Nothing but death and darkness waiting below.
She’d hate me when she knew.
I toyed with a lock of her hair. Trying to find the nerve. My words were measured as I prepared to lay it all out. “How much did you know about what Joseph did for work?”
I always wondered how the slimy asshole had convinced her he was legit.
She blinked at me, stuttered a bit, “He . . . he’d started working down at the shippin’ yards right after you left. He got promoted quickly.”
I cringed and then gently prodded. “Do you remember how quickly?”
How he went from a minimum-wage job in the warehouse to claiming to own the cargo front in a handful of years?
But it was Joseph who had been owned.
Her brow squeezed. Like she was fighting the truth of everything that was written in front of her. “He said . . . he said he was working hard to give me the life that I deserved. So that, one day, we could buy this house and I’d be able to live out my own dream.”
Hate fisted my guts. So fucking tight.
She didn’t know. She didn’t know.
She blinked at me. “Did . . . did you know he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been? Did Mack? Oh God,” she whimpered, the pain I’d wanted to shield her from slid out. “How didn’t I know? How didn’t I know he was involved in somethin’ he shouldn’t have been?”
Horror filled her words. Grief clouding over her like an eclipse.
The love she had for him showing through. The care. Her own regret.
“It wasn’t your fault, Faith. There was nothing that you could have done that would have stopped what was coming.”
That was on me.
“What was comin’, Jace?” she pleaded. “Did you talk to him after you left? Did . . . did he tell you somethin’?”
My tongue soured with the confession that gathered there. Everything I knew. Unsure if either of us was prepared to take the blow.
I sucked in a deep breath, the words dying on my tongue when the little voice echoed through the wall. “Mommy?”
Chocolate eyes went wide, her guilt stripped away. In its place was a flustered panic. “Oh, goodness. Bailey.”
I brushed my thumb over her cheek. “Hey . . . it’s okay. I told you, I’m in this with you. For you. For her.”
Faith eased a little, and I sent her a soft smile before I rolled out of the bed and pulled on my jeans, quick to head out of the bedroom like it’d granted me a stay of execution.
A moment’s reprieve.
Reprieve that came in the form of the tiny thing that stood in the hall outside her door, rubbing one of those tiny fists in her eye as she clung to the Beast.
“Jacie,” she whispered in some kind of relief when she saw me there. “I’s had a bad dream.”
Like she found comfort in my presence. That just for the fact I was standing there, she was protected and safe.
A belt of emotion tightened around my chest.
Never had I known it stronger than right then.
I’d never allow anything to happen to her.
Not to Faith.
Not to us.
Joseph had left enough wreckage behind.
I was going to pick up the pieces.
Thirty-Five
Jace
Twenty-One Years Old
Jace didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to see his brother. Ian leaned against his car in the parking lot, looking like freedom and the road to Jace’s second chance.
He was going to take it.
Run with it.
Run home and to the one thing he never should have left behind.
It’d taken locks and bars and cells to finally figure out who he was and what she’d seen in him, and he was determined to become that man.
The lock buzzed, and the heavy metal gate slid open.
One second later, Jace was free.
Released two years earlier than his five-year sentence. Let’s just say, he’d been on his best behavior.
A little harder than he’d once been. Three years behind bars would do that to a man.
He’d thought he’d seen it all—the worst in people—but he hadn’t had the first clue.
He’d learned a lot of tough lessons, but he’d finally embraced a bunch of good shit, too.
His only worry was the letters. The letters he’d written over the years that had never been answered. He guessed some things had to be confessed face-to-face.
He walked toward his brother, determined to never repeat what had gone down. He was reclaiming his life. Taking back what was his.
Ian straightened when he approached, and they measured each other for a second before Jace threw his arms around his brother and hugged him tight.
Ian hugged him just as fiercely. “Fuck, man, I missed you like crazy. Don’t ever leave me like that again.”
Jace squeezed him like his next breath depended on it. “I don’t plan on it.”
Ian nodded, pushing away, shaking himself off. He rounded to the other side of the car and hopped into the driver’s seat. Jace slipped into the passenger’s.
Ian turned over the ignition. “Where are we headed?”
“I need to get to Faith. Explain all this bullshit.”
They were more than a hundred miles from Broadshire Rim. Jace had been carted off to some dump penitentiary that was hidden in the mountains on the west side of the state.
Something passed through Ian’s expression. Worry and sorrow and pity.
Jace’s hands fisted on his thighs, and he stared across at his brother, who tried to busy himself by fiddling with something on the dash.
Dread spiraled through his system, and he heaved a breath, forced out the words. “Just tell me, Ian.”
Ian stilled his fiddling and inhaled deeply before he slowly looked back at Jace. “She’s married, man.”
“What?” Disbelief fisted his spirit, drenching his heart and mind.
No.
It wasn’t possible.
Not after he’d sent all those letters promising he’d be back.
Denial pulsed through his being. Ian had to be wrong. He’d made a mistake. That was it. A mistake.
“I’m sorry, Jace. I couldn’t tell you while you were in there. I just . . . couldn’t.”
Grief constricted Jace’s throat, so tight he was sure he was being strangled. Right as a fist punched into his chest and ripped out his heart.
“To who?” he barely managed.
Ian hesitated, wavered as he rocked in the seat, holding on to the steering wheel as if it might make delivering the blow easier. “To Joseph.”
Agony sliced him in two. It was a misery unlike anything he’d ever known.
Amplified by the blinding fury that beat within his broken heart.
Betrayal.
He couldn’t stop it. The way his mouth worked and moisture filled his eyes.
No.
Fuck no.
He couldn’t believe this shit.
Ian jerked his head away, shaking it, filled with turmoil. Then he cursed and jerked his gaze back to Jace, so much brutal sincerity in his voice that it rocked the car.
“I didn’t do it, Jace. Those drugs? I didn’t have anything to do with them. I promise you. I know you were trying to take the fall for me, but it wasn’t necessary. I know you didn’t believe me when I told you I wasn’t involved. But it’s the truth. I wouldn’t have done anything that piece of shit said. I didn’t fucking care if he’d killed me. Not after what he did to me, and sure as hell not after what he did to you.”
“I know.” I could barely manage to form the words.
His head dropped again. “Joseph was always jealous of you. Of everything you had. Of everything you stood for. He knew he could never compare to you.”
Ian looked back at Jace. “He’s been working for Steven since the day you got hauled away.”
Turmoil blistered through Jace’s body. So hot, he was sure he was being incinerated from the inside out.
Joseph had been responsible?
“Take me there,” he demanded. “I need to see it for myself.”
Ian’s eyes went wide. “Why would you want to go and do that?”
“I have to, Ian. I have to.”
Maybe Jace needed the confirmation. Or maybe he just needed the proof that dreams really didn’t last. That dreaming them was nothing but a waste of time.