Anti-Hero (Wild Heart Ranch Book 4)

Charlie furrows his brow. “What list are we talking about?”

“You know which list. The one with all of his rapists,” I hiss, unable to keep the frustration out of my tone.

Charlie sends me a look, which I ignore.

“Stop calling them that,” Ant bites out.

Smokey headbutts me, something she does whenever I get angry or frustrated. Scratching behind her ears, I explain to Charlie, “I was looking up their information and needed help. I gave Anders the list—clearly a mistake—and after his team discovered all their data, he gave it back to Ant.”

Ant’s uncle, Javier, shifts in his seat. “Where is this list?”

I shake my head. “Oh no. You’re not getting anywhere near that list. We don’t need Chico and the Unhinged Uncle going after those people. You’re far too emotional for this.”

Ant snarls at the characterization, and Javier turns to face me. “Why is that so wrong? I spent ten years of my life looking for him, and I am happy to spend the rest of it hunting down the men who hurt him.”

Ant vehemently shakes his head. “Tío, you’ve already done too much for me. This would hurt you too much.”

“Nephew, there is never too much. I would sacrifice my life for you.”

Ant gets up and kisses Javier’s forehead. “You’ve begun something beautiful here with Levy. I won’t let you sacrifice your happiness. You can help me with the assholes in Mexico, but I’m putting my foot down for the rest. You stay here and let Levy love on you.”

“For once, I agree with Ant,” I say as gently as possible. “This works better when you can be dispassionate. Cold. When you can kill without remorse.”

Ant plops back into his chair—which practically swallows him—and raises his hand. “Oh! You mean like me?”

I wrinkle my nose. “You cannot go after your rapists. We’ll send Anders and Hopper.”

“You do know that Hedy signed off on this, right?”

I roll my eyes. “Maybe that would mean something if she weren’t also Anders’ therapist. Or if she hadn’t recruited him and Odd into whatever insanity they have going on in Wimberley.”

That’s a different argument for a different day.

Ant’s small hands ball into tiny fists. “You don’t have to like it, Erik. Or even respect it. But if anyone should get to kill those johns, it’s me. Do you know why Anders gave me their information?”

“Because my cousin wants me to put my foot up his ass?” I spit out.

Why is everyone so determined to put Ant directly in the path of danger?

I swear, one of these days, I’m going to wrap him in bubble wrap and guard him like Heimdall guards the rainbow bridge. Smokey nips at my hand, and I go back to petting her.

“Because he knows this is important to me,” Ant explains. He’d almost sound reasonable if we weren’t talking about a fucking murder list of all the men who—

I can’t even think about all the things they did to him.

Ant gestures to the disgruntled snarl on my face and continues, “It’s important for my recovery. It’s important for my development as a member of his team. I’ll work around whatever missions we have to go on. I’ll do it on my own time. I’ll bring help when it makes sense to bring help.”

“You are not going to kill those rapist motherfuckers all by yourself. That is fucking ridiculous.”

Ant blinks at me and Moose lets out a low woof.

The traitor.

“Language,” Charlie warns under his breath.

I turn to him, incredulous. “What do you mean, language? It’s not like I called him a kid.”

I used to do that until my Aunt Anja ripped me a new one. I’ve even stopped calling Ant a kid in my head, which I think is progress.

It’s also a little hard to keep doing when he wakes up with scruff on his face. He’s usually fully dressed in the main areas of the house, but I’ve swum with him in the creek behind Javier and Levy’s house. He’s even got a little chest hair.

Not to mention the light fur between the deep Venus dimples above his tiny, round backside, which have somehow made it into my dreams. Shameful fantasies, really, in which I imagine my thumbs settling into those sweet dimples as I grip his hips and…

Definitely not a kid.

Not the point, Bash.

“You don’t get credit for not calling me a kid when I’m old enough to buy my own beer,” Ant points out, bringing me back to reality.

“Sure, fine, but you barely come up to my nipples.”

His mouth drops open. “I’m almost at your shoulder!”

