Christmas dinner will be delivered tomorrow by the currier from Ma Grady’s catering service. I’m sure the girls would’ve cooked, but other than breakfast that Chaney insisted I let Freyja make, I wanted us to have a relaxing day where we weren’t spending hours doing dishes after feasting.
I’m going to assume the larger sizes belong to Chaney because she’s got a slightly thicker frame than Freyja does. I don’t want to mess this up for them, so I cross my fingers and hope for the best. There’s two of everything in regard to their hair shit, only in different colors. So I start divvying blow dryers, straighteners, hairbrushes, and storage cases up by shades. I give Freyja the teal blue ones and Chaney the lime green ones. They kinda go hand-in-hand with their personalities that are just now starting to present themselves.
Freyja is the calm one, there’s always a soothing aura surrounding her—she’s my little peacekeeper.
Chaney is a spitfire, she’s always digging into things, intrigued by life in general and asking questions I’m not always comfortable answering—she’s my inquisitive tornado.
They haven’t been with me long, but I’m starting to forget what life was like without them. Boring is the word that comes to mind. I was busy with work, spent time with my brothers, but always alone when I’d come home at night. I thought that’s how I wanted things, now, I’m questioning why I felt that way.
By the time I’m done wrapping things, it’s four in the morning and the tips of my fingers are numb. My arms feel like I’ve been working out, they’re sore and stiff. “Shoulda just got some gift bags, it would’ve been easier on my body,” I mumble to myself as I stretch out my fingers before standing up. As I stand upright, my spine pops causing me to groan with relief. Damn, I’m getting old. I bend down and begin to stack everything up so I can carry the packages into the living room and pile them underneath the tree.
Other than the lights on the tree illuminating my path, the house is pitch dark. Being out in the country means we don’t have any lampposts as spotlights which means I rely on what’s on the porch in order to see the front of my house, but as I crouch low to deposit the first batch of presents beneath the tree, I could swear I see some sort of shadow shift outside and it catches my attention.
Standing up, I walk over to the window and peer outside, but everything is still and there’s no movement whatsoever outside of what Mother Nature dishes out nightly, so I shake it off and put it down as a figment of my imagination which isacting irrational due to the circumstances—my alarms would’ve sounded off if someone had infiltrated my land.
Even with that thought in mind, I still decide to do a sweep of my property and make sure everything is on the up and up. I go into my office and input the code for my electronic lock gun safe and pull out my long distance rifle that has a night scope attached to the barrel. I load my pockets with ammo and notch one in the chamber before unarming my alarm and creeping out of the house as quietly as I can so I don’t wake the girls. I barely have my left foot out the door before a note attached to my porch railing by one strip of scotch tape catches my eye since the bottom half of it is fluttering with the breeze of the wind.
“What the fuck,” I mumble. Lifting up my scope, I place my eye to the ocular lens and use it as a telescope, scanning the yard.
Somebody got past my defenses and I’m seething. I spent an enormous amount on this system, and keep it maintained as well as monitored by Booker, who’s no slouch when it comes to surveillance equipment, so I know I have the best there is on the market. No being on this planet should be able to disarm it without inputting my personal code. And it’s not something the common person should be able to figure out since it’s the date of the day my life changed. The day Riptide found me drowning my sorrows at the bottom of a bottle. Theoneday I’ll never forget since it was the same day that I discovered my life was all a lie. My parents were my grandparents and my uncle was my dad. That’s something that fucked my head up, and when I stop and think about it, it still does.
“Don’t go there, Nova,” I scold myself as I continue clearing my land, never leaving my porch while doing so.
A muffled sound coming from the side has me swiveling in that direction. I tilt my head to the side and tune in. Inch by inch I slowly walk that way, never lowering my rifle as I continue walking. I should kick my own ass for not putting in my earbuds and reaching out to Booker so he could monitor me while I secure my land. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to go back into the house and grab my phone to call for help. This is all on me. My gut is telling me that I need to keep going and not let anything distract me.
Whimpering, that’s what I’m hearing. As I tune in further, I know it’s not coming from a wild animal, the pitch is all wrong—it’s a human. My feet pick up the pace and I’m now jogging toward the mewling sound.
When I round the corner, I nearly collapse to my knees from the horrific picture before me. “Holy hell!” I shout, as the scene penetrates my mind. Taking the chance that Jennings is gone, I rush over to the woman tied to the acorn tree and drop to my kneecaps, jarring my entire body from the brutality of my impact. “I’m going to untie you, Stella. Stay with me. Keep breathing!”
“Nova!” Chaney hollers from the porch.
“Chaney! Grab my phone off my nightstand and get it to me. Hurry!” I don’t hear if she has a response to my command because my focus is elsewhere. As I undo the knots of the rope, my body shivers in both anger and fear. I’m angry as fuck that Jennings dropped her off at my property. Infuriated that mysteriously, he managed to get around my security system and breach it.
Is placing her here a warning for me, for my club?
Does he know I have the girls?
Fuck, those two probabilities scare the ever-loving shit out of me. This man is ruthless, stealthy, and unhinged. He’s smarter than we’ve given him credit for and that baffles me because nothing in our research shows him as some sort of savant when it comes to computer shit and he doesn’t have any sort of military or martial arts training to be able to do half the fucking shit he does.
“It’s me!” Chaney yells as she runs through the grass and makes her way to me. “Oh, my God!”
I finally get the rope untangled and slowly lower Stella to the ground, checking her pulse. It’s weak and sporadic, which means we need to get her to a hospital sooner rather than later. I make a judgment call and instead of hitting Marsten’s number, I dial 911.
“Go back in the house, sweetheart. You don’t need to see this,” I declare as she joins me on the ground.
“No, Nova. My father did this, didn’t he?” she asks.
“Yeah, Chaney, he did,” I honestly answer.
“Then I’m staying here. She needs me, Nova.” Chaney pushes her legs straight out and lifts Stella’s head into her lap, resting it there where she begins talking softly to her, combing her fingers through Stella’s hair.
“Keep talking to her, I’m going to run in the house and grab a blanket for her and a jacket for you. I’ll be right back,” I tell her as the operator picks up and I begin relaying information to her.
I rip the note off my porch on the way in, check on Freyja who’s still sound asleep, and run to my office—sending out a messageto my brothers through my computer using a forum we set up for communication during times like this.
Need backup, ASAP!
Knowing that’s all I need to state, I run to the closet, grab a throw blanket and one of my heavier jackets and rush back outdoors.
