A Wilde Christmas (Wilde Security Worldwide #0.5)

Chapter 5

five

When the news dropped, everyone offered cheers and well wishes.

Everyone except Cade.

He went deadly silent. The calm before the cat-5 hurricane. He handed his daughter to his brother and calmly walked across the room.

Davey met him halfway. “Cade, man, I know this is a blow. You’ve been with WSW forever and?—”

Cade slammed his fist into Davey’s jaw. He hadn’t seen it coming, and it rang his bell hard. He staggered into the tree. It tipped and crashed to the floor, its ornaments scattering across the hardwood.

The room plummeted into a stunned silence.

Nova started to cry.

“Cade Hudson Wilde!” Eva snapped, pulling out her mom voice. As a tough-as-nails detective with nearly forty years of experience dealing with the worst criminals humanity had to offer, her mom voice sounded a hell of a lot more intimidating than most. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Cade ignored his mom, took the baby from Weston, and walked out, snagging a tactical diaper bag from the floor as he left.

Eva whirled on her husband. “You knew about this and didn’t warn him?”

Hands on hips, Cam stared at the ceiling. “I couldn’t. I was locked into an NDA.”

“That was my doing, Aunt Evie,” Fiona said. “We didn’t want the news leaking before we were ready to announce.”

Eva glowered at her. “It’s a family company. He should’ve been able to tell us .” She turned her glare back to her husband. “NDA or not, you should’ve told us.” Then, she stormed out after her son and granddaughter.

Cam exhaled a curse and chased after them.

Davey tasted blood on his tongue. He touched his lip, and his fingers came away red. Mom rushed to his side with a cold pack wrapped in a washcloth. As a kid, he always thought she was magic because she instantly appeared out of nowhere with first aid supplies. Now he knew she was just paranoid and well-prepared because her boys—husband included—were constantly banging themselves up. She fussed over him until he took the ice pack and gently nudged her away.

“I’m okay, Mom. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not!” she fumed, and tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, that Cade and his goddamn temper!”

He set the ice pack down and pulled her into his arms. “Mom, I’m okay. I’ve taken harder hits.”

She started shaking, and he realized too late that had been the wrong thing to say. She wasn’t only angry about the punch. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have fazed her. Between her sons and her husband and his brothers, she was used to the occasional fistfight breaking out. But she’d kept such a tight lid on all of her fear and anger since he was injured, and the seal was cracking. That punch had been the last straw.

He didn’t know what to do as she sobbed into his chest and desperately looked over her head to his father for help.

Jude peeled her away and held her with the ease of a man used to comforting his wife. “C’mon, sweetheart. You’ve been on your feet all day cooking. Let’s go lay down for a bit.”

“We’ll clean up,” Greer’s wife, Natalie, offered. She enlisted the rest of the aunts, and the three of them disappeared into the kitchen.

The remaining uncles hesitated, and then Greer said, “Let’s go help the wives and give the kids some space to talk.”

When they were gone, Davey scanned the faces of his brothers and cousins.

His employees.

Shit. Why did he sign those papers?

His brothers were both red-faced from trying not to laugh.

Daphne and Celeste looked like they wanted to be anywhere but here. Both hunched over Daphne’s laptop as if whatever was on the screen were the most interesting thing in the world.

Liam and Bridger—Greer and Natalie’s sons—had been deep in an intense chess match all evening, barely even breaking for dinner, but now they stared at Davey and the downed tree, the game forgotten.

“What happened?” Liam signed. He’d been born deaf and had a cochlear implant, but often turned it off in noisy environments—like a Wilde family Christmas party—because he preferred the silence. His disability had never slowed him down and hadn’t stopped him from becoming one of the baddest badasses Davey knew. The man could shoot any weapon you put in his hands, from an arrow to a sniper rifle, and his aim was almost supernaturally good.

Bridger signed back, explaining the situation to his older brother. He was the calmest of all the Wildes, level-headed and serious. “Basically,” he added out loud, “Cade’s being Cade.”

Liam turned on his implant. “Well… fuck.”

“Yep, that sums it up.” Fiona walked to the bar and poured herself yet another glass of wine.

