Cal and the others looked up at him. “What is it, Beckett?” Nowicki asked.

  “I can’t let him have her.”

  “It’s too late, man. We made a deal.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going all soft for a piece of ass?” Tanner, another one of his Navy Seal brothers, chimed in.

  Brody didn’t bother answering, prompting his brothers to return to the task at hand—taking care of the body and all the evidence that went with it. He did not hold Tanner’s remark against him. After all, Tanner and the rest did this all for him, all to help him avenge his sister. He would have done the same for anyone of them, no questions asked, so he knew that they would understand what his next move would be, and that he would take the blame for it alone. He couldn’t let his brothers become targets for Carter even though realistically, going after Emily meant taking Carter out and leaving his Navy Seal brothers with more blood on their hands. He would not ask that of them.

  “Don’t even think about it, Beckett.” Crawford spoke up. Out of all of his brothers, Crawford always knew what Brody was thinking, sometimes even Brody himself knew his next move. “You can’t take Carter alone.”

  Grunts of approval came from the rest. All but Calvin, who remained with his head bowed down. The man did just pull the trigger, ending someone’s life, but he imagined that Cal felt much the same as Brody did. He didn’t look like a man experiencing relief. Furthermore, Cal was going to answer for the poor intel he brought Brody later. Now all Brody could think about was rescuing Emily.

  He ran out of the building in time to see the direction Carter had sped off in. Brody jumped into Cal’s SUV, while Nowicki hopped on his Duckati. Tanner and Crawford got in another SUV, while the rest stayed behind in the warehouse. They’d have to meet up later, if rescuing Emily proved successful, and discuss how to deal with Carter. After today, he would be after all of their blood. And as much as Brody wanted to tell them to stay out of it, Crawford was right. He couldn’t get to Emily alone, no matter how good and efficient he was at retrievals.

  They sped off in Carter’s direction, turning on their com links. Keeping a healthy distance, they debated what the best approach would be, one of which was to cut them off on the road, force them to pull over, and grab Emily before Carter’s other men, also in separate vehicles, had a chance to intervene. Brody and his men were heavily armed, but as of now they were outnumbered.

  He had studied Carter for months, knew his patterns and that of his men. Grabbing Emily once they reached Carter’s estate would prove even more difficult as it was heavily guarded at all times. Over the com, Brody brought up the optimal times to break into the estate. He and his men were in middle of formulating a plan to briefly disable the security system once Carter had gone to bed, even though the thought of Emily having to spend one night with Carter felt nauseating, when an opportunity presented itself.

  “Car two is veering off,” Nowicki informed, speeding ahead of them. Carter must have been pretty confident that matters had in fact been settled otherwise he never would have left himself so vulnerable.

  “We got number one,” came Tanner’s voice. He and Crawford were about to cut off the other vehicle, leaving its passenger’s blind to Brody’s next move until it became too late for them to intervene. Retaliation would definitely be imminent, but they’d have time to plan once they got Emily to a safe house.

  Brody waited for the signal.

  “Go!” Tanner and Crawford had succeeded in cutting off the other vehicle. Now he just needed to wait for Nowicki’s intel.

  “Two armed up front,” Nowicki notified. “Carter and the female in the backseat.”

  Nowicki would have to take the two armed men, leaving Brody to deal with Carter first before grabbing Emily. Brody sped up now as Nowicki’s bike came dangerously close to the driver’s side of their dark Lexus. It worked. The driver, distracted, veered off to the right.

  “Shot out tires of car number one,” came Tanner’s voice.

  “The fuckers were pissing us off,” said Crawford. “Heading your way now. Keep ‘em busy.”

  A few minutes later, Tanner and Sawyer cut off Carter’s car then shot out more tires. The car swerved violently and ended up facing opposing traffic, but safely on the shoulder of the freeway. Nowicki was quick enough to get to the passenger side and knock out the other goon in the passenger seat before he had time to shoot him. Tanner quickly knocked out Carter—shooting him in broad daylight on a busy highway was not an option—while Brody grabbed Emily and basically shoved her in his car. The whole rescue may have been a lot messier than Brody would have liked, but damn if it wasn’t quicker.

  Once moving again, Brody said nothing at first and neither did Emily, but he saw in his peripheral vision that Emily had put on her seatbelt. Only after Tanner, Crawford, and Nowicki were safely away from the scene, did he speed up. He’d catch up with them all later at a different safe house, but for now, he needed to get Emily out of harm’s way.

  “Why did you do that?” Emily stared straight ahead as she asked. “He’s going to come after you, you know.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Brody replied, matter-of-factly. “But your concern is noted.” Right now he needed answers from her, not the other way around. “What did Carter mean by the other one?”

  “What difference does it make? You got the right one.”

  “I asked you a question, Emily. I don’t like to ask things twice.” She remained obstinate and said nothing so he decided on a different approach. He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and easily found the video that had tortured him for months and set him on this crazy vengeful spiral.

  “What’s this?” she asked when he shoved the phone in her direction.

  “Just press play.”

  She did as he asked and mere seconds into the footage gasped at what she saw. “Keep watching,” he ordered when she looked ready to pass the phone back to him.

