“She needs to stay here,” I say, watching her readjust herself in bed. She’s still pretty out of it for the most part. We arrived six hours ago. And although I have some people to torture before I kill, I want to be here with her when she wakes up again. I lower my voice to make sure she doesn’t hear me. “They confirmed her pregnancy at the hospital. That won’t stay quiet for long.”
“You think no one will look for her here?” he inquires.
“I think it’s the safest place for now.”
He looks over at her closed door and then back at me. “You trust them?”
I nod. The Spade brothers do some fucked-up shit here, but they wouldn’t harm my wife. Or my unborn child. “Yes.”
“We bring you an update on the fire that claimed the life of ten people earlier this week at Blackout,” a reporter says on the TV. Ryat grabs the remote and turns up the volume a little bit for us to hear. “Remember when we showed this clip…”
It goes to the night of the fire, and reporters are already littering the parking lot along with all the first responders. My Bentley comes squealing into the parking lot. It shows me running toward the building. Then the cops knock me down. We fight. I’m in handcuffs. Then it skips over to me pushing the cops off me and shooting one of them.
“We can now confirm that Laikyn Grace Crawford, Tyson Crawford’s wife—the only living daughter to Frank Minson—was, in fact, inside the club when the fire took place and was pronounced dead at the scene. But no official report has been released as to how or where the fire started.”
Ryat turns it off. “So that was their plan?” He snorts. “To make the world think she died. A horrific death at that? Burning?”
“Seems so.”It’s worked before.
“But why?” he continues. “How does her death benefit anyone?”
“It’s not about benefitingthem. Whoever it is wants to take her from me.” It has everything to do with me and nothing to do with her.
“You think it’s her father?” he asks. “We knew he’d retaliate. If not him, then who else could it be?”
A sniff gets my attention, and I turn around to see Lake sitting up in the bed, her watery eyes on the blank TV. Slowly, they meet mine, and the first tear falls from her bottom lashes, rolling down her bruised cheek. “Luke,” she whispers.
“What does he have to do with it?” Ryat asks.
Her eyes meet mine. “He was the one who pulled me out of Blackout.”
We both stiffen, glancing at one another. “Luke was there? At Blackout?” I clarify. No. She’s not remembering clearly. It couldn’t have been him. It had to have been her father.
“Thought you had guys on him?” Ryat asks me.
“They’ve been searching ever since the day of the wedding. He’s been MIA,” I say. Ryat doesn’t know that Colton, Alex, Finn, and Jenks work for me. He knows I’ve hired some men to do my dirty work, but that’s as far as his knowledge goes. When they never came up with anything, I pulled them from the surveillance.
“I thought you killed him.” She speaks softly, her heavy eyes dropping to her hands in her lap.
I sigh, wishing I would have. I had a hunch he’d lead me to something important. I was wrong.
“Why would he wait so long?” Ryat goes on. “You two have been married for months now.” He looks at her. “Did he say anything to you?”
She nods softly. “There were two of them. But I never saw the second guy. He stayed behind me.” Her shoulders start to shake. “Luke dragged me out of the club and threw me in a van. They gagged me, where I couldn’t close my mouth, and pulled out my tooth.”
My hand tightens on hers. I’ve been going crazy wanting to know what happened to her while she was away from me. Now that I watch her break down reliving it, I want to tell her to stop.
“Said I could thank my husband for that.” Deep breath.
My chest tightens.
“Then they took me … somewhere.” She looks around, as if to see if it’s the same place she remembers. “Luke carried me inside while the other stayed behind. He said that I better hope you knocked me up. That I’d finally know my worth. I told him that wasn’t possible.”
I haven’t had the chance to tell her she’s pregnant yet. I look at Ryat, and he frowns. “So both her father and Luke wanted you to knock her up? Seems fishy to me,” Ryat states.
“What?” she asks, wide-eyed. “My father wanted me to get pregnant too?” Her eyes meet mine.
“So it seems,” I say vaguely, not really believing anything Jackson has to say right now. But some of what he said did make sense. Miller knew things he would have only known if he had been there in the very room with us. But Jackson also said that Frank had only given Luke that room to make sure she remained a virgin. And then sent him to give her fake birth control. So what is it? Stay a virgin or get pregnant?
