Page 35 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Some Cheese Dick

Cobra

“I’m going to ask you again, sweetheart.” I leaned into her space, barely repressing the rage in my gut. “I need you to be very specific. Who are you protecting our daughter from?”

I boxed her in, one hand on each side of her on the head board. I towered over her. She didn’t cower. She stared me in the eyes. I was surprised, because she’d recoiled when I raised my voice. Now she was standing up for me. For our daughter.

Or, at least, that’s what she thought she was doing.

“Talk. To. Me.” I’d given her ample opportunity to tell me what the problem was.

The more and more I pried, the worse the picture got, but only she could fill in the blank spaces on the canvas.

“Who are you protecting her from?”

“From me!” She brought the blanket to her mouth, putting fabric between us. “Please, don’t ask me. I…”

She shook her head. My eyes fell to her pouty, beautiful lips, and the swollen, bleeding part from where someone had hit her. Desperation to protect was mixed with the overwhelming need to taste her lips, as bruised as they were.

“I’m asking, Princess.” I didn’t kiss her mouth. Instead, I lightly touched my lips over the bridge of her nose where I knew there were no cracks, cuts, or bruises.

“I can’t tell you.” She was struggling, same as me. Struggling against our magnetic pull.

I wanted to draw her in, and she wanted it as well! She needed to let go, and let this be what it needed to be.

“Why not?” This was the point of no return.

I traced my index finger over her bruised cheekbone, where the blue skin was fading to a green. I grazed the back of my knuckles over the swollen side of her jaw. It looked a lot better than that first night, and she didn’t even wince that time.

First, I had to go in and make a big ask. My opening bid. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I dropped my hand to her abdomen over the blanket. Beneath my palm, past the duvet, and the MIT sweatshirt I’d put her in to sleep.

Those letters were carved into her skin. I’d seen them when they changed her bandage, as clear as fucking day. I had to step out of the room, my vision blurred, I was so fucking angry.

I had no idea what they meant, but they were nothing good.

“I’m protecting her from me,” she said, her tears pouring down. “From becoming me. ”

I froze. The gears in my head came to a screeching halt, unable to understand what the hell that was supposed to mean.

“I can’t tell you any more,” she said again. I growled, and she winced. “Please, know that I’m protecting you, too, Joe.”

Joe. not Cobra. Joe. The sound of that nickname, the one that only she’d ever used, sent a flutter in my dormant heart. It was a small ember in an otherwise cold soul.

“If I tell you, he’ll hurt you.” She covered her lips with the blanket again, as if to muffle her own words. “He’s already hurt Charlotte. I can’t let him hurt anyone else. Not for the sin of simply being kind…”

So I could confirm that it was a he . Ray wasn’t short for Rachel or whatever else. That simplified the problem.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” She wiped her tears with the duvet. “He can get away with anything… with everything .”

I could work with that. It was like a toehold on an otherwise smooth wall I needed to climb.

“Explain it to me,” I whispered, as my fingers traced down to her hip. “What will he do?”

I swallowed, trying to summon what was left of my patience.

“What did he do to you?” Instead of going for a name, I was asking about his actions. I exploited another angle. “What do these letters mean?”

I’d seen them too many times for it to be a coincidence. They meant something.

“Intensive Care Unit,” she whispered. “And also… I see you. He’s got eyes everywhere. Friends everywhere. He can reach out and touch me. He can hurt me, wherever I am. He can do as he likes with me, and he always has. He’s…” She cut herself off, and looked away in shame.

Shame, not embarrassment. Those were two very separate emotions, and I didn’t like it.

I swallowed, trying not to go rigid from the need to strike something. To strike the headboard, the wall. Feelings that belonged to a much, much younger man.

“He can hurt the people around me, too.” She looked away. “He sent me to the hospital for a broken rib, concussion, and… other things. I was in the ICU for days.”

She shut her legs, bringing her knees together.

What else had he done? Christ, I wished she’d just tell me. Talk to me. Before my imagination ran wild.

I’d seen too much of human depravity, I could imagine a lot.

