“Or are you fucking them all?” Robert spat. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You always were a whore. I snatched you from the gutter and you act like trash when you don’t have me to discipline you. You’re using that pussy of yours to get men to come into my home and take away my son? Big mistake, Elena. I’m gonna show you just how big. When I get my hands on you, I’ll—”
I didn’t hear anymore.
Because my phone was snatched out of my shaking hand by a large and strong hand that most definitely wasn’t shaking. A hand attached to a muscled arm, an iron jaw and hard eyes.
Lance held the phone to his ear for exactly seven seconds.
I counted.
He didn’t say a word.
Didn’t move a muscle, which was a feat considering all the muscles he had.
After those seven seconds, he moved the phone from his ear. To smash it right against the concrete at our feet.
I watched it shatter.
Then I watched Lance’s boots move away from me. I had to lift my head to watch him tear through the back yard, then disappear from sight as he rounded the house.
Lance
Keltan was waiting for him after he emerged from the gates, wiping the blood off his knuckles with the back of his shirt.
Lance expected him to be.
He was sure Heath or Duke would be down the street, waiting in case he needed backup.
Lance never needed backup.
That was kind of the point.
But Keltan was here, leaning against the SUV, arms folded, expression clear.
Lance wondered how long he’d stayed at Elena’s. Long enough to get her to talk to him, tell him what happened in order for him to know to come here. Long enough to likely calm her down, get her to stop fucking shaking, wipe some of that cold, vacant terror from her eyes.
Lance clenched his bloodied fists with the mere memory of that expression. That faraway expression that was miles from the beautiful, full smile that had spread to her whole body, fuck it’d spread to the whole back yard, crept through all the layers of his skin, his scar tissue, snaked through until it found something inside him still able to feel.
Yeah, that happiness had affected him.
Warmed him.
And the loss of it, the absence of it had chilled him. He’d watched it drain from her just like he’d watched her fill up with it since everyone had started arriving. Though she didn’t have those smiles, that warmth for him. It intrigued him, that anger that he’d not seen her direct toward anyone else. He treasured it, that menace. It was obviously rare, precious. Because she gave everyone her smiles, the warmth dancing in her eyes. But he was the only one that got that cold fury that had begun in the wine aisle at the supermarket.
It had come from a place of pride. A place of hurt.
He’d seen it all mixed in her eyes like the most potent, delicious and dangerous cocktail on the planet.
He was already fucking drunk on her when he’d made sure not to even sip that shit. Because she shoved it down his throat. With her stupid fucking awkward words that made his cock hard and his mind intrigued. With her thinking that thirty bucks on wine was expensive, with her trying to stand up to him when she was wearing the bruise as evidence of another man’s violence.
He knew she couldn’t afford to feed everyone that would be at her place. He didn’t want her paying for that shit. Lance lived simple, his main expenses being weapons that were scattered throughout his shitty apartment. Money did little more than pile up in his accounts since he had nothing, and no one to spend it on.
It gave him a rush, spending it on shit for this party.
Shit for Elena.
It gave him more of a rush that she was so against him doing that shit. She was independent. Fiercely so. It was clear she did not want to exist on handouts, or help from the people around her who obviously adored her and her son and wanted to help her.
Life hadn’t been kind to Elena Phoenix, previously Hudson, originally Pérez.
Lance had looked her up and saw that shit. Saw the doctor’s records. Looked into her parents. They had a long list of priors. Of offenses. Her father was currently serving time for beating the shit out of a hooker. Mother was still living in the trailer park that Elena grew up in. Surprised the fuck out of him. She did not look like a woman that came from that. Did not speak or act like a woman that came from shit.
Life had been hard to her, it should have calcified around her, carved sharp edges, jaded her.
It hadn’t.
By some miracle, she was all soft and round, even when her body was all skin and bone. She was soft everywhere she should be and everywhere she shouldn’t.