Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven Noah

Luca stormingout of the office broke up the thick tension in the room as several small and quiet conversations began to take place. Everyone but Kade, Declan, Ryder, Charles, and I begin to talk with one another about what to do next.

Charles is staring out the door where Luca just left, but I can’t help but wonder who he’s really thinking about. Luca and his intense reaction? Or the woman Luca no doubt went to go find? Our woman.

My fingers twitch at my sides at the thought of him wanting more from Scar. The idea that he could earn more than just her forgiveness but her favor once more. They were engaged at some point after all.

I glance down at the papers I still hold in my hand. There has to be a wealth of information in here if it’s truly what he says it is. I itch to get to work, to ignore everything else that unfolded and dive into the nitty gritty of what Scar really needs. Answers. Ones that we could be just days away from getting.

Somehow it feels wrong to be the first one to make a move though. To fully burst the bubble that ballooned in this room with this conversation. With Luca already gone, I direct my questioning look to D. It takes him a moment to turn to me because his attention is solely locked on where Kade is vibrating with his barely restrained rage.

Declan nods as he clears his throat. “Ryder and Kade, go with the guys to the gym and get a feel for the fighters and how we could implement Jade’s idea.” Ian and Ryder both nod in acknowledgement as they both go to steer Kade out of the office. He doesn’t register, but everyone knows them going to the gym has more to do with letting out Kade’s pent-up aggression than anything else. Tyler and Holden follow them out but Joe lingers, waiting for something from D, but when he’s waved off he also leaves the room.

“Britt needs to get to the coffee shop too,” Mikey says, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder.

“Hey,” she snaps, smacking his ass. “I want to stay and see Scar,” she argues.

Ronan watches with a smirk. “Sorry, my little java chip, the coffee beans are calling.”

She lifts her head up to glare at him. “You’re the worst.”

He leans forward and smacks her ass as Mikey walks them out of the room. “That’s not what you were saying last night.” My lips twitch at the sound of her groan as they move out of hearing distance.

Jade and Rachel trade looks, before turning their attention to D. “We can stay and start to go through the files Noah needs to look through?” Jade suggests and Rachel eagerly nods. He accepts easily and they both move to sit behind computers and wait for my instructions.

I look down at the papers in my hand, something Charles said still bothering me. “Why did the logo give it away?”

He rubs the back of his neck and looks at the floor before sighing. “I didn’t see it when I was younger,” he starts off defensively. But I don’t get the feeling that he’s defending himself to us. More like trying to justify his flaws even all these years later in an attempt to soothe the guilt. Guilt that may very well be misplaced after everything we’ve learned today.

“You wouldn’t hold a child accountable for the actions of adults. So stop blaming your younger self,” Declan interrupts him.

The look in Charles’ eyes makes me feel uncomfortable. Not because it’s wrong, but because it hurts to see how badly he needed to hear those words. I never wanted to like the guy, but slowly through our interactions I could see why Scar was having a hard time. I wanted to hate him because Kade and Luca would never do so without a valid reason, but it was clear how much he cared for Scar. Even now. Almost a decade since they were close, he still is fighting to help her. Hard to hate a guy like that.

Jealousy slithers down my spine. That’s something I don’t think will ever go away with my girl. I don’t mind sharing her with the guys. I’ve seen how much she needs them. How we all complete each other in a completely wild and fucked up way. We’re happy in our current dynamic. It feels good. Full.

Declan and Ryder both came in before we had that feeling. Everything felt up in the air. I was hanging on for as long as I could but never thought Scar could love me back. It’s different now.

I might come to like Charles, but I don’t want to share Scar with him. I don’t want to find a new dynamic. I like ours. The pain in his eyes reflects the same demons I’ve seen in the mirror, seen in Scar’s… and Declan’s… and Kade’s. Fuck. All of us bear similar scars.

Declan gave him exactly what he needed to hear like we all do for each other. He instinctively comforted him the way he would any of us. It’s almost a little too easy to see how he could fit amongst us. And I hate it.

Air hisses through my lips as I force myself to release the breath I’ve been holding as my lungs begin to burn. Fuck me. I’m not usually the emotionally charged one.

“We won’t blame a child,” I add in reassurance. Regardless of my feelings on the possibility of change, I won’t take it out on someone obviously hurting. Not in this way at least. If he crosses lines, I won’t hesitate to sic Kade on him. His anger and hate towards Charles will probably never completely disappear.

“My father,” Charles starts again. “He never really cared. Was never really around.” He stares off at a wall in silence, trying to find a way to string the thoughts into words that fully encapsulate the horrors he must have experienced. “Looking back it’s easy to see how when he did show interest, it always had to do with her.”

Declan nods along with his words and the sick feeling in my stomach intensifies. “Not always in obvious ways. Like he cared about my class schedule and my extracurriculars. But the changes always put me on the same schedule as her. We always loved it, thought it had to do with the inevitable merging of our families.”

