“You don’t know that!” Reese is pacing now. Agitated in a way I haven’t seen before. This isn’t anger, this is real panic, the kind that comes from a man who’s just realized his partner is more dangerous than he bargained for. “The plan was the wife. Leverage. Negotiation. Not kidnapping a six-year-old! The Greeks can’t protect us from Hunter on a rampage for his only kid!”
“The plan changed,” Beau says flatly.
“Changed?” Reese rounds on him. “You just put a death sentence on both of us. Hunter will burn this state to the ground looking for that boy. He won’t negotiate. He won’t deal. He’ll come through that door with every man he has, and he’ll kill us both. Not just kill us, tear us to pieces.”
“Only if he finds us. You said this was bought under a shell company, right?”
Reese scoffs.
“He will find us!” Reese shouts. “He always finds people! That’s what he does! He fucking tracks men for the mafia! This was meant to get us to the table with him. Sign the ranch over, and we return Lola. Simple. Clean. Not this! This is war. And the Greeks won’t help us until we do the deal. We’re fucked, Beau. Fucked.”
Reese punches the wall hard, sending the art crashing to the ground.
Wyatt flinches against my chest. I press my lips to his hair. “Shh, baby. It’s okay. I’m right here. Daddy is going to get us, okay,” I whisper.
Beau looks at me and then at Wyatt, curled in my lap. And there’s nothing in his eyes. No recognition that the child trembling against my body is his own nephew.
He is a true monster, created from the greed of a man.
“This is bigger than the kid,” Beau says, turning back to Reese. “Hunter would have torn apart the state for his wife alone. But his wife and his son? He won’t think straight. He’ll make mistakes. And when he does, we’ll be ready.”
Reese drags both hands through his hair. He’s sweating. His composure is cracking.
These two are dumbasses. And that may just save us. Hunter doesn’t make mistakes.
“This isn’t what I signed up for,” Reese mutters.
“You signed up the moment you put your hands on her,” Beau says, nodding at me. “You don’t get to pick which sins you’re comfortable with, Reese. Hunter assaulted you, and you wanted revenge. Well, here it fuckin’ is. We’re in this together. All the way.”
Reese stares at him. And I watch the last shred of whatever morality he had left dissolve behind his eyes. “We need to talk, in private,” Reese hisses. He turns. Walks out and the door slams behind him.
Beau follows without a word.
The lock clicks.
Wyatt is shaking in my lap. I lean my head down against his. “Wyatt. Listen to me.” My voice is steady. I don’t know how; it must be some sort of motherly instinct in there somewhere. “Your daddy is coming. He is coming to get us. And until he does, I am not going to let anything happen to you. Do you hear me?”
He nods against my chest. “What about you?”
“I will be just fine. Okay. Don’t worry about me.” I take a deep breath. “Look at me, Wyatt.”
He pulls back and his little blue eyes, just like his daddy’s, stare back at me, melting my heart. “I need you to be brave. Can you do that for me?”
“Like Daddy is?”
My heart cracks. “Just like Daddy.”
He wraps his arms tighter around me. I can’t hold him back, but I can give him something else.
Hunter is coming. He has to be.
I keep looking around the room, trying to figure out ways I can get him out of here.
Wyatt isn’t tied up. There’s a window. A really small one, except it’s too high for him to get to on his own. I need to lift him out.
“Wyatt. Are you good at untying knots, buddy?” I whisper.
“I am,”