I flashback to hugging him at the last pool party for making the winning point in water volleyball, and I was able to comfortably rest my chin on his head. He reached the divot in my collarbones, maybe.

It was weird how well he fit against me, given our nearly sixteen-inch size difference.

“I’m just saying. You’re small, and it’s ridiculous you think you can, I dunno, roam the countryside exacting revenge.”

“You know I’ve killed people twice my size, right? Once to save your stupid life.”

“Yes,” I admit, rubbing my chest. I hate to concede the point, but I’ve seen the video. He absolutely saved my life.

“So I don’t need your motherly condescension, your head pats, or your hyperbolic concern. I have already been killing people on my own. A fact you only know because I told you.”

Fucking hyperbolic. Ant’s studying the things he missed in school with my Uncle Georg, and Georg says he’s smarter and faster than even my twin cousins, who are literal geniuses. Not that I’m surprised. He created a whole persona to shield himself from those fucking rapists. Not to mention he passed his GED test two weeks ago with a perfect score, and now he’s considering online college classes. For fun.

The truth of the matter is, I worry that his intelligence makes things more dangerous for him, not less.

“I seem to recall you needed help cleaning up your mess.”

“Yes. I did. I made a lot of mistakes,” he admits. I raise my brows at his massive understatement, but he ignores me and continues, “But I’ve learned since then. You know this because you’re one of the ones who helped me refine my technique. Everybody here has helped me become better at this. I am now very, very good at it. A fully grown adult who can kill people without remorse and without leaving a trace. In fact, I killed somebody this weekend, and you will never know who it is.”

I’m so thrown by how calmly he’s saying this that the last sentence takes a second to register.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. When did you have time to kill someone? You were helping with the fencing thing at the rodeo. After that, you drove over to help Sparrow with his horses because Luke hurt his wrist or something.”

“That was during daylight hours.”

“I know. You were here in the evening.”

“Was I?”

“I didn’t hear the truck take off.”

“Because I pushed it onto the highway,” he admits, looking way too proud of himself.

That’s it. I’m fucking getting extra security cameras for inside the house. I don’t care what Charlie says about privacy.

“How the hell can you push it? You weigh, what, ninety pounds?”

“I do not weigh ninety pounds, you fucking tree. It doesn’t matter how much I weigh because I am incredibly strong. You need to get it through your thick fucking skull that I am an adult. And a killer. A pretty damn good one at that.”

Charlie and Javier follow us like a tennis match, barely concealing their grins. You’d think those two would be more interested in his safety.

“Charlie and I literally dragged you from the clutches of evil, Ant. There is no reason for you to have to go out and randomly kill people. I thought you agreed not to do that.”

He swipes the air with an open hand as if to erase my words. “I am not having this argument with you again. Also, I didn’t do it randomly, and I didn’t do it without permission. I just wasn’t working with this team when I did it.”

“Wait. What? You’re working with Wimberley now?”

“Not officially. Anders has been giving me the broke assholes for practice. Which, now that I understand how Wimberley does things, makes sense.”

“Aww. Anders is running a murder internship,” Charlie says, fucking grinning as he shakes his head. Like it’s cute or something.

“I am going to rip my cousin’s head from his shoulders, I swear to God,” I growl, getting up to pace the floor. “I can’t tell what’s worse. You randomly going on solo missions in the area with fucking Anders as your mentor or the completely preposterous notion that we’re gonna let you wander the country on a mission to kill every last one of your rapists like some fucked-up Kill Bill scenario.”

“I have already asked you to Stop. Calling. Them. That!” Ant yells, gripping the ends of the arms of his chair. “For fuck’s sake.”

“That’s what they are, Ant,” I snap, tired of tiptoeing around things. “They raped you. They victimized you over and over. If you can’t handle naming it, then maybe you aren’t ready to go out and kill them.”

Charlie and Javier jump up from the couch.

“Hey!” Charlie shouts, something I’ve seen him do maybe twice. “Erik, you are way the fuck out of line here.”

