The Romeo Arrangement

“Very funny, Gracie,” he says, stopping inside the door, his body filling it. “Put that fucking toy down and talk to me.”

I fire, once, and the bullet flies right over his shoulder and buries itself in the wall.

Jesus.

It’s enough to make him flinch.

Enough to make him drop that wretched cigar.

Enough to smell the rug underneath his feet burning a few seconds later as he gives me the vicious look I’ve seen again and again in my nightmares.

“You can’t be fucking serious, you—”

“Try it. Go right ahead, you bastard, take another step and I’ll shoot you in the balls. That first shot was fair warning. Next time, I swear to God, Clay, I won’t miss.” I’m stunned at how harsh I sound when it feels like my lungs are full of cement.

I’ll never know what makes him turn, retreating slowly away from the soulless carnage he’s left downstairs.

Maybe he’s genuinely afraid I’ll make good on my word.

Maybe he realizes he needs backup.

Maybe he means to finish this when he’s sure I’ll be easy prey.

Oh, he definitely intends to fight another day, and make me pay for daring to threaten him.

Whatever it is, I don’t relax until I hear the screen door banging shut and the slow, angry growl of an engine fading in the distance.

Present

“You were brave, beautiful. So very fucking brave.”

Ridge’s voice is all thunder as he kisses the top of my head and hugs me tighter.

“Clay…he left then,” I whisper, finishing my story. “I locked the doors and hid behind the basement stairs for over an hour until Dad came home. He found me, clutching the gun, and was on the verge of calling 9-1-1 before I snapped out of my trance.”

“A perfectly normal reaction to that level of psycho shit,” he growls.

I push off his chest and sit up.

“Maybe, Ridge. But…but brave? No, I wasn’t. No way. I was a coward.” Regret sickens me again. “It was total self-preservation. I could’ve ended it if I’d just shot him. He wasn’t even armed, I don’t think. But I didn’t. Because I was afraid. Scared of what he might do when he’d already ripped out my effing heart!”

Ridge sits up. “Of course you were afraid, Grace. You were smart, not cowardly, to show the restraint you did. That fuck would’ve hurt you. He could’ve—”

“So what? I should’ve killed him!” I belt out, pulling at a loose strand of my hair with one hand. “I had the chance. I should’ve chased him down and kept shooting until I ran out of bullets. Who knows, maybe I would’ve gone to jail or gotten Dad in hot water but…we wouldn’t have to run for our lives. We wouldn’t have dragged you into this. I wasn’t thinking about others. I was just thinking of myself.”

“Thank God you were.” Ridge grabs my shoulders, digging his thumbs in softly. “You could’ve gone to jail. His uncle and his spiderweb of connections would’ve made damn sure of it to protect his own ass. The Old Town Boys are an entire machine, and even if you tore off the head, there’s no telling how it might keep going.”

“But I could’ve ended it for Dad. He could’ve lived in peace. I made it worse.”

“How? He came back that soon?”

“No, his goons did. We kept the gate locked, but that didn’t stop them. We had to board up our windows the last few months we lived there…we never knew when they’d come to throw things at them or fire a few shots just to shake us up. I expected them to break in, come after me, but they made it a game. Clay kept backing off to drive us insane.”

“You were under siege,” Ridge growls, more to himself than me.

But the white-hot anger I see clouding his gorgeous features is entirely mine.

“Even the neighbors called the police a few times…but the police acted like it was our fault. Didn’t do anything to stop it, especially when Dad always tried to downplay things. I think I knew then, even before his cough took a turn for the worse, that we had to leave.”

If I’d just killed Clay that night, so many things might’ve been different.

And I wish I had, even if I can’t say with any confidence whether it would’ve turned out better or worse.

At least the psycho, the scum, the would-be kidnapper who doused me in my own mom’s ashes would be in hell, where he belongs.

“There’s another way, darlin’. Don’t think he’s gotten off the hook,” Ridge tells me, his voice as cool as the calm before a storm.

I peel back, my eyes shifting back and forth, studying his face which catches the shadows in the room like gunmetal.

“That plan I mentioned before…we’re awfully close to finalized. Leave ending Clay Grendal and his machine to me.”

Oh, the things I want to say, to protest, to beg him not to do when this isn’t his fight.