Page 32 of Dangerous Command
“You pulled the guards away from the house,” Derek said. Uncle Ray clenched his teeth and nodded.
“Did you do that on Muro’s orders?” I asked.
Uncle Ray started balling, his shoulders heaving in jerky movements. Like he couldn’t do anything to stop the intense emotions from rolling through him.
After a few minutes, he finally tried to speak.
“You have to believe me,” he said. “Muro had my wife. My wife! I would never do anything to hurt our family, except he hadher.I couldn’t let her die for me. I couldn’t—”
“Stop the whining,” Derek muttered. “You know the rules.”
“You’ve got to believe me,” Uncle Ray said.
“Tell me: how did Muro get into the house?”
“You think I gave him the codes?” Uncle Ray shook his head. “I could distract everyone. Trust that my brother knew to keep his guard up. But I would never give Muro direct access to the house—”
“Then who the fuck did?”
For a short moment, the room was silent. My gut clenched and my face was hot. Then Uncle Ray’s sobbing continued. Demi’s eyes grew soft and I bit my lip. There wasn’t much we could do for him now. Derek motioned toward the door, and the four of us left the workroom, leaving Uncle Ray alone.
The birds chirped in the distance, and the air, though humid, cooled my skin, a welcome relief from being trapped inside of the workroom with Uncle Ray. Axe nodded to Derek, then wandered into the woods holding Demi’s hand, giving us privacy. Derek looked at me.
This was the part where Derek would tell me that my interrogation hadn’t worked to save his uncle’s life. He was going to kill Uncle Ray.
But I had to try to help.
“Now we have confirmation,” Derek said.
“The only confirmation that you have is that he was trying to do what was right for the people he loved,” I said.
Derek forced a dark smile as if to mock me for using the word ‘love.’
“He lied to us,” Derek said. “He should have been ready to die for the family.”
“Like you are?” My stomach hardened. “Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t do the same and defend your wife if the situation called for it.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
Derek grabbed me by the throat, pushing me against a nearby tree. Our bodies were pressed against each other. With his mouth closed, he looked down his nose at me.
“I don’t appreciate that tone,” he said in a low voice.
I closed my lips, my bottom lip puffed out. Staring back at him.
“Wouldn’t you do the same for your wife?” I asked.
“I don’t have a wife,” he sneered down at me. “I have my brothers. My mother. And I would gladly die if it meant that they lived.”
He was right. Derek always put his family first. That was the only kind of love that mattered to him.
But to me, families were more complicated than that. Family didn’t always mean love.
“Listen to yourself.” I turned my chin up. “You act like you’ll never love anyone else. But you could have a wife one day, like Uncle Ray. Like Wil. Like Axe! Try to see what it’s like in their shoes.”
“I know what it’s like.” He narrowed his eyes. “My father made the mistake of defending someone outside of the family because he fell in love. But I won’t make that same mistake. I will live and die by my family.” He leaned in closer, our foreheads touching. “And if you’re good to us, I’ll be good to you,” he whispered. “It’s that simple, Mads. Ray broke the rules.”
