Page 137 of Unveil
But Hatch only leans in further. “It’s not manipulation, Bordeaux. It’s facts.”
Sol scowls. “The Troisgarde is learning from its mistakes. Now that Luna is safe, Brylie has agreed to return to Italy with her parents?—”
“She’s what?” Dash breathes, pushing off the wall. “But her twenty-second birthday’s only a couple of months away.”
Sol’s left brow raises. “Which, as you Furys seem to continuously forget, doesn’t. Fucking. Matter.She’ll be safe there. The Lucianos have even deeper ties in Italy than here. Good riddance to any Wilde who tries to fuck with the mafia. That goes for Furys too,” he adds with a wry smirk.
Dash’s jaw flexes, but he leans against the wall again, shoulders slouching like something in him has loosened its grip. Maybe fear and relief all in one. Or maybe the calculating motherfucker is biding his time.
No matter how he plays what happens next, I get it. That instinct a Fury has to claim his woman is in constant battle with the even more desperate need to protect her, whether that’s gluing her by our side, like I did, or letting her go. Like I’m willing to do now.
That inner fight, though… It's why Dash is hyperfocused on med school, why Hatch pretends not to give a shit, and why I left my home to stalk and kidnap a woman I then had to convince wasn’t my enemy. We’ve all had to protect our girls from afar, which means we’ve had to figure out how to survive the gnawing pit that distance creates without letting it eat us alive. Avoidance, dissociation, confrontation. We’ve tried everything, but the ache still thrums through us like a second pulse under the skin.
None of us know how to explain the phenomenon, but among the King kin, the certainty that our women areours, sometimes at first sight, comes as surely as the skull birthmark we’re bornwith. As isolated as life gets in these mountains, you’re born believing in things bigger than yourself, and devotion to our future wives becomes gospel. Maybe that mark of Fury DNA carries some primal gene, because the second King told us the Troisgarde daughters were ours, something in us shifted.
Back then we were too young to know what to do with those instincts. But when Momma died, that drive to protect turned feral, like keeping our girls safe could be our second chance. After last night, I don’t think we were wrong.
“Wait a second, Brylie’s leaving?” Hatch asks. “So Lucy’s gonna be all by herself? For how long?”
“Not that it concerns you, but Brylie left for Boston less than an hour ago to join her parents.” Sol’s irritation hums throughout the room.
“But what does that mean for Lucy?” Hatch’s tone is more venomous than I’ve ever heard it. “Are Lucy’s parents going to take her back to Vegas? She shouldn’t be alone.”
Sol’s left eye narrows, tugging at his scars. “Like I said, it’s none of your concern what their plan is, and the last person they’ll tell isyou.”
Anger reddens the small scars peppering Hatch’s own face. “So she’s still in danger. You said yourself that she was freaked out about Luna. She’s scared out of her mind and all alone. She needs someone with her?—”
“Let me get this straight,” Sol laughs coldly. “Lucy asked herownparentsto give her space because her anxiety was so bad, but you—what? Somehow know her better than they do?”
Hatch stills. “Are you saying Lucy hasn’t talked to her parents?”
Sol scoffs like he’s disgusted. “Let me give you some advice, kid. Whatever you’re doing, Hatton—watching her, stalking her, tapping her phone—stop it. Kian will have your head. TheMcKennonsknow their daughter.Youknow nothing. If the Wildes come, Kian and Lacey will handle it.”
“Oh yeah?” Hatch rises to his full height, nearly an inch taller than Sol, but Bordeaux doesn’t flinch. “Like you did?”
“What did you just say to me?”
Hatch doesn’t back down, stepping up to him. “When—not if,when—the Wildes come for Lucy, it won’t be theMcKennonswho figure out how to savemy wife.”
I blink.
Well, shit.
I’ve never heard him call her that out loud before.
Hatch can get intense, but in a chaotic, unhinged way. I’ve never seen him this deadly serious.
“The McKennons don’t know the Wildes. None of you do. You haven’t fought them like we have. Orion’s the muscle, Dash the mind.Irun the underground, so I know how far and wide their network goes, and it’s filled with people who’d die before they ever gave their family up. From what I’ve heard, that’s not the case with you.”
He lets that sit, and Sol’s face twists with rage the longer the breath goes on, until Hatch huffs.
“Nah, don’t look at me like that. It’s not the Furys who fucked up. The Troisgarde already failed one daughter, even after we warned you, and still you won’t accept our help. Youwillfail again, because despite what your arrogance tells you, the Wildes. Won’t. Stop.” Hatch seethes, shaking his head. “Not until everything we love burns to ash.”
Those words sear a hole in my chest, but Hatch is gone in the next breath, shoulder-checking Sol on his way out. Dash follows after him, his face a dark cloud of rage too. Whether that’s at Sol’s arrogant naïveté, or Hatch’s storm of emotion, I don’t know. If I didn’t have Luna cradled against me, I’d be going after them too, or lighting into him myself.
Guilt has made Dash overprotective of Hatch since that day in the woods. He still thinks our scars are his fault, but we both failed Hatch, almost just as much as we failed our mom.
He just managed to live.
