“You don’t get to interrogate me,” she says. “And you sure as hell don’t get to rescue me.”
I take a half-step closer, and my voice drops. “That ain’t how this works.”
“Then maybe I don’t want it to work,” she shoots back, and that one cuts clean.
She’s angry and stubborn and young enough to think defiance is armor. “I didn’t ask you to stand between me and anything,” she says. “I didn’t ask you to warn me. I didn’t ask you to hover. I don’t want you rescuing me.”
The word rescuing sounds like acid from her mouth.
I hold her gaze for a long second. I can feel my wedding ring like a damn brand. I can feel the weight of every choice I’ve made in this club, in this town, in this marriage.
Then I nod once.
“Fine,” I say.
Her breath hitches like she expected a fight.
Instead I step back. “Walk to your car,” I tell her evenly. “Alone.”
Her chin lifts. “Gladly.”
She marches across the lot like she’s proving something to me, to herself, to Hell. I don’t follow, not where she can see. I don’t push. I don’t hover.
I watch.
And I catch the movement she doesn’t.
A black SUV pulls out from behind the pharmacy slow as sin. Too slow. Windows tinted. Tires whispering over the asphalt like the driver’s trying not to exist.
My blood goes cold.
She reaches her car, fumbles with her keys, gets the door open.
The SUV swings wide.
Passenger door flies open.
Two men spill out.
Wrong boots. Wrong eyes. Not club. Too clean in the face, too blank in the mouth, like the kind of men who pray before they bury you.
Pearly Gates.
I move before she understands what’s happening.
One grabs her arm and she screams, sharp and terrified, and the sound splits something in my chest I didn’t know was there.
I hit the first bastard from behind and drive his face into the side of her car hard enough to make the metal thunk and the bone crack. He folds with a grunt, hands scrambling, and I don’t give him time to breathe.
The second one swings and I catch his wrist and twist hard. Something pops. He howls. A stun gun drops out of his hand and clatters across the pavement.
So that’s the play.
Take her quiet.
I shove him into the SUV door and slam it on his leg once, twice, because I’m not in the mood for mercy and Pearly Gates doesn’t deserve it. He goes down with a choking sound.
“Get in your car,” I bark at Brittany.
