Only For Him, page 16
“If you need me, squeeze.” He puts my hand on his thigh. “Understood?”
“Yes.”
He sits back up and returns to the call, but his hand never stops moving over my hair and that warmth never leaves me.
DECLAN
She’s already seen and heard too much. Most is intentional and a setup, in case she is an informant. The information will identify her and it’s not true. But some things … like the meeting yesterday … I should not have let her hear that conversation.
My family has only dealt with that particular situation one of two ways.
A quick death or marriage. All their wives have been involved in matters they shouldn’t have. And none of them can be forced to testify. If Braelynn isn’t an informant, but she hears things she shouldn’t … there’s only one of two ways we deal with that.
All morning the consequences of what our relationship has evolved into have bothered me. They’ve whispered into the back of my mind that it’s going to come to an end. It would protect my little pet. She wouldn’t have to worry if she overheard conversations. It’s her worrying that’s the problem, I’ve come to decide. I take it as my responsibility to ease that.
Time is not in our favor, but it will certainly help.
Knock, knock. My gaze lifts to the door and then to the monitors on my left. I hadn’t noticed Nate coming down the stairs.
I call out, “Come in.”
Nate closes the door quietly after entering, his custom-tailored suit looking more rumpled than I’m used to seeing on him.
“What is it?” I ask him and then click over to my schedule. The night is nearly free and what I do have on my calendar can be pushed back. Nothing is pressing, so I’m not sure why the hell Nate has that look on his face. There’s always a tell about him when he’s stressed.
“Your brother called a bit ago.”
“What for?”
“He said he wanted a quick conference. He has orders.” There’s something about Nate at the moment that I don’t care for. There’s an anxiousness about him.
“Call him,” I order him and lean back.
Nate does as directed, calling on his burner. As it rings, my thumb trails over my stubble. If Carter has orders, something’s changed.
“Boss,” Nate says in greeting as the line is picked up.
“Is my brother there?” Carter questions.
“I’m here,” I call out. Nate places the phone down gently on my desk and resumes standing, his hands clasped in front of him.
“Declan.” Jase’s voice comes through next. I get the impression it’s a fucking intervention.
“Fuck, if this is about dinner, it’s a bit of overkill.” I let out a short laugh, but my brothers are silent. “I’ll be there next week.”
I bite my tongue before telling him I may bring Braelynn. I’m not certain I should. Things have been difficult and I don’t know whether it would make things better or worse to involve my family. I want them to meet her, though.
Carter speaks first. “It worked.”
“What worked?” I question and I’m the only one. I take it I’m the last to know.
“Whoever you set up with the numbers.”
My blood goes cold and I peek up, Nate doesn’t even look at me.
“What numbers?” I ask. They can’t be talking about the books. Denial sinks its claws into me, holding me steady as Carter confirms the unwanted thoughts.
“We got in the transcript this morning. We notified Nate in case she came in. Braelynn, isn’t it?”
Betrayal sinks deep into the marrow of my bones. My world turns blurry, reality bends and spins in front of me. Taunting me. Laughing at the very thought that I believed her.
She said she wouldn't hurt me.
Every doubt I ever had screams at me, demanding I acknowledge they were right.
Of course she stayed last night rather than leaving. It’s the only reason she ever stayed.
“She’s working for the feds. Now we know.”
Nate’s statement brings my focus back.
I clear my voice and sit up straighter, my shoulders stiffening as I tell my brother, “Send me everything. I want to be sure it’s her.”
“Declan.” Carter’s tone is reprimanding. “She’s the only one—”
My voice is harsh as chaotic anger burns inside of me. “Send it to me.”
To keep my hands from trembling, I form white-knuckled fists.
“Declan, the information about the train tracks is in the testimony,” Jase tells me. Matter-of-factly, but also with an air of sympathy. If he were here, I know he’d grip my shoulder, then pat it.
He would tell me it’s all right, but it’s not.
Nothing about this is right.
“The tracks?”
“From our conversation,” Nate speaks, and when I look up his eyes are on me but only for a fraction of a second. The moment my gaze narrows, he looks downward, focusing on his shoes instead.
My vitriol has nowhere to hide.
“And the numbers in the books, the ones that were off and you planted. They’re in the report.”
“It has to be her.”
My body sags into the chair. “Get out,” I whisper as something else takes hold of me. Something I don’t care to admit. “Get out, Nate.” When I glance up to scream at him, I realize he’s already gone. He left quietly. Smart man I suppose, given I was prepared to throw anything I could find at him.
“Declan? Are you there?” Carter questions.
“I’m here.”
“We’re coming, all right? We’ll be there soon.”
I can’t explain why, but hearing Carter tell me that breaks something inside of me.
“Are you sure?” I ask him and then I think maybe he would misunderstand and think I’m referencing him coming down here to The Club, but before I can clarify he tells me.
“It’s her, Declan. We need to take care of this.”
To take care of it … my blood chills. I’m quick to end the call, before the emotions swarm and make me a weaker man.
