Taken by Her Prince

She made a sweeping gesture with one hand then patted her knee. “My dad stayed in the Club for a little while after that. Ended the war, I think he went a little crazy, because I remember the guys looking at him weird for a while, a little afraid of him, you know? But after it was all over, he begged my uncle to let him retire, and they did, they let him walk away with no strings attached. We moved to a different house in the neighborhood, he got a job working construction, and we just… moved on. I lost all my Club friends and tried to pretend like everything was okay, even though my world was completely broken.”

She stopped talking and leaned her head up against the headrest. She held the coffee against her chest then lowered it down into her lap. I watched her for a few breaths before I shook my head and turned down a side street, the car rolling along.

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “Losing everything like that. And you were just a kid. You probably didn’t even understand why.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “But I learned as I got older, and I started to hate the Club, you know? They took so much from me.”

“I can’t blame you for that,” I said. “I would’ve hated them too.”

“Now it’s like that all over again,” she said. “They’re taking my father away, and I just… I don’t understand it. They didn’t need to go this far.”

“You’re right.” I spoke softly as I turned a corner and drove through Club territory. “Here’s the thing. I was thinking the other day, about our tour through this neighborhood.”

She gave me a flat look. “You think I missed something?”

“You didn’t show me where your uncle lives,” I said.

She took a deep breath and let it out. She didn’t speak for a minute and I could feel her tension growing.

“I didn’t want to,” she said. “I thought… thought you might do something stupid.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like breaking into his house and killing him.”

I laughed and tilted my head. “But that’s exactly what you should want me to do.”

“Maybe before they took my dad. But now, I can’t be sure he’s not in there and you won’t kill him by mistake.”

I clenched my jaw. I wanted to say that I didn’t make mistakes like that, but so far this whole war had been one botched fucking attack after the next. Maybe it was because my crew was made up of young soldiers without much experience, or maybe I’d been a little too aggressive and didn’t plan enough.

I wasn’t going to make that mistake moving forward.

“I want to get your father out,” I said. “I want to bring him home for you, Colleen. But I can’t do that if I don’t know where he is.”

“We don’t even know he’s at my uncle’s place,” she said.

“Oh, he’s there, all right.” My voice felt like a low rumble in my chest. “Your uncle isn’t the kind of man to keep someone that important anywhere else.”

She gave me a look and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Point it out to me,” I said. “I won’t do anything without your approval first.”

She snorted. “I don’t believe you.”

“Try anyway,” I said.

She rubbed at her temples then ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t believe you,” she said again. “I don’t think you’re the kind of man to run anything past anyone.”

“Maybe,” I said and ran my hands over the steering wheel. I stared straight ahead, didn’t glance in her direction. “Maybe you’re right about that. But I’m trying to change here, because the way I’ve been hasn’t worked. So help me step up and do better.”

She shifted in her seat and put her mug down in the cup holder. She pulled out her seatbelt and released it, let it snap back into place across her chest.

“All right,” she said. “But I’m serious, Steven. You can’t… you can’t just attack him without talking to me first. Okay? Do you swear?”

“I swear,” he said.

“Turn left up here.”

She gave me directions and we rolled down a quiet, boring street. There were typical sedans on the block, and the houses all looked the same, with the same stoop and the same simple door. She pointed out the window at a house with a black door and bars over the downstairs windows, but otherwise it looked like any other house in on the block.

“That’s him,” she said.

I kept going and didn’t stop. “Anything I should know about it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t been there since I was a little girl. He had an alarm system back then, but I don’t know what’s there now.”

He nodded. “All right. Thank you for showing me that, Colleen.”

“Do you really mean it when you say you’re going to get my dad?” she asked.