Page 48 of Devil's Due: Sarge

But she needs to understand there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do to defend her, protect her.

Nothing.

Before either of us could get another verbal jab in, the dinner platters are brought in by the help and set along the runner in the center of the table, then the covers are lifted, and the help slips back into the kitchen.

“We opted for an informal, family meal today,” Greer’s mom says about the spread. Her new found ‘kindness’ is completely fake. She’s not trying to hide that it’s fake. Her patronizing manner of speaking is proof of that. And informal? Are you shitting me? “Pork medallions.” She gracefully gestures to the platter of meat in a brownish gravy. “Green beans.” She moves her hand next to a silver tureen. It looks like there’re onions—those little pearl onions—mixed in with it. “And pommes Anna,” she says about the last dish. “It’s a French dish.Pommessimply means potatoes.” As if I can’t tell. I’ve eaten scalloped potatoes and au gratin potatoes. What planet does she think I’m from? These look just like those but with a different sauce. “They’re layered with butter and salt and pepper,” she says. “Trust me, they’re delicious.”

“They look delicious, Mom,” Greer says. She doesn’t sound either happy or upset about it. She really has no emotion in her voice at all and I hate that. Greer, my Greer, at least, the woman I had my hands on against the bathroom door, she shows emotion.

As the platters get passed around the table for us to serve ourselves, Greer’s mom asks, “So how didyoumeet my daughter?” I don’t miss the way she emphasizes ‘you’ as in ‘the likes of.’

“I met her when she ended up in Kentucky after—” Just then I feel Greer squeeze my knee again. When I glance at her she’s subtly shaking her head no. She doesn’t want her mom to know she’d been attacked? That she’d ended up in the hospital with sepsis? That she almost died? But with the way her eyes plead to me not to take the conversation there, I bite back what I was about to say last minute. “she found herself there once she left Texas.”

“Kentucky?” the woman gasps, horrified. “Why would anyone willingly go there?”

“Uh, because it’s beautiful,” Greer answers for me. “I love it there. Our little town, everyone knows everyone. I’ve made friends.”

“What about that nice boy Timothy?” she asks. “I thought he—”

“He’s a friend of Drew’s, mom, nothing more. I was polite and entertained him because Drew asked me to.”

Fuck, hearing that bitch-boy’s name makes me want to hit something. Thinks he has the right to buy a wife against her will?

“I need to head to Paris for work,” Drew cuts in, changing the direction of the conversation. “I was thinking you could join me. You know how you love Paris after the tourist season begins to slow.”

She smiles appreciatively at her husband and for the rest of the meal, we’re removed from the conversation. The next time we’re acknowledged is when dinner has finished and the men stand, so setting our forks and knives on our plates, Vlad and I do too.

“It was good of you to join us,” her stepdad says as he herds us toward the door. “But it’s getting late. You can come by and visit Greer tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”

“I’ll just go grab my pack,” she says once she joins us from the dining room. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Greer, dear, give your mother one more night. She’ll miss you.”

“She will.” Greer slides in next to me in the foyer, much to her stepdad’s obvious dismay. She leans her body against mine, her arms around my waist, letting everyone know where her loyalties lie.

“You can’t give your mother one more night?” Stephan asks, and it’s the first time all night that I’ve heard him address Greer. “You don’t know how lucky you are to be able to give her that.”

This’ll probably be the last time she sees her mother. They might not be close, but that’s still a hard tie to sever.

“If I stay, I don’t want you to go,” she whispers to me. “Stay here with me tonight.”

Unfortunately for Greer, Drew hears her. “We don’t have any guest quarters prepared,” he answers, letting us both know what he thinks of the idea as he reaches over to tug her closer to stand between his sons and himself. When she resists, he begins to lose his cool, tugging harder.

My eyes narrow on his hand, squeezing Greer’s wrist, keeping her next to him and in that moment, I understand where he’s at. He’s not letting her go and this has nothing to do with her mother. Vlad and I could make a stand, but we don’t know what power he has on standby. A man like him, his kind of money, his business, there’s no way he doesn’t keep an armed payroll. The smarter play is to stage a rescue with all my brothers at my back. Tonight.

I step up to her, bending in to press a kiss to her jaw. “I’ll be back, baby,” I whisper back, in her ear for only her to hear. “Do you trust me?”

She nods almost imperceptibly, and I know this woman, it’s not because she’s hesitant to trust me, it’s because she doesn’t want our audience privy to our conversation. But god, when she tips her chin up, showing me the pain and fear in her eyes as they shimmer from her unshed tears, it’s all I can do not to throw her over my shoulder like a damn caveman and take off running for the literal hills, back to Kentucky, where we belong.

Instead, I lift my hands to wrap them gently around her neck, tilting her chin up further, to line her up where I can bend down to take her lips in a kiss that has to convey everything. She needs to be ready.

Greer fists my cut and I swear she’d climb inside me if she could, she presses so close to me.

“For crying out loud,” her stepdad mutters. “Remember who you are.”

We break the kiss, but only to keep her from any punishment for disobeying or disrespecting the man in his home, until I come to get her.

My woman… She’s amazing and I know down to my soul what she’s declaring when she says, “I remember who I am, Drew.”

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