Page 94 of Broken Dreams

Something must have happened.

Continuing my movement out of the room, I feel that sense of foreboding again. Fuck, fuckity fuck.

“Take this, I have a bad feeling,” I tell Ayla, pulling the door half shut to give her enough privacy to change. A moment later, she’s shoving the door back open, her steps unsteady.

“I’m ready,” she slurs.

Duncan scoops her into his arms because it’s faster, and we double time it through the house.

“Can you open the gate from here?” I ask her.

Signaling for Duncan to stop at the door, she begins to reach out toward the gate when her eyes widen.

“The light is green. The gate is open,” she whispers.

“Then that’s the way we’re going out,” Duncan mutters, looking out the window.

Hudson’s car is just moving through, so we jog right out the front door, and even shut it after us. Ayla stays quiet as we stay out of the headlights of her husband’s car, crossing the front lawn to exit out the front gate just as it begins to close. We couldn’t have planned this any better.

Hustling to the SUV, Duncan carefully puts Ayla on her feet and into the car. I climb into the vehicle just as he does, and he’s quickly turning over the engine and driving away. He doesn’t turn on the headlights until he’s turned away from Hudson’s house, just to be safe.

“Someone is going to come to the house to monitor you,” Duncan says, carefully glancing in the rearview mirror to check on her. We’ve both watched too many horror movies, and are waiting for her to lose her shit on us.

Thankfully she’s calm and nods, leaning against the headrest. Kidnapping my future mother-in-law wasn’t on my bingo card, but here we are.

“Why, Ayla?” I ask, disappointed and finally being able to say it.

“It’s so much worse than you could ever imagine,” she says softly. “Did you see the paperwork on my bed?”

“Yes, I packed them up in your bag. What about it?” I ask.

I’m terse, reeling at how close we were to losing her. I think part of it is how much of a mother figure she was for Duncan and I. It’s hard to see her as a coward.

“They’re proof that Hudson sold Quinn to a man named Miles. I don’t know his last name, but my husband arranged for my baby girl to be kidnapped,” she whispers. “I was packing to leave when he called me. He told me that I would never get to see our daughter again, because I didn’t deserve to. He said…”

“What?” Duncan asks, his knuckles turning white as he grips the wheel. We know his name because Quinn told us, but now it’s another nail to hammer into Hudson’s and Miles’ coffins.

“Hudson has become really successful because he’s laundering money with a gang in Wisconsin and another in Chicago,” she explains. “Since he’s several hours away, he figures it's less likely that anyone will connect him to it. My husband told me when he got home he was going to tie me up, throw me in the trunk, and give me to one of the gangs to rape until they killed me. It’s weak, I shouldn’t have done it. He sounded so close by…”

He was.We missed him by milliseconds. I don’t know what she’s been through in the years time has forgotten about her, but I can’t judge her for this. She’s fragile and small, and her husband knew how to push her past her limits.

“Okay,” I whisper, shuddering. Whatever else has happened, Quinn deserves to hear from her mother’s mouth. “Ground rules. Your daughter has changed a lot. Don’t expect her to be the same as she was at fourteen.”

“Speech is difficult for her,” Duncan adds. “So she’ll use silence as her shield. Don’t feel intimidated.”

“We have two scent matched omegas, and we put in our paperwork to claim them both,” I tell her, waiting for the judgement.

“That’s amazing,” she says instead. Tonight is making me a prickly bastard. “Love in every form should be celebrated. Congratulations.”

I can feel myself getting emotional and take a deep breath.

“Thank you,” I rasp. “There’s still a lot of hurdles left to overcome, but we’re getting there.”

We’re almost home, and I worry about springing this on Quinn. We just told her and Linus we’d be up front with her about things, yet here we are with another surprise. We’ll get Ayla situated and wait for Morris.

Hopefully, they’ll both understand. It’s clear there was no way we could have left her there. She’d be dead in order to escape her husband or dead by her own hand. Both of those options suck monkey balls.

Glancing at the time, I see she’s still performing, and I feel my anxiety sparking. I can only manage what I can control, which is the next few moments, and then the next. Duncan hasn’t received any calls yet, meaning we aren’t on the list of suspects.

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