Chapter 22

‘Cause Satan told me so isn’t a good excuse when you have to explain to your partner why you did something.

-Fact of Life

Truth

The moment she fell asleep, I studied her face, wondering if I was making the wrong decision by staying with her.

I was fairly sure, however, that it wouldn’t matter if I left her for her protection at this point. Elais Beckett knew what she meant to me, and he’d do whatever he had to do to kill her.

He may have missed her today, but he’d gotten me anyway. He now knew my weakness, and I’d given that to him without even realizing I’d done it.

I’d been in the middle of an argument with my aunt, cousin, and father when I’d seen my car careen past us out of the corner of my eye.

I’d turned just in time to see my car— with my sister and my woman inside—hit the dumpster.

My scream of agony had forced the limo driver to pull over, and the moment we’d slowed enough for me to bail out, I had.

I’d sprinted toward the car, my heart in my throat.

By the time I’d finally arrived, my car had been surrounded.

My sister had been standing beside the wrecked car, a small cut on her forehead from what I assumed was glass.

Knowing instinctively that she was okay, I’d turned my attention to my woman, only to see a bullet hole through the windshield where her face would be.

Kettle had been leaning into the car, his big body blocking my view; I hadn’t realized that she was okay at the time I’d called her name.

Agony and heartache had laced my words, and I knew everyone around me could tell how much she’d meant to me in that moment.

And then Kettle had moved and I’d seen her.

I’d seen the blood on her face.

I’d seen the agony etched over her face as pain tore through her.

What I hadn’t seen, thank God, was a bullet hole.

The next two hours had been a blur of activity as my fellow Dixie Wardens had rallied around me, making sure that my woman had all the care that she could and would need.

Now, here I sat, finally watching her sleep peacefully, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

“You’re doing the right thing.”

I looked up to find Ghost standing there.

“How do you know?” I asked, my voice thick with what I realized were tears.

I hadn’t cried in five years—since I’d found out that I’d killed not just one innocent, but many innocents—and I realized that this was way worse than that.

Sure, I’d fucked up by putting those men down years ago, and I would always live with that black mark on my soul.

But this, knowing that I’d put Verity in the crosshairs of a madman over something I’d done was enough to kill me.

“Because if you were wrong, if your decision was wrong, you wouldn’t be wondering if you were doing the right thing,” he explained. “If there was one thing I could wish for right now, it’d be to have my life back. To rewind to five years ago when my daughter was a baby, and my wife had no clue what kind of a man she’d married.”

Twelve hours ago, had he said this, my curiosity would’ve been piqued. Now, with Verity lying so still in the hospital bed, I realized that I didn’t care about anyone but her. And that likely made me an ass, but I literally couldn’t deal with anyone else’s shit. I could barely deal with my own.

“She could die,” I said bluntly. “What do I do if she does die?”

“She won’t,” he said. “There are eighteen Dixie Wardens in this hospital ward, and four about half a day from being patched in. They all, along with me, have your woman’s safety at heart. They won’t—I won’t—let anything happen to her. I swear to Christ.”

His sincerity made my heart relax minutely, and I closed my eyes and leaned my head down, letting my forehead fall down to come to a rest next to Verity’s hand. The same hand that was now broken.

Fucking Beckett.

“Don’t make the same mistake as me, man,” Ghost said to my lowered head. “Take it from me. I’ve regretted it every day for eighteen hundred and fifty-two days. And I’ve watched her find a man last week. My heart’s in fucking shreds right now, but I made my bed. Make sure you don’t make yours, too.”

With that he left, and the door closed softly behind him with a whispered click.

My eyes squeezed tightly closed before I got up, placed a single kiss on her face, and walked out of the room.

Ghost was right.

I wasn’t going to give her up. Not now, not ever.

And as I sat down in a chair in a hospital waiting room with The Dixie Wardens at my sides, I realized three things.

One, I had a great group of men at my back.

Two, Elais Beckett was a dead man.

Three, I should’ve never doubted the severity of Ronan’s anger.