“Oye, pendejo. Watch your fucking mouth around my nephew,” Javier snaps, pushing past Charlie, ready to defend Ant with everything he’s got.

The one who’s gone quiet, however, is the guy who never seems to shut up. I finally look over and immediately want to eat my words.

Ant’s chin wobbles, and he’s fighting back tears.

“Oh,” he says, his voice barely audible as he chews his lower lip, obviously trying to arrest the emotion threatening to overtake him. “That’s…that’s how you view me. It’s not even my age or my size, is it? All you see is a victim. Got it.”

Nodding to himself, he unfolds from the chair, stands, and turns toward his hallway. Bunny follows and, just like I taught him, nudges Ant’s hand to make him feel better.

“Ant—”

He ignores me and keeps going. Javier looks like he wants to rip my face off, but it’s Charlie’s look of realization and disappointment that gets me moving. We both know I know better, but I can’t help how I feel. It’s different with Ant. It just is.

Still, I have majorly fucked up.

I jog over to him, catching him before he can open his bedroom door. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I start again. “Ant, I’m so—”

Whatever I was going to say gets lost as soon as Ant’s hand lands on mine. Within seconds, he’s twisting my arm so violently that I fall forward to prevent my elbow from coming out of its socket.

Using the proximity and his lightning-fast reflexes to his advantage, he pivots and lands a kick right behind my knee, driving it to the ground. He then grips his doorframe to power another, far more brutal kick. When it lands, it feels like it’s gone straight through the middle of my chest.

I fall back, pain shooting through the bruised and torqued knee. I then awkwardly tip over to my side, trying to just fucking breathe, while he stands over me and punches me in the face twice in quick succession.

Before I can even process what’s happening, he grabs me by my ears and smashes his knee to my nose, breaking it with a wet crunch. He steps back, resetting his posture, and it dawns on me that he’s about to put me in the hospital.

“Ant!” Javier yells.

Ant throttles the kick aimed for my ribs and holds up his hands. Breathing heavily, he kneels in front of me, his chest hitching and tears flowing freely.

“When you say rapist, you ignore the rest of it. The sex wasn’t so bad in the end. It was the dehumanization,” he says, displaying the deep scarring on his palms. Scars given to him by the traffickers who stole his very language. “It was the being sold like cattle. It was the everything, everything, everything, you fucking Nordic tree.”

My ears ring from the volume and violence of his words.

Ant takes a ragged breath, not quite done with me. “When I was in those rooms, I did whatever I could to give myself a sense of control. So I stopped thinking of them as rapists. I started thinking of them as clients. Johns. My johns. Who I would wrap around my perfectly manicured pinkie because it gave me back control. It allowed me to not lose myself to the everything. By the way, that’s what makes me and everyone else who dealt with that shit survivors. Not victims.”

Blood is pouring from my nose, running into the seams of the expensive wood flooring. Flooring that I convinced Charlie to splurge on because I thought this place should feel like a home.

Ant continues, even as his voice trembles, “So, yeah. Victim? Rapist? You don’t get to use those words. Though I shouldn’t have to explain myself, should I?” He shakes his head, rage flaring behind his eyes. “Levy says rule number one is to use the patient’s language. When you don’t respect my language around the thing that fucking stole my life, when you don’t like how I’ve changed to take back control, when you don’t let yourself see me. Me,” he says, poking his chest as he rises to his feet. “Well. Then you are no better than them.”

I sense Charlie’s and Javier’s presence in the hallway behind us, but they are silent as church mice. The only thing I can hear is the sound of our breathing.

Blood continues to drip from my nose, and pain pulses everywhere his sharp, efficient hands and feet landed. I fucking know the rule about matching the language the people who’ve lived the trauma use, and I broke it with one of the most important people in my life. Frustrated and angry at myself, I pound the floor with the side of my fist.

“Tell him, Erik,” Charlie says, his voice soft.

“Fuck off,” I bite out, fighting back tears.

Charlie kneels beside me and kisses my temple. “You have to tell him how you feel.”

