Page 81 of Sacrifice the Knight (Checkmate 6)

“They murdered my wife!” I roar. “On video. They filmed her begging for me; they filmed her tears and beaten body, and when my daughter unbound her ties and tried to protect her mother, they shot them both.”

“You had a daughter?” Jess cries. Her pregnancy hormones kick her ass and send her into a meltdown. “Oh my God. You had a baby? And you never told me?”

I turn to Kane with the deepest fury bubbling in my blood. “You were undercover, and you weren’t compromised. You blew it all for nothing. They should have put a bullet in my brain that night.”

“I wasn’t going to let you die, Cap! The job is to keep the cover, but family means I take care of you when you can’t do it yourself. The same way you watch my back.”

“And if it were Jess and your baby?”

Potent rage surges in his eyes. “It’s not Jessie and the babies! This hasnothingto do with them, so don’t bring that shit to my home again!”

“But if it were!” I shove him back a step. Nobody shoves a Bishop and lives to tell the tale, but I’m not particularly fond of living anyway, and a part of my heart screams that they’d be doing me a favor by putting me down. “If it were them, would you go on and live a happy life? If it were them, would you move on after a little while and start fucking some other chick?”

“Gem and Callie are gone.” Jay moves between me and his brother. “They’re gone, and it’s a fuckin’ tragedy. We loved them too, Cap. We really did. I played Barbies with your daughter. I brushed her hair and read her a bedtime story. I considered her my niece! My family. I miss her like I’d miss my arm, and I know that’s nothing on what you feel. They’re missed. But they’re gone, and you aren’t. You vowed to live, remember? We promised we wouldn’t let you go, so you vowed to live and make those girls proud. Why do you get to change your mind now?”

“Because the woman I fell in love with is a single mom with too much to lose. It’s too similar, Jay! Knowing me is dangerous.”

“We’re civilians now!” Kane steps up so he’s shoulder to shoulder with his brother. “It’s all gone now. That old life, those people, all of that bullshit. It’s all gone, and we have protections in place in case they wanna come back. I’m allowed to have a wife and babies now, and they’ll be protected. Jay is allowed to have Soph, she’ll be protected.Youare allowed to fall in love. We. Will. Protect. Them!”

“No.” Shaking my head, I stumble back a single step and crunch Jess’ poor toes beneath my boots. “I need space. I can’t watch a video like that again, but it’s all I see now.” I smack my temple with the heel of my hand. “It’s on repeat and won’t go the fuck away!”

“You need to just stop a sec–”

“No.Youneed to build bigger walls, a bigger army, and better protections so you’ll never know what I know. I don’t want to visit my girls’ graves anymore, Kane! I don’t want to sit on the grass on their birthdays and feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t want to count Mac’s birthdays and know he’ll be fifteen in May, then compare that to Callie, who should have turned fourteen last June.” I slam a fist to my chest. “I don’t want to hurt Katrina! I don’t want to dream of Gemma and Callie and have my subconscious replace their faces with Katrina and Mac. I see Gemma in my head, tied, beaten, bleeding. And then I see Katrina!” I circle my friends and stumble onto the front step. “It’s just… No.”

“What are you gonna do?” Jay demands. “Are you gonna be a pussy and hide from your problems? Are you gonna pretend you didn’t just admit that you’re in love?”

“No… I just…” I trip down the stairs on jelly legs. “I need space for now. I need to think.”

“Cap!” Kane takes a step forward. “You’re not thinking clearly right now.”

“No fuckin’ shit, Sherlock! That’s why I need space.”

“You’re going to break something really good,” he snaps. “You’re going to hurt her if you run.”

“I’m not running from her. I’m just… I need a minute.” I race across the grass and slide in, but before I can get the engine roaring, Soph throws herself into the passenger seat and slams her door. She pulls on her seatbelt with quick hands, but her dark eyes remain on me and glitter with something that might border on grief.

“You’re having a moment, and that’s okay. You’re allowed to take it.” She sits tall and rests her elbow on the door frame while Jay stares at us with a gaping mouth. “I’m coming, because I know what you feel, and I’m never allowed to take a moment out without people making it weird. So we can hang out and not talk together.”

“Suits me.” I switch the engine on and pull away from the curb. Music continues to play, but I don’t hear a word they sing. I don’t hear the bass, the tempo, the sweet voices. I hear my daughter.S’okay, don’t be scared, Mommy.

