Chapter 20 #3
"That's not possible." The words come out tight, controlled, but I hear the fear beneath them. "They're supposed to be dead."
Hope surges through my chest, wild and dangerous. I crush it down before it can show on my face, but my heart pounds against my ribs with renewed ferocity.
Drake.
It has to be Drake. Because the alternative is impossible. Because the man who promised to protect me would not let something as trivial as death keep him from fulfilling that promise.
Victor pulls a knife from somewhere on his person and grabs me by the hair, yanking my head back to expose my throat. The blade presses against my pulse point, cold and sharp and absolutely fucking real.
"If anyone comes through that door," he hisses, "you die first. Understand?" He cuts the ropes holding me in the chair and he drags me in front of him like a shield.
I do not answer. My eyes are fixed on the doorway, on the chaos building somewhere above us, on the impossible hope that refuses to die no matter how hard I try to smother it.
The door bursts open.
Drake stands in the frame, backlit by harsh fluorescent light, and the sight of him steals what remains of my breath.
He is covered in blood. His shirt is torn. His face is a mask of cuts and bruises that speak of violence he barely survived. But his eyes burn with a fury that makes the air in the room feel suddenly thin and charged with an energy that brings death.
Behind him, shadows move. Kon's massive frame. Then Rafael. Luca and Rowan flanking them like soldiers prepared for war. The full force of the Red Letter Syndicate, descended into this basement to stomp out evil.
"Let her go." Drake's voice is deathly quiet and controlled.
Victor presses the blade harder against my throat. I feel a warm trickle of blood slide down toward my collarbone.
"Stay back." Victor's voice has lost its cultured softness. The grandfather mask has crumbled, revealing the cornered animal beneath. "One more step and I open her throat."
"You've already signed your death warrant." Drake takes a step forward anyway. "The only question is how much you suffer before the end."
"I'll kill her!"
"And then you'll have nothing." Another step. The distance between us shrinks with every word. "No leverage. No shield. Nothing between you and the very painful death I've been planning since the moment I learned you touched her."
Victor's grip on my hair tightens. The knife trembles against my throat, his hand shaking with fear or rage or both.
"You've already killed your brother." Victor's laugh carries a hysterical edge. "How much more blood can you take on your hands?"
“Jonah's not dead. Yet. And to answer your question, as much as I need to." His gray eyes find mine through the chaos. "Hold on, little rose. This ends now."
Victor's attention shifts to Drake for just a fraction of a second.
I move.
My bare foot drives down onto Victor's instep with every ounce of strength I can muster.
He howls in pain, his grip on my hair loosening.
I throw my head backward, feeling my skull connect with his nose in a satisfying crunch of cartilage.
Blood sprays across my shoulder. The knife jerks away from my throat as he stumbles.
Drake closes the distance in two strides.
His hands close around Victor's wrist, wrenching the knife away with a twist that makes something crack. Victor screams. Drake silences him with a blow to the jaw that sends him crashing to the concrete floor.
And then Drake is on him.
The violence that follows is methodical. Brutal. Utterly without mercy. Drake's fists rise and fall with the rhythm of a man exorcising five years of rage, reducing Victor Kedrov to a broken, bleeding mess on the concrete floor.
"You touched her." Each word is punctuated by another blow. "You threatened her family. You tried to sell her like property."
Victor stopped making sounds several punches ago. His body just absorbs the impacts now, limp and unresisting.
"Drake." I find my voice somehow, push the word past the tightness in my throat. "Drake, stop. He's done."
Drake's fist freezes mid-swing. He looks down at the ruin beneath him, chest heaving, knuckles split and bleeding. Then he looks at me.
The rage drains from his face. What replaces it is something softer, something broken, something that makes my heart crack open in my chest.
He stands and strips off his ruined jacket, crossing to me with hands that tremble as they work the hanging ropes on my wrists. The moment I am free, the jacket settles around my shoulders, warm with his body heat, covering me with a tenderness that brings tears to my eyes.
"You came." The words come out as a whisper.
"I will always come for you." His voice breaks on the promise. "Always, Katriana. No matter what it costs me."
He pulls me into his arms, and I collapse against his chest with a sob I cannot contain. The tears come then, hot and unstoppable, pouring out all the fear and shame and desperate hope I have been holding back since I woke in this nightmare.
Kon moves past us to free my mother and sister. I hear Gemma's cries, my mother's broken thanks, but I cannot look away from Drake's face. From the love I see there, raw and unguarded and absolutely certain.
