had fallen awkwardly, breaking critical vertebrae and severing her spinal cord.
Abraham was an ungodly shade of red. “So you admit it.”
Bodie tried to crawl out of the wreckage of the wall, yelped as her father snagged her wrist and wrenched her free. “I’ll admit to saving my sister. I did the only thing I could in that moment. If I’d done nothing, she’d be dead. Maybe that would’ve been kinder than leaving her to rot under your roof.”
In the next breath she took, Bodie understood she’d just pulled the pin on the grenade of her life. She kissed Braun goodbye in her head, settled her aching cheek against the breadth of his powerful chest, and whispered the words she hadn’t been courageous enough to give back to him yet.
She held herself in that vision, kept herself anchored in her Master, as the world stayed still for a long, quiet moment.
When the pain hit, Bodie stood straight and hit right back.
*
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me she lived in this dump?” Braun demanded of Liam as they cruised into town. He shook Bodie’s note at her best friend, infuriated she’d managed to let this little detail go undetected. “You think I’d have even let her think about coming back on her own if I knew she lived here?”
Liam glared at him. “You’re her Dom, Braun. She’s been living with you for a goddamn week; you didn’t think to ask?”
Atticus's massive truck was filled to capacity with five Masters. The man himself was driving, following Liam’s directions rather than following the navigation system. Jasper, faster than the rest, had called shotgun immediately. Liam was wedged between an irate Braun, and a napping Loki.
When he’d realized his subbie lived in a notoriously shady area, Braun had summoned his buddies. Leaving a bemused Connie in charge of Avalon while the plumbers worked their magic—something Braun was going to pay for painfully, if the look of intent on her face meant anything—the Masters of Avalon were riding to Bodie’s aid.
If she wanted her old apartment clearing so badly, well, it would be cleared. In half the time. He wanted her nowhere near anything dangerous, and he certainly didn’t want her to be a sitting duck if her asshole parents turned up for one of their regularly unscheduled visits.
“No,” Braun admitted grudgingly. “We covered a lot of stuff but where she lives exactly didn’t crop up in conversation.” He clenched his fist, bouncing it off his knee. A kernel of unease wound its roots into his belly. “How much longer before we get there?”
“Well, if our resident chauffeur takes a right here, and then the second left, we should be there.” Liam leaned between the seats to point, then his back stiffened as two shiny motorcycles revved loudly, tires almost screaming as they came around the corner at speed.
Braun’s attention was caught by the broad guy riding the bike closest to the truck—the man rode without a helmet, his bulky form stuffed into black leathers. Silver hair streamed back from a craggy face as the bikes bulleted past with a whine of engines.
“Heisler,” Liam said tightly, “put your fucking foot on the gas. Now.”
“Liam?” Atticus spared a glance at him, then set his attention back on the road as he made the turn.
“Put your fucking foot down!” Liam had lost all color in his face and, to Braun’s horror, looked as though he wanted to cry. Never in all their years of friendship, not even after his asshole boyfriend took off with another man, had Braun seen William Carradine shed a tear.
He set his hand on his friend’s shoulder, pulled him back into his seat. “Tell me what’s going on, Liam.”
Stormy gray eyes met Braun’s, and the pain in them was equal to his fear. “That was Bodie’s father. The guy on the bike. It was Bodie’s father, Braun. You understand what that means?”
Braun resisted the illusion that the man might just be in the area. Criminals had their territories, but from what Bodie had told him, the city was his territory, which meant he could go anywhere he pleased, whenever he liked. But for him to pull out of a street leading directly to Bodie’s apartment?
Coincidence? He thought not.
“Atticus, step on it.” Keep a cool head, Fitzpatrick. “You got a first aid kit in here?”
The truck sped up, pressing them back in their seats as it rocketed down the dark street. Buildings blurred past, then Atticus wrenched the wheel, spinning them around a corner