He was right, and with them, I did.
Then Bram was stepping toward me, a manila envelope in his hand.
“What’s this?” I asked when he handed it to me.
He shifted on his feet and refused to meet my gaze. “Just some legal stuff.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of legal stuff?”
“The kind that protects you if something happens to us.”
And now I knew what he was talking about.
I thrust the envelope at his stomach. “I don’t want it.”
I didn’t want to think about the possibility that they weren’t coming back to me. Didn’t want to think about the possibility that my vengeance would be their end.
“Goddamn it, Maeve, take it.” There was no mistaking the angry edge in his voice, and he inhaled a deep breath and took my face in his hands. “You have to do this for us because we’re not going to be able to think straight if we don’t know you’re taken care of.”
My throat closed with emotion. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“You don’t have to think about it.” His voice was surprisingly tender. “Just take it, and if anything happens to us promise you’ll call the lawyer listed in the paperwork.”
He was pleading with me. Begging me.
I nodded. “Okay.”
“I fuckingloveyou, Maeve. Don’t you forget it. And we’re not doing this just for you, so don’t spend even a second feeling guilty. We’re doing it because we’re one, and if you don’t have peace, we don’t have peace.”
He bent to kiss me, lingering over my lips as he made long, slow sweeps of my mouth.
I sank against him, memorizing the feel of his strong body molded to mine, his big hands warm on my face.
Then he was pulling gently away from me, Poe and Remy filing out after him. One by one, they picked up their bone masks, waiting by the door, and stepped into the night.
The closed with a click of finality that sounded like a warning.
56
ETHAN
I pulled backthe curtain in my studio and peered outside, looking back and forth across the compound. It was dark, the bushes and trees illuminated with landscape lighting, which didn’t help.
The property was shrouded in shadow, even the guards I’d hired to keep watch mostly invisible.
Still, it had been over a week since Bram Montgomery had called in to the show and there had been no sign of him or the other Butchers.
I breathed a sigh of uneasy relief. They were on their way to Switzerland, were probably preparing to surround the St. Moritz house at that very minute.
Little did they know, I fucking hated the cold. I’d only holed up in St. Moritz because I’d had banking to attend to there. The Swiss still had some of the best DL banking in the world.
I inhaled a deep breath of the salty ocean air rolling in off the beach in St. Kitts, feeling the most relaxed I’d felt since the first time Maeve Haver had lurked at the bottom of the driveway of the house in Blackwell Falls.
I just wasn’t a snow kind of guy, and I stepped into the balcony off my studio and dropped into one of the wicker chairs, then rested my feet on the railing.
Sand and sun were much more my speed.
57
