Chapter Twenty-One

Splintered Slumber

Ella

Sprawled out on the lushest green grass she could ever remember, she turned her face to the warmth of the sunshine with a lazy smile.

This is the life.

And it was.

She couldn’t remember where she was or why she was so content, but she decided it didn’t matter.

I’m happy.

The ‘why’ or the ‘how’ were rarely important. What mattered was that she was so satisfied, spread out in the sun.

I am satisfied. Her lips stretched wider as her fingers played with the soft blue blanket she was lying on. I can’t remember feeling this way before.

“Ella.”

She might have leapt at the sound of his voice, for she was certain that only a moment before she’d been there alone. But, as was often true in dreams, she acknowledged little surprise as she rolled onto her side to find Tucker sitting beside her.

Tucker.

She practiced saying his name in her head. Tucker was the remedy to a poison she hadn’t even known she’d consumed. Tucker was terrifyingly close to becoming everything.

“Sir.”

She reached for him instinctively, tracing a line over his jeans as she snuggled closer and breathed in his familiar sandalwood scent. One of his arms slipped behind her back, holding her close, and she was grateful for his proximity. The sun, which had been so intense only seconds before, must have been hidden behind a cloud because suddenly, the air was cold. Glancing up to the sky, she was alarmed to find that dusk had fallen, and a dark canopy of the night sky had settled in to replace it.

“When did that happen?” she murmured, tugging the ends of the blanket around her. Tucker was abruptly missing from the place he’d been holding her, and Ella was left there alone. “I was sunbathing, and then—” Her sentence was ended by a jarring noise from the star-laden sky, her attention drawn back to its twinkling vista. “What was that?”

She saw nothing out of the ordinary, but her breaths came faster as she searched for an explanation. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what, and she didn’t know how she knew, but somehow, she did know. Something was terribly wrong.

To her horror, the bizarre sound only grew louder. Rolling onto her back, she gripped the blanket she’d been sprawled on and tried to decide what was happening.

Is it an earthquake?

The ground around her seemed to be trembling at the jolting chime of the alien sound, the disconcerting tremors making it impossible to think about anything else but the panic knotting inside her.

“Tucker!” She searched around for him in the dark, certain he must still be close by, but in the morphing landscape of her dream, it was impossible to say. Nothing was as it seemed. “Tucker, help!”

Lurching forward in the covers, Ella threw her body bolt upright. By the time her eyes opened, her heart was racing, and there was a glistening layer of sweat on her brow.

It took a couple of seconds for her senses to catch up with her reality and a further few for her eyes and ears to make sense of what they were deciphering.

Where am I?

The room was dark, the constant thrum of temperature-controlled air fractured only by her own labored breaths.

“Tucker?” Her palm reached out beside her for the place she knew he’d fallen asleep, but to her dismay, his side of the bed was cold and empty. Straying farther under the duvet, her fingers grazed the edge of something soft. His mother’s blanket . She grasped it and pulled it to her chest. “Tucker!”

The door to the bedroom opened at her louder call, his silhouette visible in the doorway.

“Hang on.”

She knew in an instant that it wasn’t her he was talking to as he stalked to the bed.

“It’s okay, little girl.” His voice was a hushed whisper. “I’m sorry to wake you. I’m on the phone.”

On the phone? Who’s calling him at this time?

Although she accepted she had no idea what time it actually was.

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. “Okay.”

Tucker turned, walked back to the doorway, and returned the device that was presumably in his hand to his ear.

“What do you want, asshole? Have you got your friend, Collins, with you?” His curt tone shattered any illusion that the caller was a friend. Evidently, Tucker didn’t want to speak to whoever was on the line, although she didn’t know who Collins was. “How do you even have this number?” There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line replied.

Ella grasped the blanket closer. She couldn’t shake the sense of alarm that had risen in her dream, and Tucker’s disdain for the mysterious caller only amplified her concerns.

“It doesn’t matter who I’m with,” he hissed. “That’s none of your damn business!”

Her throat dried as she acknowledged she was now the choice of conversation.

“You can’t track this device,” Tucker sneered. “You should know I’m smarter than that.”

Another silence filled the air, and in the half-light, Ella saw him glance briefly in her direction. She wanted to call out to him, or better, to go and offer reassurance, but terror kept her rooted to her spot on the mattress.

“Yeah, and I said , what do you want?”

That time, Tucker’s voice was little more than a growl, and her pulse accelerated at its warning. She’d only heard that voice from him once before and that was when her father had interrupted them at the cabin. Could this be Alexander again?

“What?” His head snapped up, and she noticed how his breathing sped up as he replied. “What do you mean, Kenner?”

