“We’re at a hospital,” I said, feeling frustrated. “I don’t want a bunch of strange men lingering around me—”
“Hunter almost died,” Leo growled, inching closer to me now. “I don’t give a fuck if these are a bunch of strange men to you—they’remyfucking men, and they do asIfucking say, and if I want them standing around making sure you’re alright, then that’s how it’s going to fucking be. Got it?”
I swallowed my words down, too afraid to argue because Leo was scary when he behaved like this. Shaking, I crossed my arms, no longer able to stare at his unfamiliar face. He didn’t apologize for his tone, either, or give me a soft touch. He simply turned back to Shane, ordering another phone call to have a bunch of men stationed here. Then he was at Roy’s side, strategizing, while I found myself backing away from everyone.
In no time at all, two of Leo’s men arrived acting like my shadow. I made no objection about their presence around Leo, but my skin crawled. I didn’t know them. They were strangers and I felt distrusting of them. Roy left a few bikers around, familiar faces like Faden who were tasked with protecting Hunter and passing updates along the way. Leo didn’t tell me goodbye—he had been lost inside his own head, looking lethal.
Shane approached me before they left with the bikers. “He’s hurting,” he whispered to me as I watched Leo throw his suit jacket off. He threw it on the hood of their car, standing by the burst wheels as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
“Where is he?” I asked Shane, unable to tear my eyes off Leo as he spun around to speak to Roy. Standing in the darkness like that, his tall frame towering over Roy, his broad shoulders double the width of most of the men around—Leo looked beastly. The suit he was in suddenly did not look fitted. He reminded me of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Dressing a man like him in fine clothes did not disguise the beast within.
“He’s in there,” Shane assured me. “Just…hidden.”
I finally turned to look at him. “I’ve never seen him like this, Shane.”
“What you’re seeing is Leo no longer repressing years of turmoil. His father—” Shane paused, tensing his jaw as he searched for words. “Leo has seen things, Skye. He has been subjected to horrors you will never face. Sometimes…Sometimes it is asking too much for someone to remain in control of themselves in light of a tragedy such as this.”
“What did his father do to him?”
Shane’s throat bobbed with emotion. “He broke down a beautiful little boy.”
“By doing what?” I pressed, hating the vague responses.
He looked me in the eyes now, his own rimmed red. “By making him witness death and pain and misery, over and over and over again.”
When I looked back at Leo, my heart stilled. He was staring right at me, his steely eyes cold. So fucking cold.
*
They had been gone for an hour when I wound up back in Leo’s car, sleeping in the backseat. Visiting hours were over, and I couldn’t hang around the hospital anymore. It would have been wiser to go to Leo’s place and rest there, but I couldn’t be away from Hunter. Leo’s men roamed up and down the parking lot. I caught their shadows every now and then through the windows.
The tears I’d been holding in let loose in the darkness. I sobbed in my hands, hurting for him, for Kayla—fuck, his mother was gone, and he was going to be broken. Leo and Roy were on a death spree, bloodthirsty for revenge, and I couldn’t predict what might ensue from this.
But that wasn’t the worst of all.
I sat up in the car, unable to sleep, staring bleary-eyed at the seat in front of me, knowing—knowing deep inside that this was somehow my fault. I did this. I did this because—
I sucked in a breath, recalling that day when Kurt found that card in my drawer. Jonas Walker’s card. I punched at the seat in front of me repeatedly, screaming because—
There was no rat inside the club, Miles had been right. The Warlords were family. Their loyalty was unmatched. They would never betray one another, I was positive of that, had seen it before my very own eyes.
This was more sinister than that, and I could have been wrong, but I didn’t think so because this—
“They always eat a bullet—Hunterwill eat a bullet, if not a fucking stabbing if someone is keen enough to enjoy that kill.”
This had Kurt written all over it.