The NSC Boxset: Heart of Stone (247 page)

“No Kade, a daughter.”

He blinked at me in confusion, “What the hell are you saying. I don’t understand you or this.”

“The person who took the contract out is Will, Kade. My brother took out the hit on me.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kade

I STARED IN shock. I’m not even sure if I saw her as my vision blurred and my stomach knotted considerably. “What?”

She didn’t speak for a while as she held me in her locked gaze but I was more than aware of her torment. “Can we do this another time?” she asked with sadness but I shook my head and continued to gape at her.

“Not really, no.”

“Kade please,” she wiggled her shoulders to remind me that she was bound but I shrugged.

“You’ll be fine for a while longer. Tell me, tell me why.”

Her face crumpled faintly and she tipped her head in contemplation, “I’m not even sure if I understand it yet. It’s all quite . . . unreal.”

She suddenly looked exhausted and I sat before her, pulling her legs straight on either side of me so she wouldn’t get cramp in her calves. “Please, Grace. It might help if you share it with me.”

She exhaled heavily and frowned. “To be honest I’m even sure where to start.”

“At the beginning?” I prompted and started to massage the muscles along her legs gently just to make sure the blood was circulating around her body properly whilst she was immobile.

“The beginning . . .” she mused quietly. “I don’t even know where the beginning starts. I thought it started when my father died but it seems not.”

I nodded. “What about Baxter, how do you know him?”

She smiled faintly and chuckled, “Grant was my father’s best friend and is my Godfather.”

My eyes widened in surprise as I quickly glanced over her wounds. “This is just business, Kade. Grant didn’t do this, although he set the fight up.”

“He’s your Godfather, yet he makes you fight? For what?”

She smiled again but sighed. “Kade, I’m lucky he is my Godfather, he wouldn’t have let me off with just a beating, and I should by rights be dead.”

“Well yeah, but . . .”

“No buts Kade. I know it doesn’t make sense to you but Grant lost out because I exchanged. He needed to get his reputation back due to that, so the only way was for him to push me to fight. It wasn’t just a silly fight between me and Gina; it was organised combat so Grant could show everyone the reason for his change about killing me.”

“That’s . . . sick.”

She laughed and her eyes twinkled with humour, “No Kade. In Grant’s line of work he can’t afford to start changing his mind about what should be shown as a warning to others, he’d look soft and then where does it end? He did me a favour, I did him one.”

I nodded in understanding but that didn’t mean I thought it was right, “Is Grant the man your father told you to get in touch with?”

She nodded and stretched her back so I shuffled behind her and started to undo the cinches and knots. The pattern left by the Shibari was amazing and I gazed at the design I had created, the blush of her skin demonstrating the complex signature I had composed on and around her. It was stunning but more than that, it enhanced and exhilarated the subtle softness to her skin as she wore something of
me.

She started talking as I unravelled each wrap and I remained silent as she finally opened up.

“Around six months before my Father died he came to me with the combination to the safe and made me memorise it. He wouldn’t write it down, too risky he said and at the time I thought he’d gone a bit loopy, with him being tired and working hard. He said if anything happened to him, I was to take the contents and run, just run, he said. Of course, the last thing on my mind when I found them was to do as he had asked. Plus, Marcus was so small and needed me.”

I started to massage the muscles along her arms and she sighed contentedly, initiating a small smile to curve my lips with the sound of her easiness. “Okay?”

She nodded and smiled at me over her shoulder. “Yeah, surprisingly I am. I thought it might hurt more but it’s a bit of a relief to finally get it out really.”

I leant towards her and wrapped my arms around her waist as I placed a gentle kiss on her shoulder, “Good.”

She turned her head and kissed my cheek. The gesture filled me with a weird feeling but I swallowed it back and let her carry on, my arms still holding onto her as though I could help her through the painful task of recounting something that must be crippling her heart.

“Did he ever tell you what he was working on?” I asked as I moved my fingers onto her back and started to rub her softly with my thumbs.

