Xander

I’m conflicted, and I can’t sleep. I put Sasha to bed hours ago and spooned with her until she fell asleep. My mind wouldn’t shut up, and at two in the morning, I slipped out of bed and paced my bedroom, sat in a chair watching Sasha sleep, took a shower, and finally, I took out my laptop and sent Calvin an email. Private investigators keep strange hours, and luckily enough, he emailed me back right away arranging a meeting for later on today.

I’m hiring a bodyguard to watch over Sasha and Tori. When Sasha wakes up, I’m going to hire someone to follow Enrique and someone else to do an in-depth background check—someone from the FBI or the DEA.

I fix all kinds of people’s faces including congressmen, lawyers, and FBI agents. I’m well connected in my own way, and a lot of people owe me favors. One way or another, I’m going to make this man go away and leave Sasha alone.

What kind of monster treats his wife like a dog, divorces her, and murders their unborn baby? I look at her sleeping face. She’s been fitful like Tori was for months after her mother tried to kidnap her.

All night she’s been flopping around in bed, frowning in her sleep, mumbling, and occasionally whimpering. I leave her be. If I get in bed with her, I’ll end up waking her and making love to her, and she doesn’t need that right now.

Before I know it, my alarm is going off, and it’s 4:00 a.m. I quiet the alarm before it wakes Sasha and get ready to run. I promised not to leave her, and I meant that, at least for a while. I’ll run inside on the treadmill today and go to work late after my meeting with Calvin. I scribble a quick note telling her I’m downstairs in the gym and prop it on the night table by the lamp.

Thirty-five minutes later, I’m in the zone running to Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers when I feel a hand on my arm. I look down and pull the earbuds from my ears.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, but there’s a man at the front door, and I’m not comfortable opening the door to strangers.”

“No need to apologize. Did you sleep well?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know, I mean I was in bed for the proper amount of hours, but I feel like crap.”

I press the cool-down button and text Calvin to wait a few minutes. “You tossed and turned all night.”

“I kept you up, I’m sorry.” She leans on the mirrored wall behind her.

“You didn’t. I wasn’t in bed.”

“You didn’t sleep?”

“No. I had things to do.”

“What about work today? Won’t you be too tired?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m going in late, and I want you and Tori to come with me.”

She’s quite for a beat. “Who’s at the door?”

“That’s Calvin, he’s here for a meeting with me.”

“A meeting about what?”

“You. Tori. Me. Your ex-husband. What was his last name again?”

“Xander, please don’t go digging. He’s dangerous, more dangerous than you could ever imagine. I don’t want you or Victoria on his radar.”

I stop the treadmill and wipe my face with a towel. “Sasha, I realize we have only known each other for a couple of weeks, but I need to tell you something. I have a reputation as a manwhore. I don’t get into relationships because I don’t want the responsibility that comes along with them. I also don’t want strangers around my child. Can you see how many things I have changed because of you? I have feelings for you… big, scary, deep feelings. So if you’re on this fucker’s radar, so are we because as far as I’m concerned, we are a package deal. Now, if you feel differently, you need to tell me. I’m going to take care of you, and I will still do my best to eliminate that black roach from your life either way.”

She pushes off the mirror and takes two steps bringing her next to me where I am still on the treadmill. She takes the towel that’s hanging around my neck and pulls me down to stand in front of her.

“I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you or Victoria. I have feelings for you, too… big, scary, deep feelings. I also have feelings for your daughter… protective, maternal feelings,” she says gazing up at me. “But, I can’t ask this of you. It’s not fair to either of you.”

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering, no, insisting, so let’s go upstairs and talk to my head of security and private investigator, Calvin, who’s waiting at the front door.”

Her eyes drop to my chest leaving me to guess if she’s going to make this easy and go upstairs with me or make it hard and argue.

“Okay. I need to check on Tori anyway.”

I pull her in against my sweaty t-shirt and squeeze her tight. “That’s my girl. Come on, we have a plan to make.”

