And before I knew it, I had her pulled through the bars and tossed over my shoulder.
It was time to get the hell out of this fucking place.
1
ANNA
I never thought I’d see someone upset at saving a woman.
But Cap was on a fucking rampage.
“You could’ve blown everything,” the man said as he paced back and forth.
Brutus just stood there, arms crossed over his chest, always looking like he didn’t give a shit. But for once, he stared down at his feet.
He never stared down at his feet.
I didn’t like that.
“You should have come and gotten me. They’re going to know we were there, Brutus. Do you realize that?”
“The fuck was I supposed to do, Cap?” Brutus asked as he lifted his head. “Leave her there?”
“You should’ve come and gotten me! You know how this fucking works! You don’t go rogue!”
Brutus threw his hands into the air. “We’ve all gone rogue! All of you have gone rogue! The only difference is that the woman I went rogue for, I don’t wanna fuck!”
“GOD DAMN IT, BRUTUS!” Cap bellowed.
I had enough of this shit. “Allright!” All heads turned as I stepped up between them. Not in Cap’s face, I wasn’t stupid,but close enough that he’d have to go through me to get back to Brutus. “He saved someone. I know that screws up the plan. I know you’re pissed. But the man pulled a woman out of that hellhole and you’re standing here chewing his ass over it like that’s the problem worth solving right now.”
Cap went very still. The kind of still that meant I had approximately one more sentence before this got bad for me.
“So maybe redirect,” I said, quieter.
“Anna.” My brother’s voice was a warning behind me.
Cap looked at me for a long moment. Something shifted behind his eyes, not softening exactly, but recalculating. “You have about five seconds to walk away,” he said, low and even.
I held his gaze for exactly four of them.
Then I shot Brutus a look and went after my brother.
I heard soft crying, and something in my chest pulled tight. I didn’t know how to do this, how to be around grief this raw, this open. I’d spent my whole life learning how to keep my own locked down. Watching it spill out of someone else, someone who had every reason in the world to fall apart, made me feel like the walls of the safehouse were closing in on me. Though, they had good reason for it, I suppose. Still. I left the kitchen, storming out to go figure out what in the hell my brother was doing.
But when I found him in the living room of the safehouse, I saw something I’d never once seen in my brother before.
Softness.
He was crouched down and murmuring to the woman who couldn’t stop crying.
“It’s okay, there’s just a lot happening right now,” my brother said as he held out his hand for the woman. “No one is upset with you. Everyone is really glad you’re safe.”
She sniffled, her words broken with her emotions. “No one sounds glad.”
“I’m glad,” my brother said.
I watched him bring the back of that woman’s hand to his lips to kiss.