  He already had the footage memorized. Sheila was tied to her own bed—the same bed he had tied Emily to in Calvin’s basement—while a woman stood over her with a knife … a woman who looked exactly like Emily.

  “You’re so very pretty, aren’t you, Sheila?” the woman taunted. “You think you’re prettier than me, don’t you?”

  Sheila shook her head fiercely, unable to speak due to the gag in her mouth.

  “Louis thinks you’re pretty. He thinks you’re prettier than me. Maybe you are … for now.” Sheila cried out in pain as the woman slid her knife slowly down the length of Sheila’s left cheek.

  “You have your own man, but that’s not enough for you is it? You wanted mine?”

  Again, Sheila fiercely shook her head as she sobbed prompting the woman to deliver a quick slash to her other cheek. This one looked deeper, the blood gushed faster, thicker. Then the woman placed the knife at Sheila’s throat as she spoke her next threat. “The next time won’t end well for you. You got me?”

  Sheila nodded in understanding right before the door burst open and Tyler, Sheila’s boyfriend and Cal’s brother, came barreling down the stairs. He startled the woman who looked like Emily, causing her entire body to jerk. Brody didn’t think the woman even realized that she had sunk the knife deeper into Sheila’s throat as a result.

  “Baby, we g—” Tyler had frozen in place due to the horrific scene before him.

  Time would not have been on Tyler and Sheila’s side to run anyway. Fallow had burst in seconds later and shot Tyler in the back of the head. Sheila let out a muffled cry at the same time the woman resembling Emily screamed. Fallow looked at her with disgust and said, “Let’s go before I tell the boss what you were up to. Now!”

  The woman hunched her shoulders and quickly scampered off after Fallow, leaving her digital camera behind. The video on his phone ended there since Brody didn’t transfer the rest of the footage of his sister bleeding out to death.

  Brody found her the next morning … dead, Tyler on the floor in a pool of his own blood next to the bed. That was the last memory he had of his sister, one that would be ingrained in him forever.

  Chapter Seven

  Emily had watched the footage in horror. By the end, tears were streaming down her face. It all made sense now why Shadow hated her so much, why he wanted payback. He thought she had been the one to do those things to his sister.

  “That’s not you in the video, is it?” Shadow asked.

  “No.” Emily shook her head repeatedly as she continued to cry. “No,” she stated again firmly, still not believing that Enza could go that far. “But like I said before, you still took the right one.”

  “No,” Shadow roared, slamming his fist on the steering wheel.

  Despite his anger and outburst, the car remained steady. Emily couldn’t help marvel at the man’s total control.

  She waited for him to calm down and when he finally did, he spoke more evenly. “You were innocent. I touched you … Cal … fuck!”

  “Louis would have never come for her,” she told him. And suddenly she was glad that he grabbed her instead of Enza. She shuddered to think about what her Shadow would have done to her sister. “I am not blameless here either, Shadow.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t meant to call him that aloud. “I didn’t know your name, so …” she trailed off. She felt her cheeks redden.

  Her Shadow chuckled. “It’s Brody. Brody Beckett.”

  She supposed that suited him more now that he was real and not just lurking in the darkness. When he prompted her to continue to explain why she thought she wasn’t blameless, she told him about how she stole Louis away from her twin sister.

  Even though Emily and Enza looked nearly identical, save for the fact that Emily had an inch on her sister, and Enza had dark blue eyes instead of green, the two of them could not have been more different in personality. Emily, always the studious one, always the one who did the right thing, and constantly doted on by her parents, while Enza was a trouble maker, who hated school, had a new boyfriend almost every week, and snuck out of the house repeatedly. The strangest part was that in opposition to most twins, they were never close. They loved each other yes, but each girl had been jealous of the other.

  Emily always had a hard time meeting men, especially around Enza whose flirtiness and outgoing personality overshadowed Emily’s whenever they were together. Enza had once stolen Emily’s boyfriend, something she never even felt any sort of remorse over. She had been crashing in Emily’s dorm room under the guise of shopping for colleges when Emily walked in on her having sex with Devon, her college boyfriend. Enza’s response at being caught was an “oops,” followed by hysterical laughter.

  Years later, Emily returned the favor by stealing Louis from her sister, the one and only man Enza claimed to ever love. Louis became infatuated with Emily even while still dating Enza. She would come to Emily in a rage, screaming about how once again Louis called out Emily’s name in bed. He threw Enza to the curb when Emily finally agreed to go out with him and subsequently became his obsession.

  “You may have been naïve about Carter, but none of this was your fault.” Brody became angry again. He picked up his cell phone from the center console, where she had carefully laid it using her uninjured hand. “Put that fucker on the phone,” he barked at someone. When whoever it was came on the line, in the same angry tone, he asked, “Did you know? Did you fucking know there were two of them?”

  She couldn’t make out what was being said on the other line, but she got the gist. Brody had been shouting at Cal who had withheld that important piece of information. After he ended the call, he told her about the recent photos he saw. Emily was shocked. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her sister in almost two years, and had no idea that Louis had taken her back. She thought for sure that Enza wouldn’t hesitate to rub it in her face if he had.

