Page 61 of Unbound

I had her there at that warehouse for two reasons. One: I couldn’t bear to think of her being out of range of my protection.

Two: she needed to know.

She needed to know that if anyone fucked with my family, they would pay. She had some sort of malfunction because of being in Vegas with all the shit swirling, but she needed to get a handle on it and come to terms with the fact that the man she was tied to for the rest of her life was not a white hat wearing guy. I was who I was and she needed to get to terms with it so we could move the fuck on.

No, I didn’t want to wear the shoes my father left for me to fill, but Pop made it pretty near impossible for me and Dare to escape this life unscathed. The men he was associated with would put out a hit on me and Dare if they thought he or I was anything but likeminded.

But also, it just wasn’t me. In my core, I was who I was. Maybe because of my life thus far and yeah, I wanted to be better for her, for our future kids, but when it all boiled down to it, she now knew I would put a knife to a throat, a bullet in a face, and order that someone get sodomized with a rusty pipe for fucking with what was mine or what was under my protection.

Anyone who knowingly fucked with me needed to be taken down.

“Hi,” she said.

I kissed her.

“Any word on Dex?” she asked, her face showing her worry.

“If nothing went wrong overnight, we’ll pick him up on the way to the airport. If they need to keep him, we’ll have Will stay with him.”

“Wh… what happened while I was in the car? What about the third bomb?” She scrubbed the stubble at my jaw with her fingertips.

“They found it and disabled it. Denarda had the three detonators on him so Nino had kept them aside. We stillhave them. Nino’s dropping them off to a friend in the police department.”

She traced my arm some more.

“People died, Tia.”

Her eyes moved to me; her lips parted, her finger stopped moving.

“I was afraid of that. How many?”

“Seven people. Including Kate Lewis.”

Her eyes bugged out and her mouth dropped open.

“How?”

“She was crushed. A few died from internal injuries, being too close to the bombs, faces blown off, or their skulls getting crushed. Johnny ain’t in great shape but he’ll live. The news’ll say eight people but one of them was Leo’s goon, that fuck posing as a waiter who tried to take you.”

Her eyes filled up with tears and her hand covered her mouth.

“Poor John. My God, they have six children. Oh Tommy.”

She was crying into my chest. I put my arms around her and squeezed her tight.

Nino, Will, and the other guards watched the girls and the kids while I went to the hospital with another guard, just as a precaution. I stopped in and saw Dex, then John. Dex was banged up good, but he’d live. He’d be off work a while but he could come home with us that day.

John was staring off at nothing when I walked into his hospital room. He glanced at me. No, not staring at nothing. He was staring at the stark reality in front of him. The man was utterly wrecked with the loss of his wife.

I leaned in. “The fucker whose fault this was felt a whole lot of hurt before he left the world and descended to hell.”

John barely blinked through that news. I squeezed his uninjured shoulder.

“What can I do? What do you need, Johnny?”

“It wasn’t fast?”

“Nope. Real slow.”

---