Nikolai
Every word he says to Rose lands like blows I can almost see. I don’t need to be in the room. I don’t need to witness it. I can hear it, a vibration in the air.
Pain, betrayal, the utter fucked up shit he said to her about Steph, about me and Steph, which never, ever happened, how I want her dead.
Right now, I’m trapped. There’s a chance if I somehow back out and get away, I can send a message with Beale Street so we might find his secret fucking compound. Or, since he’s about to go there, round up as many of his goons as possible. I’m thinking that Garcia might know who’s at the top of the food chain.
If I leave, then I’m leaving my Rose to a fucking madman, and right now, the best I can do is wait and strategize.
I can see Derek from the shadow I’m in, against the wall. He can’t see me, and the fucker has a gun. He’s taunting, hurting, wanting to make her bleed in his favorite way. He likes his fists and boots and he likes to use words. If I move in, the guy who’s in the room one door up will see me, and if I take him out, Derek might shoot her.
I’m really fucking trying to see a scenario where I get both me and Rose out. I have the name Beale Street. I have Garcia. This is enough to justify me pulling her out if I can. The white-hot fury has morphed into almost paralyzing fear. Fear I won’t be able to save her. Fear that I fucked up.
I don’t care about my plan. I care about Rose.
When I was a kid, a nobody, starting with my uncle, I recognized him as the one who killed my parents. I liked Steph enough-couldn’t work out why she was with this fuck until I saw they had a kid. I never lied to Rose about that attack when she was two.
Mostly.
No one else stepped in except me because I thought he was going to kill the kid and then Steph. Steph…she chose to stay, but a kid didn’t have a choice. So I stepped in and told him to stop.
He beat me. I fought him, but he had two men hold me, and he beat me.
No one did anything. My uncle wasn’t there. This was my first big dealing, even if it was small.
If that had been it, I’d have taken the lesson, and used it as a steppingstone. I know he only had me held because I would have taken him down. I never gave a shit about that. Lessons learned and all that bullshit.
No. It was everything else.
When I told my uncle about his sister’s murder, I set the path. I got them killed. Rose and her mother got them killed.
That’s what settled in my head. I helped Steph get out with some money. Then, she turned evidence. Me? I took over and built my uncle’s gang into the force to be reckoned with. In my head, I tangled Steph and her kid in with the deaths and betrayals and marked them both along with fucking Derek. Finding Rose was a boon, just not the one I expected. And now…
She’s my Rose, though, the new one with her thorns. She’s taunting him, winding him up, pushing through the pain that pulsates in the air to sink her own barbs in. About me, about her mother, about how pathetic he is. She’s utterly magnificent and it just might get her killed.
If she dies, I…I can’t let that happen. I’m going to have to make a move because that fuck points the gun at her. I’m going to take him down and I don’t care what happens to anyone else but her.
His phone rings, and I press against the wall as Derek answers and the guy in the other room appears. “What the fuck? If the alarm went off, I know what that means. He’s here. You-get out there.” The guy lumbers past me, not even looking.
“Why do you fucking think I wanted one put at the garden gate?” Derek’s voice rises and he’s close to losing it. “If no one’s answering, look for the fucking bodies! Get out from your fucking little guard house and find the fucker!”
He doesn’t know I’m in the house. He thinks I’m out there.
Derek starts up again. “Kill them, no matter the cost. Kill them and bring the corpses to me.”
He slams down the phone and then he trains the gun steady on Rose. I can’t see her, but that’s what he’s doing.
“Thorne? Come here.”
“Are you going to kill me like I asked?”
Goddamn fucking Rose. Is she wanting him to kill her?
Something snaps. I don’t think. I step out and into the room, gun on
Derek. “If you are,” I say, “I’d rethink it.”
Derek goes red then gray. “You fucker. You can’t have her.”
“I don’t want her,” I say, lying. I can’t look at Rose, but her little moan strips skin and flesh from my bones. “I’m here for you.”
“You invade my home, you step into things when you shouldn’t, again,” he spits. “You take my family from me. My daughter.”
“You weren’t treating her very well, were you? Selling her? Offering her to all and sundry? No, I’m not finished with her, so I’ll kill you and take her. Of course, I can let you go. End the war.”
“Not on your fucking life, Wilder, you piece of shit. You know I had Lila, right? She begged for me. Then I cut her up and sent her to your stupid, ugly uncle. Then I killed him, too.”
The knife’s edge, twisting. “History. I don’t care about that. I’m offering you a deal. Walk and you live, and you get to keep face.”
“You fucked my Thorne.”
I grin slow and terrible, and I can feel the air shift and change to my left, where my beautiful, damaged Rose is. “I did.”
He’s going to kill her because he thinks I care. He’s right.
He’ll never survive any of this because if he touches her, I will fucking hunt him down. All his people and their families. I’ll take them all out. He’s not going to survive because he doesn’t deserve it.
I’m the better shot with and without the vest, so I take it off and hold it out for Rose to take. Keeping my eyes trained on Derek, I feel the weight of it go from my hand as she does.
“That won’t save her and you know it,” he sneers at me. “But it tells me you care.”
“No, I really don’t. Since you’re a shit shot, I just know I won’t need it. It’ll only slow me down.”
There’s a tiny sob. I ignore it. I have to. She has a chance with the vest at least. And if the opportunity comes, and he does shoot at me, I hope she’ll run.
“So, you give her your vest in some misguided fucking attempt at heroics?” Derek asks.
“No,” I say. “If I was doing that, I’d tell her to fucking run when the opportunity comes. Do you see me doing that?”
“You fucked her.”
Even if he kills me, he will never live because Rush and Tony and everyone else will carry out my instructions. It’s something I privately talked to Tony about. But Rose? I need to save her, so I hurt her. Make her bleed. Turn her against me. Forever.
“Yes,” I say, “I did. Fucked Steph, too. Guess who was better?”
He swings the gun at me, and then, at the last second, he turns it on her as he pulls the trigger. I leap in front of it because he’s aiming at her head.
Something hits me. Rose screams. Derek laughs and cocks his gun, and I slam into the ground.
Then, pain like I’ve never experienced rips through me, like bone and organs are smashed and torn, and the world turns dark at the edges. I still have my gun and I raise it and shoot. It goes wide. Someone grabs my gun.
Soft hands. Hands I know.
Rose. She’s alive.
She points the gun and pulls the trigger, over and over again. Derek screams like a banshee and runs, and Rose keeps shooting until it’s empty.
“Always…always was a coward.” I close my eyes and breathe out.
Something shakes me, and there’s a voice. Sweet, the voice of a rose.
Rose.