Page 12 of Coal
The door flies open, and Nickel stumbles in with what can only be described as a whirling dervish in his arms. All I see is a flash of red hair and wild eyes before Kara is across the room andwrapping her arms around the woman, pulling her away from Nickel, who bends over panting.
“Thea, it’s okay, it’s okay. Calm down,” Kara says, pulling the woman away from Nickel. How she’s managing that is beyond me because the woman tops her by at least four inches.
Copper calls out to Bolt and Iron, who are standing laughing in the doorway. “If all is good out there, can you two find something to tie this fucker up with?”
Bolt pulls a roll of duct tape from his pocket and tosses it at Copper, who grabs it and starts to tie up Kelly.
Ignoring the women for the minute, I look over at Iron. “Is the house secure?”
“Yeah, Pres, we rounded up the staff and locked them in the pantry. They’re good for now. We can let them go once we get the lay of the land here.”
With that worry gone, I turn back to the women, who are standing with their arms wrapped around each other. They’re both pale and looking worried. Recognising her as the woman who’d piqued my interest yesterday when she’d left the cottage, crooking my finger towards her, I call her to me. She’d taken on a bunch ofstrange men to get to Kara, and I was interested to find out why. She gives Kara a look but unwraps her arms from around her and walks over to me.
When she reaches me, I stare down at her. While she’s tall, she’s still shorter than my six foot four. She isn’t what I would call pretty or even beautiful; what she is, is interesting.
Now that she’s closer to me, I can see that she has clear brown eyes, her face bare of any makeup, with a scattering of freckles dotted across high cheekbones, and her full lips hold a natural pink colour.
What holds my attention and has me intrigued is that even in a room full of strangers that she knows nothing about, she meets my eyes without flinching. This isn’t a weak woman. She has strength and steel in her backbone. There are enough familiar characteristics in her face that I can see she’s family to Kelly, but I’m not yet sure how she fits into their dynamic.
What I do know is that he hadn’t wanted me to know about her because she wasn’t in any of the information we’d found. And that intrigues me.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
She studies me carefully. I don’t know what shesees in my face, but she decides to reply, “Thea Kelly.”
I hum a little at the news. I’d already figured she was related.
“What’s he to you?” I enquire, tilting my chin to Kelly, who’s getting redder in the face by the minute.
Her eyes flick to him and harden. Her answer surprises me. “He’s my father.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline at that news, and she smirks a little at my surprise.
“I’m his oldest daughter,” she explains.
“Interesting,” I reply with a nod, wondering why she hadn’t been part of the marriage offer instead of the two younger girls.
“Why didn’t he offer you to me?” I enquire.
Thea tilts her head before answering, “Because he needs me for his black-market weapons business, and he knows that if I liked and trusted you, I’d never turn on you. Plus, he knows I’m not what most men go for.”
Frowning at her choice of words, a rumble leaves me, and her eyes widen when I mutter, “Their loss.” And it was. If the men in her life couldn’t see her worth, then it was their loss. I’dgrown up with a mother who had felt the same way, and I’d watched over the years as my dad built her up. I had a feeling Thea was the same. It seemed the Tin men had a type.
Getting serious again, I ask, “Do you want to be here?”
That’s when the stupid bumfuck opened his mouth, “Remember what I can do, Thea. Don’t be a stupid cunt.”
The woman in front of me winced at his words, and it had me wondering what he had on his daughter.
Looking at Bolt, I jerked my head to Kelly. “Keep him quiet,” I growl out.
“With pleasure,” Bolt grins. Taking another roll of duct tape from his pocket, he slapped a piece over the bumfuck’s mouth. Once I see he’d no longer be a problem, I turned my attention back to the woman in front of me who had said nothing through all this, nor had she tried to intervene on her father’s behalf.
“I’ll ask you again. Do you want to be here?”
She shakes her head, “No. But I can’t leave.”
“Why not?” I demand. “What does he have on you?”
