Sweet Eternity Read online

  Lucas had managed some minor hacking skills and had viewed the security footage from the traffic camera across the street from my father’s building. This had given me visual confirmation my mother was alive.

  It was crazy being here. After all these years, all this time, Lucas and I were together. The love we’d had was real all along, not just a figment of my little girl dreams.

  When I turned my mind off, allowing myself the freedom to be in the moment with this man, it was perfect.

  Because we were perfect together.

  We fit.

  In a lot of ways, I sort of felt like we were much like the gold locket hanging around my neck. Lucas was engraved on my heart and soul, precious as the metal that love was minted on, and timeless as all the fairy tales I had once believed in.

  Somehow, even with everything between us, Lucas Young was still my knight. His armor might have been battle worn, his mind might have been in a million places at once, but in our time together, I had learned his heart was always entwined with mine.

  He looked up and, like always, read me like a book. “Looks like you’re thinkin’ awfully hard over there, angel.”

  “Lucas, we can’t stay hidden forever.”

  He blew out a breath while watching me lean against the wall. “Gin, I promise you, when I find a way, we will get back to your mom.” His features were set in stone, reminding me of all the years he had spent at war.

  I dropped my head. “My mom …” I whispered, not knowing how to communicate what I felt.

  Like a ninja, making no sound, Lucas was up and pulling me into his embrace. “I promise, Ginny, I’m gonna protect your mom and get her free from your dad.”

  “Lucas …” I nuzzled his chest, inhaling his scent and finding much needed comfort in it. “What if he goes after your family?”

  “I’ve already taken measures to make sure my family stays safe. Hell, I’ve had them covered since I went into Special Forces. I don’t want you to worry about that.”

  He was so confident I could only hold on to the hope he was right, and that my father wouldn’t touch the Youngs. I could never live with myself if something happened to the people I considered family.

  There was one other person I had started worrying about more and more each day. Jay.

  I still didn’t know how he was doing after Lucas had shot him the day he had taken me. I had managed to work up the courage to ask Lucas if he had killed Jay, and his response hadn’t been very reassuring.

  “Probably not, angel.”

  Turning my head so my cheek rested against his chest, I looked at his laptop, knowing what I had to do.

  “Lucas?” The whisper was soft, but he must have heard something in my tone, because I could feel his body stiffen in wariness.

  “Yeah?”

  “Will you check on two other people for me now that you have the laptop, please?”

  “Depends on who I’m checking on, babe.”

  Nervous, I started to draw little circles with my fingertip on his chest, refusing to look him in the eye. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have a problem with one of the people. The other … “My maid Barbara, can you see if you find her on the surveillance cameras? She usually shows up to work about six in the morning and leaves anywhere from six to eight in the evening.”

  Lucas snorted. “You have a maid now?”

  I shrugged. “Father insisted. I didn’t like the idea at first, but after a while, she grew on me. She just might be the only friend I have in that building.”

  His voice was soft when he spoke again. “Okay, angel, I’ll look for Barbara the maid. But you’ll have to tell me what she looks like. Now, who’s the other person you want me to check on?”

  Biting my bottom lip nervously, I whispered the name, knowing I was probably about to piss Lucas off. “Jay.”

  Using his grip on me, he pushed me back far enough to look down at my face. “You really care if that asshole is breathin’ or not?” His features were set in stone, but there was now a hard glint to his eyes.

  It took everything I had to gather up the courage to open my mouth and say what needed to be said.

  “Jay was never the enemy in this situation, Lucas … whether you want to admit that or not.” He started to open his mouth to protest, but I shook my head and put my hand over his mouth. “No, let me finish.” Pulling my fingers from his lips, I slid them over to cup his cheek. “I may not have wanted to marry the man, but he was kind to me at times when no one else was. It was like he could see how much of a prisoner my father had made me, and he tried his best to give me what freedom he could. It might have all been a manipulation to stay close to my father, but in his own way, he helped me a little. I get that might not mean anything to you, but to me …” A sad sigh escaped me as I struggled to put the rest of my thoughts into words. “To me, that small kindness of taking me out for dinner, silly dates to museums—or whatever else he did, those were like get out of jail free cards. For a little while, I could breathe. For a short time, I didn’t have to worry about my father watching every little move I made. Until you’ve been held prisoner like that, had all your freedom taken from you, and had your sanity threatened to the breaking point, you’ll never understand how such a small kindness could mean so much.”

  The displeasure melted off his face as anguish replaced it. “Angel …”

  Unable to see the pity and regret anymore, I cut him off by burying my face in his chest and hugging him tightly to me. “Please, Lucas, please check on Jay and tell me he’ll be okay. That’s all I need to hear.”

  He held me for a few silent moments, soothing his hand up and down my back. Then he promised me he would check on Jay.

  It couldn’t have been easy for a man like him to check on the welfare of someone he considered an enemy, but he would do it for me. That was just another example of why I loved the man so much and always had. He took care of those he loved.

  Then why couldn’t I shake the fear that he wouldn’t be able to take care of my mother, too?

  Chapter

  6

  Two Months Later...

