24. Ember #2
His eyes snapped back to me. “You think he loves you, but you’re wrong. That man uses people and tosses them aside like they’re nothing.”
I flinched. Hadn’t I had that very thought multiple times over the past month? Ivan stared at me with bitter, angry eyes. Was this about his daughter? Had Jack been telling the truth about how casual and meaningless their relationship had been?
Or did my husband make a habit of wrapping women around his little finger and then cutting them loose when he got sick of them?
No. No, Jack was a good man.
As if he could read my mind and thought I was dumber than a box of donuts, Ivan snorted and walked toward the counter.
Why was I letting a grumpy old man get to me? I shook my head and turned back to Darby. “I don’t like him.”
“He’s horrible,” she agreed.
I smiled and tore a piece of cinnamon roll, licking the glaze on top before biting into the soft, sweet dough.
Caroline was a genius. We watched as Ivan shuffled back out of the bakery, a brown bag in one hand and a takeaway cup in the other.
He didn’t look our way as the door closed behind him.
Good riddance. I watched him disappear uphill, assuming he was headed toward his shop.
A shop I vowed to never visit again. We’d given him too much of our money when he was nothing but rude. He could keep all his own junk and shove it where the sun didn’t shine.
Caroline appeared next to me, gathering our empty cups. I frowned at her. “Why is he allowed in here when the Marses aren’t? He’s awful.”
She pursed her lips. “If I barred all the assholes from my bakery, I wouldn’t have any customers left.”
“Hey!” an elderly woman said from a table next to ours.
“Present company excepted, Betsy,” Caroline added with an unrepentant wink. She turned back to me and arched a brow. “I heard some interesting things about last night. Perhaps you’d like to tell me a story about a fancy party and the reason you have a bandage on your arm?”
Before I could tell her all the latest gossip, Ivan came back into view.
The paper cup and bag had disappeared, and the old man was sprinting as fast as legs in their seventh decade of life permitted.
His wispy hair flew up like a sparse sail above his head, his eyes wide as he pumped his scrawny arms. The wind blew his button-down over his potbelly and made it billow out behind him.
He had a big coffee stain splashed over his shirt and pants.
Darby turned to look, and a moment later three men in leather vests came pounding down the pavement after him. Cash, the rangy lieutenant who’d stood next to the booth yesterday, and a third man I didn’t recognize.
I stood up.
Jack, Bennett, and Knox sprinted past the window. Caroline rushed to the door and pushed it open, and the three of us—along with half the people in the bakery—hurried outside to stare down the street.
“Sheriff’s Department! Out of the way!” someone puffed behind us.
We all turned to see two out-of-breath deputies clatter down the sidewalk just as a pedestrian crossed the road with a little fluffy white dog on a leash.
The faster deputy, a tall, lanky man, hopped over the dog and kept running.
The shorter, stouter officer tried to do the same and promptly got his legs tangled in the leash.
He proceeded to faceplant on the concrete in front of us.
Everyone winced. Thankfully the dog was unhurt, but it did use the opportunity to jump on the deputy’s back and start sniffing at his pockets.
“What’s going on?” Caroline demanded.
“Ivan,” the deputy said with a groan. “Trying to catch Ivan.”
“And the Reapers?”
He rolled onto his stomach and tried to do a push-up, but his arms gave out and he fell flat again. “Them too.”
There was only one explanation that made sense: Ivan was the man who had hired Spider to harass Jack. But why?
I looked at the group running down the hill and saw Ivan duck into a side street. “Where’s he headed?”
“Probably trying to head up the alley and make it to his shop’s back door.
Barricade himself inside. That’s what I’d do.
Come on, we can go through the kitchen!” Caroline darted back into the bakery, and Darby and I followed.
We passed under the section of the counter that hinged up, and Caroline slammed it back down before anyone else could come through.
From there, we hurried past stainless-steel kitchen surfaces, gigantic ovens, and a utopia of baked goods—some of them done, some of them unbaked but held on big rolling racks. It smelled unreal.
“Through here,” Caroline said, following the lit-up exit signs to a solid door at the back.
She shouldered it open, and we poured out.
Caroline stayed by the door, and Darby crouched behind her, poking her head around the edge.
I tried to do the same, but they were both taller than me and I couldn’t see, so I took a step out to get a better look.
Ivan barreled into me with a garbled yell.