“It didn’t?” Jade asks, confusion marring her face.

Charles shakes his head, sadness and grief emanating from his body. “It just made it easier for him to keep an eye on her through me. What was she participating in? How were her grades? What did she like? Never asked quite directly but with a ton of other questions that buried his intent and masked his attempts as an interest in his own kid. He drilled into me the importance of taking care of her as she would be my spouse. I was punished if she was hurt on my watch.”

“Creepy,” I agree, “but how does this lead to the logo?”

“He always gave her daisies,” he answers. “Called her his little daisy,” he continues and my stomach turns, the connection now obvious. No wonder she lost it at the sight of the logo. “Not often enough to raise any real flags, but often enough that we had our own little jokes about it. He stopped as we got older, around the time that we would have realized how odd it was.”

He shudders and I reflexively mimic the action at how sick the entire picture he paints. “As soon as I saw the logo, all those memories, all the once seemingly innocent moments came flooding back in a new light. A much darker one and I just knew.”

I look down at the USB still in my hand and get to work.

* * *

“It’sa lot worse than we thought,” I whisper to Luca. They just got back from seeing the progress on Poison and I hate to destroy the fragile peace they’ve found. But this can’t wait.

His eyes darken as he studies my face, trying to read my mind to prepare himself for how bad it is. He breathes heavily and I take it as a sign to get on with it.

“Not that anyone is surprised, but it’s a shell corporation. A good one though. He definitely knows how to cover his tracks. There’s a home office, a website, he files taxes, has detailed expense reports. The whole nine yards.”

“Okay,” he says questioningly.

I rub the back of my neck. “Well, it doesn’t seem like the reports are forged at all. Just the intent behind them is a lie.” I put up some of the information I’ve been able to pull from the USB Charles gave me onto the large screen in the center of the room. “Business conferences, meetings, marketing research. These are all trips that have been written off, but if you throw the locations based off of his receipts onto a map.” I open the map and thousands of red dots appear on it showing where Donaue has traveled to.

Scar stays quiet as she leans against the wall with her eyes shut. She almost looks indifferent, but I know better. She’s simply taking everything in, giving herself time to process the new information before letting her feelings in.

“He travels a lot?” Luca asks.

I’m not explaining this right. I cue in the animation I set up so each dot appears in the order of the dates those trips were taken. “This shows the timeline the trips were taken,” I explain. Luca’s eyes widen as he watches the dots disappear and then slowly begin to reappear one by one starting all around the town Scar grew up and rolling out like a terrifying wave across the country.

“He’s been systematically going through the country,” she observes, no trace of emotion in her voice. The light that was in her eyes moments ago already dimmed. I hate myself a little more for not giving her this day off.

I nod in agreement. “I think he’s been searching for you.”

“He has,” Charles declares. I startle for a moment, having forgotten he was even in the room.

Luca turns dark, steely eyes on him and for a moment I worry we are about to have another fight on our hands. But he stops at just the glare. “Explain.”

“My father is nothing if not thorough. But there is nothing, and I mean nothing else to explain that pattern of behavior besides his obsession getting away from him.” He points to the still rolling tide of red dots. “He’s always wanted to find her and he’s using that business as a means to do it.”

The dots stop in Northern California, in Cherry Hills, where we just were. “He’s getting closer to her.”

Luca shakes his head. “I already knew they were closing in,” he admits. “There were whispers about her for the first time in a long time last year but they hadn’t reached these parts yet.”

“Technically, still haven’t,” I add. Is it helpful? Based on the baleful look Luca throws my way, probably not. “There’s more though,” I continue as I tense. This is the worst part. Scar never worries about herself as much as she worries about others. This will both devastate and piss her right the fuck off. I can’t help but study her as I hesitate in delivering the blow I know will diminish the rest of the light in her eyes.

“Get on with it, Noah,” she snaps. I sigh, but don’t take it personally.

“We have eyes on all our people, especially the east coast ones.” She nods in agreement, her body tensing as she knows what’s coming. I don’t beat around the bush. Pulling up another graphic I made and show her what I found. “The blue dots are Josie, the orange ones are employees of CGK corp.” They overlap far too much for anyone’s comfort or to be a mere coincidence.

“They have eyes on Josie,” Scar seethes, her entire face transforming into a mask of rage and violence.

“She’s been able to make a few trips without being followed from what I can tell. Including both her recent trips out here. We can at least determine it’s not someone in her inner circle.”

It doesn’t make her feel better. She looks about half a step away from flipping a table. I can’t even blame her. When I realized it was happening, I almost lost my shit.

Luca pulls her into his chest and wraps her tightly in his arms. “She has guards on her,” he reminds her. “We’ll send more. I promise Josie will be okay.”

