Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"How is she?" Ivy asked as soon as I answered her call.

I looked at the closed bedroom door. I didn't need to lay eyes on the woman lying in the bed to see her injuries. They were branded on my soul. There was no hole deep enough, no box tight enough, no lock strong enough to bury the memory of hearing the gunshots, of running into the house and finding Billy on top of Aria. Before we'd entered the house my target was Aria, my only objective was getting her out of the house, my brothers would take down Billy. But hearing what I'd heard, seeing what I'd saw, I lost my mind and went after Billy thinking he'd shot Aria. Cash had taken my place and got Aria clear. It wasn't until Jonas pulled me off Billy did it register I was beating a corpse. I wasn't until I saw Aria sitting in the back of the Escalade did it hit me she was alive. And when it hit, the sight took me to my knees.

All of that burned into my brain. Aria whimpering in pain as the doctor Zane sent to the house treated Aria's injuries—now that was tattooed on my soul. Only one other time in my life had I felt so helpless. And we all knew how that ended. But it would not end that way for Aria.

"She only woke up once last night," I told Ivy. "She took a pain pill and I replaced the lidocaine patch. It took a while but she went back to sleep."

"And you? Did you get some sleep?"

Fuck no .

In the last forty-eight hours since Aria had been home, I hadn't slept. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't even close my eyes without seeing the blood smears in Aria's house.

"Sure."

"You're lying, Smith. I can come over and sit with her so you can catch a nap."

That wasn't going to happen. Not Ivy coming over—she and Kira had already been to the house. And would likely show up again today.

"Her dad's here," I reminded Ivy.

Captain Taylor.

The man had barged into my house with Zane in tow, tossed his pack on my couch, and without saying a single word to me, helped himself to my bedroom where Aria was resting.

I gave them privacy. That lasted fifteen minutes before my need to be close to my woman had overridden my respect for a father who was out of his mind with worry. I couldn't say Captain Taylor appreciated my interruption. It was a rocky start, but Aria smoothed the way when she visibly relaxed when I entered the room. Her dad didn't miss her reaction, neither did he miss we were obviously together.

Surprisingly, he'd waited until this morning to give me the third degree. I'd never had a father look me over before. I gave it to him straight, didn't leave out a single detail, knowing I was giving him everything he needed to find me lacking. We both knew I'd never be enough for his girl. But by the end of the conversation I'd made it crystal clear—good enough or not, I wasn't going anywhere.

Aria was mine.

There was no fight he could wage that was harder to win than the one in my head.

"Oh, I haven't forgotten Captain Silver Fox is staying with you."

Captain Silver Fox?

What the fuck?

"I wouldn't let your husband hear you say that."

"Listen, Smith, I need to tell you something."

I didn't like the sound of that, nor did I like her unsure tone.

"Whatever it is can wait."

"No, it can't. I know I messed up and I know you're going to be pissed at me and probably not want me to come over but I need to tell you. It's killing me."

"Ivy—"

"It was me," she blurted out. "I was the one who accidently told Aria about… her . I didn't know Zane was on the phone with Aria when I said her name. That doesn't make it right, me not knowing, but I didn't do it on purpose. But, it was me."

Her.

I closed my eyes, lifted my free hand to the back of my neck, and squeezed, trying to release some tension.

I didn't know if it mattered knowing who told Aria about Valerie. On one hand it was good to know one of my brothers hadn't gone behind my back and betrayed me. On the other hand, if someone hadn't told Aria, I wasn't sure how long we'd be sitting on that ticking time bomb. Aria finding out and confronting me meant there were no secrets between us. Aria knowing meant I was free to move on.

"I'm not pissed."

"You're not?"

"No, Ivy, you did me a favor. I wasn't strong enough to tell her myself."

"Still, I'm sorry."

"Nothing for you to be sorry for."

My phone beeped with another call. I pulled my phone from my ear, saw the caller's name and sighed.

"Your husband's calling me. What time will you be over today?"

"Lunch time. Text me what you want us to bring."

Nothing . The thought of food made my stomach churn.

"Will do."

I clicked over and braced for Zane.

"Yo," I greeted as I made my way to the kitchen.