"I thought you were dead." I choke the words against his chest. "Victor said Jonah betrayed you. Said you walked into a trap."
"I did." His arms tighten around me. "But I walked out again. Because you needed me."
"Jonah..."
"Alive. For now." A muscle ticks in his jaw. "I have plans for my brother that require him breathing."
Behind us, Victor stirs. A wet, gurgling sound that might be an attempt at speech. Drake's head turns toward the noise, and I see the violence flood back into his expression.
"Kon." The name is a command.
The massive Russian appears at Drake's side, his ice-colored eyes taking in the scene with grim satisfaction.
"Make sure he doesn't die before I'm ready." Drake's voice carries no emotion. "I want him conscious when I finish this."
Kon nods and moves toward Victor's crumpled form.
Drake turns back to me, his hands cupping my face with infinite gentleness despite the blood still coating his knuckles.
"I need to tell you something." His voice is rough, urgent. "Something I should have told you before any of this happened."
"Drake, we can talk later. You're hurt, I need to check on my family, we need to get out of here."
"No." He shakes his head. "I've put this off too long already. You deserve to know the truth."
I go still in his arms. The truth. The secret I have seen lurking behind his eyes for weeks. The confession he has been avoiding every night we fell asleep tangled together.
"I've wanted you for three years." The words pour out of him like water through a broken dam. "Since the first moment Jonah brought you to a family dinner. I watched you with my brother, watched him treat you like property instead of treasure, and I wanted you every single day you were with him."
My breath catches.
"I claimed your wish because I couldn't let anyone else have you.
" His thumbs stroke across my cheekbones, wiping away tears I did not realize were still falling.
"It wasn’t because I needed an heir or the promise I made to my mother.
I wanted you for three years, Katriana. Three years of watching from a distance while my brother treated you like something disposable.
I told myself you weren't mine to save. I somehow convinced myself that stepping in would only make things worse.
And after he discarded you, I stayed away.
I convinced myself once again that any woman who survived his cruelty would want nothing to do with another man who carried the Moses name.
" His voice roughens. "But when you dropped that envelope in my box, I took it before any of my brothers could reach for it.
I had been waiting for any excuse to make you mine, and I did. "
The confession doesn’t trigger the emotions in me I think Drake expects. “Do you hear what you’re telling me?"
“Yes. You suffered because of me and I did nothing.”
I take his battered face in my hands and kiss his lips gently.
“You were not responsible for me back then, Drake. You respected boundaries. Sure, I would have loved to have had a friend on my side, but you can’t take your brother’s sins on your shoulders or my actions to stay with him for as long as I did as your burden. ”
The absolute knowledge that this man walked through fire to save me — and would do it again tomorrow without hesitation — swells my heart with love.
He presses his forehead against mine. "Besides,” I whisper, “I’ve known for a while you always wanted me as your partner in life."
He lifts his head and looks down at me in surprise.
“Your library,” I remind him. “My first night with you, you told me it was always for me. That told me without you saying it directly.”The way you looked at me.
The library you prepared before I even arrived.
The thousand small moments that told me I mattered to you more than any contract could explain. "
"You're not angry?"
I let out a shaky breath and shake my head. "Mad? My sweet love, you’ve torn yourself up over something that eventually brought us together. How could I ever be mad?"
He pulls me against his chest again, and I let myself sink into his embrace. Behind us, I hear Gemma calling my name, hear my mother's tearful voice asking if I am alright. I hear the sounds of the Syndicate securing the building and dealing with whatever remains of Victor's men.
But for this moment, there is only Drake. Only his heartbeat beneath my ear. Only the solid reality of his arms around me, holding me together when I should be falling apart.
"I love you." The confession slips out without permission, muffled against his ruined shirt. "I love you, Drake Moses. And I am proud to be with a man I can trust with my life."
His whole body goes still. Then he tilts my chin up and kisses me with a tenderness that makes my heart ache.
"I love you too." The words brush against my lips like a vow. "I've loved you since the day I met you and I'm going to love you for the rest of my life."
Gemma appears at my side, throwing her arms around both of us in a hug that makes Drake grunt with surprise. My mother follows, her thin arms wrapping around us all, her tears soaking into my hair.
We stand there in that basement, surrounded by blood and violence and the broken remnants of the man who tried to destroy us. We stand there clinging to each other while the Syndicate works around us, securing evidence, removing bodies, erasing the nightmare that almost swallowed us whole.
We survived.
And as Drake lifts me in his arms and carries me toward the stairs, toward the light, toward a future I never dared to imagine, I realize that surviving is just the beginning.
Now comes the living.