Page 66 of Wolf

“You gonna get angry like this when Anna tells you no one day? ’Cause she will,” Ash pushed, her toes lifting her higher into my face. “You going to swear to God at her, too, huh? You going to get mad? You going to hurt her like you want todome?”

“No!” I hissed. “Of course, I fucking wouldn’t. Anna’s my woman. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to fucking protect her, even it meant giving my life for hers. She’s the most precious thing I got; there ain’t no way I’d hurt her. Are you fucking crazy?” I went to move forward, but a hand across my cheststoppedme.

My head spun to Lamb leaning across the bar, ready to tell him to get his hand fucking off me as I told this bitch what was what, until I realized he wasn’t looking at mebutAsh.

Ash stood quietly, back on flat feet, her shaded eyes pointed up at me, chewing on herlowerlip.

“You were done?” Lamb asked her, and it was at that moment I realized what she had beendoing.

She’d been testing me. Again. Testing to see if I was good enough for Anna. For her bestfriend.

I also realized that all this time, when I said I didn’t grasp Anna and Ash’s relationship, that wasn’t true. I acted like I had been awaiting judgment on it, but deep down I had really been thinking of Ash using Anna’s selflessprotectiveness.

But it was this moment, now, that I realized Ash and Anna’s relationship was a lot stronger and a lot more intense than I had firstthought.

Ash was willing to challenge a huge man like me who towered her by over a foot and outweighed her by almost four times her massforAnna.

Jolted by the revelation, I barely heard Ash as she pointed to the glass doors and said, “Outside.” Her voice was a conflict of emotion, something telling me that despite revealing where Anna was, she wanted tostopme.

I cast her one more look, watching as she went back to her whiskey, overshadowed by Lamb, before I turned toward the door and headed straight outofit.

* * *

IfoundAnna lying on her back on top of one of the picnic tables, admiring the clear earlywintersky.

I patted Mint on the shoulder, sending him back inside to where it was warm, and headed over to mywoman.

When Anna noticed my approach, she tilted her head in my direction, waiting until I was standing over her, looking down at where her blonde hair was fanned over the wooden bench. Her baby blue eyes were muted in the dark light, and she was wrapped up in her thick property jacket. Then she started speaking. “That’s Orion,” she said, pointing up into the sky. I didn’t look up, instead taking in her face, the light smile on her lips, and the rare gentle expression, eyes glittering as she continued to move her hand around, pointing in different directions in the sky, naming each constellation. “Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, Taurus...” Her hand dropped down onto her chest, her eyes still flickering between each one. “In July 2005, Ash and I were in college. We drove as far as we could from home for the hell of it and ended up in this field in the middle of Derby, looking up at the stars as she googled what each one was on herphone.”

She then sat up, the wood creaking under her sudden movement as she hopped off, her feet touching the grass, the heels digging into the softer mud ever so slightly. “March 2008, we were at this beach in Cornwall, and there was this surfer there who was getting a bit too handsy with her, so I ended up hitting him with his surfboard, but it was one of those cheap tacky ones, and it split over his head. And when he complained to me to pay for it, back before I knew where to hit for knockouts, Ash just kicked him in the balls and we had to leg it as fast as we could. Do you know how hard it is to run on sand?” Anna laughed, the noise filling my ears, one of the most pleasant sounds I’d heard from her outside thebedroom.

She spun around on the grass, this lighthearted version of her bathing in the starlight as she practically glowed in frontofme.

Until shedidn’t.

“April 2012.” She stopped spinning, her hands dropping to her side. The gentleness of her expression soured into a painful wrinkle between the bridge of her nose, the saddened frown of her red lips, and the dropping of her eyes into the grass. “Ash wentmissing.”

“Missing?” I repeated, watching as Anna’s face shut down, the emotion drawing back as a cold, calm voice entered thechilledair.

“You wanted to know Ash’s connection to the Rothwells?” Anna asked me, the question rhetorical. “She’s the daughter they neverwanted.”

I felt my chest lurch as the words hit my ears. “Daughter?” I repeated, my eyes wide as Annanodded.

“They were never a family, not really. They wanted a daughter for show. For their perfect political family, to keep up their ruse. And for a long time, she was like that. When I met her, she was like this little porcelain doll. She didn’t laugh or smile unless she was told to. She was a puppet on a string. Soulless. I couldn’t leave her alone, and bit by bit she began to break out of her shell, started doing things she wanted to. She became a real person. And that’s where it all went wrong. For every disobedience, every embarrassment and shameful behavior, she was...punished.”

“Punished? What do you mean, punished?” I hissed, feeling a burn in my chest, which I saw reflected inAnna’seyes.

“Abused, beaten, tortured. Call it whatever the fuck you like,” Anna spat, her lip snarling, bearing her white fangs. “It went on for years and years until I’d finally had enough. I managed to convince her to leave. We were going to run where they couldn’treachus.

“We were supposed to meet up at Manchester Airport. We were going to get out of there once and for all. Get Ash away from her family and their abuse. When it got to an hour past the meeting time, I knew something was wrong.” Anna’s hands clenched at her sides, her top lip curling against her teeth. “I got to her home and was banging on their doors, demanding I see her, but they kept me out, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even bring myself to care about the danger; I searched all their hideouts, their meeting places, properties they owned, but there wasn’t a single trace of her. It wasn’t until three days later that I got thephonecall...”

Anna paused, her lip quivering as she fought to take in a slow, deep breath, a shaky one expelled inreturn.

“It was Ash.” She shuddered. “I was so relieved and so happy just to hear her voice, to know she wasalive.

“But that wasn’t all she had to say.” The single bit of emotion that had crept forward in Anna’s recount of events vanished, steel walls slamming up harder and stronger than I’d ever seen them before as she stood back, her blue eyes dead and icy, meeting mine straight on, empty of any affection I was used to seeingthere.

“Ash had been tied to a chair for three days, beaten, tortured, and you name it. It was Rothwell’s demon wife who had her, having volunteered to be the one to put Ash in her place. I don’t know how, but she had managed to get her ties free and grab a cell phone from one of the men who guarded her. She dialed me first, and I came straight away, but I arrived a momenttoolate.”

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