After the Fall (The Fallen Men 4)

“A man like what?” I was being combative and waspish, but I was tired of judgment and disappointment after speaking with my mother, and I didn’t need more family drama to get me through the day.

“A man who’d lay down his life ’fore he ever let somethin’ happen to ya.”

This was true. King wouldn’t let a bee sting me if he could help it, and that overprotective, alpha instinct was one of the many reasons I loved him.

I bit my lip, studying Sander closely, noting the strain beside his eyes and the slack skin beneath them that said he didn’t sleep much or very well.

“How are you?” I inquired. I was nervous, afraid to give him an inch when my heart yearned for a mile, and my brain knew better than to give him either.

He seemed just as disconcerted by my kindness, and I was reminded by how utterly sweet Lysander could be beneath all that gruff and toughness.

He perched his ass on the edge the coffee table so there was still a decent distance between us and braced his arms on his thighs. “I’m doin’ better. Sober for five years now. It’s been…a weird year. Got into some stuff I never thought I’d enjoy or even be good at, but guess life’s good that way. At surprisin’ ya when you least expect it.”

“Preach,” I agreed, and a small part of me knew it was just to see him grin at me. “Can you tell me about it? Is it…legal?”

His lips twisted, and I knew that even though he wanted to answer me, he wouldn’t.

“Never mind.” I held up a hand. “I would rather you not lie.”

“Okay.”

We were quiet for a moment, and my eye caught on a rare shade of reddish blond hair the colour of melted down rose gold. It niggled something in the back of my memory, before the girl in question scuttled closer down the A-C fiction aisle, and I realized it was Honey Yves.

King and H.R.’s half-sister.

I stood before I could think and followed her, Sander behind me. She was in a dark corner at the end of the row slipping a book into the back waistband of her jeans.

Stealing from me.

Before I could do anything about it, Sander was striding past me, straight to her. She let out a truncated scream as he caught her arm and wrenched the book from its hiding place. He was so much bigger than her, dark and foreboding, whereas Honey was slight and utterly feminine. I was worried for one terrible moment that he would hit her.

And then to my shock, after a moment of locked eyes, she hit him. A hard punch straight to the solar plexus that expelled a loud grunt from his chest, and then she was turning, running toward me, hair flying like a pennant in her haste for escape.

“Wait,” I called, trying to catch her arm only to have her fling me off.

In the light at the end of the row spilling in from the windows, I could see the bruising crawling up the side of her left cheek and jaw up into her hairline.

Someone was clearly abusing her.

“Wait!” I yelled after her. “Please, wait. You can have the book. Just please come back.”

She didn’t stop to listen to me.

In fact, she tore through the front doors too blindly, she almost ran over the two cops strolling in as if they owned the place.

They shouted at her to watch herself, but she was gone before they could even finish their sentences.

“Freak,” I faux-cursed under my breath, dragging a hand through my waves to try to settle myself from the calamity of the day before I faced the officers. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

Officer Ormand and a cop I’d never met but knew to be Officer Peters ambled over to me in tandem. I wondered idly, cruelly, if they practiced that.

“Just checking out your new place of business,” Ormand drawled as he picked up The Prince by Machiavelli from the Recommendations display and flipped through it before deliberately dropping it to the floor.

There was a lot I could forgive. I was a loving person, an understanding person now, if not before I’d met King, and I allowed for a lot of wrongdoings before I drew the line.

But I could not and would not ever forgive flagrantly desecrating a book.

I crossed my arms, cocked my hip, and raised a brow. “Well, here it is. My little corner of the literary world.”

“Yeah.” Ormand sniffed and scratched at the razor burn on his neck as he surveyed it, noting Benny working behind the cash desk and two customers quietly talking in a corner near the cookbooks. “Your idea to start this, was it?”

“Yes, whose else would it be?”

I could feel Sander at my back, lingering hidden in the shelves, and noticed Benny frantically texting on his phone, knowing he was calling in the guys.