Page 8 of One Hellion of a Christmas

He pointed at where the older set of identical twins was watching with mischievous, swirling brown eyes.

“Why did you encourage your brothers? You are both old enough to know better. Are you trying to get them killed?”

“Sometimes you have to let Ciaran learn things like that on his own,” the one I was guessing was Elijah said with a shrug. He tended to be the mouthier of the two, but I couldn’t tell them apart even when I tried hard. The only way I could differentiate between Aidan and Ciaran was because Ciaran was typically the one leading the charge into the disasters they created.

Ciaran also tended to be my favorite. I was glad Jamie had saved the kid. I might have missed him if the boys had succeeded in their latest bad idea.

Losing interest, I turned my attention back to my phone. Vaughn was over at Gian Fontana’s house. Those two weren’t friends, but they did work together, pooling their resources to take down as many sex trafficking rings as possible. Abi was so fucking proud of her husband for how many kids and women he had helped rescue over the years. I’d tagged along with Gian and a few of the Angel’s Halo brothers to assist in the extraction of some of the victims. But it was really my brother who handledthe most important parts of finding and shutting down those sick motherfuckers.

Some of the victims were transferred to Sanctuary in Creswell Springs. Some were returned home. Others were flown back to whatever country they had been taken from. It was good work, but probably not enough to cleanse Vaughn’s or my own soul enough to earn us anything but a one-way ticket straight to hell.

Still watching the app that kept track of Abi and Amala, I paused when I saw the little heart rate index on Abi’s avatar suddenly spike. Without hesitating, I called her.

As soon as she answered, all the buzzing in my head went silent. Her breathing was choppy—half hiccup, half wounded cry.

“Sammy, I-I can’t… I can’t.I can’t…”

The world around me narrowed to nothing but the sound of her voice. “You can’twhat, Abs?”

“Hayat,” she sobbed. “I can’t find Hayat.”

Next level crazy unlocked.

CHAPTER FIVE

hayat

Ky’s fatherand stepmother used to live next door to my pop-pop and nana. I’d met them both countless times. Neither had impressed me. Jamie’s parents had randomly stopped by Carver Towers twice. Each incident had been less than joyous for their son. I hadn’t thought it was possible to dislike any of my in-laws as much as I did Hadley Renchford, but Jamie’s mom had proven me wrong.

She told me she was a beloved…princess? Duchess? I’d stopped listening to anything she said about ten minutes after meeting her the first time, when I noticed how she dismissed Jamie whenever he tried to speak to her. Something royal was all he had ever said about her and his douchebag father before and after their two visits.

Royally fake.

I called bullshit.

After witnessing how much of an asshole she was to Jamie, I might have threatened—emphatically promised—to drown the woman in the pool above our living room if she ever tried to visit again.

That had been more than two years ago. She hadn’t tried to visit again. Hadn’t even attempted to call Jamie, as far as I knew.Which was a good thing for her, because if she ever showed up at our door again, I was going to ask Sammy to eliminate my mother-in-law.

Even if she wasn’t legally my anything, I considered the guys mine in every way. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a ring or a piece of paper that declared me anyone’s wife. We were committed to one another for life, and that was all that mattered.

When it came to the families of my three amazing men, Sparks’s was the only one I’d never been introduced to. And there was a huge reason for that.

The PCC.

Sancho and Miguel Guerrero ran the Pacific Coast Cartel. Several times a year, Sparks’s brother gave him a call, a few of which he actually answered. But Sancho was a no-go for him, a major hard limit no one dared to push him on.

But despite having never come face-to-face with the man before, I knew as soon as I saw him that I was looking at Sancho Guerrero. Sparks had made sure I was familiar with the face of the one person I was supposed to run from if he ever approached me.

Seeing him in the flesh drove home all the stupid decisions I’d made recently. And now I was tied to a chair, facing one of my unborn baby’s grandparents. That was definitely going to earn me a well-deserved, not-so-fun spanking from Jamie.

So many times over the last few months, I’d told myself I was staying silent for the guys’ benefits, not wanting them to worry. We’d all been exhaustingly busy, and I didn’t want to add more stress to them. But the truth was, I hadn’t been ready to face the reality of how much our lives were going to change with my pregnancy.

That shouldn’t have kept me silent about suspecting I had a stalker, though. Of all the shit I’d kept to myself, that was theone thing that had not only putmein danger, but potentially everyone I loved.

I’d had more than one indication I was being stalked. Random things had engaged my fight-or-flight and made me stop to see if someone was following me. What if it was nothing more than my mind playing tricks on me? I’d been so tired, overworked, and fighting morning sickness—not to mention stressed to the max with the discovery of being pregnant.

Bile filled the back of my throat, burning my chest as my indigestion spiked higher. Apparently my kid wasn’t a fan of Sancho any more than any of their daddies was. But I fought through it, tilting my head back and smirking up at the man standing over me, all smug and thinking he had the upper hand because he was the head of the PCC.

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