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

Chapter Sixty-Three

Isabella

Carter’s knuckles drag up my naked spine, zipping up the dress I wiggled into moments ago. I could probably do it myself, but I love his touch, his gentle nature in the solitude of my closet, and when it’s all said and done, I turn and let his arms catch me while I fall into his awaiting embrace.

My heels are too tall and uncomfortable already. A few hours of this, and I’ll be ready to kick them off. The dress isn’t any more comfortable, hugging me tight with bright red sequins and a smooth, silky surface down from the bodice.

Carter is wearing black, per the usual, but his handkerchief is silky red and matches my dress perfectly. Even in the mirror, we look powerful and analogous. I can’t help but grin at the sight of us together. He’s so handsome and sharp—in any other decade, he would be rather dapper.

Even now, he still is in my eyes.

“Are you ready, dove?”

I grimace, thinking of Frances Johnson and his annoying possessiveness over Carter. They’re thick as thieves, quite literally, and I don’t want anything to do with the mayor. He is just a political figure, the lowest there is other than the city council, but he walks around like he’s the next damn president.

I don’t trust him—but I trust Carter, so it has to be okay.

“Yeah, I think so,” I lie. I pull my hair back off my bare shoulders and lightly touch the necklace hanging loosely around my throat. It’s expensive and not really my style, but he insisted that I wear it, so I did. “Are you sure we have to go?”

He ponders the question for less than a second, nodding at last.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, dove. I have to get this business done, or we’re in trouble.”

I grumble but abide. He has already put down the trouble with Jacob Lacey, and it’s a possibility his goons will come after us again tonight, but he wouldn’t ruin the mayor’s event. That would really cause some trouble with the election.

Jacob needs Frances to win just as much as Carter does, but he just wants to do it without someone from the Blackthorne family running things. If I know one thing about Jacob, it’s that he doesn’t do well not being on top of the food chain. There’s nothing I can do about any of it but try to enjoy myself.

I put on my best smile and hang off his arm, taking the smooth, silent ride to the event with one of his cousins and Ernesto up front. I breathe in Carter’s manly and woodsy scent, trying to immerse myself inside of it as much as possible. Without it, the air wouldn’t be as good.

Ernesto drops us off at the front of the venue, my nerves relaxing at the sight of so much security and police officers everywhere. Everything seems to be safe from this view, so I keep up with Carter while he holds my hand, stalking toward the large, brightly lit doors.

“Excuse me, sir,” a buff, muscular man in all black attire breathes, stopping Carter and me both. “You’re going to need to come with me. Frances Johnson would like a word with you.”

Carter’s brow furrows. “Okay, I’ll bite. Dove, go inside and—”

“Her too.”

My stomach knots, hearing his unflinching, demanding tone. I look over my shoulder, seeing a crowd of security guards form, something unsettling about the sight of them all.

“Carter,” I whisper, pulling against his side. “I think we should leave.”

Someone snatches the back of my arm, ripping me from Carter. A large, brooding man steps between him and me, his eyes darting through me with such a look of painful concern that I know something is very wrong. Carter is never worried, not even when I’m hanging off the side of a building.

He looks worried now, so it’s clear I should be fucking petrified.

“Let me show you around the back, sir,” the security guard hums, pointing Carter in a certain direction.

I try to push the man’s grasp off my wrist, but it loops around so tightly that I feel my bones ache and twist unnaturally. I keep from whimpering, his grip unmatched by even the tightest set of handcuffs.

Carter walks ahead of the group, being led around the side of the building and out of view from the other event attendees. I bite back the urge to kick the security guard in his kneecap, his hold on my arm a little bit too aggressive for someone wanting to just talk to us.

I watch the back of his head the entire way, waiting for something to happen, for the lightning to stick and hit us once and for all. I knew this storm cloud would be waiting over our heads. Now it’s just the time to pay the price for crossing Jacob Lacey.

Carter Blackthorne may not fear that pompous asshole—but I certainly do.

He stops ahead of me, the security guards all watching him a little too closely, while Carter adjusts his jacket and seems to fuss with his jacket’s button. It’s hard to tell from behind him, but I see him pulling off his coat seconds later, tossing it at the largest security guard in the pack, and having it land right over his face.

Carter flinches, a bullet whizzing through the air, sending the first guard to the concrete. I hit the ground next, trying to keep out of the way of his fire, ignoring the whims of the guy holding my wrist.

He snaps the bone, and I bellow in a scream, managing to pull free while Carter fires a silent, non-echoing shot in his direction. Maybe it’s my eardrums already covered by the pounding, aching pulse soaring through my body, mixed with overly ambitious adrenaline, that ultimately dulls my senses.

I watch the one-sided firefight continue until the bodies stop falling, Carter still vastly outnumbered. Then, when my vision clears of the haze, I peer up from the ground where I lay, holding my wounded wrist to my chest.

Jacob Lacey stands over me, second only in the worst sight possible in my mind. He holds a pistol down in my direction, my eyes able to trace inside the deep, long barrel with such precision that there’s no doubt he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger right now.

He has the trigger in his index finger already, prepared to make that easy choice at a moment’s notice.