* * *

Scar starts thrashingat my side, immediately jarring me awake. “Shh, baby girl,” I console, sitting up and pulling her into my arms. She whimpers in her sleep, her eyelashes fluttering as her body tenses. I rub her arms and gently shake her. “Wake up, baby girl. It’s just a nightmare. I’ve got you. Come back to me,” I murmur a litany of soft reassurances, knowing better than to try a more direct approach. It only makes her nightmares worse to forcibly try and wake her.

“No, no, no, no. Please,” she begs and curls into me. I hold her close to me and continue to murmur sweet nothings even as a tear escapes her tightly closed eyes and slides down her cheek.

My chest aches with a hollow and useless feeling. Nothing makes me feel worse than this. Not being able to help her. Knowing I can’t take away her pain and struggles and carry them myself.

An ear-piercing scream breaks free from her lips, the broken sound a knife right to my chest. I hold her tighter as an even more devastated scream tears from her throat. More tears stream down her face and my own eyes prick with moisture. Rocking her back and forth in my arms, I continue to try and gently pry her out of the hands of her demons from the past. Minutes pass, each one feeling like an eternity as she refuses to wake up. She whimpers again as she begs to be saved and I wish I could. Wish I could do something more than just try and comfort her, even as I begin to shake her harder in an attempt to wake her up. I’ve never seen one of her nightmares last this long before. She usually isn’t this hard to wake up from them. They’re becoming more frequent again too. It all worries me. Facing her demons seems to be dredging up all the suffering they caused.

Just as another pain-filled scream fills the air, the door is thrown open and Kade’s large frame fills the doorway. He wastes no time in stripping out of his bloodstained clothes and climbing into bed with us. Rather than pulling her out of my arms and into his, he pulls the both of us towards him so she’s sandwiched in between us.

Her scream fades and her body gives a little shudder as she melts in between us.

“How long?” he demands, his voice strained and gruff as he runs his hand over her hair.

“At least ten minutes,” I admit, tears working their way free to spill down my cheeks as I watch her tense all over again. I know the whimpering and begging is about to start. Lines of tension mar Kade’s face as he watches her.

He gently kisses her forehead before carefully wiping her tears from her cheeks. “She’s strong as hell for surviving what she did,” he says before reaching out and wiping off my tears. “We have to be strong too.” I nod, but it sounds like a reminder to not just me but himself as well. I take a deep, shuddering breath and blink away the last of the moisture in my eyes. Our girl needs us.

Kade closes his eyes tightly and kisses her head again and a weight seems to lift off of his shoulders. Somehow, I just know that he’s decided to let his past with Charles go in order to be there for her. He starts softly humming a familiar tune to her. As her whimpers turn into begs once more, his humming shifts into lyrics. I recognize the words and join him as we both softly sing to Scar. He rubs her arms and pets her hair, as I squeeze her hips and trace designs on her thigh. Both of us keeping her tightly pressed between us.

Her pleas die off, but no scream comes this time. More tears spill free and she begins to shake herself free of the nightmare. Her eyes flutter open and she looks up to Kade. I’d sigh in relief except the tendrils of her suffering lines every inch of her face.

“It hurts so bad,” she sobs, the onslaught of emotion wracking her whole body and I know she isn’t fully with us. Not quite yet. We squeeze her tighter between us, my hand now resting over Kade’s back as we practically wrap ourselves around her. Our singing morphing back into murmuring sweet nothings. Anything and everything we can think of to try and soothe her.

I’m not even aware of half the words coming out of my mouth.

“I can still smell it,” she whispers, followed by a gag. “The vodka, the blood, the smoke.” I’ve seen Scar in a lot of different ways, after nightmares, enraged, lost, on the verge of breaking, feeling shattered, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so fragile. She looks like a little girl. Like she’s morphed back into who she was on that night.

“No, no, no, no.” She isn’t awake yet. Her eyes are wild as they dart around the room, but never landing on Kade or me.

“Shh, baby girl. It’s Noah and Kade. We’ve got you. Can you hear me?”

“The smell, the smell. Make it go away. I don’t like vodka.”

I stare helplessly at Kade but he looks just as stuck as I am. We don’t know how to break her from this in-between wake and sleep place. “Come on, Letty. Come back to us,” he pleads, a desperate edge in his voice.

“Kade?” she questions, a haze still in her voice. “Kade?” she asks again.

“I’m right here,” he promises, holding us both tighter, keeping her locked in between us.

“Luca,” she gasps. “Where’s Luca?”

“He’s working, Ladybug. Noah’s here too. We’re here. We’ve got you.”

Silence follows his words and she shakes her head. “Ladybug,” she whispers, a confused lilt in her tone. I trade looks with Kade as the relief bleeds from his face. She’s still not fully awake. Fuck.

“Scar,” I say slowly. “It’s time to wake up.”