He tackled me to the ground, flailing, and we landed in a puddle stinking of stagnant water.
It was slimy as it splashed over my face and neck.
Disgusting. Then, with surprisingly strong arms, Ivan hauled me to my feet and backed up against the far wall.
One arm was banded across my neck, and the other snapped out toward the bricks. Something shattered.
He held an empty glass bottle, its jagged neck lifted up toward my throat.
Oh my God.
The bikers crashed to a stop. Cash lifted his palms. “Put the bottle down and let her go.”
Ivan tightened his hold on me. “Make me,” he snarled.
Cash met my eyes. His were green and steady, and he radiated confidence, like he wanted me to stay calm. But I couldn’t stay calm. There was a deranged old man holding a broken bottle to my neck.
That was the moment Jack and his brothers ran up to us. Jack took in the scene, and his face went cold. He was monumentally, incandescently angry.
But he would take care of this.
Some of the panic raking down my spine lessened as he took a single step forward. Jack was here, and everything would be okay.
“Back off, manwhore,” Ivan snarled.
Jack stopped. “The police will be here in a second. Your contact at the Reapers already ratted you out. We know you paid him to vandalize our equipment. Do you really want to add assault and murder to your charges?” His voice was calm and unyielding.
I was suddenly sure that everything would be okay, but Ivan’s grip on me didn’t loosen.
And I’d guessed right. Ivan was behind the vandalism.
The portly cop chose that moment to crash through the bakery’s back door. He put one hand on the butt of his gun and said, “Let her go, Ivan.”
I stood very, very still.
Behind me, Ivan’s stinking breath slid across my ear.
I could tell he was speaking to Jack when he said, “You deserved everything you got, Mars.” The arm across my neck tightened, and he dipped his lips closer to my ear to sneer, “Hope you’re not in love with this guy,” he said.
“He’ll just break your heart and tell everyone it never meant anything.
Just ask my Sofia how much she suffered when he tossed her aside. ”
Jack flinched. So something had happened between him and Ivan’s daughter—and Ivan had decided he was going to destroy what Jack cared about in return. Vandalizing a bunch of security equipment seemed so petty. Maybe now that he had me at his mercy, he was hoping to destroy me as well.
I gulped. “Sofia is your daughter?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
The old man was trembling. He smelled like sour sweat. He brandished the broken bottle as one of the bikers tried to edge closer, then brought it up so it was near my neck again. What the hell. What the actual hell. This was not how I wanted my morning to go.
“Sofia is my pride and joy, and she won’t even step foot in this town.
She just bought a house on the West Coast. She’s not coming back.
And it’s that man’s fault.” He pointed the broken bottle at Jack.
“I wanted to destroy everything he cared about. Ruin his business. Make his clients drop him. Make sure he lost something he really cared about. And I know he doesn’t care about people. ”
Ivan was lonely, and he couldn’t handle the fact that his daughter had flown the coop. Suddenly, I felt so sorry for him. He spent his days surrounded by old junk, hating everyone.
There was movement near the bakery door. “Pookie bear?” Ivan’s head shot toward the voice. It was the old woman who’d been sitting at the table next to ours. She frowned at Ivan, shaking her head. “What are you doing?”
“Betsy, baby, go inside,” Ivan said. His hand was trembling as he held the broken bottle. I could see his knuckles turning white from gripping it so hard.
But Betsy didn’t go inside. She straightened, frowning, and marched out of the bakery. She lifted a finger and pointed it at Ivan over my shoulder. “You put that bottle down and let the poor girl go. That’s my great-niece by marriage!”
“And she’s married to a piece of human scum!”
Wait, what? That would mean Betsy was…Etta’s sister? Sister-in-law? Something else? I blinked and shook my head. Small-town family trees were beyond me right now.
Betsy’s eyes shot fire. She was terrifying. Definitely Etta’s sister. “Ivan Popov. I will never speak to you again so long as I live if you don’t let her go right now!”
Ivan faltered. His hand loosened, and I knew it was my only shot.
I wrenched it away and sprinted toward the line of men waiting to pounce.
I crashed into Jack, and his arms came around me.
He squeezed me so tight I could hardly breathe; my head pressed against his chest so hard I could hear the rapid thrumming of his heart. He’d been terrified.
And now I was in his arms, and I was safe. The relief was unbelievable.