I open the front door for Calvin who looks annoyed. “Morning,” he says moving past Sasha and me. “Office?” he clips. Calvin isn’t the most personable guy, he’s more of a gym rat combination sneaky Pete, but he’s never been rude to me.

“Well, good morning to you, too, and yes, my office is fine.” He starts for the hallway, but I grab his muscle-bound bicep and stop him. “Calvin Heart, this is Sasha Rivers. Sasha, Calvin.”

“I figured since you don’t let women in your house,” he says looking irritated. What the hell is going on with this guy today?

Sasha, sensing the tension in the air, steps forward and offers Calvin her hand. “Nice to meet you, thanks for coming to help.”

“Yeah, well I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I’m not going to let anything happen to Tori, so let’s go figure out how to get rid of this asshole.”

“Cal, I appreciate your help as well, but if you’ve got a problem with Sasha, you can turn around and walk out the door right now.”

“I don’t have a problem with you, ma’am, it’s your ex-husband that I have a problem with. Do you have any idea what you’re getting involved with, Xander? This guy is big-time bad news. You thought Star and her goons were trouble, Enrique Sanchez makes them look like a flea on a Great Dane.”

“Sanchez… I’ve heard of the Sanchez drug cartel on the news. Could they be the same family?

“Yeah, when you said his name was Enrique, I started digging. I found your marriage license online.”

“You did?” Sasha says sounding unusually surprised. She was married to the man, why would finding a marriage license be strange?

“Yeah, it wasn’t easy, but it’s there.”

“I was never sure if we were legally married. I never saw the license, and his uncle married us.”

“Nope, it was all real, lady. You were married to the biggest drug dealer in Mexico’s son. Those people almost never divorce. The only way out of that family is in a casket. How’d you manage that?”

“He’s mentally ill, bi-polar. He was in a manic state and had found a new woman to fixate on, so I asked him, and he said yes.”

“Yeah, well you got lucky, sort of.”

“What do you mean sort of?” I ask.

“He’s still hounding her, isn’t he? A piece of paper saying you’re divorced isn’t going to stop this guy. He’s psycho, certifiably crazy.”

“Okay, let’s move this up to the office before Tori wakes up.” I lead them down the hall to my office. When I sit down, I turn on my computer monitor and move the mouse around until I can see Tori sleeping in her room via the security camera. All this talk about psycho drug cartels has me on edge. I want to keep an eye on my baby at all times.”

“I’m going to put on some clothes. I’ll be right back,” Sasha says pulling her robe tight around her.

“Okay,” I say watching her go. When she’s out of earshot, I look Calvin straight in the eyes. “Just how dangerous is this?”

“Twenty-five on a scale of one to ten. It couldn’t be worse. I’m telling you this guy is a loose cannon who doesn’t take his meds running around with unlimited funds and bad-ass connections.”

“Shit.” I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling.

“Man, I know you dig this chick, and she’s a cool nanny and all, but is she worth all this trouble? She could get ya’ll killed, like both you and Tori cold-in-the-ground dead.”

“Yes, she’s worth it,” I answer with conviction. “I know I haven’t known her long, but she’s special, like the one special. I want you to do everything humanly possible to protect them both.”

“Okay, you’re the boss. I just thought you should know what you’re getting into. You talk to anybody at the FBI or the DEA yet?”

“I have a call out to both.”

He nods looking impressed. “You got some big connections?”

“I don’t know about ranks, but I’ve done some serious work for a few higher-ups.”

“You think Enrique was here yesterday?”

“He was here,” Sasha says entering the room dressed in a pair of cut-off jeans and a sweatshirt. “I got three texts from him. That’s why I freaked out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I say raising my voice.

“I… I didn’t want you to get involved. I thought if he went away, I could quit this job and everybody would be none the wiser.”

I shake my head and close my eyes. “So you were just going to quit?”

“Yes, to keep you both safe, I was.”

“What about your safety? Did you think of that?”

“I’ve been running from him for a while now. I know how to deal with him.”

“Oh? Is that why you got your face smashed in two weeks ago?”

“I’ll admit that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting him to go that far, but he would have left me alone for a while if he hadn’t seen me here.”