She shakes her head, her eyes drifting shut again. “It hurts. It still hurts. Kade, why does it hurt?”

“I know, Letty. I know. But you have to wake up, okay?”

“Make it go away, make the pain go away.” Her desperation claws its way up her throat and into my skin with her words.

Kade curses under his breath. Finally it dawns on me. “I think she took something to help her sleep.” I’m not sure what it was, but she talked about it with Declan before he left to go wrap some things up at the clinic.

“It hurts,” she cries and Kade curses again. Neither of us sure what to do. “Make it stop,” she begs.

“We’ve got you, Letty,” he promises. “We’re gonna make you feel good, okay?”

She doesn’t respond but sinks deeper into our arms, some of the tension bleeding out of her.

He feathers kisses over her face, catching her lips in a soft, chaste kiss. “Kade?” she questions.

“It’s me, baby. I won’t leave you.”

His comforting strokes turn into sensual caresses. “Are you sure?” I ask.

His eyes are strained as he meets my eyes. “Anything to make her pain less.”

I dip my head in acquiescence. “Okay.” I lift her hair off her shoulder and nuzzle into the skin where her neck and shoulder meet.

“Kade?”

“Yes, Letty. It’s me and Noah.” At the sound of his voice she releases a content sigh and I trail kisses down her back. “We’re gonna make the pain go away, okay?”

“Okay.” She nods her head as her body relaxes. We both lean away from her as we try to reposition ourselves and she instantly tenses.

Kade and I spit out curses at the same time. “She needs touch,” he whispers. “Gentle and slow.”

I nod my agreement and run my fingers through her hair, stopping to massage her scalp. She hums and I do it again. “Good girl,” I praise and the corner of Kade’s lips twitch. Not quite a smile, but I’ll take it.

He leans forward to press kisses from one collarbone to the other. She arches up into his touch and hums under her breath. I glide my hands down her back and over her hips, lightly massaging her as I go. Her eyes stay closed as she falls back into some form of rest.

She normally loves to be woken up by one of us between her thighs, but the nightmare and the likelihood she’s on medication makes me hesitate in pushing it too far. Kade must be of the same mind set as he stays above her sleep tank, never dipping lower than the skin already exposed. We both keep it to firm, affectionate touches until she slips back into a relaxed state of sleep. No more humming, no more whimpering, or begging or screaming.

Kade and I both sigh in relief as we change our positions again, keeping her tucked between the two of us. We both turn into her, our eyes meeting over her head. “No more sleeping pills,” he says.

I chuckle, but it lacks any sort of amusement. “Absolutely no more sleeping pills.” I hesitate. “You think she’s going to be okay the rest of the night?”

He doesn’t answer right away, instead he carefully studies her now peaceful sleeping face. “I really hope so.”

The room drifts off into silence as we both slowly relax enough to fall into a light sleep. The peace doesn’t last long.

It feels as if only a few minutes have passed when a jarring scream wakes me up once more. Scar is locked in another nightmare. Her arms and legs flail as she thrashes, trying to escape the sheets.

“Kade, Kade, please help me,” she cries. “It hurts. It hurts so bad.”

“I’m here, Letty. I’m still here. What hurts?” His voice is so strong and soothing, so aware, I have to wonder if he ever managed to fall asleep. The first hints of light give away the hours that must have passed since her last fit.

“Everywhere. Everything hurts.” Her arms wrap around herself and her body trembles with the phantom pain.

Kade hesitates but as her body convulses and tears begin to cascade down her face, sobs only seconds away from breaking free, he steels himself and makes a decision. “It’s me and Noah, okay, Letty? We’re going to replace the pain with pleasure. We’re going to take care of you.”

I arch a brow in question. “She’s physically feeling that pain right now,” he says, his voice breaking. “Anything to make it disappear.”

“Anything,” I agree. “The meds’ effects should be fading as well.”

Not much ever holds me back from making my girl feel good. From doing anything I can to make her pain disappear. Fear is a strong deterrent though. Fear of making it worse. Of hurting her more.

I steel my nerves. Anything is better than this. Better than doing nothing.

Kade begins to slowly kiss down her face and brush away her tears with his lips. I place my hands on her thighs and gently massage my way down and back up again, being careful to avoid her ass entirely. This isn’t the time to push her.

He pulls away from her and looks down at her flushed skin. I help hold her up so we can pull the thin tank top over her head, letting her gorgeous tits spill free. Her whimpers turn to sighs as Kade dips his head to her breasts and reverently kisses the soft mounds.

Her head falls back against my shoulder, exposing her neck to me. I trail my tongue up along the side until I reach her ear. “There’s my baby girl.” Her body relaxes against mine as Kade begins to tease her nipples between his fingers. “Let us take control.”

Her mouth parts open and a gasp of pleasure eases the tension in my shoulders. She’s slowly coming back to us.