What Grows Dies Here

“You walking away now is not punishing anyone but Wren,” she pled. “Not hurting anyone but Wren.” She pointed to the door. “And that woman, that fabulous, kind, open hearted woman has been torn apart.” Her voice splintered, and her eyes filled with tears as she jutted her chin up. She was not done with me. Her eyes narrowed. “And so help me God, if you even think about leaving her at a time when she needs you most, I will hunt you down, and I will end you.”

I believed Stella in that moment. Many, many people had tried to take me down over the years, most notably a secret branch of the US government that didn’t technically exist.

Even they could not succeed.

But I believed the five-foot nothing woman who was barely a buck ten soaking wet.

Because she’d slay dragons for her friend.

Her hand shook as she pointed to the door once more. “You march your ass in there,” she ordered. “You show her all that pain you’re feeling. Don’t you dare fucking hide it because she needs to see it. She doesn’t need you to be the big, strong man without a heart.” Her gaze softened ever so slightly with mercy I did not deserve. “She needs your heart. Your broken heart. To know that she’s not in this alone.”

It was clear by the rapid rise and fall of her chest that Stella had expended all the energy she had left to go up against me. And even though she was exhausted, if I fought her, she’d go up against me until she collapsed.

Then I’d have Jay to answer to.

If I left, where the fuck would I go anyway?

Leaving was the noble thing to do, the good thing, despite what Stella said. But I was not noble or good.

So I looked at Stella for a moment longer before walking to the door, opening it and closing it quietly behind me.

Wren was not asleep.

She turned her head ever so slightly when I entered. Her expression didn’t waver. Nor did the vacant look in her eyes.

I had to restrain my flinch, seeing her like that.

Her empty gaze went to my hands. I’d tried my best to wash the blood off, but some remained.

I knew she saw it, knew she understood what it meant. She didn’t comment on it. Didn’t speak as I settled in the chair beside her bed.

She looked so small, so fucking lost in that bed, I could barely stand to look at her. All her light was gone. Every inch of her seemed so fucking fragile, I was afraid to touch her, to look at her wrong.

But even now, during the most horrible time of her life, she was still my Wren. She would always be my fucking Wren.

WREN

He didn’t say where he’d been, and I didn’t ask. I already knew from the blood on his hands.

He’d gone to avenge me. Avenge us. I hadn’t expected anything less. But the knowledge that those who did this to me were dead did not give me any comfort. I didn’t have any kind of thirst for revenge. Although I wasn’t hip to all the details on what was going on in Jay and Karson’s world, I understood it was the Russian Mob. I was also shrewd enough to deduce that the men who did this were hired guns. Orders came from somewhere else completely.

Jay and Karson would be going to war with one of the oldest criminal institutions in the world. For me. For Stella. For her.

The thought did nothing for me. It merely made me tired to think of all the effort, all the danger they’d be immersing themselves in when it was too late to make any kind of difference.

This had still happened, no matter how many people they killed in retaliation.

They could not bring her back. Nothing would ever grow inside me again.

“This is it,” I said, my voice flat, dead.

Karson regarded me unblinkingly. “This is what?”

I stared right into his eyes, unflinching at the pain, the devastation behind them.

“This is my villain origin story.”

His face contorted in pain like I’d hit him. I didn’t feel any guilt. “Darlin’, you could not be a villain if you tried.”