“Move,” she snaps. The fire in her eyes is wild, almost out of control. The blaze has already caught inside her, and is burning hotter and hotter by the second. I have little hope of putting it out.
“Sophia, what do you think you’re going to accomplish by racing over there? You’re gonna give Hector exactly what he wants. He’ll cuff you in the basement and let each and every single one of his boys fuck you, and he won’t let your father go. He’ll end up dead, and you’ll end up broken and bleeding. And then I’ll end up dead, too.”
“No, you won’t.” Her dark eyes glint with steel, like she’s seeing some other outcome to this course of action.
“Of course I will. Do you think I’ll let you leave here without me? Fuck, Sophia, do you think I wouldn’t die trying to break into that place to get you out? Jesus Christ. Did you think I was just gonna sit here on my ass while you went off half cocked to confront one of the most dangerous men in the goddamn country?”
She doesn’t look impressed by my anger. “You can do whatever you like, Jamie. If my father is in trouble,”—pain flashes in her eyes now—“in trouble because of me, because I didn’t go home when I should have, then it’s up to me to rectify the situation.” She pulls her keys out of her back pocket finally and fumbles them, trying to get them into the motorcycle’s ignition. I watch her for a second, wrestling with myself. How the fuck am I supposed to talk her down right now? If I were in her position, I’d be feeling exactly the same. Nothing would stop me from going after Hector. Nothing at all. Except, maybe…
“Sophia? Sophia, look at me.” I place my hand over hers, stilling it as she struggles to stop shaking long enough to slide the key home. She looks up at me, furious and scared, and my heart aches.
“Sophia. I’m not going to let Hector do anything to hurt your father. Do you trust me?”
She blinks. “How can you stop him? What if he’s already hurt him? What then?”
I shake my head. “Do you trust me, sugar?”
I know her, and because I do, I know she’s desperately fighting the urge to say that she did trust me, but then she found out I was keeping this from her and now she doesn’t know what to think. She knows me, too, though. She knows I wouldn’t have kept information from her unless it was because I wanted to be sure, because I didn’t want to panic her unnecessarily. That knowledge makes her hold her tongue.
She says this instead: “What am I supposed to do, then, Jamie? Sit around on my ass and keep my mouth shut until you’ve figured out what our next step should be? Anything could be happening over there in that farmhouse. My father’s not a tough guy, okay? He’s gentle. Soft. He’s a Christian. He’s not cut out for this kind of thing.”
Her words mirror my thoughts. Alan Romera really isn’t cut out for kidnapping and physical abuse. He’s not the kind of man who will be able to withstand extreme violence. Alan’s the kind of man to give his interrogators everything they desire immediately, without question, which is tough because he actually doesn’t possess information or property that Hector wants. His only valuable commodity is his life, and he won’t be in possession of that for very long if we don’t play ball. The weird thing is that Hector hasn’t asked for anything yet. The details of Alan’s kidnapping had to be beaten out of one of Hector’s lackeys, where usually I’d expect him to play his cards right out of the gate. Hector’s hardly patient. He’s hardly the sort of man who sits on an ace when he can lay it out and watch the chaos ensue afterwards, rubbing his hands together in delight as everyone around him falls apart.
I sigh, knowing what’s going to come out of my mouth next and not looking forward to it. Sophia isn’t going to like it either, but she’s just going to have to deal with it. “I’ll go over there. Cade and I will go. We’ll talk to him, figure out the lay of the land. It’s our only option.”
Sophia shakes her head, no, even before I’ve finished speaking. “I won’t be left behind. I’ll lose my mind, wondering what the hell is happening to both my father and then you two on top of everything else. I’ll have a goddamn nervous breakdown. I am coming with you, Jamie, whether you like it or not.”
I can see from the look on her face that she means business. She won’t back down. Highly inconvenient, given what that means for us now. She’s going to hate me. “Okay. Fine. You can come.” I rub at the back of my neck, trying not to swear and failing miserably. “Come back inside, though, sugar. We need to talk about it. Figure out what our plan of attack will be.”
My beautiful girl narrows her eyes, swallowing. “Don’t even think about trying to put me off in there, Jamie. I’ve made my mind up.”
“I can see that.”