The room prickled with tension as his irritation ballooned. Ella squeezed into a tight ball in his bed as the gap in conversation protracted. He’d mentioned another name—Kenner—but she didn’t know who that was, either. The universe seemed littered with angry men, and even the one she was falling in love with sounded close to the edge.

“What?” Disbelief echoed in Tucker’s voice as he staggered back toward the bed. He landed unceremoniously on the covers at her side, prompting a gasp from Ella before he went on. “What do you mean, burned?”

Burned? She frowned as the sound of laughter resounded from the phone line. What’s burned, and who the hell thinks it’s funny?

“You can’t do this!” There was venom laced in Tucker’s screeched response. She didn’t think she’d ever known him so incensed before. “You can’t fucking do this!”

“Too late, asshole.” For the first time, Ella heard the other person’s chilling words. “It’s done, and unless you want another one of your assets to go up in flames, I suggest you contact Bennett as soon as possible for a trade.”

The line went dead seconds before she heard Tucker drop the phone to the bed.

“Oh God.” He sounded winded. “I-I can’t believe he’s done this!”

“What’s happened?” She seized his mother’s blanket tighter, realizing the closer she clutched it, the calmer she felt. “What’s wrong, sir?”

“That was…” He hesitated as if uncertain, but that couldn’t be right. Tucker was never unsure. Even when Bennett had called and they’d fled the cabin, it had only taken him seconds to devise the plan.

He was always in control.

“Who?” she pressed, closing the distance between them and reaching for his body in the shadows. “Who was it, sir?”

“Someone you don’t know.” His answer was one rushed lungful of air.

“Kenner?” She repeated the second name she’d heard him use.

“Yes.”

“Who’s Kenner?” she urged him to explain.

“A jerk-off with serious clout.” His muscles stiffened. “And someone who’s apparently been propping up your father.”

Alexander’s involved . Her body tensed at the inevitability of the outcome. Naturally, it was about Alexander. At the bottom of every bad result, there always seemed to be her father. I should have known.

“What d-did he say?” She didn’t know if she was referring to her father or Kenner, but in the end, it didn’t matter. One or both men had royally thrown Tucker off course. His was practically shaking as he spoke.

“He called to keep me up to date.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, but if she didn’t know better, she could have sworn she heard tears as well. “He’s good that way.”

“And?” Finding his hand in the darkness, her fingers enveloped his. The strong man she’d come to lean on was shaken to his roots, and she needed to discover a way to console him.

“It seems Daddy’s search party reached the cabin, but of course, we weren’t there.” He pulled in a breath as though whatever was coming next was painful.

In her mind, she was already putting together the terrible pieces of the puzzle. Alexander and the men they’d seen in the woods had found the place she’d been hidden away. She could only guess at how annoyed they would have been to find the cabin empty.

“So, they decided to leave me a little departing present by torching the place.” Emotion choked his voice, and the hand she was covering with her fingers balled into a fist.

“They burned it?” She envisioned the crappy little cabin going up in flames. The place had been her prison, and she’d loathed it when she was there, but since they’d left, she’d started to understand just how much the building meant to Tucker. Having built it from scratch, she could only imagine his pain at knowing someone had set it alight.

“Yes.” Anger pulsed through his body, and holding onto him, she could have sworn she sensed the waves as they passed through his sinews. “And God knows what else. Starting a fire in the forest could kill numerous trees, animals, and other habitats. Those fuckers don’t know what they’ve done!”

“I’m sorry.” She wrapped herself around him, curling her body around his back as the fury surged through him. “I’m so sorry they did that.”

And all because of me.

She bit back on the final line that waited at her lips, unable to vocalize it, despite its simple honesty.

This was all her fault.

“They want you back, little girl.” He turned her way, the warmth of his breath guiding her lips to the place he waited. “They think they can drop four million in a garbage can somewhere, and we’ll call it quits.”

“But that’s not going to happen.” Sensing where his thoughts were headed, she finished his sentence for him.

“Too fucking right, it’s not.” His hands were on her then, his body shifting as his hot fingers grazed over her skin and moved her until she sat with a leg on either side of him. “I’m not giving you up.”

“I don’t want you to,” she assured as she settled over him. “I only want to make sure my mum and Julia are okay. I don’t want to leave you, sir.”

“Thank you, little girl.” Two vast palms slid up her body and steadied her face, though she had the sense the act was designed to offer him stability. His face was wet from tears as he pressed a gentle kiss to her mouth, the soothing caress a stark contrast from the hateful anger she was sure was swimming in his veins. “That asshole, Kenner, is playing with fire.”

“I know, sir.” She kissed his stubble. “I know.”

“I’m going to make sure you’re safe, little girl.” His kisses were hot and heavy as he continued. “Then I’m going to burn his whole world to the ground.”

The End

The Savage Affection series continues with

Absolution