13. The End
THIRTEEN
THEO
I hate this driveway.
I hate this dark and drafty mansion.
I hate this suit.
I hate these assholes.
I hate smiling.
That’s a new one, and it makes me pause. I’ve been coming to the Father’s “soirées” for the better part of the last twenty years, and my list of things I hate about them has been growing steadily over time.
It’s been a while since I’ve added something new to the list, but “smiling” isn’t coming very easily to me at this moment.
It becomes even more difficult when I spot Edmund Lawson walking toward me.
“Grady.”
“Lawson.”
His face contorts into something like a smile, and I wonder if he knows. Dane said Charity went back to his apartment, but did she stay there? Her car is still in the parking lot of his building, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t leave with someone else.
I should put a tracker on Dane’s car.
“You’re looking rather broody this evening. Something troubling you?”
Would it hurt my chances with Charity if I stabbed her father to death? “Your presence tends to be a difficult adjustment, but don’t worry. I’ll survive it.”
Edmund’s eyes narrow, all pretense of friendliness gone. “I told him about you.”
“That’s nice and vague,” I sigh, grabbing a flute of champagne off a passing tray. “But I assume you mean you told the Father I came to dinner the other night?”
“That you came to collect,” he corrects.
I’m going to shoot him.
I wonder if Dane would know how attached Charity is to her father. He could probably tell me whether killing the man would help my case or not.
“He was quite interested in what I had to say about you.”
Edmund sounds so fucking smug. He’s proud of himself for putting his daughter’s life in danger. “What did you do?”
“What I had to.”
“You fucking idiot,” I step into his space, towering over the little rat. How my Charity shares any amount of DNA with this little goblin is beyond me. “If he hurts her, I will kill you. In fact, I might kill you anyway, for all the shit?—”
“What’s this about?” The Father’s cold voice cuts through my words, making me turn my back on Edmund. I know the real threat here. “It isn’t like you to be so intimidating, Theodore.”
“I was out of line, Father. My apologies.”
His eyes sweep across my face, and I know he’s searching for a tell. He doesn’t trust me, and that isn’t a good thing. “If you continue to let your feelings for Edmund’s daughter affect your decisions, I will have to do something about her.”
My eyes cut to Edmund in time to see the blood drain from his face. Honestly, how did he think the Father was going to use her against me? “Understood, Father.”
“Good,” he claps his hands together, the sound echoing through the room despite it being full of people. “Now, I was just telling Edmund?—”
The lights cut, and the air fills with screams and the sound of gunfire.
It must be eleven o’clock.
It’s been three days, and I’m about to crawl out of my damn skin.
I left my phone at the house before heading to the Father’s soirée, knowing better than to take a phone to the Manor. If I had known shit would go sideways, and I would end up spending three days in the woods with no communication to the outside world, I would have found a way to bring the fucking thing with me.
Charity could be anywhere by now.
Sighing, I drop another crate of ammunition onto the shelf with more force than is strictly necessary. Merrick’s team brought everything into the woods, but they took severe hits, and I volunteered my team to restock. I told myself I was being helpful, but I just didn’t want to go home and see that Charity hadn’t even tried to reach out to me. I thought it was the best option, but now I’m questioning the decision.
“Seriously, boss, you owe me a fucking month of vacation after this.”
“We’re in the Mafia, Julius,” I roll my eyes, marking the crate with a black twenty-nine before shoving it to the back of the shelf. “We don’t get vacations.”
“We might get them now,” he shoots a bright grin in my direction, shoving his crate to the back of the shelf next to mine. “And if we do, I get first dibs.”
“What am I?” Victor demands from the opposite end of the loading bay. “Chopped liver?”
“Fresh meat, at least,” Julius jokes, flipping Victor off.
“You can both shut the fuck up and get back to work,” I snap, grabbing another crate off the ground and slamming it onto the table at my side. Ripping off the lid, I start sorting through the contents.
The guys are silent for a while, but I know it won’t last. Sure enough, Julius clears his throat after a few minutes. “Everything alright, boss?”
Annoyance cracks up my spine, but I force myself not to lash out at him. The guys aren’t used to seeing me at the end of my rope like this. I’m not usually at the end of my rope because the end has been safely stored away in New York City, one thousand six hundred and forty-two miles separating us. Now, she’s in my city and wants nothing to do with me.
“I’m fine,” I lie, dropping the lid back onto my crate. I move to take it to the shelf, but a hand on the top stops me.
“You’re not fine, and I don’t like it.”
“Well, it isn’t for you to like it or not, Julius. Just do your fucking job and go home.”
“To my wife.”
“What?” I snap, jerking the crate away from him.
Julius smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which are full of pity. “I’ll do the job, then I’ll go home to my wife.”
“Is there a point you’re trying to make?”
Victor shuffles into view, a guilty look on his face. “We know about the Lawson girl, boss.”
I don’t have anything to say to that.
“You’re just not going to talk to us about her?”
“There isn’t anything to talk about.”
“Theo, stop!” Julius sounds like he’s trying very hard to keep himself from punching me in the face. “You’ve never been like this before, and we’re worried about you. We just want to make sure you’re alright.”
“And see if there’s anything we can do to help.”
“There isn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Victor’s soft encouragement, the gentle hope in his voice, is what finally breaks me. “She doesn’t want me. Can the two of you change that? Can you make her love me the way I love her? Can you make her feel this pain, this gnawing, clawing ache in her chest every time we’re apart? Can you make her see me? Make her understand I would do anything, anything, for her happiness? Because I sure as fuck couldn’t.”
Neither of them seems to know how to respond, and I wave a hand dismissively. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what I sound like. I’ll be fine. She’ll either come back to me or she won’t. I’ll live either way.”