It was forty-two steps from my bedroom to the kitchen. Each one of the steps felt like a mile. The separation from Aria, even when she was sleeping, made my chest ache.

"Cleanup crew is finished at Aria's."

Right. Good to know the crew Zane had hired to clean Aria's blood off the floors and walls didn't fuck around. But she wasn't going back there.

"And the window?"

"I called that guy, Philip. Jonas met him at Aria's and they boarded the window. Philip said it would take a few days to get the window in, then he'd be back to replace it."

Again, good to know her house would be secure. But she still wasn't going back there.

"And the Grasonville house?"

"Ran that by Philip, too. He's meeting Theo and Cash there tomorrow. Linc ordered a Dumpster, it'll be delivered tomorrow. After they meet with Philip, Theo and Cash will clean up the mess we made."

Aria was going to flip her shit when she found out all the drywall upstairs had been torn down. Another tin box of pictures was found. At this point, the evidence was moot; Billy Rice was dead, but the police still had jobs to do.

"Thanks again for arranging Blackburn to come to the house."

A perk of working for Zane Lewis—the police didn't question or bitch at you for taking the victim and witness from the scene of the crime. They also made house calls and sent a sweet, older female detective who handled Aria with care.

"Seems those hefty donations to FOP are paying off."

His donations to the Fraternal Order of Police had nothing to do with it. Zane had called in a marker so Aria wouldn't have to be questioned at the station.

I let that go.

"And Stephanie? Anything with that?"

During Aria's questioning, she told the detective Billy had mentioned a girl named Stephanie begging for her life. It had taken some deep breathing to remember the man was dead.

I heard footsteps coming from the other room and looked over my shoulder. Captain Lucas Taylor with his hair wet, new pair of cargos on, black tee, held my stare as he walked through the living room. He saw the phone to my ear and jerked his chin in question.

"Zane," I told him.

"Has my daughter seen your guest bathroom yet?" Lucas bizarrely asked.

"Don't think so."

"Advice—don't let her or she'll be planning a remodel."

Three days ago I would've taken that advice. Now I'd give my right nut to have my woman fighting fit, wandering my house looking for shit to remodel.

As far as I was concerned, she could redo whatever she wanted to if it meant she never left. Or better yet, we could dump this place and buy something better.

I pulled my phone from my ear and put Zane on speaker.

"Taylor's here," I announced. "Finish what you were gonna tell me about Stephanie."

"Nothing concrete."

Zane didn't often evade and give bullshit answers. The man just came right out with it. He had zero filter, and even less bedside manner.

"Why are you being shady?"

"Because you've already desecrated a corpse once this week. I'm thinking the cops are gonna let that slide but I don't think they'd take kindly you breaking into the morgue so you can have another shot at the asshole."

"If I knew that was an option I would've already dragged the motherfucker's body out of the fridge and set him on fire in the parking lot."

Taylor's chuckle shocked the shit out of me.

"I'd pick the lock for him," Lucas put in.

"And they say I'm the unstable one," Zane muttered.

Unstable didn't begin to describe my boss.

"Jesus Christ, what'd they find?"

"Cold case. Stephanie Brinkley, seventeen, COD was a gunshot wound to the head. She was pulled out of Marshy Creek in Grasonville after being missing for two days. Stephanie was a classmate of Billy's."

Jesus fucking shit .

"The gun we found?"

"No projectile was retrieved from the victim. They did find a shell casing. They might not be able to prove in a court of law Billy killed her, but they don't need to; the fucker's dead. They're taking his confession, his access to the victim, the pictures they found of her from one of the boxes. Hopefully, the casing is still in an evidence room somewhere. They run that and then close a twenty-eight years old cold case of a murdered seventeen-year-old."

I was certain the hostility I felt rolling off Lucas Taylor matched my own.

The sick fuck had murdered a classmate after taking his sick fucking pictures, and hid the gun in his best friend's attic. Then years later got his hands on Aria.

"Do the cops think there are others?" I asked.

"They've got approximately seven thousand images to go through that span almost thirty years. Dating profiles to examine and devices to dissect. With that, they'll try to match any Jane Does or open files. But that's their problem. Bottom line of it is, your woman's home. Don't buy more shit you don't need so you can spend the next decade mentally torturing yourself instead of convincing your woman she made the right decision hooking her star to your dumb ass."