My throat constricts at the thought, and the tears win, joining the blood. “He doesn’t want to hear about my stupid emotions.”

Ant rubs my shoulder. “Actually, I do,” he says, sticking out his hand.

I take it, still puzzling at his strength as he helps me to stand. Dizziness spins me around, and I lean against the wall to steady myself.

“Here,” Ant says, gesturing me toward him. “Bend down.”

I do as asked. He positions his thumbs on either side of my jacked-up nose and, with a quick, agonizing adjustment, snaps it back into place. Javier hands me a warm washcloth, and I gingerly wipe down my face. Taking a deep breath, I look to the ceiling for the words.

“I…me and Charlie, we’ve been doing this for a while. You know, there’d be nights where we’d both cry ourselves to sleep after seeing something so horrible. But then it got…I dunno. Routine?”

Taking another breath, I curse the stupid tears and wince at the bruising pain radiating from the center of my chest. “Then you came along.”

I swallow down the wretched sadness that threatens to take me out. That night is as fresh in my mind today as it was over a year ago. Ant looks up at me with frustration and affection—which I do not deserve—at war in his eyes.

“Ant, that look you gave me when you got into the back of my truck? I’ll never forget it,” I choke out. “You were so brave and so terrified. After that, there was no way I was letting you out of our sight. Whenever I think about what those men did to you, I want to fucking curb-stomp every single one of them.”

“Then why is it so wrong that I want to do the same thing?”

A completely reasonable question. I hate it.

“It’s not wrong, Ant. Or maybe it is. I just…you’ve been saying it this whole time, but maybe you needed to hand me my ass so I could hear it. You are not the things that happened to you. You have worked too hard to put yourself back together.”

“Do you mean it?” he asks, some of the anger finally bleeding from his expression.

I nod. More than he could ever know.

“I…you can’t go out there by yourself. You’ll get hurt.” My voice cracks, but I keep going. “I know you will, and it’ll fucking kill me.”

“I can’t let them live, Erik. You have to know that.”

“I know, but I can’t let you go out there alone. I just…can’t.” I rub my forehead, already regretting the words before I even say them. “The only way this works is if I go with you.”

He draws his chin back, confused.

“You want to go with me?” he asks, sending a puzzled look to Charlie.

I lift my eyes to Javier. “What did they use to call me?”

“The Silent One,” he answers gravely.

Turning to Ant, I take hold of his small, deadly hands and kiss his bloodied knuckles. “If you let me, I’ll be your Silent One. I’ll go with you and be there when you take out these motherfuckers.”

“What about all these ops we have coming up?”

Charlie answers, his voice grave. “Wimberley’s guys are more than happy to help us pick up the slack.”

Ant looks from me to Charlie and back again. “Will you really let me do what I need to do? Even if it gets ugly?”

A tear tracks down my cheek. “Yes. I promise. I’ll protect you while you do whatever you need to do.”

“God, you are such a crybaby,” he says, wrapping his arms around my waist.

Even when he finds me irritating, he’s never been able to stay mad at me. I try not to think about what that means.

“Oof, careful. Some guy just kicked the shit out of me.”

He lets out a funny sound, like a sob-laugh or something, and tightens his grip. We’re both crying and laughing in the hallway, with Javier muttering “Pinches locos” behind us.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Ant and I crack up as Anders enters the hallway, his silver case in hand.

“Charlie sent me this bonkers text saying Erik was about to need my services, and I didn’t believe it.”

“I do, cousin. This one,” I say, gesturing to Ant, “broke my nose, fucked up my elbow, and my knee is in so much pain I can barely stand.” I chuckle, then wince and rub my chest. “Ow. Fuck. He also may have cracked my sternum.”

Anders holds out a fist, which Ant bumps, proud of himself. “I set his nose, but it’s still a little crooked. I say leave it.”

I laugh. “Fair enough.” Looking at Anders, I lift my chin. “Shoot me up with the good stuff. Ant and I are about to go on a road trip.”