“Yes. Start with begging,” Cade commanded and shoved him back. “Get on your knees to do it too.”
He chuckled like he thought Cade was joking, but the beautiful man who I knew I loved right there and then, in all his crazy glory, in his madness, his fury, lifted a brow.
Aleks nodded fast then. “Of course.” He got on his knees. “I really meant no harm, and my country is innocent. I have a wife.”
“What if I gave her a dose of what you gave my Untouchable, a dose that was almost lethal?”
The man started to sob. He knew he wouldn’t live, that he probably wouldn’t be spared. “She’s just a woman.”
“Don’t women rule us? She owns my soul. I can control every computer you log into, the technology that protects your country, and I can control if you live or die. But she controls me. She says kill you, and I ask how she’d like it done. Do you understand? Take a look around you.”
We all glanced around the room. It was very clear that Cade had used his blade on Dion. There was the fresh smell of blood in the room. He’d been gutted, and Aleks’s knees were soaked with the evidence of that.
“Turn to her and plead,” Cade commanded.
Aleks didn’t even hesitate. He pivoted to me immediately with tears in his eyes. “Please. Spare me. You’ll make an enemy of the nation. Albania is mine. My family rules it. Think of your nation, how we could be allies. Please.Please.”
“Those were the words I used before Dion took my sobriety,” I whispered, holding his gaze.
Dion was bleeding out on the floor already, the thick liquid flowing from his stomach as he rolled around in pain. I crumbled to the floor as I let the fear wash over me, the pain of the loss of my sobriety, and the relief that I could get out.
The man begged, and I tried my best to think beyond what I felt then, tried my best to understand that alliances would be broken if I acted with my gut and emotion. “Cade, you can do what’s best for the nation.”
Cade searched my eyes. Then he shook his head as his tattooed hand, the one that read CHAOS on it flexed hard. The room faded away as he held my gaze, as he seemed to look in my soul, dig around and find my heart, my emotion, and my pain. He didn’t blink or break eye contact, his eyes dark and haunted, as he slit the man’s throat.
I turned away as Dante came to stand beside me and asked if I was okay. Cade was there a second later. He scooped me up even as I said, “I’m fine. I can walk.”
“And I can carry you,” he murmured into my neck. Then, he yelled for the guys to figure out this shit show we were leaving behind.
No words between us were exchanged as he set me gently into a black SUV and then we drove into the night silently.
I thought we were in the clear, that he’d come for me, and I’d figured out I loved him. We’d find a way to get over this and be together. I thought that everything was going to be okay.
Except Cade wasn’t. That night altered something in his mind, something I wasn’t sure I could ever get back.
28
Cade
It was seeing her broken—the quiver in her voice, the bruises on her body, the blood from her mouth—that changed something in me. I’d pushed her buttons before, tortured her a little, fucked with her because she was mine, but this was different.
No one got to torture her but me.
No one got to mark her but me.
Izzy Hardy had been mine for a long time, but it took this kidnapping for me to realize it. My bracelet shined as if untouched on her wrist, but it hadn’t protected her. Nothing I’d done so far had protected her enough.
That was going to change.
“I’d corrupt the whole world for you. Have them bleed out and suffer for attempting to hurt you,” I murmured as our driver turned a corner to make it back to my place. I couldn’t take her home, where she needed to be, because they’d drugged her there, tainted the place she should have felt safe.
“I don’t want the world corrupted,” she replied. “I only need what you give me. A place to be free, a place to let go enough to be myself.”
I pulled her close, grabbed her thighs, and had her straddle me so I could kiss her gently, so I could hug her and smooth my hands over her back, like I needed to check her and make sure she was really with me.
I barked at our driver to stop and get her some food, never letting her move from my lap. I hand-fed her without a word. She opened her mouth and chewed every bite, staring at me with tears in her eyes. She needed nourishment. I made a promise to myself, as her lips brushed my fingers with each bite, that I’d nourish her for the rest of my life.
When she’d finished eating, she nestled into my neck and was asleep in seconds. I told the driver to go until I said stop. How I hadn’t given her love without fucking and torture before, I didn’t know. Because there, in that SUV, I fell in love with loving her. I wanted to fuck her slow, with the night’s city lights on her, and see how she melted into my gentle touch. I wanted her to feel safe and loved and treasured. I wanted to see the tears in her beautiful eyes. I wanted to see the love I felt for her right then in her eyes for me always.