Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Isabella

I sit in the backseat of a car that has seen too much battle in its life. Somehow, Tristan still seems to like it, the leather worn and weathered—not to mention uncomfortable as well. It rides slowly, almost like a tiger creeping through the concrete jungle that is Manhattan. It’s not the only predator out here, and that’s what frightens me the most.

I keep my head down, my hands clasped together in my lap, while my leg shakes with uncontrollable twitches. It’s all I have to not cry, to fight back the dread that trickles over inside my mind. There’s no fighting it as we park outside my apartment at last. I jump out of the car and heave in an inhale.

Carter grabs me haphazardly, pulling me into his side with a stern look in his stormy eyes. “Stay close to me.”

“Sorry,” I breathe, panting while the panic overcomes me. I don’t like being on this sidewalk, in this city… nothing makes me feel safe anymore. “Is Sam out of the hospital yet?”

“She is,” he hums, tugging me for the doors. “She’s with my family in the Bronx.”

I swallow hard. “Is that safe for her?”

“It is when Anita carries her pistol. No one is getting into that house, trust me. That woman is hell on Earth. We’re just here to assess the damage before we go to the penthouse.”

I’m surprised he doesn’t want to go straight to his fortress, but I oblige, hurrying up the stairs before coming to my hallway. I furrow my brow at the sight of my doormat gone, the old all-season wreath hanging over the door missing as well.

Carter has a key to my place, and I don’t ask where and when he had that made. It doesn’t seem important or even difficult for a man like him, either. He pushes inside first, and I freeze, seeing everything is missing from the space.

My bed, the couch—even the dingy dining room table that Carter tied me to for breakfast is absent.

The place looks so much larger when it’s empty. The wood floors are freshly lacquered, shinier than they have ever appeared before, and I stare dimly at the place that has been my home for just under a year. I left college to look after my father, coming to this small space and hiding away from the world for so long.

I rest my palm on the wallpapered walls, feeling their fresh lay and how they hold so many memories of me being alone and unhappy. I feel those emotions rush back, recalling the day I moved in with nothing but a high-school diploma I shoved into a kitchen drawer and the weight of the world on my shoulders.

“Wh-what happened?”

Carter pulls my hand into his, kissing my knuckles lightly as he exhales a warm breath into my fingers. “It’s all gone. You don’t live here anymore.”

My chest aches with a pain I never thought would sit there. I’ve dreamed lavish wonders that considered leaving this horrible place behind. If my father ever got out of the hospital, I dreamed he and I would live in a home on the Upper East Side. It would be a townhome with original wood floors and beautiful iron accents. Maybe even a chandelier with crystals as beautiful as diamonds.

But that doesn’t negate the sadness I feel at the thought of leaving this place.

“Where am I going to live, then?” I breathe. “I can’t afford anything else and—”

“Shh, dove. You’re always so tense and concerned. Have you not learned that I will always take care of you?” He hands me a golden key that works the elevator in his building. Then he gives me two silver keys that belong to my apartment. “I spoke to the landlord. I paid you out of your lease, and it’s all official by tomorrow. Your stuff is already moved into my penthouse downtown.”

My hands tremble as I grip the keys. I want to thank him for this amazing gift, but I also want to cry at this sudden shift in my life. I stroll into the kitchen, set down the silver keys for good, and take a last look around the empty counters and cleared-out drawers.

I’ll miss the view from the kitchen, nowhere near the vantage point of Carter’s place, but also because I could see the hospital from here. I could walk the blocks at midnight, the cheap fast-food restaurants still open and lighting my path. I would get stared at or catcalled, but it was routine.

In all the chaos with the Phillips and Lacey families coming after us—I could use a normal routine again.

I turn my back, daring to take one last glimpse of the hospital in the distance. I’m stunned to see something else. Tristan is laid out on the ground, blood staining the sidewalk. I cling to the window, meeting the eyes of a man who is climbing up the fire escape—a man who has shot at me before and thankfully missed.

I gasp a breath and throw myself back, finding Carter’s eyes as he takes in the panic setting in over me.

“They’re here already,” I say, stunned.

He grabs my elbow and races us both toward the hallway. I hardly get another goodbye to my apartment before Carter shuts the door and eyes the landing below in the stairwell.

Heavy, purposely hard footsteps ring out below, coming right for us!

“Dammit,” he growls, grabbing his cell phone.

Out of all the times to shoot off a text, this doesn’t seem like the one I would choose, but he stuffs it in his pocket seconds later. He pushes me ahead, barking for me to run upstairs. I want to protest, to ask him why, but I do know him well enough to say he isn’t to be questioned in a moment of crisis.

I trip going up the steps, Carter pushing and pulling and urging me to go faster. My heart is already racing out of my chest as we hit the top floor. He drags me toward the last door in the hallway, kicking the door open to what I can only assume is a storage closet.