“Will you?”
I’m saved from having to answer by the sound of a phone ringing. It takes a moment to pinpoint where it’s coming from, but Victor eventually points to the phone hanging from the wall next to Maddock’s office. We’d all made fun of him for installing a landline, but it’s proving more useful than anticipated.
“Hello?”
“Thank fuck!” Merrick’s angry voice makes my eyebrows jump to my hairline. A quick look at Julius and Victor shows they heard him, too. “Get your ass to Peaks. Now!”
I snap my fingers at Julius, pointing to the crate of Glocks he just shelved. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a pissed-off woman shouting at my patrons.”
“What do you?—”
My question is cut off by an angry roar followed closely by glass shattering. “WHERE IS HE?!”
“Is that?—”
“Yes,” Merrick sighs, sounding beyond pissed he’s having to deal with this. “And she’s refusing to leave.”
“I’m on my way.”
Hanging up, I spin in a circle, unsure of what direction to move in first. Julius pulls me into focus with a sharp whistle. “Boss, what do we need?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Victor’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “Why not?”
I shake my head, still unsure what’s actually happening. “It wasn’t an attack, it was, well...It was Charity.”
“The Lawson girl?”
“She’s at Peaks?”
I nod at both of their questions, moving toward my coat in the corner. “I have to go. Finish the last few crates, and I’ll give you both a day off.”
“I thought we didn’t get days off?” Julius smirks, sliding the lid back on the crate at his feet.
Flipping him off, I jog toward the front door. “I’ll figure it out!”
It would normally take twenty minutes to get to Peaks from the Warehouse.
I get there in twelve.
Somehow, I’m not expecting the scene I’m met with when I push through the front door. Peaks is packed with people, but that isn’t surprising. The woman standing on a table in the center of the room, on the other hand...
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Charity spins on her heel, nearly losing her balance when the table wobbles beneath her. She doesn’t seem to care, though. Her eyes are glued on me, a feral look replacing her normally calm gaze. “Making a scene, obviously.”
She has to shout to be heard over the crowd, many of whom I realize are men who’ve had too much to drink based on how heavily they’re leaning against the chairs around her table. “Why are you making a scene?”
Charity huffs, throwing her arms in the air. “Because you fucking disappeared on me, Theodore Grady!”
That draws me up short. “I disappeared?”
“Yes, you did! And no one would fucking tell me anything because apparently fucking you doesn’t get me rights to know your whereabouts.” She shoots an angry glare at Merrick on the other side of the room, and I wince, realizing that was a direct quote.
“Then, my d-dad.” She sucks in a breath, and my beautiful, angry goddess looks like she is holding back tears. I lost track of Edmund in the chaos that followed Lachlan cutting the power to MacAlister Manor. Based on the way she’s looking at me right now, I’m glad I decided not to kill the man myself. “And I couldn’t find you.”
“You were looking for me?” I push one of the drunken assholes away from her table, taking his spot at her feet.
“Of course, I was looking for you.”
“Why?”
“People were dying and you weren’t answering my calls or my texts! And I’m not a psycho like you, so I didn’t have any fucking tracking devices planted under your skin.”
“I didn’t put a tracker under your skin, Viper.”
“Well, I’m going to put one under yours.”
“If it will get you down from this table, I’ll implant it myself.”
Charity rolls her eyes but she no longer looks ready to cry. She holds a hand out for me to help her down, but I ignore it, reaching for her waist instead. Sharp fingernails dig into my shoulders when I jerk her hips forward. I hold her steady, looking up into my favorite honey-brown eyes.
“Did you want to say something to me, Viper?”
“You’re gonna make me say it here?” Her eyes dart around the room, taking in the crowd, most of whom have turned their attention to the two of us. “In front of all these people?”
“You’re the one who wanted to make a scene in the middle of the town’s only bar on a Saturday night.”
She huffs but doesn’t argue the point. “I’m choosing you.”
“Sorry, what was that? I didn’t hear you.”
Her eyes narrow on me, but I simply smile innocently up at her. “I said,” she growls, nails digging deeper into my shoulders. “I’m choosing you.”
“Who?”
“You!” she shouts toward the ceiling, an annoyed smile breaking across her face. “I’m choosing you, Theodore Grady. I’m choosing you today and tomorrow and every day after that until one of us dies.”
“You won’t choose me in death?” I tease, lifting her off the table and lowering her gently to the ground in front of me.
Her hands creep up my chest, wrapping around the back of my neck. “The jury’s still out on whether or not I want to deal with your shit in the afterlife.”
I open my mouth to tell her I’m not above bribing a jury to vote in my favor, but I don’t get the words out before she pulls herself up and plants her lips on mine. The kiss is harsh and desperate, all her fears from the last three days pouring from her soul into mine. I welcome the burden of her worry, anything to ease her way in this life.
“Don’t you ever disappear on me like that again.”
My heart swells at the concern in her voice. “I won’t.”
“I mean it,” Charity huffs, her eyes locked on mine. “I get a text or a call. Something, anything, do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Her head shakes as if she doesn’t believe what I’m saying. “You scared me, Theo.”
I’ve never heard her voice so full of quiet pain. It’s barely loud enough for me to hear over the noise of the room around us. “I know. I’m sorry, Viper.”
She shakes her head, tightening her grip around my neck. “Not good enough.”
“What would be good enough?” I’m not sure what she’s going to say, but I know I’ll give it to her. I’ll bear my soul to the devil’s judgment and find a way to crawl back to her if that’s what she asks of me.
“I don’t know yet.”
Our noses bump together when I tip her chin up, looking directly into her eyes. “Well then, it’s a good thing I’ll do anything for you, Charity Lawson.”