Freed (Bad Boy Hitman Romance) (25 page)

Chapter 26

Rebecca

My head hurt. There was an ungodly throbbing at my temples, and my mouth was so damned dry, it tasted like ass. Gross.

I groaned out load.

Slowly, I opened my eyes to see Kyle staring down at me. He looked worried and then the worry gave way to a look of relief. “What’s going on?”

“You lost a lot of blood, and you fainted.”

I groaned, closing my eyes again. “My head hurts. Where am I?”

“Home.”

“The dorms?”

I laughed. “My place. You’re in my bedroom. I force-fed you some juice.”

“Where’s Tanner and Emily?”

“In the living room.”

My eyes sprang open again. “Alone?” I struggled to get up, but my head began to get dizzy, and I felt nauseous, so I flopped back down onto the pillow until the nausea passed. “I’m missing some puzzle pieces here, Kyle.”

He chuckled and brushed the hair back out of my face with his hand. “You’ve been out for a while. While you were out, I had a discussion with Tanner and Emily.”

“Uh-huh.” Despite feeling as bad as I did, I needed to know what was going on. While I was out, there had to have been some truce called for them to be left alone. “Are they tied up somewhere or drugged?

He chuckled. “No, I think they’re watching a
Big Bang Theory
marathon.”

“Huh?” I crinkled my nose up at him and opened my eyes again, catching his gaze. There was something so intense in his eyes. I’d seen it before with other guys, but I had remained unaffected by the look coming from them. Coming from Kyle, however, it felt warming. The pain in my shoulder and leg seemed to pale in comparison to the surge of joy at seeing that look in his eyes.

I was pretty out of it, having just regained consciousness. Maybe I was imagining the look. But then again, it didn’t go away. He looked at me as though he was in love with me. I shook myself out of that line of thought. We had other matters that took precedence.

“What in the hell happened?”

“They’re in love.”

“And?”

He grinned. “And they’re a non-issue.”

“I don’t understand. Didn’t your father want Tanner’s head on a platter?”

He nodded.

“Wasn’t the whole point of them coming here for you to lure them out?”

He nodded again. God, why was he making this so difficult? He knew what I wanted to know. Fuck him and his insistence on being difficult and making me work for everything!

“What changed?”

“You,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Me?” A frowned creased my forehead. “What did I have to do with it?”

“Do you want them dead? I can make it happen.”

“Emily, no. Tanner…” I shrugged and then winced. I didn’t really give a damned about Tanner. God, I needed to remember my shoulder, though how I kept forgetting was beyond me. Maybe I wasn’t as bright as I thought I was.

“Emily wouldn’t be able to exist without him, Rebecca. She’s…”

“Stockholm’s syndrome. Yeah, I know.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. But just watching them together, you can tell she’d perish without him. And he’s genuinely in love with her. To kill him would be to kill her too. And let’s be honest with each other, did you have any intention of letting me hand Emily over to Flynn to be put into the sex trade?”

“No.” There was no point lying to him. For a while I was uncertain, but the more soul-searching I did on the matter, the more I realized, regardless of the circumstance of my father’s death, the bottom line was that he brought it onto himself. I was getting what I wanted. Emily was my family, and I’d be damned if she’d be taken by anyone without my say so. “So, what do we do?”

“After a visit with you, Tanner and Emily are going to take off again. Tanner knows how to disappear, and once they’re gone, they’ll be gone forever, unless they want to come back up for air. I’ll set up a way for you to communicate with Emily.”

“Will he hurt her?” His expression went stony blank for a moment, and my eyes narrowed at him. “Will he? If he gets bored with her what will he do?”

“I really don’t know. From what I can tell, he’s smitten. It’s been a number of years, and she’s having his kid. They seem extremely tight. I think there’s something in her that makes him human. Somehow, she’s found a way to unlock the affection in him. There’s no guarantees, but it’s my honest opinion that she’s safe with him.”

I nodded, letting out a loud huff. Could I unlock that within Kyle? He’d changed me whether I liked it or not. I felt better when I was around him, and I longed to be with him. It was a foreign and sometimes unsettling feeling, but that’s how it was. I was falling in love. Hell, maybe I was in love already.