  Lucas

  “Take me home!” Ginny screamed.

  “Gin, calm down,” I said, knowing damn well after seeing what we had just seen there was no calming down my angel. No, she was hell-bent on leaving and leaving now.

  Guilt sucker punched me in the balls. I had done this.

  I couldn’t find a way to handle our shit. I couldn’t find a way to get us the fuck out of here.

  I glanced helplessly at the computer screen where we streamed the news from Chicago. There had been a scheduled ribbon cutting ceremony for a new pharmaceutical production plant. And who owned this prize of a business? None other than Richard Wellington.

  On a thirteen-inch laptop screen in front of us were Mr. and Mrs. Wellington, a prominent businessman and his arm piece.

  Ginny’s mom was in a designer suit, her hair done up, and makeup perfected in a way that someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t see the shell of the woman both Ginny and I could see.

  She had lost twenty pounds, if not more, and looked damn near skeletal. The dark circles under her eyes weren’t accent highlights in her makeup, but rather a sign of extreme fatigue. Having been trained in reading body language, hers was clearly of a woman broken, defeated, and damn near dead.

  Even worse, what sent a chill down my spine was the cast on her arm. The plaster covered in a light blue didn’t blend as well as intended.

  Had Richard Wellington done that? Had he locked her away in some sadistic way and starved her? Brow beaten and threatened her until she was mentally fractured into a million pieces? Broke her arm in a fit of rage?

  Or was this all a setup to lure us out?

  My gut wanted me to climb on a Harley and ride right up to the bastard’s front door. If I had my way, I would knock twice, and then put a bullet between his eyes when he answered.

  Except, there were too many variables. There were too many movin
g pieces to the puzzle. There were too many people at risk.

  Because I couldn’t pull my fucking head out of my ass and find a solution, Ginny’s mom was living in a hell that my woman knew far too well.

  I paced the expanse of our cabin while Ginny sat hunched over the laptop, stroking the image of her beloved mother.

  “Lucas, I want to go home.”

  “You are home.”

  I made the mistake of turning my head and allowing my eyes to lock on to hers. Unshed tears pooled mercilessly in the corners of her eyes.

  “She’s not safe,” Ginny whispered before allowing the first tear to fall.

  “Fuck!” I roared as I turned to face the wall and banged my forehead against it before punching it, too. My hand stung like a motherfucker, but it was nothing compared to hearing her whimpers from across the room. Her tears were worse than the bombs I used to hear falling around me in a desert warzone.

  I refused to look at her as I kept my forehead against the wall, yet I knew from her sobs and sniffles that there were drops sliding down her cheeks. Just the knowledge was enough to demolish me more than those bombs ever had a chance to.

  Everything we had built during our time here—hell, for our whole lives—was crumbling at the sight of her mother in the hands of her father.

  Ginny

  My heart was breaking all over again as I stared at the screen displaying my mother’s picture. There had been a time, years ago, after Lucas had hurt me, that I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to ever make me hurt this way again.

  I was so, so wrong.

  Because this pain? This was worse. This was a pain so magnified and wretched that I hurt from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I imagined it hurt so bad because, for a little while, I had decided to instill my complete faith in Lucas, thinking he would somehow save me and my mother from our nightmare in Chicago. However, the picture on the laptop taunted me, making me question that recently gifted faith. It was like Richard Wellington had grabbed the freshly glued pieces of my still healing heart and tore it all asunder again.

  Lucas might be strong, skilled, and loved me so much that he was willing to fight anyone or anything for me, but as I studied the cast on my mother’s arm, I couldn’t help wondering if any one man could take down Richard Wellington. Perhaps this job, or mission as Lucas liked to call it, was too big to be accomplished. That was a serious problem, because I couldn’t lose my mom.

  Tearing my eyes away from her delicate cast, I looked back at her masked features and tried to find the strength to figure out what I needed to do.

  As much as I loved the man across the room from me, I loved the woman silently staring back at me from the picture more.

  Everyone said a mother’s love for her children was unconditional. Now I knew a child’s love for their mother was uncompromising.

  Infusing steel into my spine, I turned my head and looked at Lucas, who was still facing the wall. “Lucas?”

  At the sound of my voice, his body tightened, as if readying itself for some sort of physical blow. Then he reluctantly turned his head to look back at me.

  “Angel.” His response wasn’t a question, more like a tortured plea, one I had to stringently ignore, no matter how much it hurt.

  “You have precisely seventy-two hours to come up with a way to rescue my mother, or I’m going back.” He started to say something, but I cut him off. “I mean it, Lucas. I don’t care if I have to run out of this cabin, screaming at the top of my lungs that you kidnapped me. We both know this campground is so packed that the next cabin over is probably occupied and somebody will hear me. I’ll do it if I must. I’ll do absolutely anything to save her, except sit here and do nothing. So, this is me, giving you my last bit of faith. You have three days to come up with a plan to pull Mom out of there safely, or I’m going back in, no matter what you say.”

