The only time I can bring myself to work is when Snow sleeps.
It’s been eight days since our wedding and three since she was allowed to come home, but I haven’t spent more than a few minutes away from her. I can’t. I came too close to losing her, and anytime she’s out of my sight, panic claws up the back of my throat and holds on until I see her again.
She’s been withdrawn since I brought her home, not the same Snow I became obsessed with all those years ago, and I hate it. I miss her fire. I miss when she argued with me about everything. I miss her. But she’s healing and I can’t expect her to be jumping for joy after being shot. I have to be patient with her.
“Storm,” I answer my phone as I slip into the hallway but keep the door cracked open so Snow is still in my line of sight.
“How’s Snow?”
“Still quiet. She sleeps most of the time, and when she’s not sleeping, it’s almost like she’s checked out. I don’t know what to do for her,” I sigh. I never thought I would be talking to someone who is meant to be my mortal enemy about my relationship, but it’s funny how these things play out.
“It’s only been a week, I’m sure she’s just working through it all.” His words do nothing to comfort the ache in the pit of my stomach that maybe I’ve made a mistake. I’m starting to think I never should have stolen her from her life, never should have taken her from her family and kept her. She wouldn’t have been hurt if I had stayed in the shadows. She’d still be her lively self who I’ve obsessed over for the last decade.
“I know.”
“We’ve had another shipment go missing,” he sighs.
“What? How?”
“I have no fucking idea. We had so many men at the docks we were bordering on suspicious, but when they went to do the count, everything was missing.”
I lean on the wall opposite the bedroom door, my eyes brushing over my Snowflake as she sleeps. Watching her allows my mind to work better, as if when she’s around, all the worry I feel and measures I have in place to protect her disappears, and my business mind starts firing. “They’re hitting it before it docks,” I say.
“What?”
“They must be intercepting the ship somewhere. That scene was too clean the last time, and there’s no way they got past your guys this time, so the only explanation is that they have to hit the ship during its journey, not after it docks.”
Silence greets me on the other end of the line and I pull the phone from my ear to check he hasn’t hung up on me. “Those motherfuckers,” he growls. “We have guards on the ship though, and cameras. Surely someone would have seen an entire shipment of guns get unloaded to another ship.”
I nod, thinking through how I would have approached this back when I would run jobs for my uncles. “The cameras are easy, they would have hacked in and had a loop play over and over again so you wouldn’t be suspicious.”
“But the guards?”
“That I’m not too sure of.” It’s been too long since I’ve had a complex problem to solve and too long since I’ve been out of these four walls, but I won’t leave Snow. I don’t trust anyone who works for me, and I certainly don’t trust anyone in Storm’s ranks. The only people I trust with her safety are me, and her brothers, and I’m still not convinced they won’t try to take her back from me the first opportunity they get.
Storm sighs, the sound of ice on glass filling the line. “Wynter wants to come see Snow,” he tells me.
I brush my eyes down my fragile Snowflake curled up in the middle of our bed and allow my head to fall back against the wall. “Give her a few more days. I don’t think Wynter would intentionally upset her, but she’s fragile right now.” I hoped that after her admission in the hospital, some of the guilt would disappear, but if anything, it gets worse with each day that passes. She’s convinced this is karma, that by taking birth control without my knowledge, she set a series of events in motion that led to her losing an ovary.
Nothing I say or do seems to ease her worries and seeing her in so much emotional turmoil makes my cold, dead heart ache.
“You can’t hide her away forever, Elijah. And you can’t personally guard her for the rest of her life. At some point, you’re going to have to hand her safety over to someone else, at least for some of the time.”
“No,” I growl. He may be right, but I’m not ready to hear it yet. I need more time. More time to watch her, to bring her back to me, to prove to us both that I can keep her safe from any threat that comes at us.
A knock at the door draws my attention away from Snow, and I watch as Mrs. Chambers makes her way to the front door, wiping her hands on her apron. I watch as she looks through the peephole and pauses for a moment, a frown tugging at her brow before she unlocks the door and opens it.
