Page 30 of Out of the Darkness

“Not at all,” he replied. “But as I said, anyone who threatens her is a dead man. So, you better make sure they follow their orders to the letter.”

The phone went silent for quite some time. Xavier had even pulled it away from his ear to make sure that the call was still connected. However, after a while, he heard Rodrigo sigh again. “How did we get here, Xavier? How has our relationship come to this?”

Xavier leaned back in his chair, his eyes locked on Madelyn as she moved into her bathroom, no doubt to take a shower to clean up the mess he had left behind during their time in the alley.

“I don’t know,” he replied carefully. “I hold no ill will toward you, Rodrigo, and I will always be grateful to you and for everything you did for me.”

“But you found yourself a new family, it seems,” Rodrigo added softly, “in this Madelyn.”

“I have,” he agreed with a small nod of his head.

“And she is important to you?”

“The most important thing to me,” he corrected matter-of-factly. “I would die for her.”

He was admitting far more than he’d like to admit to a skilled killer, but there was no point in keeping it from him. Now that Rodrigo knew about Madelyn, he had the right to know how far Xavier would go to keep her safe.

“Well, I’m happy for you, son. Truly.”

“You are?” he asked. He didn’t mean to sound so surprised. He just wasn’t used to hearing stuff like that from someone like him.

Rodrigo believed that emotions were a sign of weakness, and in all the years Xavier had known him, he had never heard him say anything like that. To anyone. He didn’t even think Rodrigo had ever told Isabelle that he loved her, and she was his only child.

“Of course I am,” Rodrigo replied with a chuckle. “I’ve always known that you deserved better than this life of violence and bloodshed. Isabelle was born into it; you were not.”

“But you… you raised me to be who I am. You trained me to be?—”

“I only did what you asked me to do, Xavier,” Rodrigo interrupted. “You asked me to give your life a purpose, a meaning, and you always wanted to do whatever Isabelle was doing. Since I saw a lot of myself in you, I couldn’t say no to you. But I’ve always wanted you to have better. Why do you think I let you leave? No one leaves. You know that.”

Xavier pressed his lips together. “I did wonder about that.”

“Well, now you know. Look, I can’t ask the guys to protect your girl, but I can tell them to be on the lookout and to make sure that she’s not injured or killed by any one of us.”

“Make sure that you do,” Xavier replied. “I’d hate for us to have to end on such bad terms.”

It wasn’t perfect, and there was still the chance that something could happen to Madelyn if he wasn’t careful and didn’t keep her out of danger, but he would do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen.

He guessed the police were going to have a lot more cases on their hands because it appeared as though war was coming to Cedarwood.

Chapter Fourteen

Madelyn

The next evening, Madelyn was sitting on the couch in her living room with her feet tucked up beneath her while having a glass of wine with Melanie. She had asked Melanie to come by because she felt that it was finally time for her to tell her friend about Xavier.

This was not going to be an easy conversation to have, and Madelyn had made herself sick thinking about it all day. It was going to be hard to get her to understand when she couldn’t tell her that Xavier was a shifter or that he believed that the two of them were fated to be together. However, she had kept things from Melanie for long enough. Besides, if she and Xavier were going to attempt to be a normal couple, even though the two of them were anything but, she needed to be able to go out with him in public. So, she owed it to Melanie to give her a heads-up.

“Okay, I say this with all the love in my heart,” Melanie commented, setting her wine down on the coffee table. “But you look like you are either about to throw up or pass out. What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Madelyn gave her friend a weak attempt at a smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just…” She swallowed hard as she leaned over and set her own glass down. “There’s something that I need to talk to you about, and it’s probably going to be hard for you to understand.”

“Okay,” Melanie drawled out the word. “Because that’s not ominous or anything.”

“I know,” she agreed with a small nod. “I just don’t know how to say it. It’s not going to be an easy conversation.”

“Now you are just freaking me out. Spit it out already.”

Madelyn chewed on the inside of her cheek briefly. “Alright. Well, I… I met someone. A guy, I mean. He’s… he’s hot as hell, over-protective, likes to take control, and is all sorts of wrong for me. But the connection between us is really freaking strong and difficult to ignore. So, we, uh, we decided to see where it goes.”

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