Page 37 of Freeing Denver

I’m on him before he can right his footing, my hand around his throat.

“I should have killed you in that house,” I whisper, Ranger’s back arching as I force him further over the balcony. His eyes widen and he grabs at my hold, but something more than physical strength is driving me.

Loss.

Agony.

Grief.

The need to protect her.

To protect my family, my business, the empire I’ve built.

The click of a gun has me looking over my shoulder.

I know who he is purely because of how much he looks like Ranger. He’s holding the gun with both hands, a steady grip under the butt, his gaze entirely focused on me. From the stories Denver told me, Axel is a shy kid. Twenty-two, a Luxe in name only, and wanting nothing to do with his father’s life. I guess he’s changed.

“Get the fuck off him,” Axel says.

I stare at Ranger’s son, debating my options, and realize I don’t have many. Ranger slumps to the ground as I back away, my hands raised.

“You okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine,” Ranger bites back, not at all grateful for his son’s intervention.

Axel doesn’t lower his gun or go to his dad’s side, but his attention snaps over his shoulder as Denver comes jogging into view. She lets out a cry as she rushes to me, cupping my face.

“Are you all right?”

I cast a glance at Ranger, who glares at the both of us. Threats come to mind, promises of violence if he touches her again, but it feels pointless to say anything, because my promise is passed through a single look.

Next time we meet will be the last.

Chapter 10

Colt

Taf watches me from the far side of the room. He’s been glaring at me since I got home, and the heat of that glare is almost overpowering the murmured conversation of Denver and Sebastian in the hallway.

Reckless. That’s what Denver called me. She yelled, she raged, she told me I had no right to rush into danger when she’d only just got me back.

“Eighteen months,” Taf says. Lifting my gaze to him, I say nothing. “That’s how long JJ was in San Francisco. Eighteen, almost nineteen months. And you know what hurt the most?” He pushes himself off the wall and steps forward to grip the back of the couch. “He could have come home when Wilder did, but he chose to stay. If he’d asked you, he knew you’d let him come back, but he stayed away … in danger, away from me, away from all of us …” He drops his attention to his hands, to his whitening knuckles.

“It made sense,” I say quietly, my throat raspy. “We needed someone inside, and he knew that.”

“Do you think that fucking matters to the man that loves him?”

Taf rarely uses a cutting tone with anyone in the family. Even when he tortures, he’s oddly polite—he told me once it was because he likes bringing new life to the phrase “kill them with kindness.”

He continues, “Do you think I cared about what made sense when the man I loved was living in danger every day? You know what Ranger would have done to him. I’d have lost him. Probably in the most painful way imaginable. Even now he’s home I … I’m so fucking angry at him, Colt. I’m getting past it, but he left us. Left me.” His eyes shine, but his jaw is tense. “Don’t make me angry at you, too.”

The guilt cuts through me, even more of it than I can handle in one fucking day.

“If someone hurt JJ, you’d do exactly what I did,” I say, but even I don’t back my own weak argument.

“I wouldn’t have gone alone. I wouldn’t have forgotten that we’re a team. That we’re a fucking family,” he says, and he returns to his place against the wall. “We lost Wilder. I refuse to lose anyone else because of this pointless fucking war.”

Part of me wants to apologize. Another wants to argue my position. Taf and I rarely argue, and I feel weirdly out of my depth with it.