Devil Takes His Innocent (14 page)

Before he had a chance to even
remove his shoes, he heard her
groggy
voice say,
“Please make sure you lock up as you leave.”

He stopped in his tracks, his
shoes and trousers suddenly forgotten. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“
Yes, you are,” Gabby replied,
turning away from him onto her side. “You promised Nikki you wouldn’t do
anything against my wishes. You staying
is
, so leave
now.”

He was reminded why he rarely let
words speak for him. They were often thrown back in his face, as his mate was
doing. “That promise was meant to reassure Nikki that I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“
You staying would only hurt me!”

“
I’m your mate. I belong by your
side.”

“
Only when it suits you,” Gabby
retorted, still with her back facing him. He could hear the anger and the pain
in her voice. He didn’t like it, but he knew he had been the cause.

“
Why didn’t you ring me when you
realized the house had been broken into?” he asked, suspecting he knew the
answer.

“
Why would I, Devil?”

“
Because you’re mine to protect,”
he replied, forcing the growl back down his throat.

“
But
not to love?”

This was his opportunity to make
amends for his previous failures. Walking around the side of the bed, he
crouched down beside her head. Gently moving strands of hair that were stuck to
her tear-soaked face, he offered, “I have no love to give. But know
this,
I do care about you, Gabby.
Immensely.”

Fresh tears rolled from her eyes.
“If you care for me, please leave.”

Angry at his mate’s disregard for
her own safety and her challenge to prove his words to be true, Devil moved to
the bedroom door. Still he didn’t leave. Instead he turned back to Gabby and
said, “I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll be in the lounge room if you need me.
Once Nikki returns, only then shall I leave, and only when I hear the alarm
being set.”

After shutting the bedroom door,
he headed into the lounge room. As he began righting furniture, he considered
the messy relationship he currently had with his mate. It was of his doing, of
that he had no doubt. But he lacked the skills to fix it.

Throughout his life he had seen
the worst in people, fixing their betrayals with his fists. Only his brothers
had stood by him, never wronging him. Their relationship didn’t revolve around
discussing feelings, but common belief systems guiding them through their joint
quest. How was he meant to fix his relationship with his mate when he had
little experience dealing with the more positive emotions in life? He was at a
loss for answers, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Chapter
Sixteen

As Gabby and Nikki left the
hospital the next day, they spoke about the strange cases they had come across
during their shifts. It was something they often did, but today Gabby found her
heart wasn’t in it. It had been a hard and tiring day.
More
tiring than most because like her day, the previous night had been filled with
thoughts of Devil, rather than sleep.
She had hoped he would return to
her side, but he hadn’t. It only added to her growing list of disappointments,
compliments of him. When he’d told her that he cared for her, he had sounded so
sincere that she had almost begged him to come back to bed. She desperately
wanted to believe him. Her heart needed to believe him. But how could her mind
reconcile his claims when the behavior of this self-confessed actions man
didn’t match his words?

He claimed to care for her, but
still he was able to stay away from her for four days. With no thought of a
phone call to query how her injured arm was. He had walked away from her,
leaving her in tears and in pain. How could a man walk away from a woman he
professed to have feelings for, especially when she was upset? That was twice
now, he had left her crying, offering no form of comfort whatsoever.

Her thoughts were so consumed
with Devil that she hadn’t realized immediately that her guards had changed.
“Where are the guys?”

“
They got pulled for the
afternoon.”

Gabby had to wonder whether Devil
had sacked the guards because they had allowed her to enter the house
unaccompanied. She hoped that this man spoke the truth, because she didn’t like
the idea that she had been the cause of them losing their job. They were nice
enough men, whom she had come to feel comfortable with. As the car headed
toward home, she resolved to talk to Devil about it. Though she doubted he
would listen to her.

She was pulled from her thoughts
by a squeeze of her hand. Looking up at Nikki, she saw worry in her friend’s
eyes. Following her line of sight, she immediately saw the issue. They weren’t
heading toward their house.

“
Why are we going this way?”

The man in the passenger side
seat looked at her for the first time. The evil that resided in his eyes said
enough, though he didn’t seem to think so. Lifting a gun from between the two
front seats, he pointed it at Nikki. Not taking his gaze off of Gabby, he
replied, “Our boss wants a word with you.”

