Why can’t these fucking people just do what they’re supposed to do with honor? It would make my job so much easier.
My father appears in the doorway of my office. “Son, you need to get your M24.”
I don’t question. I just react by going to the gun cabinet and removing the case that houses my favorite sniper. “Only the M24?”
“Take the Magnums too. I’m not sure what we’re dealing with yet.”
He comes to my gun cabinet, and I pass the Magnum cases to him. “What do you think has happened?”
“We’ll talk about it after we get going.”
My father doesn’t give me time to ask any questions once we’re in the car. “Load now. We’ll talk after you finish.”
Shite. That’s weird. He always briefs me while I prepare.
“Yes, sir.” I finish with the last Magnum and place it on the seat. “What’s going on?”
My father hesitates, and that’s when I know something bad has happened. Something personal. Something that involves me. “A man came into the bridal shop and attacked Westlyn.”
I’m not a man who is easily frightened, but I’m fucking terrified right now. “Is she…” Alive? I can’t bring myself to say that word.
“She made it through.”
I bring the coiled side of my fist to my mouth. I cough, trying to clear the lump I feel there, but it doesn’t move. My voice breaks when I ask, “What did he do to her?”
“I don’t know the details. Only that he used a knife.”
He cut my doll. “Where is she?”
“The Fellowship Infirmary. Jamie and Ellison are treating her wounds.”
I’m sure Jamie is an excellent doctor, and I’m certain he’ll only give the best care to his sister. I’m grateful for that.
“I wish I knew more, but Isobel was very distraught when she called, and the conversation was very short.”
My father and I don’t speak further during the remainder of the drive to The Fellowship Infirmary, and the silence feeds my fear. The limo barely stops before I’m out of the car and running toward the house that The Fellowship has transformed into a place to treat their wounded.
Isobel is holding the front door open for me. “She’s in the acute trauma room. First door on the left.” I stop at the door before entering and inhale deeply, preparing myself for the worst.
Westlyn is lying on her back, her eyes closed. Her skin is as pale as the wedding gown and veil she’s still wearing, both saturated with red stains. There are two squares of white gauze taped on her face, one covering her chin and the other covering her left cheek. Blood has seeped through the center of both.
I walk around the stretcher and stand next to her. I want to take her hand in mine, but I can’t because Jamie is sewing on her lower arm. “How bad is it?”
“She has numerous defensive lacerations on her lower arms and hands, a few on her chest and breasts, and then those two on her face. She’s going to need a lot of sutures. We’ll be working on her for a while.”
I watch Jamie insert a suture needle into her skin, and she doesn’t flinch. “Is she sedated?”
“Aye, and I’m using local anesthesia. She was in a lot of pain and couldn’t be still. I need her to be relaxed while I do this so that the edges of the lacerations will come together smoothly. If she’s tense, they’ll be jagged and cause puckering in the skin when they heal. I’m suturing as many as I can from the inside, and we’ll close the skin with surgical glue to reduce scarring.”
“Did she tell you that she could be pregnant?”
Jamie stops and looks up at me. “She didn’t say anything about that.”
“We’ve been trying. It would be very early if she were, but I assume that’s something you’d need to know before giving her certain drugs.”
“What she’s had so far is fine, but we’ll double check any further medications before giving them to her to be sure they’re safe during pregnancy.”
Jamie returns to suturing, and I kneel next to Westlyn. I lean forward and press my forehead to the side of her head so my mouth is over her ear. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” I caress the top of her veiled hair. “You’re going to be just fine, doll. Jamie and Ellison are taking good care of you.”
“Do you know who did this to my sister?” I can tell that Jamie is working hard to choke back his emotion.
“Not yet, but I am going to find out.”
“What do you plan to do to him?”
A snipe is too good for whoever did this. “He’s going to eat the barrel of my Magnum, but not before I make him sorry that he came after my mate.”
“I want him to suffer for this.”
Isobel is standing in the doorway. “I hit him hard with the heavy end of a crystal vase. He has a severe laceration tae the back of his head. I know because he was bleeding profusely.”
I hope he doesn’t die of a head injury before I get to him.
Jamie looks up at me. “Probably has a concussion and will need to be seen by an emergency doctor. I have connections at Royal Infirmary. I can find out who comes in with a head trauma.”
“In the meantime, I will have my brothers do a head check of all Order men to clear them.” I believe we have them under control, but this is similar to something one of them would do. “It sounds like you saved her, Isobel. Thank you for being there with her.” Her mother would have probably stood back and done nothing.
Isobel looks over at Westlyn. “She fought valiantly and used the defense skills Bleu taught her. I dinnae think she’d have survived that attack otherwise. That man was determined to kill her.”
Westlyn moans. “Kier… an,” she whispers.
“I’m right here, doll.”
Her eyes are slits and her pupils look out of focus. “Can’t see me… in my wedding… dress. Bad luck.”
“Don’t worry about that for even a second.” I stand and lean over her so that I can see her eyes. “Can you hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes.”
“Mo chroí. That’s what you are to me. My heart. And I love you. I. Love. You. Don’t doubt that for a second.”
