SWNOVELS Dead of Wynter: Chapter 14
I slam the door to the office so hard the walls rattle from the force before taking long strides back to the desk. That woman is fucking infuriating. She was when she was a teenager, and I don’t know why I’m surprised that she’s even more so as an adult.
Doesn’t she understand I’m just trying to keep her safe? Doesn’t she get that we’re at war and this very fucking suspicious box that was delivered with her name on it could very well be a trap? Dealing with her only reminds me why I stayed single all this time.
I should have moved on after I left. It would have been easier if I cut ties all together and moved on with my life rather than watching from afar, but I’m nothing if not a glutton for punishment. And I’ve never wanted anyone other than Wynter. I tried. I fucked so many women I lost count, and none of them ever matched up to my dove. They couldn’t hold my interest, and even during sex, I found myself imagining the woman I love beneath me.
“So things are going well then?” Storm smirks.
I glare at him before doing the same to the box. “Shut up.”
“You would never have been interested in her if she weren’t the way she is, and she’s always been like this. She’s always thought she knows better. It comes with the territory, I guess. Growing up in the environment we did with two older brothers who were involved in the family business.” He shrugs.
“I just got her back,” I whisper. “I can’t bear the idea of something happening to her, it makes me homicidal. When I saw her holding the box by the front door…” I trail off. God, the idea of what could have happened makes my heart beat so hard in my chest it hurts.
“I know. Believe me, man, I know. Every fucking day in the family is another day one of us could get taken out. The accident proves that.” He shakes his head, staring at the leather chair his father used to sit in every night with a glass of scotch and read.
He always said it was his way of unwinding and letting the horrors of the day go. I didn’t understand that until I was older, until after I took my first life.
I scrub both hands over my face. It’s like there’s a live wire under my skin burning me from the inside out. “What do you think is in this thing?” I ask.
“Honestly, I have no fucking clue. I’m guessing not a bomb. It would have blown up by now.”
I nod. “I agree.”
Storm picks up a letter opener from the desk and carefully slides the blade through the tape until the flaps give way beneath it. We both take a breath as he opens the box with the end of the letter opener, careful not to touch it just in case it’s laced in poison.
The things the box could contain are limitless. The family receives any number of threats per day, usually body parts or the like, but what I’m staring at laying in the middle of the box takes long moments for me to put the pieces together.
“What the fuck is that?” Storm asks.
“It’s a dove,” I whisper. This threat isn’t for Wynter alone. No, this is for both of us, and it’s not a stretch to assume it came from one of the Russos. If I had to guess, I would say Elijah, but it could have been any of them.
His eyes move from the dead bird in the bottom of the box to mine, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. I chose to leave Wynter to keep her safe. My family is dangerous, they have no boundaries, and nothing is off limits to them, but we made a decision to allow me back in her life, and the moment I did, she was in danger again, maybe even more so than when I left.
“Don’t even think about it,” Storm says quickly.
“What?”
“Leaving. I see it in your eyes. You think she’s safer if she’s far away from you, and that may have been the case eight years ago, but not anymore. We’re all in danger. Every person in this house has a target on their back, and if anything, Wynter is safer now because there is nothing you wouldn’t do to protect her, including throw yourself in front of anything that could hurt her.”
“They threatened her because of me,” I say quietly. “This may be addressed to her, but it’s a threat to me. If I stay with her, they’re going to hurt her.”
Storm groans. “They threatened her before you came back.”
“They what?” I growl.
“When Angelo was trying to get to Emerson, he said that if he couldn’t get to her, he was going after Wynter and Snow. It’s why we went into lockdown.”
“And you’re only telling me this now?” I shout. I should have known he wouldn’t put the whole family into lockdown unless more than one of us was in danger, but fuck, he should have told me.
“At the time, we thought it might be an empty threat because of where it came from.”
“Those passports…”
He nods. “Yeah. I took a lot of what he said with a grain of salt, however, I’m never willing to gamble with my family’s lives, and I knew if he took one of them in place of Emerson that she would be beside herself and hand herself over.”
“Which would turn Rayne into a complete psycho.”
Storm nods. “Exactly. And we get threats every fucking day. I can’t count the number of death threats I get, so it wasn’t worth worrying you over. I was hoping the day you pulled your head out of your ass and came back wouldn’t be under such dire circumstances, but not even I could have planned for the accident.” He sinks into the chair behind the desk and sighs. “Dad would know what to do if he were here. He’d be able to give us a rock to look under, but I feel like we’re just going around and around in circles.”
“Have you been sleeping?” I ask.
“No. Not since the accident.” He sighs and looks back into the box at the dead dove. The symbol of my love for Wynter lays mutilated in the bottom, and neither of us can keep our eyes off it for long. “How would they know you call her dove? You’ve always called her that, but I don’t feel like it’s common knowledge. The two of you never even went public, so there’s no way anyone could know.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’ve only ever called her that in this house, and even when I’ve spoken to my uncles, I never speak about her with them. I never wanted them to know how much she meant to me.” That was the worst part of having to leave her, because I had no idea how my family even knew I loved her.
“Do you think we have a rat?” Storm asks.
“I don’t think we should rule it out.” I shrug. We’ve always bred loyalty. The Saint James family treats their men with respect. They are paid in accordance with what they do, and traditionally we’ve never had an issue.
“Have a look into everyone that comes and goes in this house that isn’t a member of this family. I want to know every person they’ve spoken to in the last six months right down to their mailman.”
I nod. “I’ll get on it now.”
“And Everett?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t leave her again. She won’t survive it.”
Those words ring through my head as I leave the room in search of my laptop, because the reality is, neither will I.