Temper Him by Caitlyn Dare

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Conner

"Argh," I groan as I lean forward and pull my sweats up my legs. My fucking ribs hurt almost as bad as when that motherfucker cracked them.

I breathe through the pain, determined to get dressed and go do something useful and try to find my girl. Lying here in pain and being good for nothing is driving me crazy.

Going to that fight was a mistake. I know that. It was a huge risk, and it didn't pay off. I wanted the pain, needed the distraction, but I wasn't meant to put myself out of action for days. Not while my girl is fuck knows where dealing with fuck knows what at the hands of that sadistic fuck.

The sound of footsteps booming up the stairs makes me look up at my closed door, but I assume it's just Cole, probably dragging Hadley behind him ready to put me through a couple of hours of torture as I'm forced to listen to her squeal and call for God.

I suck in a breath, ready to hunt down my AirPods to drown out the inevitable, when my door flies open so hard I think it's going to come off the hinges.

"You need to come now," Cole barks.

"Uh... sure." I bend down to pull up my sweats and he groans at my speed.

"It's K, Con. We need to go now."

"Fuck. Okay."

The pain is momentarily forgotten at the mention of my girl needing me, and I'm dressed and out the door in a heartbeat.

I expect Cole to turn toward James' office but instead, he heads for the stairs.

"Where are you..."

"No time, let's go."

I follow Cole out to the driveway where I find a black SUV with the engine running and the back door open. Cole helps me up, and the second I'm inside I find James and Ace waiting for me. The door is closed behind us and we're pulling out of the driveway before I've even sat back.

"What the hell is going on?"

"We know where she is."

"Fuck," I breathe, relief flooding me. "Where?"

"We're going there now. But..." He trails off, and the dread I've become used to over the past few weeks come racing back.

"But what?"

He blows out a breath and finally meets my eyes. What I see in them makes my stomach knot.

He pulls a laptop from the seat beside him.

"Before you see this, I need you to know that we've got it under control. We are not going to let anything happen to her.” His expression hardens. “You just need to... you need to trust me. I have the best guys ready to move in, and you're going to be right behind them to get her.”

"Just open it," I demand, needing to know what we're dealing with.

The seconds tick by excruciatingly slowly as he unfolds the laptop and powers it up, but that's nothing compared to how everything fucking stops the second I lock my eyes on Kenny.

"What the..." My words trail off as I stare at her strapped to a chair with a gun pressed into her temple. "Is this... is this l-live?" I stutter, forcing the words past the lump that's lodged in my throat.

"Yeah, it's a live stream. It's what we've been waiting for to find their location."

Dad’s words don't really register as I stare at my girl with tears streaming down her dirty cheeks, both her eyes swollen and bruised and her lip split in more than one place.

"Kenny," I breathe, wishing I could reach into the screen and pull her free. "Is he... is he really going to..."

"Yes."

That one single word is like a gunshot to my own heart.

"We've got to get her out of there. We have to. You can't let her... Dad, please." I turn to him, and he's blurry through the tears that are filling my eyes. "I trusted you all this time to handle it. Please, don't fuck it up now. Please."

"We're getting her out, I promise you."

I'm aware that in a situation like this, he can hardly make promises like that.

Warren could pull that trigger at any moment and blow... No. No.

I drop my head into my hands, refusing to allow myself to believe that this could be it. That after everything we've been through, our time together is going to end like this.

"Why, Dad? Why has it come to this? What can he know that leads him to do this?"

"Everything, Conner. He knows everything."

"Stop with the cryptic bullshit. What does he know?"

Dad pales slightly, and it's then I realize that what he's hiding might be worse than I've been expecting.

"Our family has a complicated history." He looks between the three of us. "The Jagger name is connected to some powerful people. People whose secrets I keep, whose indiscretions I cover up. He's dug and dug until he's found enough to ruin not only me, but the families we're connected to. And if things were to come to light, well... let's just say that the four of us, those we love, they'd never see light again."

"You work in IT," I say, my brain refusing to take all of this on board.

"I do. I just don't do it for the best kinds of people."

Questions start forming in my head, and I'm sure Ace and Cole, who are sitting silently beside me, have a million of their own, but none get asked as the car pulls onto gravel. When I look out, we're pulling up to an abandoned warehouse.

"Is she in there?" I ask, my eyes locked on the building.

"She is."

I look back to the screen. She's still in the exact same position, her frail body trembling in fear as he continues to hold the gun to her head.