One thing could be said about Zane Lewis—he was an asshole.

"You got anything else for me?"

"Don't be a fool, cover?—"

"My woman's father is listening. You might wanna rethink your next words," I grunted.

"You might wanna get to know your soon-to-be father-in-law a little better," he volleyed. "I didn't make this shit up on my own."

"We know. You plagiarized the internet."

"What you mean is, Taylor did. Then he passed that shit down so we could warn our men off leaky dick."

Christ .

"You're annoying me," I told him. "I'm hanging up now before I get the urge to kick you in your nonfunctioning balls the next time I see you. And for the record, Ivy was smart to get you neutered. The world already has two Lewis offspring to contend with. Any more would just be cruel."

"My wife can verify?—"

Nope .

I disconnected before he could tell me what his wife could verify.

I tossed my phone on the counter.

"Want coffee?" I asked.

Instead of answering, he told me something I knew.

"I'm staying my full thirty-day leave."

"Right," I muttered as I pulled two mugs out of the cabinet.

"I'm staying here."

"By ‘here' I assume you mean here in the house."

"The house?"

I set the mugs on the counter and turned to face Lucas.

"What?"

"The house. Not my house or my home. The house."

I had no idea where he was going with this so I had nothing to add.

Aria's dad did.

"You gave me your history. I get the way you grew up, then being active duty, then going dark for ten years wondering, you never put down roots. Never settled in. Never made yourself a home."

He wasn't wrong. No place, even when I lived with Rie, felt like home.

Until Aria.

From the second she walked in the door, this place felt like home.

I didn't tell him that.

I waited for him to finish saying what he had to say.

"My girl, she's like her momma. For the first year after we lost Lori, sometimes it hurt to look at my girl. She walks like Lori, she makes the same facial expressions, same smile, same eyes. Smart like her momma, too. Got her ambition, looks, sense of humor all from Lori. And thank God she did."

The way Lucas talked about his wife, stated plain he not only loved her while he had her, but he loved her now. It was the kind of love a man didn't let go of, or more to the point, the kind of love that didn't let go of the man even in death.

But I didn't understand why he was telling me about her.

"I planned on spending the next thirty days putting you through your paces, knowing it went against the grain of a man like you, but knowing you'd dance to my tune, because you love my daughter."

That was irritating as fuck but not unexpected.

"But now, I'm gonna spend the next thirty days watching my girl give you a home while you give her what she needs to heal. And when I leave here I'll do it knowing my girl's in good hands, with a good man at her back. That means when I get back and I put in for separation, I'll be doing it to come home to enjoy the family my daughter's gonna give me, instead of coming home worried my daughter is busting her ass to give me something to keep me occupied after retirement."

My chest burned with some unknown emotion that felt so fucking good the burn cauterized the leaching wounds my time with Rie had left behind.

That meant my voice was rough when I said, "You caught that, huh?"

"Hard to miss. My Aria has always been ambitious. Lori used to say all time, Aria had no choice but to own her own business. She'd never make it in the corporate world, she's too determined, too impatient to work for someone else. But, her working double time to build something that will support both of us, even though I can comfortably live off my retirement and investments, was in your face."

He only had half of it right.

"She's working double time to build something so she has something that means she gets to work with you every day. It's not the money, it's your time. She doesn't want you to get bored and she wants to work beside you."

Lucas's gaze slid to the window.

"Before you start shuffling shit around in your head, second-guessing decisions, you should know how proud she is of your service. How proud she is to be a Navy Brat. She loves the Navy but she loves you more."

"By the time that girl was five she could tell the difference between a Sailor and an Airmen by the way they walked."

"No shit. She had me pegged within minutes of meeting me."

Lucas's attention came back to me. His gaze dropped to my wrist, and for the first time since he'd barged in my door, he smiled a genuine smile.

"It's your G-Shock. Dead giveaway." He lifted his gaze and locked onto my eyes. "I'll get my coffee. I know you want to get to your girl so I won't hold you up."

Thank fuck .

I was nearing my limit and I didn't want Aria waking up without me.