“
What did you do to the guards?”

“
Don’t worry your pretty little
head off about them two. Our orders were not to kill them, unfortunately. It
seems our boss is a little scared of Torments. He’s got a reputation about him.
The boss knows that if he kills any of Torments’ men, then revenge will be
swift and hard. The boss doesn’t want to take the risk.”

“
Then your boss should know that
you’ve just kidnapped Devil’s woman,” Nikki warned.

“
Nice try, lady, but we’ve been
watching the house. He may know you girls, but neither one of you
is
his lady. If he was serious about either one of you, he
wouldn’t let you out of his sight. He’s too possessive of what he considers
his.”

“
What do you think the guards were
for, dipshit?” Nikki asked angrily. Gabby gave her hand a warning squeeze. She
didn’t want to piss these men off.

“
We haven’t worked that out yet,
but that’s another thing the boss wants to establish. How important you are to
Torments. Could you be used as a bargaining chip? Or can he keep you both for
his own gains?”

With those statements, a thought
came to her. Gabby realized that this was what Judge had warned her about. She
was what many would view as Devil’s weakness and that would probably be
unacceptable in his eyes. Was that why he had been keeping her at an arm’s
length? Because he didn’t want anyone knowing such a weakness existed? It was
something she would ask him when he rescued her. Pressing the button on the
watch she had been unable to take off since Devil had left her, Gabby called
upon her only lifeline.

****

Devil’s fist connected once again
with the red leather. Since leaving Gabby’s house the night before, he had
spent much of his time in his makeshift gym. Many punching bags had fallen
victim to his anger. The one he was currently working on was the last he had in
stock. He prayed it would hold long enough for him to come up with the answers
he needed to mend his relationship with Gabby.

Each hit provided him with a
small moment of peace. In that miniscule amount of time, he was praying that
the solution would be revealed. After many hours and several destroyed punching
bags, he had nothing but tender knuckles. His hope was waning and his anger
rising.

At what point in their
relationship had he become a fuck buddy? They were more than that to each
other. She was his mate. His equal, his future, and the only woman he wished to
crawl into bed with at night after a long, hard day. Nowhere in the term mate
did it suggest that they were just fuck buddies. She was his everything, and he
had to come up with a way of showing her.

The question was, how? Looking up
at the clock, he realized that it was past Gabby’s knock off time. She would
have already been finished and home by now. Punching something hadn’t provided
him the answers he sought; he was going to have to play the next few hours by
ear. He couldn’t allow her too much time to think about their failing
relationship. It would only cause her to sink deeper into the hole of despair
he had dug for her.

Unstrapping his hands, he threw
the tape in the plastic bag that doubled as his rubbish bin. Grabbing his
phone, he headed toward the service elevator. With a quick look at his phone,
he realized that he had allowed the battery to run down. Maybe he would have to
stop into the office before he headed up to his quarters to get showered and
ready to convince his destiny that they belonged together.

On entering the office, he knew
something was wrong. He had thought he would be in and out within a couple of
minutes. This was true, but it turned out that his next destination wouldn’t be
his quarters as planned.

“
Where the hell have you been?”
Judge demanded, strapping a gun to his thigh, along with his brothers.

“
What business is it of yours? And
what the hell’s going on in here?”

“
We have been trying to get a hold
of you for the last forty-five minutes,” Judge replied. “Your fucking phone is
off. What’s the point of having one if you’re going to switch the damn thing
off?”

“
Fine, I’ll play along,” Devil
said. “I’ve been in the basement allowing my fists to get reacquainted with
some punching bags. As for my phone, the battery died. Now tell me what the
hell has you in a tither!”

“
Well, while you’ve been beating
up on some defenseless punching bags, your mate’s SOS button has been going
off.”

“
How
long?”

“
About fifty minutes. We all
assumed it was connected to your phone, so when you didn’t call, we knew
something wasn’t right. We’ve been trying to find you and call you for the last
forty-five minutes.”

“
Fuck!”

