Chapter 23

Dear NASA, your mom thought I was big enough!

- Pluto

Silas

“That rifle shot that took your daughter-in-law out was meant for you. I lucked out that you thought it was a rock that hit her. Could’ve had me then, but you fucked up. You’re getting soft in your old age,” Shovel said snidely. “You almost lost her, and it would’ve all been your fault. All these years of you protecting them, and it wouldn’t have mattered one single bit.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Not because of what he was saying, though that was significant.

But because I was fairly positive that the broken ribs I’d sustained after going down on my bike and having the shit beaten out of me were sinking through the tissue of my lungs.

I’d woken up like this nearly an hour before, and all Shovel had done since I’d woken was talk about the old days.

Him shooting Baylee was new, though.

We’d really thought the cut on her neck was due to a rock, or something that kicked up and taken out a chunk of her flesh while we were riding.

The bleeding had never made sense to me, though.

Now, knowing that Shovel had taken a fuckin’ sniper rifle to her, it made sense.

“So what are you going to do to me?” Shovel asked.

What was I going to do to him?

I was the one that was tied up to a fuckin’ chair.

Well, granted, I had wanted to be tied up.

I knew he’d take me if I gave him the chance.

Which was why I’d gone out on a ride alone.

I knew he couldn’t resist the temptation.

And he was only one person.

He had my arms stretched upwards, tied to a pipe above my head.

But he’d made a mistake by not tying my feet.

I wouldn’t escape…yet.

I’d wait until I had my chance.

Or possibly sooner if Sawyer found the note I left her.

“You know you ruined my life,” Shovel said conversationally, pulling out a pocketknife and picking dirt from underneath his fingernails with it.

I raised a brow. “I did, did I?”

He nodded. “Leslie was going to be mine. She was going to be my reward. But then you came in, claiming her and jumping through every hoop I threw at you and took her right out from under my nose. I’d had my eyes set on her since I was sixteen, and you fucking ruined it.”

That was new to me.

I’d just seen Leslie come in, and I hadn’t been able to do anything else but save her.

It’d been her eyes.

The innocence in them.

I was drawn to that.

It drew me in every, single time.

Which had been the reason I’d fallen for Sawyer, too.

Now, though, I knew she was nothing like Leslie.

She was stronger.

She was someone I’d never in my life cheat on. She knew all about me, and I knew there’d never be a time that I kept a goddamn thing from her.

Hell, now that I had Sawyer, I realized just how much I didn’t love Leslie.

Because what I felt for Sawyer, I knew, was real love.

It was unshakable.

This love…it would withstand the test of time.

She got me, and I got her.

Before her, every damn night, I’d dream of how my life could’ve been.

Now, with Sawyer in it, I dreamed of what our life will be like.

I didn’t think in the past tense anymore.

I was now a future kind of guy.

And I knew Shovel hadn’t picked up on that yet.

Because he wouldn’t be talking to me right now about Leslie. He’d be trying to rile me up by threatening Sawyer.

Because if he wanted to see me break, that would be just how to do it.

He’d done it before.

Many, many times.

“Then you kept ruining my life by cleaning up my club, making me lose all that money. My gambling debts got out of hand, man, and every fucking day, every day, I worried about how I would pay those fuckers back. You did kind of solve that for me by sending me to prison, though. And I thought it wouldn’t be half bad, except my parole was denied time after time, and I finally realized that something wasn’t quite right. So I had some people start to dig for me. And what do I find when my people started digging into my club? I found you…the fucking president… living the high life while I suffered day in and day out,” Shovel hissed, pushing his face into mine.

My body locked, and I didn’t move a single millimeter back.

I had no room to move back from him. But mainly, it was because I wasn’t going to flinch away from him. I didn’t flinch.

Not from him, not from anyone.

“You ruined your own life, you piece of shit. You could’ve stayed just like the rest of us, but you chose to make a fucking mess out of everything. I cleaned your shit up. What I didn’t do, but should’ve done, was fucking kill you. Then I wouldn’t be in this predicament right now,” I growled.

Shovel smiled.

“You know, I watched you drive to Huntsville,” he said lightly. “Followed behind you the entire way.”

I froze, eyes lifting up to look directly into his eyes.

“Yeah?” I asked, voice steady.

It didn’t reveal outwardly what I was feeling, which was anything but calm internally.

“Yep. So I did some research into why you were there. Found four men that are fucking pissed as hell that they lost their jobs over a stupid piece of ass,” he said lightly. “So I invited them back with me.”

Then the doors behind Shovel opened, four men walking into the room.

Each one had a box in their hands.

“And they’ve got some entertainment for you. Each time you fail to show a reaction to what they’re showing you,” Shovel said, pulling out a lead pipe. “I’m going to introduce you to this lead pipe. And we’re going to make you talk even if we have to kill you.”

I doubted that.

It’d take a divine intervention to get me to react to anything.

Because as long as I knew they didn’t have Sawyer, then they had nothing.

She was safe and that was all that mattered.

“This is the picture I took of our first encounter,” the first man said.

He had blonde shaggy hair that fell over his head in a fucking mop of messiness. He had brown eyes that were dark, but not cold. Not nearly cold enough to get past my defenses.

The picture, however, wasn’t anything I wanted to see.

“We took pictures of her every day for eight years,” the man continued.

I clenched my jaw tightly as he showed me the first picture.

And I literally tasted blood as I bit into my tongue to keep from giving this creep a piece of my mind.

“Well, if that one doesn’t move you…how about this one?”

Guess I didn’t have the iron-willed control like I thought was the last thing I thought before a seething blind rage clouded over my eyes, and the only thing I saw was a broken Sawyer being violated by the pervert in front of me.

And although I went down hard as Shovel’s lead pipe came down on the temple of my head, arms still tied above my head, I took pride in the fact that the man standing in front of me now had a knife wound in his heart courtesy of the one that slid out of my boot.

“Ohh,” Shovel said, shaking his head. “That was very, very stupid.”

Head pounding and the only thing holding me up was the rope around my wrists, I said, “Yeah, yeah, motherfucker.”

The last thing I heard before I succumbed to unconsciousness was, “Tie his fuckin’ feet.”