This time it’s relief. “We have nothing here anyways,” the mother says as she glances between her children while trying to keep up the quick pace.
An hour later, we’re sitting outside the little house watching the neighbors and streets as people come and go. When there’s no sign of the woman’s husband out looking for them, we drive away.
Another person saved.
Another nightmare ended.
A new beginning born for a deserving family. Penny and Grady are going to be scarred because of what they witnessed, but they have a mother who loves them enough to heal them in the coming years. Not everyone’s as lucky as they are.
We’ve shown up to a scene too late on more occasions than any of us would like to admit. It’s never easy walking into a house where we've failed. Seeing lifeless women holding on tightly to their children, even in death. Sometimes the kids are still alive, but mostly everyone is deceased. We’ve learned to take the wins when we can.
“You think we’re trying too soon?” Severo asks in the silence, his fist clenching the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn white.
Not looking at him, I contemplate my answer. Aria Adair is, by far, the most watched-over person in our large family. She’s the youngest and most vulnerable because of her autoimmune disorder and what happened to her. Because of that, she isn’t as worldly as Hadley, who is only a few weeks older than her.
“No,” I finally answer. “She’s innocent as a baby lamb.” A wicked grin spreads across my face. “It’s going to be a true pleasure corrupting her.”
* * *
Severo
Shutting any feelings I have off when we’re moving families is what keeps me sane. I don’t bond with them the same way Seven does. I don’t ask names or tell them mine. Or give them a direct line to me. I get them safe, I give them instructions, and I ensure they understand the risks of breaking the rules.
Our little brother Santo learned the hard way about what happens when you get involved with a client. They bonded over the short time they were together, and wanting to be like Seven, he gave her a card.
She called him day and night until finally, he couldn’t answer anymore. She was taking over his life in a way that the then twenty-two-year-old man wasn’t ready for. When he stopped answering her, she called her husband. The man killed her before they left the safe house.
Santo burned it to the ground and left for California with our cousin Damien Sutton. They’re good for each other, and they’ve built a protection agency that’s doing well. They’re established and happy, and as much as our mom and Aunt Ariel would like them both to come home, I don’t see that happening any time soon. Both boys feel they have something to prove. As the youngest males in our generation, the two of them have always felt left out.
It burns me a bit that our little brother felt so strongly about leaving that he did it without telling us. In the dead of night, they were both gone. I also understand. That driving need to be something outside of the Adair legacy is what we all strive for.
Our fathers paved the way for us to be anything, do anything we all wanted with our lives. They built this empire from the ground up. When Mom and the aunts came along, I don’t think any of them expected to drift away from hookers and drugs to help women escape domestic violence.
They still run guns, but they’re a lot pickier about their clientele, and Holden Adair's calculated rage has many more men afraid to use the weapons he sells to them against innocent victims.
In a lot of ways, the Panhandle is safer than it was thirty years ago because of the killer prince. Having Holden seemed to have curbed the beast inside of King. There is nothing he wouldn’t have done to protect Lil and Holden. Then and now.
When Aria came along, it was an unexpected surprise. I still remember the day our girl was born. Months too early. She wasn’t expected to live, let alone make it out of the hospital. She died three times after birth, but she’s a fighter. The epitome of a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Growing up, she was clumsy, awkward, and shy. Her medical episodes always seemed so close together that when she went an entire year without one when she was eleven, the whole family hovered around her—protecting her from everyone and everything.
Then at the first hint of freedom, with only guards rather than us, Holden, or one of the cousins, she was kidnapped. Tristan ruined any semblance of safety we thought we’d encircled Aria with.
The night we found her, bloody, burned, knocking on death's door, I was prepared to die right beside her. There was no way I wanted to live in a world where Aria Adair didn't exist. Glancing at my brother, I remember his anguish as well.
Never had I seen my brother shed a tear before that day. I knew that if she didn’t leave that hospital, we’d have died there with her. Suicide isn’t something either of us had ever thought of before that night, but we sure contemplated it in the days after. When she wasn’t expected to survive. The burns, the smoke inhalation, her compromised immune system, they were all a deadly mix for her fragile body.
At fourteen, she was too young for us to be sexually attracted to, but there was always something about Aria. From the day we first held her, we made a silent pact always to be her guardians in the shadows. Failing that one time nearly broke us. And now I can finally see what all our and the family’s protection has done to her. She’s a sheltered princess about to be taught a lesson in sin.
CHAPTER4
Aria
Standing in front of the mirror in a dress Hadley picked out for me, I don’t know whether to smooth my hands down the soft fabric or run behind the curtain.
“What about this one instead?” Kelsey holds up another garment in black. With a turtleneck and long sleeves, everything would be covered from ankle to chin.
Hadley rolls her eyes. “As if. We’re not in the eighteen hundreds, and this one fits Aria like a second skin. The boys are going to kneel at your feet in worship.”