David, the guy who distributes the drugs to the dealers, falls through the door. His face is bloody, so much so, I doubt he can see through the swelling and blood. His clothes are torn and soiled, and by the way he collapses in the entry, I can only imagine there are other injuries I can’t see.
“Elijah?” Storm says on the other end of the line.
“Get over here,” I snap and end the call. I chance one more look over my shoulder at my Snowflake sleeping before tearing my attention from her to the more pressing issue. The half dead man in my hallway.
Mrs. Chambers jumps into action, quickly making her way to the cabinet where we keep an emergency first aid kit for times just like these.
I stride toward the large man. Once I reach him, I kneel beside him and push him onto his back.
A strangled groan erupts from his chest, and his eyes squeeze together before he forces one open. The other is swollen shut and I doubt he’ll be seeing out of it anytime in the next week. I’ve had my fair share of black eyes, and this one isn’t going to heal quickly.
“What the fuck happened?” I ask as Mrs. Chambers presses cotton pads onto his wounds to soak up some of the blood.
“They’re coming,” he chokes, a bloody cough tearing from his throat, splatting red across the carpet.
“Who are?”
“They’re coming for her.”
“Who, David?” I snap, looking up at Mrs. Chambers’s worried eyes. She doesn’t need to say anything for me to know he’s about to die, because I’ve seen death so many times, in so many different ways, that it will never come as a surprise to me again.
He tries to say something, but he dissolves into a coughing fit, more and more blood pouring from his mouth. His time is coming to an end. Any second now, he’s going to die, and not only will I have lost the only person who knows distribution like the back of his hand, I’m no closer to figuring out who is coming for us.
When David’s body stops straining to cough and his head lulls to the side, there’s a moment of eerie silence. It’s been the same in every death I’ve experienced, as if time slows down ever so slightly and the outside world quietens for just a second as death takes his latest victim.
“He’s dead,” Mrs. Chambers says quietly. She collects the cotton pads she was using and carefully pushes herself to her feet. For such an innocent-looking woman, she doesn’t flinch at the sight of death, and for that I admire her. She could just as easily pass out, or start panicking, but instead she takes it in her stride and gets on with it.
Fifteen minutes later, a knock at the door drags my attention away from the dead body in my hallway. Mrs. Chambers cleaned him up as much as she could, and I’ve called the cleaner, but there’s nothing else I can do but wait.
I reach for the knob and open the door to find Storm and Everett standing on my stoop. Their eyes both narrow on the dead man in the entry and collectively sigh.
“What the fuck happened?” Storm asks, closing the door and surveying the scene in front of him.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “But he said that someone is coming for Snow.”
“Who?” Everett kneels beside the body and carefully turns David’s head from side to side, like all the answers to our questions can be found on the body.
“He didn’t say. He died before he could give me anything more than, ‘they’re coming for her.’”
Repeating the words leaves a sick feeling in my stomach, because the idea that anyone could be hunting Snow, that someone could try to take her away from me again… it’s unacceptable. I can’t allow any more harm to come to her.
Storm nods, his eyes flicking to Everett’s and then back to me. “Why don’t you and Snow come to the estate for a few nights? It’s safer there, more security, panic rooms. I’m sure you’ll feel better having her somewhere safe.”
“She’s safe here,” I growl.
Everett sighs, pushing himself to his feet. “That may be so, but your security relies on people. The estate doesn’t. Not anymore. We don’t know who we can trust right now, and I have to agree with Storm. You would both be safer there.”
I close my eyes as I breathe through the rising anger. As much as I want to be selfish, for once, I can’t. This isn’t like when I stole her away from her life and her family, or when I forced her to marry me, or when I refused to use birth control. All of those things made me a selfish bastard, but for once, I have to put someone else’s needs ahead of my own.
“She needs to go with you,” I murmur.
“You can come too?” Storm’s eyes narrow. “I know we’ve had our share of issues, but we’re family now. The estate is open to you if you need it.”
I shake my head. “No, I have to stay here. If I go with you, it will look like we’re hiding behind the big gates. You need to take Snow and keep her safe until this is all over.”
“How do you think she’s going to feel about that?” Everett asks.
“I don’t care. As long as she’s safe, she can hate me all she wants.”
