Page 19 of Stand: Part One

Most of my visits occurred while she was asleep to avoid disturbing her. But that meant I would just stew in my unrelenting anger, watching her eyes wince at the slightest movement. No matter how many times I relived the moment of ripping apart the bodies of the men responsible in my head, it was never enough. Truthfully, it wasn’t like I deserved the peace anyway, so I clung to that toxic cloud that followed me everywhere, reveling in its righteous punishment.

My failure was a knife digging deep into my back, and no matter what I did, I just couldn’t reach it to rip the fucking thing out. It dug at me deeper every day.

I could teach Jaden everything I knew, train her to be the most lethal soldier alive, make her the most formidable opponent the world had ever seen. I could give her every resource imaginable to defend herself against any single threat that came her way and be wholly confident in her capabilities. But the one thing I couldn’t do was make her fucking bulletproof.

Even with all the skills and resources in the world at my disposal, I was still bound by the limits of the human body. But Jaden was strong. I’d made damn sure of that. And if she was strong enough to survive me, then she could survive a fucking bullet. God knows I’d lost count of all the ones I’d taken over the years.

But now that Jaden’s fractures were mostly healed, she was no longer in that fragile zone of potential infection or other complications. We could finally move on to the next step of her recovery. And I fully intended on participating.

“Sir! We finally found it,” Eric said as he rushed into my office, his face lit with an excitement that didn’t fit him. Missing significant portions of his ears did him no favors, but somehow, he still found a way to make himself useful.

Sitting back in my office chair behind my desk, I held my hand out. He hurried over and placed a small red velvet box in my waiting palm. When I lifted its lid, satisfaction swarmed as I looked down at Jaden’s missing engagement ring, the one she told me had been stolen by Tony Graves’s men when he made the grave mistake of taking her from me last year.

I’d had every single man, woman, and child I could think of looking for this damn thing, refusing to allow anyone to steal from me.

“Where was it found?”

“We traced it down to the shadiest pawn shop I’ve ever seen in Tempe, Arizona. Found the new owners pretty quickly and collected without issue.”

I nodded. “Good. Did you find out who originally had it?”

Eric shrugged, a frown tugging at his lips. “The security cameras didn’t get a good look at her face. She used a common name. But the shop owner remembered she was a real pretty blonde.”

That caught my attention.

“I want that security footage. And I want it yesterday.”

Eric nodded quickly. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled and rushed out of my office.

My gaze swept across the room as Eric shut the door behind him, the doubt and paranoia slowly sinking into my skin like a toxin. Denial tasted just as bitter, a refusal to accept even the slightest possibility.

A heavy sigh escaped me as I stared at the ring, rolling the tiny thing between my thumb and forefinger. It was a long shot. There were a lot of pretty blondes out there. But as suspicion ate at me, I needed to be sure.

Kayla’s body was never found. Jaden claimed she had to have died from all the blood she found in the room Kayla had been taken to at that storage facility. Maybe she’d been moved and killed somewhere else. Or maybe, by some divine miracle, she escaped them. Maybe Kayla was alive after all. But if that was the case, and this blonde at the pawn shop was the same girl, why would she have Jaden’s ring?

The thought chewed right through my skull, burrowing deep enough to drive me insane. Maybe Jaden knew Kayla was alive; maybe she didn’t. But if she had lied to me, knowing full well Kayla was alive, then I had to assume the worst—that Jaden had assisted in her escape.

My blood boiled at the thought. I had been so awestruck at the sight of my little warrior of a wife, covered in blood and dirt, with a rifle over her shoulder and a bloody machete in her hand, her hair wild and flowing while a building went up in flames at her back. I’d never been so caught up by a singular moment when time stopped and all manner of thinking with it. I could have been stabbed in the chest and never have even noticed.

That particular scenario, that split second of distraction, would have been the only opportunity that would have allowed Jaden’s lie to pass right by me unnoticed. I’d been a dumbstruck fool, but only momentarily. If anyone could accomplish such a thing, it would be Jaden.

But even so, it was an incredibly curious thing to consider. If Jaden had assisted, why hadn’t she gone with Kayla? What made her stay behind?

She had to know I would find her. Even without the collar tracking her, Jaden could never escape me for very long. She’d never feel peace again, knowing she’d spend what little days she had left constantly looking over her shoulder, never being able to rest in one place for too long.

None of it would be worth it just for me to find her and drag her right back. And if she thought our time in the basement had been bad, she had no idea the lengths my cruelty could go. I would have made our time down there look like a fucking carnival.

And hopefully that had been the deciding factor if Jaden had helped but still chose to stay behind.

Because she fucking knew better.

She knew it wasn’t worth it. And if that was the case, then maybe I could forgive her for her deception, for the hand she played in Kayla’s escape. Because if Jaden was too afraid to run from me, knowing what the consequences would be, then there would be quite a victory celebration in my future. Because even when given the chance, she chose to stay instead.

And that was the trust I had been longing for since day one.

But that was the rare optimist in me. There was another possibility storming in the back of my mind that was utterly ridiculous to even entertain. Jaden’s ex was still as elusive as ever, somehow still capable of evading my grasp at every turn.

If Kayla had lived and was smart, she would know she would never be able to return to her life before. Which meant she would have to find refuge on her own, or she would do what any spiteful bitch would do—seek revenge.