“And why did he see you here? Don’t answer that, I’ll do it for you… because he is following you, watching you, and keeping tabs on you. He may have granted you a legal divorce, but he’s still married to you in that crazy head of his.”

“Sasha, what did the texts say?” Calvin asks trying to route the conversation elsewhere.

“The first one said nice digs. That got my attention because he knew where I was staying.”

“Okay, then what?”

“Then Victoria called for me to hurry up. We were going to the beach, and she was waiting on the patio. He text me yeah hurry up, Sasha, I want to see your face or something like that, and I knew he was within earshot. I snatched Victoria up, and we set the security system, and I called you.”

“Was that it?”

She’s quiet for a moment, and I know there’s more. She doesn’t want to tell me what he said. “Sasha?”

“No, there was one more message.”

“What was it?”

She crosses the room and takes a seat next to Calvin across my desk. She lowers her eyes to her lap where she is wringing her hands. “He told me to get another job, or this one would be obsolete.”

I take a deep breath and blow it out. Okay, so he’s threatened my family. We can handle this.

“Xander, I think we should get you all out of here for a while,” Calvin says.

“No, Zion is coming home soon, and it doesn’t matter where we go, he will find me if he wants to. And you can’t leave your practice anyway, you have patients to see.”

She’s got a point—three of them. I can’t ask Zion to go traveling around when she gets discharged from the hospital. She needs time at home to recover. And I have work. What bothers me the most about her comment is that her ex-husband could find us anywhere.

“She’s right, we can’t run from him.”

“Well, then the only alternative I can see is hiding from him. Y’all are gonna have to stay inside as much as possible and have a team of bodyguards with you every time you leave.”

“That’s already been arranged. Tito will be your bodyguard, and Mark and Matt have eyes on the house at all times starting today. That, with the security system and the panic room, ought to do it.”

Sasha looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, and Calvin frowns.

“Um, so how long are you planning on keeping us locked up here in your fortress?” Sasha asks with a touch of sarcasm.

Again, she’s got a point. “Until we have a solution to this problem.”

“There is no solution to Enrique and his family. As long as he’s interested in me, he will be trying to make my life miserable.”

As long as he’s interested, I wonder what would make him uninterested?

“What happened to his girlfriend, the one he brought home before you got divorced?”

“I don’t know. When I moved out, I never saw her again.”

“Daddy?” Tori’s voice comes from down the hall. Shit, we aren’t any closer to a resolution than we were before Calvin got here.

“Yeah, princess, in my office,” I call out. “Calvin, you can go. We will talk later but keep me updated. Sasha, I want to play this down as much as possible to avoid scaring Tori. Can you two be ready to go to the clinic with me in an hour?”

Calvin stands unfolding his overgrown muscles from the too-small chair and meets Tori at the door. “Hey squirt, how ya doin?” he says to her.

“Good. Why are you here?” Kids. They’re so blunt.

“Just had a meeting with your dad and Miss Sasha here, heading out now.”

“Oh,” she says looking from one of us to the other with curiosity or suspicion, I can’t tell which.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s go get you dressed. We’re going to work with your dad today.”

She scrunches up her face like a wrinkled old apple. “Why? I thought we were going to the Zoo and surfing,” she whines.

“We just want to be safe for a little while after yesterday,” I tell her.

“But it’s boring.” She lets her head fall back and hunches her shoulders like this is the worst news ever.

“Sasha will be there, she won’t let you get bored, and we won’t be all day. I’m going to work on arranging some time off so all three of us can hang out and do things together.”

That brings her head back to a more natural position on her neck. “Like…”

“Like a staycation. That’s where you’re on vacation from work, but you stay home instead of going out of town.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Let’s go get ready,” Sasha says taking Tori’s hand and leading her from the room. I shove my hands through my hair on either side and tug at it. How the hell did this happen? Last week I was plotting how to get Sasha to go out with me, and this week I’m protecting her from her crazy ex-husband who just so happens to be the son of a major drug cartel kingpin.

Sometimes life throws you a major curveball, and you have to learn how to swing a bat.