Her Enemy Protector (Tempt Me 2)

A shot boomed.

Blood spurted from one side of Rolf’s temple and chunks of pink from the other. The crime boss dropped to his knees, way past dead before what was left of his head hit the grass. Lucas swerved around Ruby and grabbed Rolf’s gu

n from his dead grip, whirled around, and pointed toward the orchard where the kill shot had originated.

Ingrid stood there, her face grim. The Sparrow took the gun from her limp grasp.

Despite the training to go after his main target, Lucas gathered the woman he loved in his arms. Even as he watched Gregers and the yacht loaded down with a cache of arms make its way out into the Northern Atlantic, he knew there was no other place he could be right now.

“We’ve got to get moving, if you’re going to stop that boat before it gets to Elskov,” the Sparrow said. “I suggest we take care of it at my cabin.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ruby clung to Lucas on the ATV ride through the orchard and along the back roads to the Sparrow’s cabin. The speed and the wind prevented them from talking, but the tension in his body screamed louder than words. He should have gone after Gregers, but he’d stayed with her.

How would the queen interpret that? Disloyalty? Treason? What price would he pay for not following orders? There was always a price; she’d grown up seeing people pay dearly for slights much smaller than this one. She refused to let Lucas pay the price for her—she loved him too much for that. The best thing she could do for him was to get out of his life before she hurt him anymore.

As soon as they reached the Sparrow’s cabin, she hopped off the back of the ATV and hustled into the house ahead of him. The sound of gunfire could be heard in the distance. It wouldn’t be long before her stepfather’s minions stormed through the cabin door, determined to protect the remaining Macintoshes. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she had to convince him to go after Gregers now. If he didn’t, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

Jasper and Talia were already inside, both looking fierce and ready for a fight.

“He’s dead?” Jasper asked, looking from Ruby to her mother.

Ingrid nodded. “I need to talk to both of you. Alone. Now.”

“Take the bedroom,” the Sparrow said. “I’ll get these two set up. Sounds like most of the island knows already. Every one of the paranoid bastards at the house is going to think it was a plot by the person sitting next to them, and they’ll all come out guns blazing, thinking they’re next on the hit list. At that point, we’ll be lucky to find a port in the shitstorm.”

Before she could say anything to Lucas, her mother herded her and Jasper into the bedroom and shut the door behind them. Like the rest of the cabin, it was small and Spartan. There was barely enough room for the three of them to stand in a small circle in the tiny space between the door and the bed.

Her mother had just killed a man and instead of looking like she was about to fall apart like Ruby expected, Ingrid was 100 percent in lioness-protecting-her-cubs mode.

“We don’t have a lot of time, but I can’t leave without you both knowing the truth. I should have told you before but…well, I failed you there and I’m sorry.” Ingrid took a deep breath, a steely determination in her eyes. “When I met Rolf I was a young mother married to a very bad man who finally delivered one beating too many. I killed him before he could do the same to me.”

Ruby reached out for Jasper. His hand clamped around hers as she tried to make sense of her mother’s words.

Ingrid took in a shaky breath. “Rolf had been around for months at this point. He was always there when I turned around, like a guardian angel, stepping in when your father started getting angry and drunk, distracting him from his favorite target, me. Afterward, Rolf got me out of there. I was dumb enough to think he was doing it because he loved me. He didn’t love me. He was obsessed with having me. There is a definite difference, one I didn’t learn until years later when it was far too late. By the time I figure it out, I realized that I was trapped here and so were you. He held the possible murder charge over my head to keep me on Fare Island, and once the threat of that lost its power, he promised that if I ever left he’d kill you both.”

Her mother’s confession rattled around in her head like a pinball, crashing into forgotten memories and knocking them over so she could see them from a different perspective. Her mother’s depression. Her insistence on them always doing as Rolf asked. His preoccupation with controlling all of them. He’d threatened her mother with her life as much as he’d threatened Ruby with ruining Ingrid’s happiness. No doubt he’d dangled both of them in front of Jasper.

She turned to her brother. He was as slack jawed as she was.

Ingrid reached out and grabbed their hands. “I know you’ve each been trying to get out in your own way, and I’ve done what I can to help. The initial contact with the Americans while you were at college, Jasper? The Sparrow helped me arrange it. And Rolf finally giving in and allowing you to live off the island, Ruby? That took a lot of maneuvering, but we made it happen. Now that he’s dead, none of us have to worry about him ever again.”

“I don’t understand, why did you stay once we were older?” Ruby asked, trying desperately to understand a woman she’d thought she’d always known. “You’ve had opportunities—the trips to Paris or to Elskov.”

“I couldn’t, not until I knew you both were safe. Especially not with the mad game the both of you were playing with this whole fake wedding business,” she said.

“You knew?” she and Jasper both asked at the same time.

Ingrid laughed. “I’m your mother. I always know what you two are up to.”

“So what happens now?” Jasper asked.

“We get off this island, and after that, it’s up to you. You’re free. We’re all free.” Ingrid pulled her children in for a quick hug. “What do you want?”

What Ruby wanted, she couldn’t have—not all of it. Rolf being dead didn’t change the fact that the Silver Knights would never be able to see her as anything other than a criminal’s daughter and the reason why Gregers made it off Fare Island, and they wouldn’t be wrong. Lucas may think it wouldn’t matter, but the Silver Knights were his family, and eventually he’d resent her and hate himself for it. She refused to let that happen.

“I want to start over,” she said. A new place. A new life. It’s all she’d ever dreamed of and it was the last thing she wanted.