BRAELYNN
Every day is the same now, a tempting lullaby. The red door that used to haunt my every thought now leads to my sanctuary.
When I get in, with my purse tucked under my arm and my heels clicking as I go, I stride straight to the office like I always do. Every step brings a new heat, the sweet dull ache reminding me of yesterday.
Declan Cross is insatiable. It does something to me. If nothing else, he wants me. And I crave that from him. Perhaps that’s what it’s like to be in this kind of relationship. This pining to please him and be pleased by him is addictive. I don’t know what the future holds when it comes to men like Declan, but I do know that he can’t get enough of me nor I him.
We’ll take it one day at a time. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what anyone else would do. My footsteps still seem to echo from the iron stairs as I approach Declan’s door toward the end of the hall. I’ll never forget the first time I had to come down here. I knew the power Declan had over me from the first moment our eyes met.
I’m beginning to think that power dynamic will always be the same. Even if the rest of the world goes to shit, the way I feel when Declan looks into my eyes won’t go away.
It’s an uncertain feeling that overwhelms me at that thought, because I desperately want it to be true, and that’s a dangerous thing. I let my shoulders relax and reach for the door. Time to balance the books, or bend over the desk, or sit in his lap and kiss him. Anything could happen tonight, and part of me is excited for that.
Only the door doesn’t open for me. I shake the handle a second time. It’s locked.
That’s strange. For the three weeks I’ve been working, it’s always unlocked. Last week he told me to enter without even knocking.
Balling my hand, I knock on the door with uncertainty. There’s a pitter-patter in my chest and I ignore it.
“Declan?” I call his name. No one answers.
After a moment, I take my phone from my purse and open a new message.
Braelynn: I’m at the office, are you in there?
Leaning against the wall by his door, I wait. Peering down to my right and then my left. I check my phone and social media … taking up time. After a few minutes, no new messages appear and I decide to send another one.
Braelynn: No one’s here to let me in. Should I go home or do you want me to stay? I could wait upstairs at the bar if you’d like?
Something feels off. Very wrong as I wait in the silence. It’s an uncomfortable sensation that I can’t quite place.
I really don’t like this feeling that comes over me. A noise from around the corner grabs my attention. A footstep, maybe. A scuffle of a shoe against the floor. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It could be Declan over there, but why wouldn’t he have answered me?
Fear creeps up on me as I take a hesitant step forward.
“Declan?” I barely breathe, not trusting the quiet.
I pull my purse higher on my shoulder and move through the hallway. The noise ricochets through the hall again. It almost sounds like a high heel tapping.
A crease settles in the middle of my forehead. “Hello?” I call out, expecting to hear Mia maybe or another waitress.
When I turn the corner near the back room, I see them and my body goes numb. It’s a chilling sight and I don’t believe what I see.
Scarlet.
And Nate, with his hand over her mouth. She’s pressed against the wall, her red dress barely seen around his navy blue suit. I blink and what happens next is over with in a matter of seconds.
The sight of her is paralyzing. Her eyes are wide with terror, and her hands scrabble at his, which are wrapped around her throat. They get even wider when she sees me and her body struggles against Nate’s grip. Her mascara leaks down the corner of her eyes with the tears.
My purse drops to my side, my body trembling.
Panic makes my throat go tight, but a survival instinct freezes me in place. One of her heels clicks against the floor. Fuck. She can’t even get her feet on the ground. He’s choking her!
Do something! A voice screams in my head and by the time I’m able to act, it’s too late. It all happens in the span of a single breath. By the time I step forward, a scream tearing up my throat, it’s over.
“I’m sorry,” Nate whispers.
And then he snaps Scarlet’s neck. The crack resonates inside of me, paired with the sight of her body going limp, her eyes no longer blinking and her arms falling at her side.
A scream rips out of me, scratching at my throat.
My heart hammers as Nate turns to look at me, without an ounce of sympathy in his expression. With adrenaline surging through me, I turn to run and collide with a hard chest.
My body flinches, and tries to escape until I look up.
Declan grabs me, cold and cruel. He turns me around and pins me close, a hand over my mouth, the other pinning my arms down. “He killed her!” I try to scream, but I can’t. “Declan! Please!” My words are muted, my body hot and my entire being filled with terror even though Declan’s here. My mind is a whirlwind that won’t stop.
Help her, is all I can think. Even though I know she’s already dead. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes as my throat goes raw with my cries.
Declan turns my head in his hand so I have to look at him. His grip is brutal and it’s shocking when I see his face. His eyes hold a deadly anger and everything stills.
Very, very slowly, he removes his hand from my mouth. It’s not comforting. He’s still holding me too tight. Tight enough to crush me. It’s hard to catch my breath. My mind spins back through what just happened.
Scarlet is dead.
My friend. I saw her die. Nate snapped her neck. Killed in cold blood.
“Declan.” His name, a plea from me, is barely audible. I can’t breathe enough to put my voice behind it. “I’m scared.”