  I watched as his jaw clenched in fury, eyes burning brightly with emotion. Then he pulled his arm back and punched the wall in front of him again before storming out of the cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Deep inside, where all my doubts screamed at me for what I had just done, I worried that I had put too much of an ultimatum on him. Perhaps I had just given him a mission he couldn’t possibly pull off, potentially dooming this love we had just reignited between us.

  As heartless as it might make me seem, I couldn’t let any of that matter.

  Richard Wellington might say he was a king of an empire, but it was time someone showed him who was the most important piece in the moving pieces of our family chessboard.

  The queen.

  And perhaps I was the equivalent of a pawn when you boiled it all down to strength and strategy, but I didn’t give a damn. My mom had raised me to be strong, independent, and to do the right thing, even if it hurt.

  My queen was in trouble, and I would go back into Richard’s game to do whatever I had to do to become a queen in my own right. Be the dutiful daughter, marry Jay—whatever it took if it meant I could save my mom and checkmate that bastard once and for all.

  That didn’t mean my fragile, once again broken heart wasn’t still hoping that my knight might still find a way to save us, after all.

  Chapter

  7

  Lucas

  I was about to lose my fucking mind.

  Sitting on the front porch of the cabin, watching the sun rise on the horizon, I checked the time on my cell phone for what must have been the hundredth time. It had been almost thirteen hours since I had spoken to Ice.

  In another three minutes, I would reach the fifteen-hour mark since Gin had issued her ultimatum. Time was ticking away, yet I didn’t feel much closer to a solution.

  Reaching out for help was foreign to me. There was this almost animalistic instinct inside me to work alone. A feral dog fighting to maintain his territory … alone. Once bitten by the loss of brothers in wartime. Twice shy to let others close again because of it. If I didn’t let anyone in, or let anyone help, then there was only myself to worry about when danger was around. My space, my world, my domain, and my responsibility. Letting anyone else have any kind of power made me want to break shit.

  My phone call from thirteen hours ago hadn’t helped me sort through the swirling thoughts going through my head. How was I to know that when I reached out to an old friend for information, that I would find said friend planning to take out Wellington himself? Ice, a man I had served in the Green Berets with, had gone through hell and back with, had threatened to sever any sort of connection we had. All because I had cashed in a favor he owed me.

  In his defense, it wasn’t like I had asked him to give me a shitload of money or anything simple or material. No, I had asked for something so much more important—the life of Ginny’s father.

  Apparently, Richard was tied to the murder of a young woman in North Carolina a little over a month ago. The deceased woman had worked in one of Richard’s companies and stumbled on to something that had put her life in danger. Ice wasn’t sure yet if it was one of Richard’s men, or one of his business associates, but someone had tracked her down and killed her … in front of her own sister. Now those same men were after the sister, who was being protected by Ice and his motorcycle club, the Regulators.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, it seemed one of his men, Hammer, another former Green Beret we had both served with and called friend, had become more than just a protector of the club’s charge. He had claimed her as his woman, which made my request to have the Regulators back off Wellington a tad more than a favor. In a sick way, it had been a knife in their back. A slap in the face to the years of brotherhood and comradery between us.

  All they wanted to do was protect an innocent woman who had become one of theirs by taking out Wellington and anyone else who was connected and therefore a threat. Not an unreasonable request by any means, and certainly one I sympathized with. The problem was, I was trying to protect my woman, too. And right now, that meant keeping her father breathing
long enough to get her mother out safely. There were too many unknown variables in our situation to take a risk with having Wellington taken out before I could either get Ginny’s mom out or put more eyes on the situation.

  Not that I had taken the time to explain any of that to Ice. All I had said was that I needed him, and the Regulators, to leave Wellington alive and alone. The only reason he had granted my request was because I had promised I was going to take care of Wellington on my own. That and out of respect of our history together. That was it.

  “On your own, as in, by yourself, Young? Or on your own, as in, you’re gonna have your buddies at your back? Because, I gotta tell you, man, from what we’ve gathered, it’s a bad idea to try and go up against a man like Wellington as an army of one. And while I get you’re a guy who likes to do things his own way, I’d hate for you to do something stupid, like try to shoulder this one all by yourself.”

  “What makes you think I can’t handle Wellington alone?”

  “Fair warning, Young. As a man who has been brought to his knees by not one, but two women in my lifetime, when it comes to matters of the heart, your head is never on straight enough. Handle this shit smoothly, swiftly, and with someone at your back. It can be the Regulators, or it can be that crew you’ve tied yourself to. Either way, alone is gonna fuck you up more than you or your woman can handle.” He paused, and my mind swirled with all the variables I couldn’t control. “I’ve issued the stand down to Hammer. You don’t handle this shit and quick, I can’t promise you my brother won’t follow the order. And where he goes, the Regulators go. This is the only warning you get from me. This is the only pass you get from my club.”

  The call disconnected; Ice not a man to carry on idle chitchat. The man was cold, frozen solid, unless it came to his daughter or his woman.

  I got his message loud and clear. If I needed backup, the Regulators would step in. If I don’t handle my shit then Hammer would. And where Hammer went, Ice and the Regulators went.

  Because he had Hammer’s back.