Page 13 of Texting My Mafia Savior
Penny used to say, “There’s a time to talk and there’s a time to listen. You can’t do both at the same time.”
If Patrick Calhoun has an ounce of self-preservation. He’ll keep his mouth shut and pay the fuck attention.
13
ANNA
Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. He has blood all over him. On his face, on his hands, and his clothes.
“Anna, baby.” Mark is in front of me before I realize the words rolling through my head are tumbling out of my mouth in a mumbled mess. There’s a slight tremor in his hands as he reaches out to cup my face, only to pull back after just the tips of his fingers whisper against my skin. His gaze flicks down to his hands as if seeing what I see for the first time. Blood. “Shit.”
He moves to wipe the tacky prints he left on my face but turns his hands over and over again, then stops as if he’s afraid to make things worse. He looks as if he’s afraid to move as if one touch from him will shatter me into a million pieces. He’s not wrong.
It’s just not for the reasons he thinks it is.
He has blood on his hands. Literally. My forced fiancé’s blood. Patrick fucking Calhoun’s blood. There’s hardly a clean spot on Mark’s hands after the beating he doled out on Patrick. Why is that such a fucking turn-on?
They came for me. Mark and Jax are here fighting for me, refusing to let me go even when I told them I was going to marry Patrick instead of giving myself to them and permitting them to keep me. They aren’t going to let me chain myself to Calhoun, to allow myself to be ruined at the hands of a monster like him. No matter how righteous my reasons for doing so are.
Because they want to ruin me.
They want to ruin me in a way that is entirely different from the man I intended to marry. Mark and Jax want to own me, possess my body and soul. To ruin me for all other men, and I want to let them. God, do I want that. I don’t just want it; I fucking need it. Desire pools low, and an aching need builds between my legs. I’m desperate for their touch and to touch them, to show them how grateful I am that they saved me.
They saved me from myself and Patrick Calhoun when no one else would. Not even my father.
“You okay, baby girl?” Jax gives the rope he tied around Patrick, fastening him to an antique oak ladder-back chair, a final tug, tightening the knots and eliciting a satisfying groan from Patrick. “Anna?”
Am I okay? For the first time in my life, I am more than okay. I’m fucking perfect. I know what I want, and who I want, and I’ll do whatever they ask of me as long as they promise to keep me.
I nod, unable to force the words over the knot in my throat, and blink through the blur of tears.
“Thank fuck.” Mark exhales as he watches a smile curve the corners of my mouth and the muscles in my body relax. He rushes me, crushing my body to his, despite the pain I know he’s in from the punches Patrick landed during the fight. He winces and sucks a breath of air between his teeth when I run my fingers through his hair. “Easy, babe.”
“Would have split your skull like a fucking melon if your boyfriend wasn’t here to save your ass. Two against one? Fighting dirty. Afraid you couldn’t take me one on one? Fucking chumps.” Patrick snarls. The legs of the wooden chair thump and erratically beat as he struggles against the rope binding him.
“You’d know all about fighting dirty, wouldn’t you? You fucking bastard.” Jax’s fingers curl into a fist, his arm coiled back like a spring before he unleashes a devastating blow to Patrick’s face. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your fucking mouth shut.”
“No pussy is worth the hellfire I will rain down upon you. Do you think you can steal from me, not once but fucking twice, and get away with it?” Patrick laughs and spits a mouthful of blood at Jax’s feet. “You better fucking kill me. You better make sure I’m fucking dead because I promise you, if there’s a breath left in my body, I will fucking come for you. I’ll make that pretty little whore watch as I gut you, and then I’ll put her to work.”
“I said shut the fuck up. You want a taste, motherfucker?” Jax grabs my panties off the floor and shoves them in Patrick’s mouth. He clamps his hand over Patrick’s mouth, forcing it to shut, and leans in close. “There. Now you know what you’ll be missing. Now you’ll know what we took from you, what we made our own. Yeah, we didn’t have to take her virginity. She gave it to us, begged us. Anna’s ours now and you’re not going to do a fucking thing about it.”
This is too much. Isn’t it? It should be. I should be running. Not just from Patrick, but from Mark and Jax too. There’s an edge of darkness to them, carved out by the anger, grief, and hatred they feel for Patrick Calhoun. It’s been building up little by little over the years since Penny’s death until it consumed them and drove them to plot their revenge and steal Patrick’s bride.
To kidnap me.
So I should run because they’re broken, damaged by the pain they’ve been stewing in for all this time, but I’m not going to run. And not just because I want to save my mom. No, as much as I want to save her, that’s not why I’m staying with them. I want them. I need them. But I will do whatever Mark and Jax ask of me if they’ll help me find a way to save her.
But that has to wait because we need to go. We need to get the hell out of Patrick’s house and figure out how we’re going to not only pay for my mom’s cancer treatments but keep her safe from Calhoun’s men because, after tonight, I have no doubt he’ll use her to get to me.
And this time it won’t be with threats to stop chemotherapy or radiation.
“We need to go,” Mark says as if he’s reading my mind. He releases me and crosses the room to stand next to his brother, clasping a hand on his shoulder. “Jax, we have to finish it. I know we said we weren’t going to do this, that this isn’t who we are, but I think we’ve kind of crossed a line and there’s no going back. Not if we want to keep her safe. We need to finish this and get the fuck out of here.”
“No.” Jax stretches his left arm, his fingers clawing at the floor until they hook my shirt. He lets go of Patrick long enough to twist the shirt and wrap it around his face, gagging him with my panties still in his mouth. “We’re not going to kill him. Maybe we did cross a line. A few lines, but not that one. And I’m not going to.”
“We should go,” I say, pulling everyone’s attention, including Patrick’s back to me. I wish Jax chose something other than my shirt for a gag. I want to get dressed. My skin itches with the need to cover myself up. Not because I’m embarrassed or insecure of my body, but because Patrick has leered at it long enough. “There’s someone else here, his driver or bodyguard or whatever the hell he is. He must have heard something. He’ll come for Patrick.”
For me.