“We have things now, Cap.” Soph’s eyes come to burn the side of my head. “Things that you never had when your wife and daughter were alive. Things I never had when my baby sister needed help. We have our own army; we have weapons; we have unrestricted access to any data you could ever dream of. We can doanything. It doesn’t fix what we lost, but it makes the future a little less bleak. You don’t have to break your heart over a threat that isn’t real.”

“But it is real, Soph.” I scrub a hand over my jaw to hide the way my voice shakes. “It’s so fuckin’ real. If it’s not Derrick, it’s Hayes. If it’s not Hayes, it’s Colum. If it’s not Colum, it’ll be someone else. We left, but we’ll never truly be out, because there’salwaysgonna be some fucker who wants payback for our part in their downfall. You know this, Soph.” I turn to catch her eyes before looking back to the road. “You know this as well as I do, because you’re still hacking data; you’re still tying loose threads; you’re still siphoning off dirty money. Which one of them will be our next threat? Which one do I have to watch to make sure my family is safe?”

“I don’t know.” The way her voice cracks almost undoes me. I know what it took for this woman to admit she doesn’t know something. For her to admit she isn’t all powerful. “I can fix what I know, Cap, and I can repair what’s been damaged, but I can’t predict the future. I can’t know of a threat if they haven’t attacked yet.”

“Which is why I need a minute,” I murmur. “I fell in love with an amazing woman, and now I have to decide how selfish I’m going to be. Keep her and put her at risk. Or walk away and watch from afar. It’s tearing me up inside to even think about. But I’m not sure I’m strong enough to walk away.”

“Are you seriously considering ghosting her?” Soph’s eyes come back in my direction. “Really? You’d walk away?”

“I think…” I draw in a long breath, then let it out on a throat-clearing cough. “I think the right answer is yes, walk away. But the selfish answer is no, keep her, because I fucking earned her.”

“You deserve happiness.”

I scoff and pull into the parking lot at the back of my apartment. Shutting off the engine and sliding out, I wait for Soph to climb out, then I beep the locks closed. “I’m not sure I do, but I try to be a good person. I try to earn just a fraction of what I had.” I head up my stairs and let my boots slam down and vibrate the steel. Keys in hand, I unlock the door and allow Soph to pass through first. “Soda’s in the fridge. Chips in the pantry. Don’t talk to me. I won’t talk to you.”

She mimics me, steps to the pantry with a grin as I move to my flashing answering machine, and repeats my words. “Suits me.”

I toss my phone and keys down beside the landline answering machine, and with Katrina’s beautiful face in the forefront of my mind, I hit play and wonder how much trouble I’ll be in when she wakes and finds out I ran. She’s going to be pissed, which’ll probably start me back at square one.

“Daniel.” The voice playing from my machine is a kind of slither. Like a fucking snake in the grass that draws Soph around with wide eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t take my calls this weekend. Are you still mad I fucked your wife before she bit it?” Aren’s soft chuckle still somehow manages to fill my entire kitchen. “You move on fast, brother. Now you got the blonde hanging around and fixing your collar all the time, and the skinny brunette, the one that’s all sex on legs.” Soph’s eyes blaze and darken when she understands he’s talking about her. “Then you got the bitch with the mini pig. And the other one… what’s her name?”Don’t say Katrina. Don’t say Katrina. Don’t fucking say Katrina! “Jessie… Yeah. That’s her. And she’s incubating. Fuckin’ delicious. How’ve you been, DeWhit? Busy? Happy? Did you visit Gemma’s grave recently? Some punk ass kids smashed up her gravestone. Can you believe that? Those inconsiderate little pricks.”

Soph drops her food to the table and whips her cell out instead. A regular guy could assume she doesn’t give a fuck about this call and is instead surfing the net, but I know better. She’s working her magic. She’s begun the hunt.

By the time Aren hangs up, Soph’s face is hard like stone.

“Find him, Sophia! Find him!” I tear the machine from my wall and smash it against my door. Soph sits calmly in the middle of my kitchen while I rage around her, unbothered by my roared curses, unaffected when I sweep the shit from my counter to smash it against the floor, and unmovable when I tear my entire fucking door from the hinges and smash it to pieces. “Find him before he hurts us again!”

---