“Mo… chroí… love… you… too.”
Her eyes close and her breathing becomes deep and steady again. I highly doubt that she’ll remember me saying those words to her, but she won’t have to. I’m going to tell her so much that she’ll doubt my sanity.
“Adjust the light for me, Mac.” Ellison grabs the handle of the overhead light and points it at the inside of Westlyn’s arm. “And I need you to open her sleeves all the way up.”
Ellison picks up the big scissors and cuts up the center of the wedding gown’s sleeve until she reaches Westlyn’s shoulder. “She loved this dress so much.”
“It’s exactly what I imagined her wearing.” And what I would have picked for her. Beautiful and chaste.
“She chose it because of the sleeves and higher neckline; she said that you didn’t want her to wear anything revealing.”
She listened and chose this dress to please me. “Can’t lie. I’ve become a jealous man where she’s concerned. I didn’t want other men looking at my mate with impure thoughts.”
“Your jealousy probably saved her life. The thick lace on these sleeves prevented the knife from slicing deeper.”
Thane comes into the trauma room. He looks at Westlyn and grimaces. “How bad?”
“There’ll be some mild scarring, but she’ll make a full recovery,” Jamie says.
Angry eyes shift to me. “You and Lennox told us that you would get The Order under control. You said that we would no longer have to worry about them attacking our women, and now my niece is lying here butchered like a piece of meat.”
Thane is furious, and we are too, but he’s fingering the wrong people.
“We’ve gone to great extreme to show them what happens to brothers who choose to go against us. We have them under control. Trust me. They didn’t do this.”
“I disagree. You don’t know th
em the way we do. This is just like them to attack one of our women unexpectedly.”
“The attack is very Order-like. I’m not saying that it isn’t, but Westlyn is no longer one of your women. She’s mine, and that makes her one of our women.”
“Not yet. I can’t let you marry her if she’s going to be in danger.”
Oh, fuck no. We made an agreement, and I’ll go to war with the whole brotherhood if need be. He isn’t taking her from me.
“She’s my mate. I’ve claimed her.”
“The claiming can be undone under these kinds of circumstances.”
“Not if she’s pregnant.”
“Is she pregnant?”
“It’s very possible. We’ve been trying.” Every single day.
Thane looks at Jamie. “Test her.”
She hasn’t even had time to miss her period yet. “Would a pregnancy test turn positive if she’s very early pregnant?”
“Depends on how early, but probably not unless we do a blood test. I don’t keep any kind of pregnancy tests, urine or blood, at the infirmary.”
Thane clearly doesn’t care for that answer. “The only way you’ll marry my niece is if you’ve already gotten your seed into her.”
“Or if I prove it wasn’t an Order member who did this.”
He points his finger at me where I’m kneeling behind Westlyn, trying to intimidate me. But I’m not. “Concrete proof. That’s what it’ll take for me to go along with your marriage to her.”
“I’ll get the proof,” I call out to him as he goes out the door.
Thane is right about one thing. If The Order did this then we don’t have the control we thought we had. If that’s the case, I don’t deserve to have Westlyn as my wife if I can’t protect her from my own people.
Jamie finishes with her left arm and moves to start on the right. “You must love hearing that there’s a possibility that I won’t marry your sister.”
“You love my sister, and she loves you. I see it with my own eyes and hear it in the words you exchange with one another. She’ll be heartbroken if she can’t marry you. So no, I don’t love hearing that there’s a possibility you won’t be her husband.”
“Your impression of me has changed?”
“I still think you’re a dick for threatening to beat and rape Westlyn and Ellison. And for taunting me when you knew I was scared out of my fucking mind for both of them. But I’m grateful you didn’t harm either. I know how loving you are to my sister, and that means a lot.” He holds out his hand to Ellison for a new suture. “And just so you know, I’m still pissed off at you for shooting me.”
“Sorry about shooting you. I didn’t want to do it, but you were going to thwart my plan for taking Westlyn.”
“Ah, fuck. It all worked out.”
“Until now.” I stroke Westlyn’s hair. “I can’t lose her.” I love her too much.
Westlyn goes through cycles of wake and sleep while Jamie and Ellison tend her wounds. Every time she wakes, I tell her how much I love her, and she tells me the same. The sewing goes on for hours. I know Jamie is taking great care in suturing her to the best of his ability so she’ll be left with as minimal scarring as possible.
It’s late afternoon by the time all of Westlyn’s wounds are closed. The more agony I see her in, the more my fury multiplies. “Will you give her something to make her sleep?” I don’t want her to remember any of this pain.
Ellison strokes the top of her head. “We’ll make sure she rests well.”
“I don’t want her to wake and find me gone, but I have to go figure out who’s responsible for this attack.”
“It’s okay, Kieran. She shouldn’t wake anytime soon, but if she does, we’ll tell her where you are and what you’re doing,” Ellison says.
“Please don’t tell her what Thane said.” I don’t want her to be upset on top of this.
“Won’t say a word.”
“Can you call your contact at the Royal Infirmary before I leave? I’d like to know if the motherfucker showed up there before I go to the trouble of investigating every Order member.”