***

Four hours later

“You’re sure this is it?” I asked. “How do you have this information so fast?”

I was standing about a hundred yards from a hotel room that Silas had found two towns over. There was a man that fit the last known description of Elais Beckett who was seen going into this hotel room with another male in his late sixties.

“Silas has so many fucking secrets that he could fill a goddamned water tower full of them. Just be happy he found the information, and whatever you do, don’t ask questions about how or what he had to do to get that information.”

That was Big Papa, reprimanding me like I was some misbehaving child.

I ignored him and turned my attention back to the hotel room.

“A man called me. He said he was a friend of yours,” Silas said. “Said his name was ‘Ro.’”

He’d told me that before, and I didn’t really know a ‘Ro.’ I did, however, know a Ronan.

“If that’s Ronan, my grandfather’s man, in there, we can’t go in there with guns blazing because he might retaliate before he realizes that it’s us,” I said. “I’ve tried calling him four times now. Either he has his phone off, or he’s ignoring my call.”

It was more likely that he was ignoring my call. He never had his phone off due to the fact that he had a daughter who he loved with all his heart, and if she called, he would drop everything—even Elais Beckett—and go to her.

Though, she hadn’t called him in over two years. They’d had a falling out about his behavior and his way of life, and she’d written him off.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t wait for her call.

“Tried the hotel room phone yet?” Aaron asked.

“What the hell are y’all even doing here?” I asked. “Y’all could lose your jobs.”

Aaron and Big Papa looked at me like I was crazy.

“Right now, we’re Dixie Wardens, not police officers,” Big Papa finally explained. “And you’re not getting rid of us. Stop your bitching and moaning and get in there. I have to be at work in four hours.”

Alrighty, then.

That was exactly what I did.

I walked up to the door, knocked and was unsurprised when Ronan answered the door.

“About time you got here,” he grumbled. “I had to practically draw you a fuckin’ map.”

I turned to find Silas, Kettle, Sean, Aaron, Big Papa, Ghost, and Sebastian at my back, staring at the man that’d help raise me with about as much worry as I had on my face.

“Well, I’m here now,” I said. “What do you have for me?”

Ronan stepped back, opened the door wide, and we all froze, our eyes uncomprehending at what, exactly, we were seeing.

Then Big Papa groaned.

“There’s a time and place for things like that, and that’s on Halloween, or a fucking big screen,” someone else added.

Sean, I thought.

“You’re a paramedic, right?”

Sean grunted and pushed past us into the room, stopping beside the bed where Elais Beckett was tied down on.

“How did you do this all without attracting the attention of the cops?” I asked, horror lacing my words.

Ronan had always been inventive when it came to his punishments when I was younger, but had I known that he was capable of this, I might’ve been way more scared of him than I was.

“Jesus Christ.”

That was Silas, who came to stand beside me, looking down on the bed with so much awe and a fair bit of disgust that he wasn’t sure which emotion to feel.

“Do you think he cries more when his dick is pulled, or when his tongue is?” Ghost rumbled from my other side.

It was a good question.

Not only was Beckett tied by his ankles and wrists to fucking eye bolts, Ronan had drilled into the hotel’s freakin’ walls, but he was also attached to the ceiling by a rope.

Both of them were threaded through his body parts like a goddamned fish.

Ronan had cut a hole, likely with his own pocket knife, into both appendages, and then threaded a piece of braided brown, abrasive twine through each hole and then tied it into a knot. Then he’d attached it to another eye bolt that hung from the ceiling.

His eyes were wild, and he was crying.

But I couldn’t find a goddamned reason in the world to feel sorry for him.

“Beckett?” I said to him when his gaze caught mine. His eyes widened, and I said two words. “Check mate.”

The blood pooling under Beckett’s body was drawing my eyes, and I finally pulled the plug on the horror show.

“Get him an ambulance, Sean,” I ordered. “We can’t have him dying on us. Plus, I’d like to make sure his life isn’t as easy as dying would be.”

Sean disappeared out of the hotel room, and it didn’t take long for the sirens to be heard.