“My God, that is so good” she moaned slightly and I shifted to accommodate the slight rise in my cock as she resumed. “Yes. He was working on a new program for the government, the defence sector or something. I was fourteen so not much of it sank in at the time but what I did garner from him was that they had finally after working on it for years, developed an intelligent worm that could and would perforate any intricate firewall within milliseconds.”

“What the . . .”

She turned towards me and shrugged. “I don’t understand that much of it. Is that good, bad, or what?”

I snorted and stared in shock at her, “Do you realise how . . . delicate a process it is to pierce a multifaceted firewall, especially within fractional seconds? It is damn impossible.”

“Well anyway, it wasn’t the fact that it could penetrate the firewalls that made it so ‘prime’ it was the fact that it could also read complicated and multiplex codes whilst having no
side effects
as my Dad called them. The worm was invisible and nobody would ever be able to know it was in the system.” She shrugged again, “Or something like that anyway.”

My God, she didn’t seem to realise how huge this was.

“Bloody Hell, Grace.” I scoffed in disbelief but she just pursed her lips casually. “But, what has this got to do with Will?”

She stiffened and sighed before closing her eyes. I knew she was gathering strength for the last part of the story and I held her a little tighter, feeding her as much support as I could.

“This is where it gets out of hand.” She turned so she was facing me and my heart clenched at the grief on her face. “My father discovered what the government actually wanted to do with this software. I don’t know what it was because he wouldn’t tell me, but it made him change his mind about giving it them.”

I frowned at her but she shook her head, “He told them he hadn’t at the time finished developing what they wanted.”

I nodded and took her hand which was fidgeting with the other as she grew more upset and started to run my fingers along hers in a calming action.

“By this time Will had got involved with some . . . well, some not nice people really. His and my Father’s relationship was virtually non-existent, and he needed an in with the right people to get him places.”

My stomach was beginning to clench with where I thought she was going but that thought was way too fanciful so I swept it off and waited for her to finish.

“You know the rest of the story, well you do until I stared working for Liam. He knew what I enlisted for; he could see it in me daily. The need to find out what happened to my parents, the hunger for revenge and it took me eleven years to follow the trail to the end of the line.”

“Grace . . .”

She pulled a deep breath and pulled away, standing in front of me and I cringed when I heard the rupture of her soul with her final words. “It led me back to Will.”

I closed my eyes and tried to hold myself together as her fury radiated round us like an enraged storm. Her wrath annihilated every bit of oxygen in the room as she physically morphed into something sinister before me. Her body tightened, her jaw clenched and her eyes misted with a white haze as her breathing became heavy and laboured. She looked—evil; pure, raw and dangerously ruthless.

“Grace!” I called as she seemed to transform right in front of me. I suddenly saw the rage and hatred that fed her veins, the corruption and malevolence she used to fight with and the sheer fortitude she flourished with.

I grabbed the tops of her arms and shook her until she blinked at me. “I . . .”

“What the hell just happened?”

“I . . .” she screwed her face up and physically wrestled with herself until her eyes cleared and she relaxed in my hold.

“Bloody hell, what—the—hell—just—happened?”

Her eyes swam with tears and I cursed myself for my harsh tone. “Grace, I . . . Christ!”

“I’m sorry, okay, but I . . . I got angry.”

I scoffed and shook my head in bewilderment. “You got angry? You got angry? I’d say you got more than angry. You were damn feral.”

Her face darkened and I could literally feel the anger in her glare, “Well I’m sorry, okay. It just . . . upsets me when I talk about it.”

My eyebrows hit my hairline and I laughed in amazement, “It did more than upset you. You looked . . . wild, Grace.”

She shook her head rapidly as her own eyebrows rose with her indignation. “Look Kade, it’s not exactly the easiest of subjects to talk about. My brother killed my parents just so he could climb the ladder in some dire criminal gang. You want me to laugh about it? Smile and just say hey ho, shit happens? But he didn’t just kill them, Kade; he fucking slaughtered them while Marcus watched from the bloody cloakroom.”

“Ahh shit!”