“Sure.”
Jamie and Ellison both step out, and I’m alone with Westlyn for the first time. I take this private moment to look at her wounds. There are so many slashes on her skin that she looks like she ran through a plate-glass window. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, doll. But I’m going to find the fucker who did this to you. And when I do, I’m going to make him sorry.”
Jamie returns. “I can’t fucking believe it. There was a man who came in with a blunt force trauma to the skull a few hours ago. He has a concussion and is being kept for observation.”
“Sounds like that could be our man. Is Isobel still here?”
“I’ll get her,” Ellison says.
Isobel comes into the trauma room. “Jamie says the man who did this may be at Royal Infirmary. I need you to go with me and identify him.”
“Of course. That animal needs tae be put down.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Tavis Ewart,” Jamie says.
“Ewart,” Isobel says. “That name is very familiar tae me.”
“I’m still not familiar with every brother, but I don’t recall one being named Tavis Ewart on the list of Order members.” I drop a text to my dad, telling him to check the roll for this asshole’s name.
“Feels like I’ve known an Ewart before, but I can’t put my finger on it right now.”
“Maybe it’ll come back to you when you get a better look at his face.”
“Maybe.”
“Tavis Ewart’s room, please.”
The woman keys in his name and frowns. “Looks like Mr. Ewart was discharged.”
Fuck. “How long ago?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t give you that information.”
Isobel and I walk away from the clerk’s desk. “What are we going tae do now?”
“Only thing I can do. My brother is going to hack into the system and get his home address.” Let’s hope he’s forgiven me for choking him.
“Yer brother’s contribution is hacking?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We dinnae have a hacker, but times are changing. We need one.”
“Yes, ma’am, every brotherhood needs a hacker.” Don’t know what we’d do without Maddock.
I phone Maddock and put him to work on locating Tavis Ewart. He’s fast as fuck. Has a home address for me in under five minutes. “Looks like we’re going to a village on the outer edges of Edinburgh.”
The farther we drive, the more convinced I become that Tavis Ewart is not Order. None of our members live on this side of the city. It’s a dump.
“I’ve been over this way before.”
“What circumstances would bring a leader’s wife to find herself in this slum?”
“I came with my daughter-in-law. We were investigating a lead aboot Abram.” The car stops in front of a stone cottage. “His lover lives here. Cameron…” Isobel’s eyes widen. “Cameron Ewart. That’s no coincidence.”
I’m confident that we’ve found the man who attacked Westlyn. I just don’t know why. “A man who lives in the same household as Abram’s lover attacked his daughter more than a year after Abram’s death. What does that mean?”
“I have no idea, but we are about to find out.”
The door is unlocked, so I walk in as though I’ve been invited. “Who the hell are you?”
“Is this him?”
Isobel answers without hesitation. “That’s definitely him.”
“Are you the police? Are you arresting me?”
“You’re going to wish I were the police.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man who’s going to make you sorry that you attacked my fiancée with a knife.”
“Is the Breckenridge girl dead?” His voice is so cold.
“No.” I see his disappointment. “She didn’t do anything to you. Why did you try to kill her?”
??
?I want to see Abram.”
He doesn’t know that Abram’s dead? “Oh, you’re going to see Abram all right… in hell.”
“What does that mean?”
“Abram is dead.”
“You’re lying to protect him.”
“Abram has been dead for a while.”
“So has my little girl.”
“Cameron?” Isobel says.
“Yes. How do you know her name?”
“Abram used tae come here tae…” Isobel pauses. “Spend time with Cameron. She had information aboot him that I needed, and I spoke to her.”
“Did you know that she was dead?”
“I did not. I never saw her again after that day we spoke. I’m sorry tae hear that.”
The bastard wails. “Abram killed her.”
“How?” Isobel says.
“The doctors told me that she had been choked. She didn’t die right away. She was in a coma for almost a year before I lost her. And that bastard did it. He killed my little girl.”
I’m not going to ask how he knows it was Abram because I’m sure he’s probably right.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but you’re coming with us. You have a mess to clear up for me.”
“What kind of mess?”
“Don’t worry about it right now. Either walk out on your own or have both of your kneecaps shot off and be carried out of here. Your choice.”
He chooses to walk.
Isobel and I take Tavis Ewart to one of The Fellowship’s warehouses. This isn’t The Order’s mess. I’m not killing this man on our territory. This is Abram’s doings, and The Fellowship will be responsible for the cleanup.
My father and brothers are the first to arrive. As far as I know, it’s the first time Isobel has seen my father since the night I kidnapped Westlyn.
Dad isn’t pleased to see Isobel here. “Issy shouldn’t be here for this.”
Isobel is a fiery redhead. My father should know better than to talk to me about her as though she isn’t standing there. “This man attacked Westlyn in front of me. I want tae be here. I hope ye aren’t under the impression that I’m too soft for this because ye’d be wrong.”
“I know you’re tough, but this isn’t a place for a lady.”
They spar back and forth about her being here, like old friends, but then the conversation takes a different turn. “Aren’t you going to ask me about William?”