Page 56 of Last Man Standing

I stare down at the black-screened device. “Tracking?”

“Nah. He wanted access to her camera. Peeping Tom. I’d bet he’s some dumb college kid playing around with this tech, figured he’d give her a swipe since she looks like a snack and her security sucks. Hopefully she had the good sense not to get dressed in front of her phone too often.”

“Fuck’s sake.” I slip the device into my pocket and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Any trackers attached to her at all?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing live, and even our Peeping Tom was more of a whenever-he-remembered-to thing. I wiped the lot and cut ‘em off. Easy peasy.”

“Did bringing her here compromise security?”

He barks out a loud laugh that sends white fog racing ahead of our brisk pace. “You mean literally, in the sense we need to move our troops and prepare for war? Or do you mean La Bruja thinking the sky is falling?”

I come to a stop fifteen feet from the medical wing. It’s a house, just like the fourteen others within this compound, all of which are joined by a complex underground tunnel system. A massive Olympic-sized pool centers the entire property, and barracks line the outer perimeter, much like the building I first brought Scarlett through.

“We’re not going to war?” I bring my eyes back to Mav and wish for a moment where I could lean on him. Let him carry me for a moment, because I’m dead fucking exhausted. I haven’t slept in over forty hours, and even then, my sleep centered on watching Scarlett Castro whimper and cry through her nightmares. “I didn’t fuck it up, did I? Tell me if I did.”

“You didn’t fuck it up.” He claps a hand onto my shoulder. “Promise. La Bruja overreacted, cause you’re her baby and she doesn’t like change. She especially doesn’t like when that change is because her baby’s loyalties have flipped to a beautiful brunette with big blue eyes and wobbling lips. I can’t decide if I wanna call her cute or fucking edible. Dude, she’s⁠—”

“You don’t call her anything.” I toss his hand off my shoulder. “You don’t even look at her. And if La Bruja mentions loyalties again, you let her know mine are exactly as they should be.”

His lips twitch with a taunting smile. “You’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t flipped for that woman? We’ve known each other our whole lives, Bas, but you’ll lie to my face like that?”

“I’m not lying. She’s my mark. She’s an extension of my previous mark. It’s as simple as that.”

“Right. And you remember I saw that shit at the gas station, right? That store you destroyed for her. That hug you shared?” He folds his arms and glances down at the ground. “La Bruja saw it too, which is probably why she’s feeling a little testy tonight.”

“It wasn’t a fucking hug! She was freaking out and needed a sec to get her bearings again. But don’t worry, she’s back to thinking I’m a piece of shit on the bottom of her shoe.”

Because you hurt her in the car, dickhead. Because you scared her exactly how those pricks at the gas station scared her.

“Mom’ll calm down once she stops making dumb assumptions.”

“Oh, well…” Mav’s gleeful eyes jump back to mine. “I guess that makes Scarlett a free agent then. I know she’s older than me by a couple of years, but she’s small, so I reckon age won’t matter once we get down to the business end of things.” Ignoring my feral sneer and the very real eye twitch I seem to have developed at some point today, he gestures to the door at my back. “Hop to it. He’s been waiting for you. In the meantime, I might go introduce myself to your guest, since she’s just a mark and definitely not a woman you were hugging fifteen hours ago.”

I grab his shoulder before he can take more than a single step and practically jackhammer him into the ground. Then I meet his dancing eyes and stare.

No words needed. No threat required.

He barks out a laugh and sets my teeth on edge. “That’s what I figured. Go,” he repeats, but with less arrogance this time. “He really has been waiting for you, and I really will head her way. But I won’t talk to her, promise.” He slips out from beneath my arm and takes off like a shot. “Today, anyway.”

I draw a cleansing breath before I chase him down and break his jaw, filling my chest and expanding my lungs. I tilt my head to the left and feel the pop-pop-pop of my neck crackling after twenty hours on the road, for a trip that should’ve only taken eight. I tip my head the other way and repeat, then I turn on my heels and pray the scent of death, no matter how sterile it is, doesn’t stick to my lungs for days after I’m done again.

Stepping through the door and past a junior guard—junior, means my mother has not yet come this way—I continue through two more doors and slow when I arrive to a room that beeps, beeps, beeps that way machines do when you know shit is bad.

My Uncle Bastion, the man who helped my parents escape certain death thirty years ago, the Sebastion I was literally named for, lies propped up in his bed, the rails lifted on both sides, and an IV drip attached to his chest.

Because the veins in his arms are trashed now, and the port he had in his neck blew out.

It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s one in the damn morning, nor that this man is in the cruelest war of his existence and should be sleeping. His eyes hold mine even in the muted light, and his lips curl into a satisfied grin the instant I commit and trudge across the threshold.

“Hey.” His voice is weakened by a crackle, the single word, raspy and pained. His cheeks are too pale, and the space around his eyes, too yellow. Still, he lifts his chin and gestures me closer. “Bout time you got your ass back here to spend time with me.”

“I’m sorry.” I take his hand and press my forehead against his. I am not a crier. It’s simply not something my body can do. But that doesn’t stop my eyes from itching when my always strong, always brave, larger-than-life honorary uncle’s grip isn’t nearly as firm as it used to be. “I’ve been working, but I swear, I was trying to make my way home. Some stuff came up and I just…” Pulling back, I search his eyes and swallow the ache in my throat. “I’m sorry.”

“She’s very pretty.” His dry lips curl with an obnoxious grin. “Sometimes, these things come up, huh?”

“For fuck’s sake.” With his hand still trapped in mine, I back up and sit on the edge of the visitor’s chair. “Not you too, Unc?”

He coughs out a wheezing laugh and burrows comfortably into his pillows. “I might have some of my own shit going on right now, and maybe I almost died today because there was a mix up between the latex gloves and the kind without.”