Page 132 of Diamond In The Rough

“You tossed her away.” His jaw clicks with rage. With homicide. With threat, directly cast down to shadow my existence. Yet, I’ve killed for my brothers. More than a few times. I destroyed a good woman’s soul, all because I thought I was protecting Felix.

Roscoe has a right to be pissed. And if I was man enough, I would place her hand back on her bed and walk away… preferably in front of a moving train. She deserves a clean start where me and my world no longer exist.

“You broke her heart and threw her away,” he repeats. “But that shit I saw in the club. The stuff you were saying?—”

“To go away and never come back?”

He drops his chin in acknowledgment. “Maybe my sister is hard of hearing, but I heard every word you said. Plus, all those you didn’t. The parts where you were trying to warn her away. The bits where you were sacrificing yourself for her happiness.”

“Fuck load of good that did. She came to warn me about Wilkes. And because I dismissed her, she walked straight into his gun.”

“Ya know…” He breathes out a laugh, soft and barely there. And yet, I hear the humor in the sound. The exhaustion. The grief. “She and I argued before we came to the club. I told her no. To stay away. I know who you are, Malone. I know what you do. So as her big brother, it’s my duty to keep her away and make sure she’s safe.”

“You failed.” I press a kiss to her knuckles. “Tying her to a chair might’ve been more effective.”

He grinds his jaw, his humor… not quite as stretched as mine.

“I told her you would kill her. It’s in your blood,” he clarifies through gritted teeth. “We don’t have to sit here and confess our shit for me to know what you are. Anyone who has lived in New York for more than twenty seconds knows who the Malones are, and we know who…” he clears his throat. “We know who enforces the rules in your family. So when her cover was blown and still, she wanted to come to the club and warn you, I told her you would kill her. You wanna know what she said?”

I remain silent as he lowers his hands, linking his fingers so they rest, together, on the edge of Tiia’s bed.

“She said she feels safer with you, even with your blade pressed to her throat, than she feels with anyone else. Something about how you might kill her, but you sure as shit won’t let anyone else do it.”

“She needs therapy.” I tighten my hands around hers and spy my missing digit. The pain I hadn’t even noticed I no longer feel. Not tonight, anyway. Not for days. “Saying that shit isn’t a comfort to me, Agent Hale. She needs intervention. And maybe a sedative.”

“She needs you to have her back,” he concludes gruffly, his eyes burning against the top of my head as I bow over Tiia’s hand. “I need to know you’re gonna keep her alive in the moments I’m not there to do it. Because she’s too brave for her own good. Too ballsy for me to be able to relax.”

“She’s not?—”

“I don’t know what the future looks like. And I don’t know if you and her will…” He hesitates, then shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I sure as fuck don’t approve. But Tiia surfed with sharks when we were ten.”

Slowly, horrified, I bring my eyes up and study his. “What?”

“She does whatever she wants. Rarely waits for permission. And she hardly seems to mind if the rest of us worry. I learned when we were ten I had no control. My only obligation, kind of like yours to Felix, was to chase her into the water and ensure the sharks don’t take too much of a chunk out of her.”

“Am I the shark?” Carefully, brutally aware of the wires that snake away from her arm, I lift Tiia’s hand up and open her fingers. So I can study them. So I can elongate them and ignore the blood under her nails. “Or am I the waves coming down to drown her? Is my world the ocean, readying to swallow her up?”

“You’re…” He draws a deep breath, filling his chest and releasing it again as footsteps approach our room. Shoes scuff against the floor, and company, I know, is coming to force me to share her again. “You’re the man she gave her heart to,” he decides. “Against her better judgement. Against good advice. She did it, not caring if she might lose her life in the process. Which means she’s probably gonna spend more time in your ocean. And as a federal agent, it would be ill advised for me to join her in her adventures as often as I’d like.”

He sits back as a shadow falls across our doorway and Archer’s gaze stops on mine. My little brother has come to check in on the family he ran away from so long ago. His emerald eyes search my face first, then flitter across to the woman in a hospital bed.

He notices Roscoe, too and spares him just a second of disinterest.

Then he steps into the room, his arm extended back until the cute, compact, and fierce Doctor Minka Mayet follows.

“Is it okay we come in?” Arch enters anyway, drawing his wife closer until he can wrap his arm over her shoulder, then he stops by my side, his body warmth seeping into my skin and his broad hand coming down to rest on the crown of my head.

It’s a hug, sort of. A moment between brothers as he pulls me closer and I rest, for just a beat, against his powerful form. “How’s she doing?”

“Alright.” I straighten in my chair and watch Tiia’s unmoving face, even as Minka breaks away from her husband and helps herself to the chart at the end of the bed. “Surgery went well. She caught only one slug, and it missed most of everything important. Clipped the very top of her hipbone.”

“That’ll bother her when she’s old,” Minka murmurs, leafing through the pages. “BP is consistent. Vitals are good.” She frowns and reads. “Needed a couple of bags of O negative to get through.”

“Lost a lot of blood at the scene,” Roscoe inserts. His voice is hard, hard enough to draw Archer’s stony gaze. But he’s smart, and he’s as possessive as the rest of us. “I’m not leaving, Detective Malone.”

“Who is he?” Archer’s hard eyes stop on mine. “Who is that?”

“Her brother. Agent Roscoe Hale.” I swallow the disgust nestled in my throat. “FBI.”

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