“Oh, no problem, I know how to use a gun.” It’s Luna, and Logan hastily wraps his arm around her waist to hold her back. “I’m anexcellentshot.”
Wallace’s chest is heaving, and he finally lets out a long sigh. “Gio, take Russo, see what she knows before letting her go. Logan?”
Logan cautiously releases Luna, stepping into the bathroom, uncharacteristically grim. “Aye?”
“Takethat.”He gestures toward Marlena. “Send her back. Make an example of her so they start running now.”
Marlena’s growling, thrashing against Logan’s grip. “If I see any of you again,” Wallace saysprecisely, carefully, “I will chain ye all inside one of your buildings and I will torch it. Ye and your shite sons can watch the smoke rise, coughing, eyes watering as your lungs crisp. The flames racing across the floor to ye, fast and hungry, ready to turn ye into ash. It isunimaginablypainful. Do ye understand me?” She’s silent now, face pale under her fake tan.
Logan pulls her out of the room, Gio follows with the woman who nearly ripped my arm out of my socket. “Someone clean that up,” Wallace nods at the unconscious guard, still crumpled on the ground.
As everyone clears out of the room, he spins around, wrapping his arms around me tightly. “Are ye okay? Did they hurt ye?”
Pressing my face into the base of his neck, I breathe in deep. His crisp peppermint scent is buried under a sharp blanket of smoke.
It smells like safety. Like Wallace.
“You came right from the job, didn’t you? Thank you for not stopping to shower first. Your timing…” I’m trying to be all tough and calm about this, but a full-body shudder shakes me.
“I’ll always get here in time,” he promises, kissing the top of my head, my wet cheeks, my lips. “Are ye okay with the smell? It’s not giving ye PTSD or anything?”
“No…” I shake my head vigorously, burying my nose against his neck. “I associate the smoke with you, my guardian angel.”
His chest rumbles against me. “I’m no angel.”
“You keep saving me.” I rest my chin on his chest, looking up at his beautiful face. “Maybe you need some wings tattooed on you.”
“Maybe so,” he chuckles.
The vision of the angel tile from Morgan’s reading rises up in brutal clarity. An angel, falling to earth, his wings on fire, pure white crisping to black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In which Scarlett experiences Elysium.
Wallace…
My wife’s face is buried in my chest, smelling the smoke, brushing a bit of ash out of my hair.
Scarlett is not disgusted. Or afraid. The smellcomfortsher.
“How is your arm, love?” I trace my fingers down her skin, looking for bruising or swelling.
“It’s okay, I’m a little surprised,” she admits. “It really hurt at the time.” She rotates it gingerly. “It’s fine, nothing some ibuprofen wouldn’t fix. But - this is important, she threatened Morgan. I have to call her, I-"
"Shhh..." I kiss the worried wrinkle on her forehead. "I've had two guards trading off, keeping watch over her twenty four hours a day. I'd suggest not telling her that."
"Thank you!" She hugs me fiercely, "Yeah, she'd be so pissed off."
The smell of smoke is transferring from my skin to hers, but she dinnae seem to mind. Smoothing the rough tips of my fingers along her skin, I watch a little spray of goosebumps follow. I’m instantly hard. Trying to think before all the blood drains from one head to the other, I ask Luna to get my wife some painkillers.
Stepping back for a moment, I watch the cousins cluster around my wife.
“Not to be rude, but your stepmother really sucks,” Afton says bluntly.
“Oh, it’s not rude,” Scarlett says matter-of-factly, gently rotating her shoulder. “She’s horrible, and the stepbrothers are even worse.”
“No need to worry about them now,” Kenna says. “They’re about to have a whole new set of problems to tackle.” Her wicked smile reminds me a bit of Morgan the witch.
