go to my house. Wes is dead now, so I assumed it was safe for me to go there.”
He doesn’t speak, his expression unreadable but the lines of his hard body are taut, his jaw still shadowed with stubble, set hard. He pushes off the doorframe and slowly saunters toward me, a panther on the prowl, a predator, in that moment he’s a predator. He’s lethal. He’s a killer, at least a part of him is, but I don’t care. And as crazy as it might seem to someone else, I want him insanely right now. He stops in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me. Goosebumps lift on my skin. I want him to touch me. “I hate you with him,” he says, his voice a low, rough rasp.
“Me, too,” I whisper, stepping into him, my hand settling on his chest, the thunder of his heart beneath my palm proof that Gabriel’s very existence affects him. I spent years thinking that he didn’t love me. Years believing he never looked back. I was wrong, so very wrong.
“I want you and me, Rick. I want that very much, but we have to do what we have to do to end this. Let me go to the party. By the time it’s over with, Tag will be gone and so will we. I’ll be on a plane with you to New York.”
He catches my waist and pulls me to him, pressing his forehead to mine. “I can’t promise not to kill him.”
“I know,” I say, and my hand settles on his cheek, over the scar he’d gotten that night he killed Wes’s wife, but ultimately that scar exists because my father convinced him to join the black ops team. I’m not sure what to do with that information.
Rick eases back to study me, his expression probing. “I’m not talking about Tag. I’m talking about Gabriel. If he lays the wrong hand on you, I will kill him.”
“You’ll be too busy killing Tag.”
“If you’re trying to convince me you should be at that party, you’re failing.”
“I’ll be protected,” I remind him. “And the party is high profile. There will be plenty of security present. I need to help you, Rick, and I need my father. If I don’t show up at that party, Tag will know something is up and that puts you and my father at risk.”
He looks skyward, seeming to struggle a moment before he fixes me in a turbulent stare. “You do not leave that party with him. And I mean you do not leave that party with him. I don’t care if you have to make a scene. Do you understand?”
Cotton forms in my throat. I swallow hard. “You’re afraid he’s already decided to kill me.”
“He and Pocher already decided that you’re disposable should you become a problem. We didn’t hear them make the definitive decision to get rid of you, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t made.”
My heart swishes in my ears and begins to thunder while the cotton in my throat grows more dense. I can hardly breathe. I didn’t love Gabriel, but when I met him, I thought he was a good man. I didn’t expect him to turn out to be a man who planned a hit on my life. No one can expect such things.
Rick’s hands come down on my arms. “Candy,” he says, softly, and I stare at him, this man who owns my heart and soul, this man who calls himself a killer. And yes, he is, but he’s not a monster. Gabriel is a monster.
“I need to hear you say it, baby,” he urges.
“I won’t leave with him. I promise. No matter what it takes.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Savage
Candace fixes her face while I stand at the window of the hotel bedroom, contemplating going all caveman and shit on her. I could put her on a damn plane and send her to New York. The only reason I don’t is Pocher who lives in North Hampton. He’s a bad news dude, a powerful man with the resources of the Society, which is basically the backdoor government, Washington’s underground. Which is why I need Kane Mendez. He doesn’t just legitimately own the oil industry, and buckets of cash, he’s connected to a drug cartel. And he and that cartel, hate Pocher. Kane Mendez might be dirty, but he’s the kind of dirty we need.
Minutes later, Candace and I enter the dining room to find Asher, Smith, and Adam at work on laptops. They