Page 39 of Savage Protector

It was the article describing the house fire that killed two unknown victims. They had never been named, leaving Dad’s second victim a mystery to me all these years. I never knew for sure because I had never asked, but I’d always assumed he’d paid plenty of people to keep Paul’s name out of it. The medical examiner at the time had never made an official identification on his body, had never informed Dominic or his mother. The story of the fire had only ever earned a brief mention in the paper.

Why would she have this article?

Did it take a fucking genius to figure it out? Why this specific article would be among the photos Scarlet had been going through on her mom’s birthday? They needed dental records to identify her because she had burned to death, had been burned beyond recognition thanks to the explosion that had taken us by surprise. The guy who wrote the article suggested it might have been the fault of an old furnace in the basement or faulty gas lines. Undoubtedly, it was something he was paid to write.

The room spun around me as the pieces came together. The cruelty of fate knocked the breath from my lungs and twisted my guts. Scarlet’s mother had burned the same night Paul Garibaldi burned. A man whose name Scarlet had never learned. Just another one of her Mom’s anonymous boyfriends, never identified to the fourteen-year-old she’d left behind.

Scarlet’s mother was the woman I could have saved if I had only called out to Dad before he threw the match, but didn’t.

Now, her daughter's life was in my hands.

Her daughter would only ever be a reminder of my greatest regret. Her daughter, who, if she found this out, I could lose forever.

Though if I allowed her mom to die, maybe that was what I deserved. I’d spent fifteen years regretting my actions without paying for them. It looked like the bill might have finally come due.

16

SCARLET

Something was different, and I had the feeling I understood what it was.

Being stuck in a suite, even one as luxurious as the one I was sort of trapped in, gave me nothing to do but keep up with the news. Gangland violence was the big ongoing story, and the media was eating it up with a spoon. Bodies were popping up right and left, and all of them belonged to men who were associated with various crime families.

I couldn’t help but look for Dominic’s name every time one of those stories came up. Was it wrong, hoping I would find out he was dead? Maybe, but I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry. Each time my conscience so much as threatened to bother me a little, I remembered every bruise I ever had to cover with makeup, and that was if he let me out of the house at all, which wasn’t always the case. I always had to tiptoe around him for fear of what might set him off. There was never any telling what it would be, what might offend him this time.

And, of course, there was the whole bit where I had to stay locked in a hotel suite for fear of what would happen if he found me, knowing he would want to make good on all of his promises of punishing me if I ever left him.

No, all things considered, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for wanting him dead, especially when I knew how he broke Grayson’s heart by killing Jack.

The only thing I ever had to look forward to was seeing Grayson in the morning and at the end of the day. Otherwise, all I did was kill time.

Nova visited when she could, and we would sit and chat over coffee. She told me more about her recent past, including the case against her dad. It was funny, but I’d never imagined somebody who grew up the way she had—pampered, indulged, highly educated—knowing the same sort of desperation I did. She had feared for her life after finding out her dad was making money through human trafficking. Her own father, and she’d been afraid of what he would do to her.

“Are you sure you have the time to do this?” I asked her after two weeks at the hotel as she was leaving to get back to work, and I reminded myself not to be too clingy or demanding even though I hated seeing her leave. “I feel bad for taking up your time.”

“Are you kidding? It’s a treat having a girl to talk to. I mean, I love Vaughn,” she said with a laugh. “But there’s too much testosterone around this place.”

“You’re sure it’s not because Grayson asked you to keep me company?”

She grimaced, shrugging helplessly. Bullseye. “I’ve been asked for much bigger favors. This has become my favorite part of the day, sitting and chatting with you.”

I really wanted to believe that. It was nice having something to look forward to besides Grayson’s arrival, especially when he was always so clearly distracted. Most nights, I was asleep by the time he got in, stirring when he slid into bed, falling back to sleep once I knew he was safe for the night. Most mornings the past week, he’d been gone by the time I woke up.

It didn’t take long for natural questions to surface. How many of these news stories were connected to him? Was he the person behind these killings, either directly or otherwise? If he was, how did I feel about it? How did I feel about him?

After a week of him being a little more than a ghost, I decided to wait for him to make it back to the suite. It was time to ask the tough questions, no matter how much I dreaded the answers. They couldn’t be worse than what I had already dreamed up in my head.

I even took a nap to ensure I wasn’t too sleepy later. He tended to come in past midnight, and weeks of no longer working the overnight shift meant my internal clock was all messed up. Luckily, I was used to bouncing back after a nap, something I used to do to make sure I could live through a shift. That meant being able to sit up reading in bed, wide awake by the time the suite door opened and closed almost silently. I wouldn’t have heard it if I were asleep.

Right away, his footfalls slowed down as he approached the bedroom. He wasn’t expecting to see the light burning at twelve thirty when I was usually asleep by now. I waited as patiently as I could, staring at my tablet without seeing a word in front of me, barely breathing as the tension unfurled. What will he do? Does he dread seeing me? And why would he, if he did?

Finally, he appeared in the doorway, and something about his posture made my skin prickle. There was something off. Maybe it was the way he jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his broad shoulders up around his ears as he scanned the room. “Everything all right?” he finally grunted, lingering in the doorway.

Even now, filled with apprehension, my heart softened at the sight of him—the concern on his face, the fatigue etched at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes that searched mine, eyes that undid me and made me want to beg him to open up. He had done it before, a little at a time. I thought he was starting to trust me.

Why was there this wall between us now?

Would he give me a straight answer, even if I begged for one?