I waited there, long after the other men left the room to avoid being seen, and watched as paramedics, cops, and firefighters arrived on scene.

All of whom I knew personally.

“Whoa,” said a large, muscular, African-American police officer who went by the name of Tough. He was the nicest man I’d ever had the pleasure of working with…until you pissed him off. Then he was meanest, most vindictive man you would ever have the displeasure of meeting.

It was something that luckily didn’t happen very often, and I’d never been on the receiving end of it, thank God.

I’d seen him go off on one of his best friends once when said friend had made an offensive comment about his woman. His woman was a tiny Asian girl with the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen and about half of Tough’s height. Tough felt the need to protect her as if she couldn’t easily take care of herself. God help you if you made a derogatory comment toward her.

“What the hell is that through his dick?”

That was from another officer, McClain.

“From what I can tell, it’s twine,” I finally said once the men got a closer look.

“Back away, please,” a haughty paramedic/firefighter ordered in a low, husky voice.

I turned and shuffled to get out of the woman’s way, and wondered if she saw the way the other firefighters looked at her.

They were staring at her like she was an incompetent newbie who was about to get wigged out over the gory state of Elais Beckett’s body.

But much to my surprise, and the other firefighters, the little woman went right up to the bloody mass that was Beckett and started working on him instantly.

My brows went up at the nearest firefighter, and he mouthed a ‘later’ at me before waving me out of his way.

I moved completely out of the room, unsurprised when McClain and Tough followed me out.

“What in the goat fuck was that?” Tough asked in derision.

“That,” I said slowly. “Was the man who took a shot at my woman with a sniper rifle this morning while she was driving my car and missed her head by two inches.”

Tough’s eyes widened.

“You did that?”

I shook my head, about to reply, when Big Papa sidled up to one side, and Aaron moved up on the other.

“We got an anonymous tip that he was here,” Big Papa rumbled.

That was partially the truth, right? Giving up the man responsible would be cruel and unusual punishment.

I knew for certain that they weren’t going to give Ronan up…or weren’t going to until Ronan turned himself in.

“I was the one who did it,” Ronan said.

We all turned to find him standing behind our small group huddle, and Tough tilted his head to the side.

“You did what?” Tough asked.

It wasn’t every day that a man came up to you and admitted to the gruesome torture of someone.

“You heard me correctly,” Ronan confirmed. “Now, arrest me before I try to run.”

He looked like the kind of person that wouldn’t, and didn’t run. He was big, blocky, and in dress shoes. There was no way in hell he would get away from Tough on a bad day, let alone a good one.

Ronan wouldn’t try. He knew how to read people just like I did.

Tough, however, was still confused.

“You’re saying that you did all that?”

Ronan, upon first glance, didn’t ever strike anyone as the type of man who would do anything violent. He looked like a fuckin’ teddy bear and was always smiling.

It was the smile that got you. It’d gotten me quite a few times.

I’d never known he was mad until he’d struck.

“I’m saying that that little fucker killed my best friend,” Ronan said with his Irish lilt thickening. “I’m also saying that I killed him for killing my friend and his wife. I have a tape of the confession. Though, that came first. The rest came after he admitted all the awful things he’s done since he was released early from prison.”

Tough pulled out a set of handcuffs.

“Well then, I suppose it’s my duty to take you into the station and get this sorted out.”

With that, Tough led a handcuffed Ronan away, leaving me standing in the middle of chaos wondering if I was lucky enough for it all to be over.

Ronan stopped about halfway to the car, and turned.

Tough, not really thinking correctly at the moment, let him.

“The gun he used to shoot your woman is in the trunk of the car over there,” he nodded his head in the direction of a black sedan about halfway across the small parking lot. “And I found the spent shell casing, too.”

Exhilaration filled me.

“Thanks, Ronan,” I called to him.

He winked, causing my heart to warm.

My grandfather and grandmother, and I supposed Kenneth, now had retribution.

I hadn’t wanted them to die, but now we’d at least have attempted murder pinned on the man responsible.

The rest would soon follow.