“I was needed,” Emma told Bane.“Who told you that?”“No one, but I’m not stupid. I knew something was wrong when people started behaving like ants, and then it was easy to figure out my help was needed.”“I have to punish Luke for disobeying my orders,” Bane told her. “Don’t do that, Bane. He did try to make me stay upstairs. I just didn’t let him. It’s my fault,” she said.“Angel, he is twice your size. If he had wanted you to stay in a room, you wouldn’t have been able to get out,” Bane pointed out.“And if he hadn’t let me out, there is a possibility that we would have lost Ben,” she countered. Bane gave her a hard look, but she refused to give in on this. After cleaning up his wound, she knew it didn’t need stitching, but some surgical glue would help the healing. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she walked over to the supply table and rummaged until she found what she was looking for. “Emma, this is serious. What if the people that ambushed us targeted the mansion?” he told h

After waking up and joining Bane for lunch, Emma wanted to check on Tom. She walked to the guestroom he had been placed in and knocked on the door. The door was opened by a woman in her mid-thirties. She looked tired and surprised.“Hello, you must be Tom’s wife. I’m Emma. I’m sorry to disturb you. I just wanted to check to see how he is doing.”“Hello. Yes, I’m Samantha. Tom has told me about you, please come in.” Samantha told Emma and stepped to the side. “Thank you. How is he doing?” Emma asked.“Better, I think. He was a wake this morning for a couple of hours. But he has been sleeping since then.”“It’s normal. He lost a lot of blood. He will be tired for a while. May I?” Emma asked, nodding to Tom’s hand that was laying above the covers.“Yes.” Emma bent down and took his pulse. It was stable and strong and his skin felt warm but not heated. “He is doing much better than the last time I saw him. I’m happy. How about you? Is there something you need?” Emma asked.“Me? No, not

It had been two weeks since the ambush, and Bane was in a bad mood. They still had no solid proof of who had been behind it. Not that Bane didn’t have his suspicions, he was certain that the fucker Walker had orchestrated the whole thing. But he had been clever about it. All the men had been hired guns without affiliation to any organisation. The ones they had let live long enough to talk had said that they had been hired by a Mr Smith, a man they all described differently. Everyone had been paid in cash and the money had proven almost impossible to trace. Almost, it was possible, but it would take time. That was why Bane was in a foul mood. He didn’t like the fact that someone had struck against his family and that he hadn’t been able to retaliate. That also left the organisation vulnerable to more attacks. It left his angel in danger. Bane had wanted her to stay with in the mansion grounds. She had happily obliged the first week. But over the last couple of days, she had become rest

“Yes,” Emma said and looked at Luke. “Losing his grandmother like that has made him, I guess you can call it sensitive, for when people don’t touch base with him. Especially if he knows there’s a risk involved. He just needs to know that everyone is safe.” Luke nodded.“After his grandmother died, he hit a rough spell again. She had left him her house, so he had somewhere to live. But she didn’t have that much money, so he needed to work instead of going off to college,” Emma continued. “It was before I knew him, but I think he was depressed and vulnerable. That’s when he met Jonas. Jonas was older, almost twenty years older than Simon, and from what I have heard, he was just confident and took charge over situations. Simon fell hard for him and Jonas took over parts of Simon’s life.” Emma paused again, even if this wasn’t her story, and the pain in it didn’t belong to her. It still affected her deeply.“It got to a point where Simon was more or less emotionally dependent on Jonas. Jo

Bane knew that something had changed, and he didn’t like it. Emma had always been comfortable around him, maybe with the exception of the first day. But now it was like she tried to put up a wall between them. It had started the night he and Jax had met with two of the other families to talk about Walker. Jax had made an idiotic comment that had Bane wanting to kill his friend. Jax had made it sound like they were heading out to party with women. To make the fucking mess even better, Bane didn’t have time to get away and call Emma like he had said he would. When he had come home to find his bed empty, he had gone into panic for a moment, fearing that something had happened. When he had found her sleeping in her room, he had been pissed. After that night, something was different. At first Bane had considered that Emma had been upset by him not calling. But she didn’t seem upset. She was her usual happy self, and she was just as passionate when they had sex. She just wasn’t as present.