Heartless Savage (Angels Halo MC Next Gen 7)

past what I was going to do once my little angel was no longer there to climb into bed beside me each night so I could protect her and Bun-Bun. Would she be happy when she left? Would she be safe?

Would her mom hurt her like mine had?

I hadn’t seen Felicity so much as yell at Nova in the time they had been staying at our house, but she’d done more than a little shouting at Garret. Not that he didn’t deserve it. All Garret did was get into trouble. He was worse than Vito and Bennie combined, and I didn’t think it was possible for any one person to get into more mischief than those two. But other than getting frustrated with her son and threatening to ground him, Nova’s mom had seemed okay, I guess.

I still didn’t trust her, though.

What if she was different when no one else was around? What if she did bad things to her kids when there wasn’t anyone to see?

The thought of Nova crying because she was scared and hurt by her mother—or anyone else—left me sick to my stomach.

Mom dropped her fork onto her breakfast plate, her hand going to my forehead. “Your color is off, l’venok,” she muttered. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling back from her touch so I could stare at Nova’s empty seat on the other side of mine.

After our trip to the emergency room weeks before, I’d looked up the age someone had to be in order to get legally married. If Nova’s parents gave their consent, I could marry her when she turned seventeen. But I didn’t think her dad would let me do that, so that meant I had to wait until she was eighteen. Nova would be four in November. That meant I had to wait a little over fourteen years.

That seemed like an eternity. I wanted her to stay with me now. Instead, I would have to let her get on the plane in a few days. And the worst part was that I didn’t know when I would get to see her again.

Would I ever?

“Well, I don’t like that color,” Zariah complained as she walked into the dining room with her phone in one hand. I looked at her in annoyance, only to find she wasn’t even looking my way. Her eyes were on the screen of her phone. “It’s ugly, and with your skin tone, it makes you look ugly too.”

“Zariah!” Zia Scarlett scolded as she lifted her head from the stack of papers Dad had given her to look over before he’d gone to a meeting earlier. “You are being rude and cruel.”

“No, I’m not,” her eldest daughter argued. “I’m being honest. What would be cruel is if I allowed my best friend to be seen in public in such an awful dress.”

“She’s right!” I heard the annoying sound of her friend’s whine, and it finally clicked in my head that they were on a video call. “My mom’s stylist picked out this dress, and I called Zariah for her advice. I knew she wouldn’t lie to me. Now I just have to convince my mother that it would be embarrassing for everyone if someone took my picture in this hideous thing.”

An idea began to form in my head, and I jumped up from my seat without a word to anyone. Running upstairs to my room, I did a little research on my laptop that I typically only used for homework assignments. I had an iPhone, but I rarely used it. Mostly it was just so Mom could call or text me when we weren’t together. I lost it more often than not because I didn’t really like it, but right then, I was thankful for it.

Another search and I found what I wanted, but I was going to need Mom’s help. Rushing back downstairs, I opened the front door where two guards always stood. “Get Mom’s car ready,” I told them. “She and I are going shopping.”

The one to my left gave a firm nod and extracted his phone from his suit jacket pocket. Shutting the door, I returned to the dining room, where Mom was sipping another cup of coffee. As soon as I entered the room, her blue eyes were on me.

“Well, you must be feeling a little better,” she mused. “Your color has returned.”

“I know what I want for my birthday,” I told her in a rush. “But I need it today. Can we go shopping?”

Her brows lifted toward the ceiling in surprise. I didn’t normally ask for something specific for presents. Family members always asked me, but I never knew what to say. I had everything I wanted or needed—until now. I wanted and needed Nova with me always, but Mom couldn’t give me that.

“Good morning!” Nova greeted happily as she bounced into the room. Earlier in the week, she’d had her tubes put in. I hadn’t been worried because Ciana and Bennie had both had them done, and nothing had happened to either of them. She’d been sleepy the day it happened, but once the medication they had given her to knock her out so they could put the tubes in had worn off, she’d been nothing but her beautiful, happy self ever since.

Her little arms hugged me before she climbed into her seat at the table. On instinct, I moved behind her, making sure she didn’t fall because the chair was too high for her, and I was always scared she might get hurt. “Zia, can I have a pancake, please?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Zia Scarlett told her as she placed a single pancake on her plate and then a few slices of bacon. “Juice?”

“Mm,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food. “Thank you.”

“Mom, can Nova come with us?” I asked, not wanting to spend even a minute away from her.

“If her parents say she can,” Mom said with a nod.

An hour later, after I’d promised Nova’s dad that I would protect her with my life, we were in the electronics store at the mall. The sales associate held up two different iPads, and I examined them both. “Which will have a better quality of picture when we video chat?” I asked, and the man blinked at me.

“How old are you, kid?”

“I’ll be nine in two days,” I told him, annoyed he was asking me questions instead of answering mine. “Which one has the better picture quality?”