Weston joined her and measured out a double shot of whiskey, which he downed in one breath. He set the glass down with a clunk, took out his wallet, and started to hand a twenty to Fiona but pulled it back. “Wait, you had insider knowledge.”

“What?” Elliot asked.

“The bet,” Weston explained. “First blood. We all bet on our dads, but she bet on Cade and Davey.” He shook the money in Fiona’s face. “Because she knew .”

She snatched the twenty. “Of course I knew. I drew up the paperwork for the transfer, and I know Cade.”

“Cheater.”

Griffin—Fiona’s younger brother and a snarky pain-in-the-ass—scoffed and pushed out of his seat. “Why are you surprised? We all know our Fi-Fi is a self-serving bitch.”

She scowled at him. “Don’t call me that, asshole.”

“Love you, too, sis.” He blew her a sarcastic kiss. “And, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of family drama for today. See ya.” He snagged a cookie from the tray on the coffee table, took a bite, and saluted with one finger before he left.

The party broke up fast after that, everyone making excuses while Davey and his brothers picked up the tree. The aunts and uncles left after finishing in the kitchen, but not before Greer pulled Davey aside.

“This company has been my life since before you were born,” he said, his gaze direct. “Do you know how it got started?”

Davey lifted a shoulder. “You five all left the military and needed jobs.”

Greer shook his head. “No, that’s not the entire story. The year before I started Wilde Security, your father was supposed to go on patrol in the mountains of Afghanistan, but he came down with a bad case of pneumonia and ended up getting shipped to Germany for treatment. That mission went wrong, and all but one Marine lost their lives.”

Davey knew the story. It was the reason Elliot’s middle name was Harlan, after Dad’s friend who had survived that clusterfuck. Dad had always carried a shit-ton of survivor’s guilt about it.

And now, Davey also knew exactly what that felt like. He wasn’t the only survivor—of the six men on his team, three others had survived the landmine and subsequent firefight—but the guilt of those deaths still sat like molten lead in his gut.

Greer looked at the tree, standing again but missing half its ornaments. “The following Christmas was the first time my brothers and I were all together for the holiday in years. We were in a bar, and we’d been apart for so long that we barely knew each other. I looked at Jude and realized we could’ve had an empty seat there instead of his loud, annoying ass, and it terrified me more than anything I’d ever faced in my military life. So I started Wilde Security to take care of my brothers and bring us back together as a family.”

Well, shit. That info did not make the burden of taking over the company any lighter.

Greer squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll bring this family back together again, Davey. I’m certain of it, which is why I chose you.”

No pressure. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know it.” He took his wife’s coat from the closet in the foyer and helped her into it, then grabbed his own.

“Merry Christmas, Davey,” Natalie said, kissing him on the cheek. She was the sweetest of his aunts, an all-around good person, and a soothing presence amid the crazy. Bridger took after her.

“Merry Christmas, Aunt Tally. Sorry for…” He waved vaguely at the living room. “Everything.”

“Not your fault. Besides, it wouldn’t be a Wilde Christmas if the tree stayed up all night.” She stepped outside, and Greer followed but stopped and glanced back before shutting the door.

“When you get a second, check your company email. A new client is lined up for a protection job after the holidays, and you were requested by name.”

Dread curled through Davey’s gut. “Me? How could they even know I’m no longer with the Navy?”

Greer ignored the question and pulled on his coat. “I think it’d be good for you to take this one during the transition to get back into the swing of how we do things at WSW.”

Was that a… twinkle in his eyes? Uncle Greer was not the twinkling type, and all of Davey’s alarm bells started clanging as the door shut. He grabbed his phone from his back pocket to check the email, but his brothers filed into the foyer for their coats, distracting him.

“We’re heading out,” Elliot said.

“Gonna find a bar and some lonely ladies looking for a little holiday cheer.” Dominic gave an exaggerated brow waggle and pulled open the door. “You in?”

Davey shook his head. “Nah, I’m good. Have fun.”

“Oh, I plan on it.”

Elliot followed him out, but, like Greer, he paused on the front porch and glanced back. “Tell Mom and Dad we’ll be back for gift exchange in the morning.”

“I plan to be hungover,” Dominic called gleefully from the driveway.

Elliot rolled his eyes. “Only you would be cheerful about the prospect of a hangover, Dom.”