"How do you stop him from pulling that trigger?"

"We do it first," Dad states, as if he's talking about something as mundane as the weather.

I glance up at him once more, again wondering who the hell our father actually is.

He lifts his hand to his ear, and I realize for the first time that he's wearing an earpiece.

"Okay. Yes."

I stare at the screen, at my girl’s beautiful face, waiting for something to happen.

Seconds pass like minutes before her eyes widen and a scream rips from her lips.

My heart jumps into my throat as the camera wobbles on its stand.

But everything is forgotten when Dad looks at me and places his hand on my shoulder.

"Conner, go."

I don't have time to think about those two words. The door to my side opens and I fly out of the SUV, the injuries I've been suffering from long forgotten as I run full speed toward the warehouse doors that another guy holds open for me. The smell hits me the second I'm inside, but I don't let it stop me. Instead, I run until the space at the end of the long corridor opens up into a huge room.

The first thing I see is a pool of blood, and my heart jumps into my throat that Warren might have got to K first. That what I thought I saw on that screen was wrong. My vision blurs as my panic begins to get the better of me.

Ripping my eyes from the pool of blood, I find a body beside it that thankfully doesn't belong to Kenny. "Kennedy," I scream, seeing her limp body tied to the chair.

Shallow gargled breaths come from the body on the floor as Warren loses his fight against the bullet lodged in his chest.

I want to stand over him and ensure my face is the last one he sees before he takes his final breath, but the need to go to my girl is stronger.

I stumble, my legs not moving as quickly as I need them to, and I drop to the cold concrete floor in front of her. "K, I'm here. It's okay. I'm here," I say, frantically looking for serious injuries.

I find nothing, and after another second, I hear the most incredible noise.

"Conner," she sobs.

"I'm here, babe. I'm right here."

Footsteps fill the silent space around us, but I don't look up to see who they belong to.

"Here, cut her free."

Some guy dressed in all black passes me a knife, and I set to work slicing through the bindings that have her unable to move.

The second she's free, I drop to my ass and pull her into my lap, cradling her to my chest as she sobs against me.

My heart aches in a way I've never experienced before. It's like New Year’s Eve multiplied by a million.

"I've got you, K. It's over. I've got you. You're safe."

There are more footsteps and guys start talking, but none of the words register as they move around us. That is, until I hear a familiar voice.

"Is this all of it?" Dad asks, walking into the room and looking around.

"Yes," someone confirms as I watch him walk toward a wall that's covered in images.

I squint, trying to make out some of it. There are photos of everyone pinned to the wall along with people and places I've never seen before, all connected with string—just like you see in crime shows on the TV.

"Is... is that Warren and C-Charlie?" I ask, zeroing in on one of the images.

"Yes," James states through thinned lips. "Warren was Charlie's son."

"What?" I bark, my head spinning.

"Look after Kennedy, Conner. I'll talk to you about all of this later.” With that, he reaches out and begins ripping all of Warren's hard work from the wall.

Kenny continues to tremble in my arms as two people crouch down beside me.

"Here, wrap this around her," Cole says, holding out a blanket before both him and Ace help me to stand and carry Kenny from the warehouse.

"He locked you in a fucking cage?" Cole spits. I follow where he's looking and I find exactly what he just said. A fucking cage.

I pause, ripping my eyes from the cage and to Warren's withering body.

"Someone give me a gun."

The room falls silent and no one moves.

"Someone give me a motherfucking gun."

In a beat, Dad is beside me and pulling something from behind his back.

He places it in my hand and I immediately raise it and focus on Warren. His eyes are barely open, but I know he sees me. Good. I need him to know that I won.

I need him to know that he’ll never get to hurt Kennedy or the people I care about again.

Knocking the safety off, I aim it right at his face and squeeze the trigger.

"I hope you rot in hell, you fucking psychopath."

Kenny whimpers again in my arms and my ribs scream in agony, but I can't deny that I feel that little bit better about being able to have my own revenge on the man who tried to ruin my life by taking my girl away from me. I don't give a fuck about all the other stuff, about who his dad was or who James is connected to. The girl in my arms is my entire world. Nothing else matters.

The four of us are silent as we sit in the back of the SUV waiting to see if Dad is going to join us, but after a few minutes, he appears and instructs the driver to take us home.

I'm more than happy with that, because it means I get to do what I've been desperate to do this entire time. Look after my girl.

I hold her tight to me and drop my lips to her hair.

"I love you, K. You're safe now. He's never going to touch you again."