To Cullen’s mind, it wasn’t enough blood. And Taylor didn’t look anywhere near scared as he got to his feet. His gaze was still blank, his face was still blank—the way he looked, he could have been out playing golf. He sure as hell didn’t look like somebody had just popped him one.
“You son of a bitch, you didn’t even try to move,” Cullen snarled.
“No.” Taylor stared at him, those cool blue eyes level and flat. “If I had a daughter, I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same as you.”
“You fucking bastard. You have no idea how I feel, how I would feel.”
“Cullen.”
“You know how I feel? You fucking robot, you don’t feel, that’s the problem,” he roared, ignoring the quiet voice coming from his left.
Taylor just stood there, hands at his sides, face blank. Cullen closed the distance between them, furious. Grabbing the man’s suit, he hauled him closer. “You too much of a pussy to fight me? You’ll drag kids into your world but you won’t face a man? Cowardly piece of shit.”
“Oh, now that’s it.” Two strong, slim hands pushed between them. Cullen wasn’t about to let go that easily.
“Back off,” he snarled.
And those cool, unfeeling blue eyes blazed with heat. Gently, Taylor nudged Dez off to the side. Not that she was in any mood to be nudged, but the man somehow managed it.
In a quiet, controlled voice, Taylor said, “You’re going to watch how you speak to my wife, or I’ll break you into so many pieces, they won’t have anything left to bury, you hear me?”
“Oh, now that’s all nice and sexy, Jones, but the wife can speak for herself.” Dez shoved between them once more. Her eyes hot with fury, she looked from Cullen to her husband. “And you better think again before you try to nudge me aside, buddy, because if you do it? You and me are going to box, you hear me?”
Taylor apparently didn’t. “You aren’t going to speak to her that way, Morgan.”
“Jones . . . you worry about him punching you. I’ll worry about how he speaks to me.” She wedged herself between and elbowed her husband in the gut until he moved back. Then she shoved against Cullen until he, too, fell back a step.
“Back off, Dez.”
“Don’t you go telling me to back off, Morgan. Not unless you want me to rearrange that pretty-boy face of yours, and trust me, right now I really want to do it,” she said, taking a step in his direction, her chin jerking up. “Oh, you’re an idiot, you know that? A first-class moron. He didn’t drag Jillian into shit, and if you know a damn thing about that daughter of yours, you could probably figure that out. She called him. He didn’t call her.”
“He’s using a child.”
“She’s not a child,” Dez said, shaking her head. “I know that hurts you and I’m sorry, but she hasn’t really been a child since the day she was kidnapped, and if you could let yourself admit it, you’d see the truth of it. You blind fool, what is she supposed to do—ignore the fact that she knows there are women out there . . . some of them as young as she is, being held prisoner? Girls that are going to be sold off to the highest bidder? Girls she can help? She’s got a nightmare trapped in her head. You want her to go crazy or something?”
“That’s enough, Dez.” Behind her, Taylor sighed heavily.
She swung her head around, glaring at her husband. “The hell it is. He wants to call you a coward, call you out for using his daughter, when that’s not what this is. She was brave enough to come to you, Jones. She’s got more courage than he does, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s got nothing to do with courage,” Cullen growled. “And everything to do with protecting my child.”
“And how can you protect her from what’s haunting her?” Dez asked quietly. “Because I’ve got a good idea what she has trapped inside her head. You can’t chase those ghosts away. It’s not like it’s a monster hiding under her bed, for crying out loud. And it sucks, but you can’t fix this. You can’t. Neither can Taige. Hell, if you’d taken five seconds to ask Taige, she probably would have told you that.”
“Leave Taige out of this,” Cullen rasped.
Spinning away, he covered his face with his hands. Some of them as young