Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Nursery
Colton didn't reach for a weapon. He immediately dropped to his knees beside the couch, ripping open a military-grade medical kit he had brought from his trunk. His hands, usually so steady and commanding, were trembling as he cut away Jade's soaked sleeve to expose a through-and-through gunshot wound in her left shoulder.
"She’s an undercover agent with the Organized Crime Division," Colton said, applying pressure with a quick-clot gauze pad. Jade gasped in agony, her nails digging into the couch fabric. "Six months ago, the Navarro cartel tried to seize control of my shipping berths in Savannah. They threatened to drop an explosive container on my central hub if I didn't launder their shipments."
"And you made a deal with them?" I demanded, keeping the gun trained on his shoulder.
"No!" Colton roared, his head snapping up to look at me, his eyes bloodshot and blazing with an agonizing mix of fury and pain. "I went to the Bureau! I brought them the manifests myself! Jade was assigned as my handler to build a federal RICO indictment against the Navarro network from the inside. The calls after midnight? The private meetings? We were coordinating logistics raids to intercept their illegal weapons before they reached the streets."
"Then what were the tickets, Colton?" My voice broke, tears finally spilling over my cheeks. "Two one-way tickets to Lisbon! In your name! With her name! Departure in eleven days! You were planning to leave us! Seventeen days after Ren was born!"
From the bedroom, a sudden, high-pitched wail broke the tension. Ren was awake, crying for her morning feeding.
Hearing her voice, Colton froze. A look of such profound, devastating heartbreak crossed his face that it stopped me dead in my tracks. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and let out a shuddering breath that sounded like a sob.
"Those tickets weren't for me, Lauren," he whispered, his voice cracking entirely. "They were for Jade and her seven-year-old daughter, Maya. The cartel found out Jade was compromised three days ago. They placed a bounty on her head and threatened to slaughter Maya. The only way to get them out of the country without federal leak exposure was using my private maritime transit into Lisbon under my corporate identity. My name was on that ticket because it was booked through my executive diplomatic travel account to bypass commercial passport screening."
Jade groaned from the couch, turning her pale face toward me. "He... he stayed behind to secure the manifests, Lauren. The plan was for him to remain in Atlanta with you and the baby. He... he never intended to leave you. He was using his empire to save my little girl."
The revolver felt impossibly heavy in my hand.
I looked at the bloody gauze, the federal credentials slipping from Jade’s pocket, and the man kneeling on the cabin floor. The invincible, terrifying Colton Beckett looked smaller than I had ever seen him, completely stripped of his underworld authority, weeping silently with his head bowed over a medical kit.
"I built that crib with my own hands, Lauren," Colton choked out, looking toward the bedroom door where Ren continued to cry. "I spent nine months checking the structural integrity of every wall in our house to make sure nothing could ever hurt either of you. You think I would walk away from my baby girl? You think I could survive breathing air without you?"
The gun slipped from my fingers, clattering harmlessly against the pine floorboards.
I rushed past him into the bedroom, lifting Ren from the bed and pressing her against my chest. Her warm, soft cheek brushed against my tear-soaked skin, her cries instantly subsiding into tiny snuffles as she recognized my scent.
When I turned back toward the living room, Colton was standing in the doorway. He didn't come closer. He kept his distance, his posture humble, his eyes tracing every inch of our daughter’s face with a reverence that was almost religious.
"She’s beautiful," he whispered, wiping a smear of blood and grime from his forehead. "She looks just like you."
"Colton," Jade’s voice called weakly from the couch, interrupted by a sharp electronic chirp from her satellite radio. "The tracker... they found the frequency."
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Colton’s posture snapped back into lethality in an instant. The exhaustion vanished, replaced by the cold, calculating kingpin who ruled Atlanta's shadows. He walked to the window, peering through the forest canopy toward the base of the mountain road.
"We have six minutes," Colton said quietly, racking the slide of a tactical pistol he pulled from his waistband. "They tracked Jade's emergency beacon."
