Page 19 of Kade

Right after Matthew’s birth.

Raw pain bled out of the image of her talking to the doctor, listening to him tell her the baby didn’t make it. That they’d already disposed of his body.

How?

Why would anyone send this to her?

“Mrs. Kincaid?”

She heard Jasper’s concerned voice, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the image. Bile rose, and she coughed, trying to choke it down. Black spots danced in front of her eyes, and she reached out, trying to find something to steady herself with, but there was nothing.

Darkness started to eat away at her vision, but still she couldn’t look away from the photo. Angel shook her head, but the blurriness wouldn’t go away.

And when her legs gave out, and she fell, her eyes remained on the image until there was nothing left but the dark of unconsciousness.

“Motherfucker!”

Kade paced while Nikoli sat in Kade’s office chair, eyes glued to the screen in front of him. He’d tried to find Mason this morning, who knew more about hacking than Nikoli did, but his youngest brother was nowhere to be found.

Dylan flew out to Miami last night to be their eyes and ears on the ground there. No one in the cartel knew Dylan, so they all agreed it would be safest for him to go snooping. He also knew more about gang intel than any of them did. He’d been working the gang unit of LAPD before he took the job here at KS&I.

“Cool your shit.” Nikoli didn’t even glance his way. “It’s going to take as long as it takes. You don’t want this tracing back to us.”

“Mason installed firewalls that make it impossible to trace shit back here.”

“Nothing is impossible. Difficult, but not impossible.”

Nik was currently hacked into several governmental websites in Miami looking for information on Juan Ramirez and his son.

Or maybe Kade’s son.

This waiting around was killing him. He had no patience for it. Nik had been working since around seven this morning. It was now well past noon. Kade’s every instinct prodded him to get on a plane, hunt the motherfucker down, and take his son back, but Dylan was right. He had no proof, only gut instinct, and that would get him arrested.

Nik’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. The ringtone was Lily’s.

“Hey, Lily Bells. You on your lunch break?” Nik got up and walked out of the office. As much as the interruption irritated Kade, he kept his anger in check. He couldn’t fault his brother for taking a break to speak with his woman. Kade would have done the same.

Well, maybe today he wouldn’t. He was hiding things from Angel. That was the reason he’d snuck out so early this morning. He wanted to tell her everything, that she’d had such a physical reaction to the boy because it might be Matthew, but he couldn’t do that to her. To get her hopes up and then find out he wasn’t theirs? It would crush her, and Kade would rather slice off an appendage than cause her any more pain.

His mother had often known things she shouldn’t have, things her sons didn’t want her to know. Things they’d done that would have made her so disappointed, but guilt usually got the best of them. Strangely, she’d never been shocked when they confessed or admitted she was right about something being wrong.

A mother knows her child.

That was what she’d always say. Kade got lost once, and it had taken them about an hour to find him. He’d been six or seven. He remembered being afraid and thinking if he was lost for too long, his parents wouldn’t recognize him. It was a child’s fear, but his mother had sat him down in her lap, hugged him close, and assured him that even if he had been lost for years and years, she would always know him, because a mother knew her child.

Angel knew Matthew the moment she saw him. She knew he was hers. Every instinct in her drove it home, her body physically reacting to leaving him.A mother knows her child.

He should have listened to her. He should have gone straight to the hotel and…and what?

He had no proof. No evidence. He’d have wound up in jail for attempted kidnapping. There was no way in hell he’d have left there without his son or in handcuffs.

“Sorry,” Nik muttered a few minutes later. “She’s worried. Having security trailing her is making her nervous. You know how anxious she gets if strangers are around. They won’t know how to help her if one accidently touches her and she’s not expecting it.”

“I thought she was a lot better?”

Nik shrugged and sat back down. “With people she knows, yes. Strangers, though? Whole other ball game. And her fucking boss is a flirt. Fucker better keep his distance.”

“You know this because…?”

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