“My little pet,” he says, and his voice is brutal. I thought I knew fear before but ice spills through my veins. “You should be fucking terrified.”
I’LL KISS YOU TWICE
PROLOGUE
Declan
My oldest brother told me once there was a moment when he realized he’d ruined it all. Not just for himself, but for everyone he loved. Carter said it was like time had slowed down, yet it played before his eyes too fast to stop it just the same. He saw everything that would happen — the devastation, the pain, the brutality that lay ahead. And it was all too late. He’d damned us all leading us down a path with no return.
Whiskey slurred his words that night as he leaned against the stained glass window of the church. I vaguely remember carefully taking the nearly empty bottle from him and wishing Jase would drive faster so I wouldn’t have to be alone with my eldest brother. He was drunk and nearly belligerent until he spiraled, and that night was hell incarnate for us. The blood that drenched his clothes substantiated that claim. I was only seventeen at the time. Half terrified of what had happened, but more afraid of what my brother would do next.
I remember thinking, never in my life would I allow myself to get to that point. A decade would prove me wrong.
With the motel room’s sole small window wide open and the only woman I’ve ever wanted staring back at me, that moment Carter described comes back to me with a lifetime of pain and realization.
Braelynn is crouched in the windowsill, looking small and weak, in a nightgown far too thin for the cold evening air. The red, white, and blue lights from the streets several floors down below flash across her face. Only moments ago, I held her in the bed that now stands between us. I was going to make things right, but it’s far too late. I didn’t see this coming. With everything that happened, I could have never imagined this. All I want is to take it all back.
Braelynn’s deep brown eyes are reddened, her cheeks tearstained, and the breeze blows wisps of her curly dark hair around her shoulders … all I can think is at least Carter knew the hell that waited for us. He knew the moment he’d gone too far. I didn’t.
The only thing I know as truth now is that everything’s my fault and it’s all too late.
Pleas for her to not jump ring out through the air as the metal cuffs dig into my wrists, pinned behind my back. Two men grab me to keep me from running to her, one with the barrel of a gun pressed to the temple of my head as the scream tears up my throat. Pain and adrenaline are nothing when she looks at me like that. Like she’s saying goodbye.
She trembles on the ledge and I can’t do a damn thing but shout for her to stop. With the police surrounding us in the cramped room and the ending to our story so close, I know she loves me. Her dark eyes hold obvious pain and misery, coupled with so much regret, but more than anything I know she looks back at me, her grip slipping, because she loves me.
She has no idea how much I love her, though.
Or how much this moment kills a part of me I thought was dead until she came back into my life. Something I thought was snuffed out long ago.
Her lips barely move as she whispers to me and a gunshot blasts through the moment.
“Braelynn, no!”
DECLAN
THREE WEEKS PRIOR
Everything feels colder the moment the doors close at the far end of the hall. They shut with a gentle thud and lock with a soft click, ending my sight of her limp body being carried away. The next steps are simple enough. It’s been done a hundred times or more. It’s what has to happen. She’ll be tortured until the information we seek is provided and verified. And then she’ll be dealt with and disposed of. I swallow thickly at the thought.
Her screaming my name in fear is engraved on my heart. Even now in the silence I can still hear it. Dread flows like a fog through me. There have been countless times when I’ve watched men and women alike struggle against their inevitable fate for daring to go against my brothers and me.
Braelynn, though … the betrayal runs deep in my veins and chills me to my core.
I can’t fucking believe she did it.
“Don’t leave her side.” I’m only aware I’ve murmured the command when Nate looks back at me with a questioning look in his eye.
“Boss?” he asks for clarification.
Turning away from the hall they dragged her down, I straighten my shoulders and make damn sure he hears me. “I want to hear her confess.”
At the last word, something breaks inside of me. Some childlike hope that Braelynn truly wanted me is irrevocably damaged. She didn’t have to love me. She didn’t have to care for me in any way. I know that’s an impossible task given the man I am. But I thought she craved my touch for the sake of it. I would have happily swallowed a lie if it meant never being confronted with this. She could have wanted me solely for what I can give her—the protection I could have offered her, my wealth—and I would have gladly made a deal with the devil to keep her.
I thought there was something special between us that others could never feel or imagine. A connection that even as a child I knew existed for us and us alone. I’m a fucking fool.
“I want her to tell me, face-to-face before she dies, that she leaked information. That she was working with the feds or, at the very least, Scarlet. I want her to admit she used me. I want to hear it for my fucking self. You won’t let her come close to breaking without me there. Is that understood?”
“Boss, I don’t—”
“Did you not fucking hear me?” The scream rips up my throat, a heat and adrenaline fueled by anger causing Nate to take a step back instinctively.
The brick walls of the narrow hall make my voice ricochet as I suddenly feel light-headed.
“I hear you, Boss. I’ll stay by her side and I’ll make certain you are the last one to speak to her.”
“If she’s not fucking alive, I will kill you myself, Nate.” The venom in my words is palpable.
“Yes, Boss.”