I want to look at Carter, knowing I’m his weakness in this attempt to free ourselves, but I shouldn’t be. I truly don’t know for sure if Jacob would kill me. If he could shoot to wound, then that’s for damn sure what he’d do, but he wants me to suffer. He wants Carter to suffer by watching Jacob hurt me.

There will be no satisfaction if that is cut short by a bullet to my neck.

“Jacob,” I pant, trembling on the cold concrete lot. “Please, don’t—”

“Shh, babe,” he whispers with a sly little wink. “Relax. This is between your boyfriend and me.”

I swallow hard, finally finding the courage to peer over toward Carter. He shifts uncomfortably, eyeing the gun directed at my temple now. I can’t help but see the flicker of discomfort in his demeanor now. He shifts his weight back and forth, like the same adrenaline in his blood moments ago has come screeching to a dead halt.

He finally meets my glare, the fire in his irises somewhat calmed but replaced with something else. He’s stoic again, like when I met him, uninterested in Jacob’s mind games and his intention to hurt me. Carter looks detached from me, from this entire situation, resorting to the furthest depths of his dark mind in protection mode.

If he doesn’t think about how it’s me specifically under the gun, then it’s easier to watch me get shot. Or so that’s how I perceive it. Maybe he’s devising a plan to get us out of here, but for everybody he just dropped, there are three more alive coming to surround us all.

I spy William in the midst, his aged, wrinkling smile too wicked to miss.

“I think it’s time we talked, Carter.”

Everyone shifts their focus to the gap of security guards, Frances Johnson adjusting his silver cufflinks leisurely like he walked into the breakroom for an office coffee break.

My fingertips have gone numb on my wounded wrist, and I suffer an inhale, Jacob’s boots digging into me ever so slightly when I inch forward. I’m obviously not going to get any closer to Carter or any further from that despicable mayor.

“I tried to do things your way, Carter. I truly did. I just wished you would have kept up your end of the bargain,” Frances groans, shaking his head like it really is a shame to him. He’s a greedy pig who will take slop from any bastard stupid enough to feed him. “Now we have some tough choices to make.”

“I can see that,” Carter says, his voice smooth and unbothered. “What’s first on the docket?”

Frances swivels around in his spot, glaring holes through me. “Her. I’d say we should start with your favorite little whore, don’t you?”

Jacob hums in amused agreement. “I have a few ideas that come to mind.”

“She dies,” Frances snarls, poking daggers through his new business partner. “She witnessed a killing in my office, and even if it was Carter’s finger that pulled the trigger, I can’t be linked to such an atrocious act.”

“Yeah, nothing like having an affair or letting the mafia of Manhattan carry your campaign baggage,” I mutter under my breath, filled with too much spite to even care what he does to me now.

He just showed his cards, and I’m meant to die. If I thought I had a chance of living before he mentioned that, then I’d bite my tongue. Not anymore. I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of what Jacob will do to me while I’m alive.

But I’m also afraid of how Carter will take it if I’m executed in front of him. After the entire Brooke ordeal in his early life, I don’t think watching me die before his eyes will make him any less damaged than he already is. It would shatter the already broken man he has become.

Jacob rears his boot back, landing a kick directly against the ridge of my backbone.

I hiss but keep the reaction to a minimum, knowing he feeds off my pain.

“Stop hurting her,” Carter says almost silently. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”

Jacob shrugs, dumb enough to scratch his chin with the barrel of his pistol. I would give my life for that damn thing to misfire and rip a hole through his cheek. Hell, I’d die twelve times to even get a glimpse of such justice being served.

“Let’s compromise,” William Lacey purrs, coming into the group with a wide, pleased smile. “The girl doesn’t die, but she doesn’t exactly live, either.”

“I like the sound of this already,” Jacob responds with a shrug.

Frances rolls his eyes. “What are you asking?”

“Let me and my son keep the little tramp to ourselves. We have ways of making sure she doesn’t get the chance to say she saw anything going on in your office, let alone your proximity to our work in the shadows.”

Frances knits his brows but shrugs. “Fine, take the slut. I don’t care. My bone to pick is really with Carter.”

Jacob yanks me to my heels by just a fist in my hair. I hiss, trying to break out of his hold, but my wrist is already snapped, and I’m bruising against my spine from his kick. I stagger to stay upright, held only by his knuckles curled into my scalp.

The younger Lacey asshole tips my head sideways, making way for his lips to peck against the side of my neck. Uneasy tremors erupt through my knees, and I want to buckle, to fall and be rid of his mouth and tongue dragging up to my ear.

He clamps down on the fleshy pad of my ear, and I hiss, blood speckling against my exposed collar.

Carter watches without a single word, hardly an expression at all, which is how I know his anger has hit his pique. It’s white-hot flames inside of him, and there’s no putting it out, not unless he can get a bullet into every skull in this circle—not including mine, of course.

“We’ll be on our way out, then,” Jacob grins. “Frances, pleasure doing business with you. I assume you can handle Carter.”

“He’s subdued,” Frances agrees, waving us away. “Have fun with your toy.”

Jacob pushes me away from the group, any last glance of my lover officially stolen from me. Jacob moves his hand from my scalp and instead presses it into my ass, his other hand holding the gun edged into my side.

“Don’t worry about that. I intend to.”