“I want to see her.”

“Are you up for it?”

Rolling my eyes at him, I nodded. “I’ve been shot twice in a week, and I’m still standing.” Laughing, I reconsidered my words. “Okay, perhaps not standing, but I’m alive, so I think seeing Emily will be fine.”

Laughing, he got up from the bed. “Fine, I’ll bring her in. What about Tanner?”

“I want to speak to them separately.”

“Your wish, gorgeous.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure I look stunning right now. The lack of blood must do wonders for my complexion.”

“If you’re feeling really bad, we can take you to the hospital.”

“Sure, that won’t result in lots of questions.” I pulled up the blanket and took a look at my leg. He’d stitched it up. “Nice job on the stitches.”

“Tanner did them.”

“Uh-huh.” I cocked a brow up at him. “You two lovers now? You seem to have a man crush on him.”

“It’s that evident? Damn, I was trying to keep it to myself.”

I laughed and then groaned as the movement caused pain to run through me. “Enough talking, get me Emily. I’m feeling tired.” Wasn’t that the truth. I was feeling extremely tired at the moment. Closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep would have been sweet-assed sweet right now. But first thing was first.

Kyle left, and a few minutes later, Emily appeared in the doorway of the bedroom.

“Fuck, Emily. Can’t believe you’re pregnant.” She was always a slender girl, but the pregnancy gave her a good-sized round baby bump. She looked good though, her complexion glowed, and my comment made her smile.

“You haven’t changed.” She took a hesitant step into the room and then another.

“I’m trying on this new pasty white, near death look. Does it suit me?”

Emily crinkled her nose up at me and shook her head. “How are you feeling?”

“Been better, but your boyfriend shot me.”

She glared at me. “You boyfriend also shot you. Which do you think is the greater sin?”

Ouch, she was like a little Pitbull when it came to Tanner. I huffed, not answering that question. Emily wasn’t as soft and sweet as she once was. I gave her a close inspection as she entered the room and stepped closer to me. There was a hardness to her that was once soft – internally, I mean. You could see it in her eyes. I should have been happy. She’d always been so naive, but I wasn’t.

“Kyle told us why he shot you,” she continued, coming up to the bed and sitting on the edge. “Why be with a man who would risk your life?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

She shrugged. “I’m with a man who needs me. I’ve changed him for the good. I help exercise his demons.”

Oh dear God, here we go with the God and demon shit. The Emily I knew was breaking out, ladies and gents – whether we liked it or not. “How exactly do you do that?”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Does he hurt you?” Anger surged through me. I didn’t want him hurting her. She was my sister. She belonged to me.

Emily smiled and shook her head, brushing a dark lock of hair back. “No, he doesn’t.”

“There’s different types of abuse – physical, emotional…”

She raised a hand, cutting me off. “I’m aware, Rebecca. I’m not here to talk about that. Just know that I’m safe, and Tanner will keep me that way.”

“Then I want to talk about father.”

She stiffened, and I noticed she shivered slightly. “What about him?” There was an edge to her voice, an edge I’d never heard before.

“What happened? I want the whole story.”

Taking a deep breath in, I watched her slowly release it, closing her eyes for a moment before answering. “Tanner took me. I was meant to be trained and sold. Before I met him, Tanner was a lost and damaged soul. But that changed when he met me.”

I snorted. “Yeah.” But as I scoffed at her, I felt like a hypocrite, because I was feeling the change. As crazy as it seemed to me, I did.

“Believe it or not. It’s true.”

“Continue with the story.”

“Well, we found a compromise that made it work for us. We tried to make it real. I took him to meet you, mom, and dad. But that was a mistake. He showed up one day when Tanner was out. He came right to the front door and rang the bell like he was there for a visit. When I opened the door, I was shocked to find out it was him, shocked and so excited.” She smiled, just a little bit, but her gaze turned dark again, and I saw her shudder. “But he wasn’t there for a visit. He was going to kill me.” She touched the middle of her chest. There was a nasty scar there of the number 31.