With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,56

drive. Nelly stands at our front door with grief in her eyes, but she knows what needs to happen.

She doesn’t want me to go, but she needs someone to be Jon’s savior, so she draws in a brave inhalation until her chest rises, then she lets it out again and rushes back through the door when Aiden comes out to see what all the fuss is about.

I will protect Jon. And to do that, Nelly needs to protect our babies.

Driving across town, but not rushing, since I need to get there when Jon does, I pass through Main Street and think back to high school, back to the good old days of knowing my future bride was betrothed to someone else, and all I had to do to secure my future was to steal her.

It’s my thing, right?

Steal, lie, cheat. A man who has lived my life ain’t too proud to hit below the belt if it’s what I need to do to win a war. I only participate in wars I deem worthy, and if I deem it worthy, then I already deem it necessary to win. There is no second option.

Pulling off to the side of the road at the entrance of the trailer park, hidden by overgrown trees and a wrecked truck, I peek through my windshield and the truck’s windshield and wait.

I don’t know my game plan, but Jon can’t go on living like this. So I wait, I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and sing a Bryan Adams song under my breath. It’s the song that was playing over my radio the first night Nelly came to me all those years ago. The same song we dance to in our kitchen every time it comes on the radio.

It’s our song, because everything I do is for her. For my family. For the people who hold my heart.

Today, in this trailer park, everything I do is for a broken boy and his sweet baby sister who shouldn’t know the things they know.

Eventually, about forty-five minutes after leaving home, Jon pushes through the thick tree line and emerges amongst long grass. He stops and casts a scared glance across the open park, but he doesn’t see me here. He’d never expect me to follow, and if I did, he’d expect me to be running behind, not driving around.

With tears on his face, because he already knows going into that place will hurt him, Jon bolsters his bravery and steps forward with broad shoulders. Nothing I’ve ever endured in my life required as much bravery as Jon shows when he walks toward the front steps and opens the shitty door to his derelict home.

As soon as he steps in, the shouting starts, like his bitch of a mother thinks he’s late for his beating. Pushing out of the cab of my truck at the first thump and Jon’s cry, but leaning back in with the rage pulsing in my blood, I grab a tire wrench from behind my bench seat and roll it in my flexing hand.

I don’t own guns.

They’re too fucking dangerous for a guy with too much at home to risk, but I have my fists. I have my wits, my strength, my speed, and I have fucking rage sizzling through my blood and a heady cocktail of mourning and injustice for an abused little boy who took a beating time and time again because he was trading himself for his sister.

To keep her safe, he risks death or permanent disability every time he steps inside this place, but today, it ends.

Storming forward and ignoring the shitty Ford that drives in behind me, slams on its brakes, then backs the fuck up again, I head straight to the door Jon moved through and almost rip it off its hinges when I tear it open.

It’s dark inside, almost pitch black until my eyes adjust from the middle of the day sunlight outside, but then I see it, I see Wayne-Fucking-Hart with his pockmarked face barely an inch from Jon’s, and his strong hand holding my boy around the throat and a full foot off the floor.

Jon’s body spasms, his eyes bulge, his feet kick out in search of something to stand on, and his hands tear at his dad’s skin. But the man squeezes the life out of a little boy until I roll forward on a roar and slam my tire wrench over Wayne’s broad back.

Jon’s mother screams when her husband drops. Jon falls