She walks downstairs with her hand lightly on my arm and we grin at each other remembering all over again how she ran from me.
No more.
Well. I’m not averse to play chasing, but she’ll never get to leave.
“Would you like to have breakfast before we see the despicable pencil?”
Jessa snorts with laughter, which is what I want. My girl shouldn’t be tense over that arsehole.
“He does look a bit like a pencil with his pinstripe suits, doesn’t he.”
“Yep.”
“Let’s eat afterwards. No need to make ourselves sick and spoil a perfectly good breakfast.”
I check with second in command that David Bree-Fogg has been thoroughly frisked for weapons and we enter the dining hall to find him sitting bolt upright at one end of the table like he owns the place. Interesting. Overconfident. I sit at the other end and pull Jessa onto my lap when she goes to take a chair. She comes easily and drapes her legs over mine and her arm over my shoulder.
The best possible ornament for me, my girl.
“Mr Lambeth,” he says formally, his top lip sweaty. “My apologies for the unsolicited meeting. I would like to speak with you about a business matter.” His watery gaze slides to Jessa. “Alone.”
“Anything you want to say can be said in front of my fiancée.”
David Bree-Fogg’s mouth tightens. A child getting angry when his toy is taken away.
“Unless you’d rather she not know that you and her brother tried to have her murdered.” Jessa grips my shoulder and I stroke her waist. My sweet girl. She doesn’t deserve this.
“How offensive. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bree-Fogg splutters. It’s obvious he’s lying. He’s going red at the neck.
“You do. What is it you want?”
“Respectfully,” he gulps. “I don’t think you’re aware of the whole context here, Mr Lambeth. Her brother owes me a considerable debt, and his sister is part of the payment.”
Pompous arse. As though a flesh and blood woman can be payment. “That’s no concern of mine.”
“Grant.” Jessa shifts on my knee. “Excuse me for a moment.”
Something isn’t right when our gazes meet. But I trust and don’t ask, just pulling her in for a long, dirty kiss. The sort of kiss that leads to filthy fucking on the table.
“I love you,” she whispers against my lips.
Then I release her. It’s better she doesn’t see me deal with this. Whether I pay the arsehole off or shoot him, either can be difficult to accept the first time.
“I am appealing to your sense of fair play, Mr Lambeth,” the corrupt hatstand says once Jessa has left the room. “I understand a man such as yourself feels the need to sully my property before I have it. If you will return her to me once you are finished, in I suggest a week or so, I will be very happy to recompense you for any inconvenience in finding a new companion—”
“How much do you want for her?” My stomach roils and soul rebels at the idea of returning my sweetheart to him. I can’t listen to any more of this shit, and I’m reaching under the table for the gun I know is stashed there. Fuck agreements and mafia precedents about not killing unarmed men in your own house. He needs to cough up a figure quickly and get the fuck out before I shoot him for disrespecting my future wife. The money is irrelevant. Jessa is worth everything to me.
“Two—”
A shot rings out and before my head knows what’s happening, I’ve pulled the gun from its hiding place, put a second shot in the polluted Long Island iced tea’s brain. Bree-Fogg slumps in his chair, instantly dead, as I run out, my heart in my throat, to find Jessa.
I bolt from room to room, my team arriving, guns out and faces grim. Bile rises.
“Find her!” I yell and they all scatter.
Jessa. Where is she?
The sound came from downstairs, maybe outside? But wouldn’t she have gone back to our bedroom?
I don’t know and on instinct I run to the front door, then around to outside the dining hall we were in and I see her.
Jessa stands with the gun I gave her hanging loosely from her fingers, staring down at her brother’s body on the floor.
He’s bleeding from the chest and muttering vile obscenities to a frozen Jessa.
“Sweetheart.” She looks up and seeing me breaks the stasis. She flies into my arms and I catch her as she clings to me.
I kick the gun from her brother’s hand and move Jessa away. He’ll bleed out soon enough.
The group of my staff who have come running at the sound of gunfire spring into action, trussing up her brother and checking the perimeter. My second in command isn’t here. Not a surprise. But my softly spoken PA is.
“Ron.” My PA snaps to attention. “Do you want a job that doesn’t require buying women’s clothes?”
“Yes boss,” he replies promptly, a happy gleam in his eye.
“Good. Find my useless second in command, dispose of him, and as my new second in command deal with these two messes please. Ensure this sort of fuck up never happens again.”
My PA grins. He deserves a promotion, and clearly this is exactly what he enjoys.
Back inside, on a sofa with her legs over mine, it takes a while to coax from Jessa what happened. The shock has made her numb.
“He was going to shoot you,” she says eventually, face creased with horror and, I think, anger. “Through the window. I couldn’t let him hurt you. Or take you from me.”
My heart swells to the size of a country. A continent. My heart is so full of Jessa it should have burst by all physical laws. But my love for her defies every rule. I don’t tell her that it’s bulletproof glass, because that’s beside the point. He tried to hurt her, and I stopped him. He tried to hurt me, and she stopped him.
We’re a team.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“He scolded me for using the wrong fork and didn’t even look up as he knew I was trying to escape. He knew I was going to die in a so-called accident and he couldn’t even face me as he thought I left for the last time.” Despite her words, her face is conflicted. My sweetheart is loyal well beyond what her brother deserves. “He doesn’t care about me. He sacrificed me for his own addiction. I could forgive all that. I’ve just learned about addiction myself. It’s heady. But he tried to kill you. I can’t forgive that.”
The exhalation of relief from my chest is almost a purr. She loves me. “Would you like to get married in Australia, sweetheart? A destination wedding.”
She squeezes tight on my hip. “Yes. Anywhere with you.”