A hidden stairwell appears, but it’s still not a good time for me to stop and ask about his intent.

We break out onto the roof, my legs weary and my lungs working overtime to keep my heart working. I feel my pulse in every corner of my body, punching out of my veins and threatening to make me collapse. Carter breaks a metal post off the scrap metal on top of the building and slides it into the door handle, preventing it from being yanked open from the inside.

As well as he knows that pipe will only last for so long, it’s also just a matter of time before they climb the entire fire escape and make it up here. I run my hands through my scalp, almost sobbing through my exhales, but I can’t produce any tears heavy enough to scroll down my warm, flushed cheeks.

“No, no, no,” I pant, shaking my head. “What are we going to do, Carter? We’re trapped up here now. Tristan is down, and we’re going to be… to be…”

He comes face-to-face with me, his hand sliding across my lower back. His lips purse just before they go to mine. I already feel myself giving in to his calmness, feeding off his power and strength while trying to reciprocate it in return.

I turn into putty in his massive hands, letting him pin me to his solid, firm chest while he glances around the cityscape around us. Every other building is taller than this one, with alleys between them all. The only ways down are the stairwell and the fire escape.

It’s hopeless for a moment, or at least it is for me.

“It’s going to be okay,” he groans, leading me to the pile of scrap over near the corner of the roof. He shoves me to kneel, pulling his pistol from his waistband while I curl into a ball in the middle of the mangled apartment construction leftovers. “You stay here. I’m going to handle this.”

I only nod, my lips parted and tempted to say something, but it doesn’t come out. The moment is adrenaline-filled, and my senses are dulled with the looming threat of death coming at us from all directions, but I want to say the words that are still caught in my throat.

“Please be safe,” I mutter, unable to choke out anything else.

He nods, his pistol in hand, and approaches the furthest edge of the building, peering over to get a better look at the fire escape. I want to help him more than I thought I would in this situation, but it’s not possible. I am weaker than a blade of grass in a warm breeze, and I couldn’t fire a gun if I tried.

Nor would I want to…

Carter can take a life so easily, as I’ve witnessed firsthand in the past, and I’m nothing like him in that aspect. Not even if it’s the best bet in a situation without our backs against the wall do I think I’d be able to fire a bullet into a man’s chest.

I leave that to Carter while I sink back into the debris. There’s enough of a gap between materials for me to see the door that leads to the roof, the hinges purging and pulsing with every kick from the inside. The bar holds strong, but a hole peppers the metal, and it’s burst open at once.

Carter turns around swiftly, firing at the outpouring of men coming onto the roof. They all scatter, finding places to block the bullets that come close to striking them. Thankfully, Carter does the same, using a large metal air-conditioning unit to kneel behind.

I watch as he pulls out of the safe spot every few seconds, firing a round in their direction and hitting at least one of them each time. One man falls, then another—both of them very familiar as the workers that Jacob would have at the job site where I was doomed to be stationed.

There are only three of them left, or so I thought, spying a head peer over the edge of the wall from the fire escape. My mind panics. Carter’s back is turned as the man stands up over the ridge and raises his pistol toward the man I care so much for.

“Carter! Behind you!” I scream, my voice carrying over the back-and-forth gunfire.

He straightens up, turning so quickly that he falls sideways to the round, clicking the trigger on his pistol twice and sending the man freefalling backward. Relief comes over me, my heart untangling for a moment.

It doesn’t last.

Carter catches sight of me, his eyes pained and his brows pinched. I feel a harsh grip snatch at the back of my neck, yanking me up to my feet and pulling me out of the barricade I’ve been hidden behind with success… up until now.

I gasp, the man’s grasp so tight that I could mistake it as him trying to break the bones that protect my spinal cord. One flinch of his fist and I could be paralyzed, possibly even die, but for now, he doesn’t break my neck. He keeps me in front of him and pulls us both backward, Carter standing from his spot in seeming surrender.

The gunfire halts, but the ringing in my ears is still there.

“Let her go,” Carter snarls, holstering his pistol. “Right now. This fight is a Lacey-Blackthorne battle, and she will not be involved!”

“She’s been involved since the beginning,” the man grunts, obviously smiling through his tone, but I can’t see his face positioned in front of him like a shield. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”

Carter’s glare narrows, my view of him suddenly shifting. I struggle to keep my balance, the fist clawing at the back of my neck maneuvering me to face the edge of the roof. The sheer drop below makes me panic, but both of his hands clench against my body, pushing me to the edge.

The pavement below is the only thing I can see now, and his intent is clear.

“Hand over the gun and kneel,” one of the other Lacey rats growls in demand of Carter. “Do it, or she falls to her death.”

I can only pray Carter doesn’t do such a thing. If he hands over that pistol, both of us die, and I would rather lean forward over the edge than allow that to happen.