“There was a doctor, Annie Zhou. She didn’t push, or lecture.

Mostly, she just took the time to talk to me.

She talked about her life, going to school at Johns Hopkins, and her family.

So I… over time… opened up as well.” Her watery eyes shined as they looked at me with absolute sorrow.

“She was kind to me. She saw the signs. She said that I could get out. That I could get my daughter out. I believed her. We made a plan.” She swallowed.

Her throat bobbed as she shut her eyes. “The day before I would call the police, the day Trinity would have visited me, and I would have taken her and run, hidden away somewhere, away from him… Annie didn’t show up for work. ”

She covered her face with her hands, bowing into them as a small, pained wail left her throat.

“She was in the E.R. beaten raw, and… and…”

“And what?” I gently pulled her hands from her face, because I needed to see her eyes and the secrets her lips wouldn’t tell me.

“Her nephew was here, in the United States, as a refugee. He was waiting for a court hearing to gain legal status. They were close. So close. They were ready to celebrate but…”

A high whine escaped her throat and her lips trembled. She swallowed the lump in her throat again, and I waited.

“He disappeared before his hearing. They just took him, and maybe sent him back to the very place he was running from. To the one place a judge had said he could not be deported to…” She shook her head.

Her hair swished over her shoulders as the tears began to fall, leaving a glistening line over her blue and purple cheek.

“I don’t think she found out what happened to him. ”

Another tear fell. Then another. Until it stopped being a rivulet, and turned into a stream.

“I’ve been too scared to reach out to her and ask. If I did, he might hurt her again, somehow.” She swallowed again when the phlegm caught in her throat. High pitched, pained, and sad, she whimpered. “She was the first person who got hurt because of me.”

She ran the back of her hand over her cheeks to finally wipe those tears away, but they were too soon replaced by more.

“He told me that the next one to be hurt would be Trinity. He put a gun to my head. He said that if I wasn’t his to play with then… then… he’d make Trinity…” She tensed with absolute fear. “I couldn’t let that happen!”

Her trembling fingers went over heart, as if she was afraid that it would beat right out of her chest.

“He could hurt Trinity’s wedding if I go. He could hurt my child!” She coughed, straining her voice too much with her frantic words. Then, quieter, she continued, “I can’t… I’d rather she hate me. I’d rather she never see me again than have that mad man place a target on her back.”

“Alright, baby,” I whispered, taking a strand of hair that fell over her forehead, and tucking it behind her ear. “That’s enough for now.”

I planted a kiss on her forehead. It was more of a touch, than a kiss. Something soft to end this part of our conversation.

“We’ll talk more,” I promised. Though, to her, it probably sounded like a threat. “After we go to the wedding.”

“No!” She protested, but her voice broke. “It’s not safe! It’s not safe for Trinity. You understand, yes?”

She reached for my sleeve, clutching on to it with all her strength. It was impressive, considering all that she’d been through. I admired the hell out of her.

“Yes.” I stepped back, came to my feet, and looked down at her sullen figure.

I didn’t want to do this. But it was for her own good.

“Darling, I want to be very, very clear about something.” I hardened myself against the pleading in her eyes. A plea that I would not succumb to. Not this time.

“Tomorrow, we are going to a small, but high profile wedding. It will be swarming with Secret Service and protection, which is why I’ve been busting my ass on Mack McClanahan’s farm, getting it ready to be overtaken by the groom’s godfather.

” Her brows knit together, confused, probably not quite understanding the kind of echelon she now found herself in.

“But if that weren’t the case, you are the mother of Trinity Blaze Guerro, a former Green Beret, and fighter in her own right.

You are the wife of Joaquin ‘Cobra’ Guerro.

You might not know who I really am, but you will by tomorrow. ”

I crossed my arms, squared my shoulders, stared her down so that she would know that I meant every fucking word.

“I am far more dangerous than some cheese dick with a pistol, who needs his buddies to beat unarmed women.” I leaned forward, a smirk on my lips. “I dare him to do his worst.”