Cole sat up, leaning against the couch. His eyes were closed, and he rubbed his forehead. He groaned without opening his eyes. “I’m going to have the motherload of headaches, aren’t I?”

“That’s what you get for letting Gene get the jump on you,” I told him.

He shot me a look. “Really?”

I shrugged. “The guy’s old. You’re a spring chicken compared to him.”

“Nice. Thank you. I just escaped death, and you’re giving me shit.”

Peter and I shared a grin. Cole was lucky to be alive. We knew that. He would’ve handled all of them, I was sure, but Gene had Emma in the room. I didn’t need to ask to know that Gene had done something to even the odds—maybe had a gun to Emma’s head or something. But I didn’t want to rehash it. I’d heard enough to know he’d gone rogue.

I held out my hand. “Come on. Let’s get your head checked out, then plan our next move.”

“Our next move?” Cole took my hand, and I pulled him up. He gave me a wary look. “Do I want to know?”

I was done. I had to be done. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Not all of the elders were with him. Just a small group of them.”

“We’ll find who it was. We’ll take care of them.”

“And then?”

I knew what he was really asking: what would happen to this family and me. I would find the traitors. I would kill them, and then I was done. But to him I said, “That will be talked about then.”

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and he respected my silence as we got into the truck and headed home.

I’d been frustrated at how long I’d been questioned. Emma was alone—that was all that had been going through my head. I hadn’t left any orders in place in the event that she was released from the police station and I wasn’t.

The cops at the station didn’t have enough to arrest us, but that didn’t mean they weren’t trying to find something. It was self-defense. Both Emma and Andrea had given statements to back that up, and my lawyer threw out enough legal jargon to get the cops to back down. They’d wanted to pin something on me, but with no evidence to contradict what Emma and Andrea were saying, their hands were tied.

When I couldn’t get Emma on the phone as we finally left, I called Drake, who said she’d been sent to Noah’s place where they were planning on picking her up once the detectives left them at the hospital. Then a call to Noah told me what I needed to know. Someone had picked her up, and those men weren’t mine. I went to the Mauricio house for answers. What I got, as soon as I walked through the door, was a betrayal.

I waited a few blocks before I asked Cole, “He didn’t say who was with him?”

“He said a small group. He was quiet about it, but I got the sense that not all the elders backed him. I don’t know if they knew what he was planning.”

But we didn’t know. That was the bottom line.

“Look, Carter—” Cole started.

I shook my head. Too much fighting. Too much blood. Too much death. “I’m tired, Cole. I don’t want to keep fighting. If they weren’t a part of it, then…” All those elders. All their families? Pain like I hadn’t felt since AJ’s death burrowed deep in me. “They were my family, Cole.” After AJ. When Emma was in foster care. Before she came into my life. “They backed me up to help her out.”

The thought that they would take her from me? After helping me keep her?

“Gene had a gun to her head.” Cole was quiet as he said that. I heard the resignation, and I knew what he was saying.

“We have to make sure who was with him and who wasn’t.” I pinned him with a look. “We have to. All those lives, Cole.”

He grimaced and cursed under his breath. Raking his hands over his head, he groaned and rested his head back against his seat. “We have to be unified. You and me. Nothing will work otherwise.”

“We are.”

He glanced sideways to me as Peter kept driving. He studied me for a moment, but then he nodded, and I could see the relief go through him. His shoulders relaxed, his head dropped, and all the fight seemed to disappear.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. He laughed a second later. “She bit him, Carter.”

“What?”

“Emma. That’s why he was leaving. She bit him hard enough to draw blood.”

I grinned. Of course, she bit him. She was a fighter, my fighter.

Four months later.

Amanda was quiet beside me. We watched from the car as Theresa and Noah went to the door and knocked. We’d been parked outside of Andrea’s parent’s home for a half an hour.

Finally Theresa had said they’d go first to scope it out, but the truth was I couldn’t move from the car. I didn’t know why. I just couldn’t.

“Are you nervous?” Amanda asked.

I shot her a look. “If you were to guess?” Thirty minutes. That’s how long we’d been there.

She flushed and grinned. “Sorry. I know. I’m nervous, too.”

“Why?” I turned back toward the house. The question was more for myself than her. There was nothing to be nervous about. I’d been at Andrea’s bedside every day she was in the hospital. We were still strangers, but we were a work in progress now. Her parents had come too, but our paths only crossed one other time. Andrea had wanted me to come in the afternoons, and her parents were allowed in the mornings.

She’d been in the hospital a week for monitoring, and I knew some of her stay hadn’t been smooth. She’d fought with her parents, and she hadn’t said much to me. We talked more about what we remembered from our pasts, about AJ and our mother.

I had no reason to be scared to go into her parent’s home, but I was.

“I don’t know.” Amanda smoothed her shirt, then rubbed her hands over her jeans. “This is real, you know? I mean, her dad is her real dad. He could’ve been yours, or maybe he can help you find yours. Who knows? He didn’t say anything about your brother?”

I shook my head. “Just that he asked AJ if I could go with him and Andy, and he refused. AJ’s older than Carter and me—not that it matters—but I guess our mom kicked him out, and he was in the system already. It would have taken too much time to go through the legal stuff for him to take AJ, too. And my real dad took off long ago. That’s what he said.”