Page 42 of Crush (Deadly Hearts 1)

“But we have to. You saw her. She won’t settle for anything less. It’s in her nature to save. She has to do this. Do I like it? Hell no, but we have no option. Besides, Jake wants to see what she will do. Once he sees that she doesn’t cower behind the likes of me and you, he will think twice about coming for her again in a hurry.”

“I don’t like this,” David says. “It reeks of subterfuge.”

“Declan’s right. We have to let her go.” I hate saying it. I hate thinking about her going in there alone.

“I know that,” David says as if I’m stupid. “I was the one who said, ‘she is the storm’, remember?” He huffs out. “I don’t like that we’re now all lying to her about…” He waves his hand at Declan.

“It has to be this way,” Declan says. “Her father wants her protected and she will not let him go to such lengths. It has to be kept quiet.”

“Her father?” David asks. “Which one?”

“Rex,” Declan says. “We go way back.”

“Interesting,” David murmurs.

I take all of this in. I’m curious as to how Ruby’s father knows a man like Declan Gannon. It is plain to see from his cold eyes that he isn’t just a regular old bodyguard. There’s a darkness to him that matches Ruby’s, that matches mine. We are three alike and it’s slightly unnerving. I pride myself on being a solo player. I don’t like teams. Never have. Yet here I am going along with what someone else is dictating. All for a woman who only wants me to choke her while I fuck her painfully hard.

Why is that?

Because you, too, are falling in love with her. After just one day.

I sigh. “I’ll do this however you want to play it. You know the score and I want to keep Ruby safe. Where do you want me?”

“At her back,” Declan says. “My men are there in case it goes sideways and by that, I mean she gets captured or goes down hard.”

“Are we going to let her kill Jake?” David asks quietly.

“We aren’t going to let her do anything,” I state. “She calls the shots, we’re just the backup.”

“Precisely,” Declan says. “We are getting on the same page.”

“You should stay here, though,” I say to David to his relief.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he breathes out. “I’m not a fighter. But I’ll be here providing moral support.”

“And it’s where you are needed,” I say, my hand going to his shoulder. “She’ll need you to lean on when we get back.”

He nods and scampers off up the stairs.

“Give it twenty minutes and then I’ll tell her. Don’t worry about your friend. My friend won’t let him come to too much harm.”

I grimace. From the picture that Jake’s men sent, it appears that Ramsey is being tortured. I have a terrible feeling that if Ruby ever finds out we stood around here with our thumbs up our arses while her boyfriend — yeah, that hurt to hear — gets tortured, she will never forgive us. I don’t think it's high on her list of virtues. Cross her once and you’ll regret it. That’s definitely her motto. I nod and make a mental note to tell Ruby as soon as all of this is over that I want more from her than just sex. She has brought a ray of light to my existence. Even though she is filled with darkness, her smile brightens up a room. Her sassy attitude is a breath of fresh air for me. I want to be everything she needs me for, but I need more from her. Hopefully she will come out of this attack unscathed and then we can be together, even if that means being in this with Ramsey and whatever the hell it is she’s doing with Declan.

I head up the stairs to find Ruby in her office, a knife held to some man’s throat.

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