“
After not being able to get a
hold of you, we had Mick triangulate her position. It hasn’t changed for the
last ten minutes. Some warehouse on the edge of town.
Owned
by our old mate, Saul.”

“
That fat
bastard better not have
laid a finger on her.”

“
We’ll get to her, have no fear,
brother,” Chaos reassured, patting him on the shoulder.

“
Is everyone ready?
And what of her guards?”

“
I sent someone over to the house
and hospital. They were found roughed up in the back of one of the SUVs. The
other vehicle is missing,” Viper explained.

“
Nikki’s also missing. They
probably just jumped into the car, not even looking at the guards. I doubt they
would have noticed until it was too late,” Judge added.

Devil was seeing red. His hands
itched to wrap around Saul
Biesterman’s
fat neck and
squeeze the life out of him. If he thought only roughing up his men would save
him from Devil’s hellfire, then he had another thing coming. He took what was
his, no doubt scaring the life out of her. For that he would pay with his life.
His mate deserved nothing less.

****

The morbidly obese man in front
of Gabby wiped his forehead. It was a pointless task in her eyes. As soon as
the hanky cleared the sweat, more beads formed. He hadn’t said anything to
either her or Nikki yet. He just sat back, sucking on a cigar, stinking up the
enclosed storeroom with his smoke and perspiration.

He mustn’t have seen them as a
threat, because the only other people in the room were the two men who had
kidnapped them. One behind each of the chairs she and Nikki sat on, untethered.
Gabby kept an eye on the one near Nikki. For the last hour, since arriving at
the abandoned warehouse, his stare had been roaming over her friend’s body, the
sneer increasing each time. Gabby didn’t like it one bit. Her friend had
already been through one attack. Gabby wasn’t sure she would survive another
one.

“
So you’re Harrison’s sister?”

“
Half sister
,” she spat. “Are you the person
responsible for his murder?”

“
You should know how things work
in this world, if you’re any friend of Torments,” the man said. “Your
half brother
took something that belonged to me and I
wanted it back. He didn’t have it, so he paid with his life.”

“
You’re a monster!”

“
Well, I guess that answers one of
my questions. If you consider my actions monstrous, then you would want nothing
to do with Torments. He’s guilty of much worse things than murder.”

“
Boss, does that mean we’re
keeping them?” Nikki’s guard asked.

“
Yes, these two will do nicely.
They’re going to make me a lot of money.” The man rubbed his chubby hands
together.

“
Before we send them off to the
whorehouse, I want to play with this one,” the guard said, bending to sniff at
Nikki’s hair.

Nikki squeaked her discomfort.
Gabby’s hand gripped the pen hanging slightly out of her pocket. She hoped
Devil would arrive soon, but if he didn’t, then she needed a backup plan. Her
friend’s safety came above anything. She would protect Nikki at all cost.

The fat man eyed Gabby again
before asking, “So did your
half brother
give you
anything before his demise?”

“
You mean before you murdered
him?”

“
Fine, have it your way. Did your
half brother
give you anything before I had him murdered?”

“
Like I told the cops, he took
from me. He never gave me anything. In case you haven’t noticed, he was a
taker, not a giver.”

The man must have believed her,
because he turned to the guard behind Nikki and just nodded. The guard grabbed
a bunch of Nikki’s hair. He yanked until her neck was straining backward. His
mouth landed hard on hers. A whimper came from Nikki right before the guard
stepped back, cursing,
blood
streaming from his lips.

“
You fucking bitch, you’ll pay for
that!” the guard yelled, slapping Nikki across the face. It sent her and her chair
spilling back. Gabby jumped into action. Slamming the pen into her guard’s leg,
with enough force to embed it a third of the way into the flesh, she sprang
from her chair. She slammed herself hard into the man whose hand was raised,
clenched in a fist ready to punch her friend. Her body seemed to bounce off of
his much stockier one.
Before she could hit the ground, his
hands came around her upper arms.
With a display of the strength that
lay within his huge muscles, he lifted her and flung her through the air. Her
last thoughts as her back connected with the solid concrete wall were of the
danger her friend was in because of her, while her heart wept at the idea of
never seeing Devil again. As darkness closed in, her last vision was of Devil,
looking glorious in his true form, Death.