Page 215 of At the Edge of Surrender

He peeled himself away and strode back to the bed. He tossed the rest of his things into the duffel and zipped it. I followed him out as he slung it over his shoulder.

He went straight for Maci’s room, quietly setting his bag on the floor outside her door before he crept into the muted light, while I remained hovering near the door.

He stood at the side of her bed, staring down at the child who was fast asleep.

Soft blonde waves strewn around her precious face.

Emotion poured out of him as he leaned down and brushed a kiss to her temple. His words were so quiet I didn’t know how I heard them. “You are my life, Angel Face. Daddy loves you. So much that I didn’t even know this type of love existed. And I promise that I’ll always come back to you.”

Reluctantly, he straightened, then he moved toward me.

Ferocity and fervency radiated from his forbidding form.

Chills skimmed across my flesh as he came to stand in front of me, a tower that hedged me in his intensity.

His hand slipped back to my cheek.

Energy thrashed. A gale force in the middle of the room.

“Had no clue, Emery.” His voice was a low, rugged scrape. “No clue that this type of love existed.”

I knew that time he intended the confession for me, and that love that I’d been trying to suppress ricocheted around in the depths of me.

But I had no time to acknowledge it before he tore himself away, grabbed his bag from the ground, and left me with the pounding of his boots on the stairs before the door clicked shut behind him.

FORTY-SEVEN

KANE

I satin the driver’s seat of the white Suburban that we had hidden behind a hedge at the far end of the lot. Near the sidewalk where Sophia Damascus walked her son to and from school each day.

It was the only time we thought she might not be being watched, though undoubtedly, there would be a tracker on her phone.

We’d made a pass in front of their house right before dawn when we’d made it to Eugene, Oregon, verifying her piece of shit husband’s truck was there. That it was the same as the intel Cash had gotten that he drove a brand-new gray Tundra.

He typically left for work at seven thirty in the morning and arrived back at just after five, though based on the information Sophia’s best friend had given, it wasn’t atypical for him to drop in at random hours throughout the day to make sure she remained bent to his twisted, tyrannical will.

We needed to nab them before they got onto school property. Back where we’d remain invisible, and they’d simply disappear into the morning.

It was the only way we were going to get them out of this withouta showdown. Without anyone else realizing what was happening. We needed them to become little more than a missing person’s report.

And we needed Sophia’s cooperation to do it.

For her not to freak out when we grabbed them. For her to remember the hints that her best friend had given her that someone was coming. That there was going to be a way out of the torment that plagued their lives.

That purpose pounded inside me. The one I’d made for my mother on that fateful night when I realized the path I’d been traveling had to come to an end. When I stood there realizing who I was meant to be.

To fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

In every way.

“This feel off to you?” Theo asked. He itched in the passenger seat, dude antsy as fuck, continually peering through the window at the slip of street we could see from our vantage point.

She wasn’t due to walk down that street with her six-year-old son for seven more minutes.

I blew out through the tension that thickened the air. “We knew this extraction might be messy.”

It was the whole reason he and I were there. The reason we’d taken over for River when this was normally his gig. To protect him from the added dangers when he had his family he needed to be present for.

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