But after talking with Winter about the threat that Zenith poses to us here in Sydney if they aren’t wiped out in Melbourne, I’m doing this for Noah as much as for Zara.
I refuse to let her go, but after going up against King, I know he and I both need some space to cool down. I’m not convinced he’ll ever come around to understanding what Zara and I have or how it happened, but I’ll give him a couple of weeks to get his shit together. Zara has shared the details of our relationship with her mother, and I figure if anyone has half a chance of talking some sense into him, it’s Lily.
“I have to go, little man, but I’ll come back as soon as I can. And until then, Mummy and you are going to have fun here together.” I glance up at Lynette who’s watching me with a filthy expression. She’s dirty with me for doing this, but she consented to it after I agreed to a whole lot of shit I’ll have to make good on when I get home.
As Noah’s bottom lip quivers and his tears fall, Lynette crouches with us and reaches for her son. “I’m not going anywhere, baby,” she soothes. “And like Daddy said, we’re going to play with all your toys a lot while he’s gone. And we’re going to read all your books.”
It’s the books that do it. As soon as Lynette mentions reading, his face perks up. “My Bob book, too?”
Fucking Bob to the rescue.
After we’ve calmed him down and he’s happily playing in the lounge room again, Lynette pulls me aside. “Three weeks max, Fury. After that, you better get your ass back here for him.”
I don’t blame her for being pissy, but she has no idea that while I hope to fuck to get this job done sooner than three weeks, I’m not sure it’s going to be possible. If that’s the case, we might be looking at me going back and forth for a while. When Winter shared some details of the shit he’s dealing with in Melbourne, it made me determined to help him wipe this fucking gang out.
I grab my keys and phone off her kitchen counter. “I’ll call him once I’m in Melbourne.”
“You better bloody call him every day.”
I work my jaw. “You ever known me not to call him every fucking day, Lynette?”
Her lips purse, but she doesn’t argue with me again.
A few minutes later, I’m on my way to Zara’s, and when I arrive there, she greets me with puffy eyes.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling her close, ignoring the agony in my body at the contact. All the hits I took yesterday have left me with worse bruising, swelling, and pain than anything I ended up with in my fighting days.
She places her hands to my arms like she thinks her touch will break me. “Hey, you.”
“Touch me, Zara. I’m not gonna break.”
“Fury, have you looked in the mirror? You look like you’ve just spent a month straight fighting. I refuse to hurt you more than you already are.”
I pull her hard against me. “I need you to touch me. I’m not going to see you for fuck knows how long.”
Her eyes widen, and fucking finally, she puts her hands on me. And while it hurts like a motherfucker, the pain is nothing compared to what I’d endure for her.
“I hate him for doing this to you,” she says.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” I hate the divide this is causing.
She shakes her head. “No, and I don’t want to.”
“You need to talk to him.”
“Why? He made it clear yesterday how he feels.”
“Yesterday was more about me and him than you and him.”
“How?”
“King values loyalty and truth above almost everything else. A person could do pretty much anything and survive his wrath if they weren’t disloyal or dishonest. He views the shit I did as both of those things.”
When she opens her mouth to argue, I silence her. “I didn’t come here to get into that with you. I won’t allow us to argue about shit, too. You need to talk to him and fix things between the two of you.”
“And you need to respect my choice not to.”
I want to boss her into this, but that’s because I’m coming at the situation with all the baggage of my childhood. It pains me to think of a parent and a child split apart when they could talk shit through and work on it.