  “I need to ask you one question,” Emily stated. When he nodded, she proceeded. “Would you have still taken me if you knew that it was my sister in the video and not me?”

  “No.”

  And that’s why Cal had withheld the information from him, she concluded. Brody may have been out for revenge with questionable methods, but he still remained at least somewhat honorable. They rode in silence the rest of the way. What he had done to her clearly ate away at him.

  An hour and a half later, Brody pulled into the driveway of a two story house somewhere in upstate New York. The neighboring houses were spaced far enough apart for privacy, but not to the point of being isolated. A thickly wooded area sat behind the house. Too bad she wasn’t here under different circumstances where she could really admire the tranquil location. She loved the city, but sometimes it was nice to get away from all of the noise.

  “Are you hungry?” Brody asked when they were inside the house.

  A large open kitchen sat off to the right. All cherry wood with black marble countertops and a cozy looking breakfast nook. The place looked pristine, almost unlived in, but since he had offered her something to eat, she imagined the place came fully stocked. It was a safe house after all, she heard him mention on the phone. Chances are the luxury of grocery shopping was probably currently prohibited.

  Emily couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten, but found herself without an appetite. What she needed more was to wash the day away. “I’d like to just clean up first if you don’t mind?”

  “Come,” he ordered gently, leading the way up the stairs, through the master bedroom, and right into the master bath. Emily stood inside the doorway. Brody stretched his hand out to her. “I need to look at your cuts.”

  “They don’t hurt,” she reassured.

  He walked over to where she stood and gently took her hand, pulling her along with him over to the sink. Unyielding as ever, he would apparently have his way and she’d let him, not only to help appease his guilt, but because she suddenly wanted him to touch her. At least now it didn’t feel wrong to admit it.

  Brody helped her hop onto the counter and then he fished around in the cabinets for antiseptic and Band-Aids. He unzipped her coat to expose her neck and the top of her chest. The alcohol stung a little when he applied it, making her flinch. He surprised her by gently blowing on the area. “Sorry,” he murmured. Emily knew his apology went deeper than causing her cuts to sting.

  He applied bandages to the three small cuts he had given her, and wiped off all of the dried blood surrounding the exposed area. When he finished, he continued to stand a hair’s breath away from her, his head bowed. “I’m so sorry.” He then looked at her, his gaze penetrating and apologetic. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “I know.” Emily whispered softly returning his gaze. She wanted to say that she forgave him. Her heart broke for him, for his loss, for what he had to witness and her anger toward him had dissipated somewhere between saving her to just now as he tenderly patched her up, but she still felt angry at what had been done to her.

  “In my head, I tried to justify my actions.” He took one step back and slid both hands in his hair, fisting his messy locks. “I convinced myself that since you seemed to be responding to me, that I wasn’t really hurting you and it became an alternative to cutting you.”

  “I-I did…”

  “You were ashamed that you enjoyed it,” he finished for her.

  Emily nodded and then it was her turn to bow her head. Brody stepped closer to her again and lifted her chin. “The only one who should be ashamed is me. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “You responded to me, too,” Emily whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “That made you angrier.”

  He nodded. “I wanted to hate you, but I had blown up a photo of your face so I could get a good look at you and it haunted me for months. Your green eyes stared back at me every day, like they were pleading, accusing even. There were so many photographs though. I’m not even sure if that was you now.”

  “Enza’s eyes are blue,” she interjected. His lips curved into a slight smile. Unlike before, when had given her a cruel smile, this genuine one lit up his features and even made his eyes look kind. She reached out with her right hand, suddenly needing to touch his face, but immediately pulled back when she felt the sharp pain.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?” Apparently the movement did not go unnoticed. Brody lifted her chin up after she bowed her head again. “I think I have already made myself clear when I explained that I don’t like to ask twice. That fucker hurt you?”

  “He likes to discipline, especially in front of his men.” Louis had grabbed hold of her wrist in the car, squeezing tightly and bending it back just enough to cause lasting pain without breaking it. That’s the last time you defy me, he had said.

  Brody tenderly took her hand to examine it.

  “It’s not broken,” she quickly explained. “He’s very precise. If he wanted it broken, he would have done it.”

  Funny how Brody’s angry face no longer frightened her. In fact, it brought her comfort knowing that his anger was now on her behalf. Still, she worried about his future plans regarding Enza. “Brody, I know what Enza did was unforgivable. I have no objection to you taking the video to the police, but please … she’s still my sister…”

  “I won’t touch her,” he promised. “I recently learned that vengeance only does more harm and does not undo the sins of the past. He carefully laid her hand down on her lap. “I’m going to run downstairs to get you some ice. We need to get the swelling down.”

  “No,” she said stubbornly. “I just need to take a shower now. Please just help me with my coat.”

  Brody hesitated briefly before he slowly slid the zipper of her coat the rest of the way down. They stared into each other’s eyes as he spread the coat open and carefully removed it from her.

  With her good hand, Emily reached out and brushed just the tips of her fingers against his cheek, mimicking the way that he had touched her bare skin for the first time. “What if I said I want you to touch me now?”