“Precisely,” she spat back. “So now you also know that part of my story. Why my younger brother feeds his veins with shit so he doesn’t have to repeatedly replay his parents murder in his mind.”

She scoffed and reared into my face, her own face twisted with both rage and exhaustion. “It took me eleven years to find him Kade, eleven long, excruciating and gruelling years to find my parents murderer. And do you know what I did when I found Will?”

“No” I whispered quietly because I knew her revelation was going to tear me in two.

“I laughed.”

Well I wasn’t expecting that.

“I laughed because if I hadn’t I would have broke. It would have finally finished me. After all the years of dragging myself from person to person, hunting and killing each and every one, I finally reached the end and it felt like God had stuck two fingers up and said ‘Deal with it now bitch!’ and I knew, no matter how much their death haunts me, I wouldn’t be responsible for his.”

I grabbed her and pulled her in to me as she did, at long last, break. Her choked gasps for air tore through her hatred and in the end gave her the release she craved for as she fell into me and held on for her life.

She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my shoulders as she clung to me and I walked us backwards to the bed so I could support her devastation and not crumble under its intensity.

She sobbed into my neck as she tried to bury herself inside me and find her peace with both herself and the shit life had thrown at her, but I just held on tighter and drew it all from her as her tears soaked not only my clothes but my spirit. How much more was there? She had suffered for years and I silently promised her that she wouldn’t experience any more hurt or hatred.

She needed to let go once and for all, and the only way to do that was to forgive herself for the years of carnage she had left in her wake as she sought retribution and justice.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Grace

KADE HELD ME tightly. It was strange, I’d never been held like this before but that was probably due to the fact that I never
let
people hold me like this.

He smelt good, warm but fresh and I swallowed as a heavy throb pulsed in my belly. He was soft, which was rather surprising because even though he sported some serious muscles, his body was lean and trim.

His arms enveloped me further and I nuzzled into the crook of his neck and for once took what was offered. His hands pressed into my back and I abruptly remembered I was still naked and I clenched my fists, taking the material of his shirt in my grasp.

I noticed the rate of his breathing increase a little and my arousal matched it, the throb now spreading between my thighs and pulsing with demand.

I couldn’t help myself as I opened my mouth and tasted his skin, the salt of my tears mixing with his unique taste as I slid along his neck and sampled more of him. He groaned weakly when I traced the edge of his jaw with my tongue and made my way further towards his mouth.

His hand rose and he took hold of the ponytail he had given me and yanked my head slightly back. I gasped as my eyes found his and they blazed with arousal and need. “Kiss me” he demanded harshly when he pulled on my hair and bought my mouth to his, “Kiss me, Grace.”

I obeyed with a fevered passion as I gave him what he wanted. His lips were firm under mine but they moved freely as he worked me and took over completely as he claimed me dominantly. His tongue slid into my mouth and wrapped around my own until we were both moaning and grappling with each other. He possessed me expertly as I started to slide across the erection in his jeans and attempt to alleviate some of the pressure building inside me.

“Wait!” he ordered as he pulled away from me and I gasped as I suddenly found myself face down on the mattress.

His hand came down with a sharp crack on my backside and I growled over my shoulder at him. “Fuck me, damn it, I need you.”

He shook his head slowly and smirked at me as he boxed me in underneath him and his mouth settled at my shoulder. “When you are naked and under me, you are mine, Grace. You take what I give you but you will learn some damn patience.”

His words slammed through the very centre of me and starved me more, my whole system was alight with both expectation and need but I knew this was how we both needed it. He knew my life had been one long fight and burden so he set me free and took control, giving me the abandon and renunciation I craved for.

His teeth grazed along my shoulder blade until his mouth reached the nape of my neck and he bit down gently.

“Oh God.” I was struggling for breath as my arousal flooded the whole of my body and tightened everything within me. “Please, oh god, please.”

His lips ventured down the groove of my spine and I shuddered each time his tongue flicked against my skin and brushed the sweat starting to form as my body blazed intensely.