Touch My Daughter, and You Die

Chapter 005

"You bastard!"

"You animal!"

At Whitlock Manor, a middle-aged woman pounded her fists against Wyatt's chest, her voice cracking with fury.

"You ruined my daughter's life once, and now you've come back to bring this disaster down on us!"

"What did the Whitlock family ever do to deserve this? Are you going to stop only when you've torn our whole family apart?"

It was Doris Whitlock, Elena's mother, and right now she hated Wyatt with everything she had.

"What are you doing!"

Scarlet couldn't stand watching Doris treat Wyatt this way. She stepped in and seized the older woman's arm before she could land another blow.

To Scarlet, Wyatt was no ordinary man. He was something close to a god. She wasn't about to let some shrieking woman manhandle him like this.

"You... let go of me!"

Doris's face went white. Scarlet looked like a delicate young woman, soft and harmless, but her grip was anything but. It closed around Doris's arm like an iron band, and pain shot straight to the bone.

"Scarlet, stop."

Wyatt's face went livid. He felt nothing but guilt where Elena was concerned, and if her family wanted to curse him and strike him, he told himself he deserved every bit of it.

His word was law to Scarlet. Reluctant as she was, she released Doris and stepped back, arms crossed, her pretty face set in a scowl.

"Get out of my house. Right now." Doris shoved Wyatt toward the door with both hands. "Whatever business you have with the Calloway family has nothing to do with us. If you're going to die, do it somewhere else."

"We won't hold the past against you," Walter Whitlock said coldly from across the room. "Just go, and don't come back. Figure out your own mess."

As far as the Whitlocks were concerned, a man who had beaten Julian that badly was already a dead man walking. All they wanted now was distance, enough that the Calloways' wrath wouldn't spill over onto them.

"Don't worry," Wyatt said. "As long as I'm around, anyone from the Calloway family who comes here is walking straight into a grave."

He'd beaten Julian half to death and he still wasn't satisfied. A man who kidnapped his own daughter deserved worse than that. In Wyatt's eyes, the Calloways had already signed their own death warrant.

"Spare me the big talk." Doris looked him up and down with open contempt. "Who do you think you are? Do you have any idea how much power that family wields? You think you can take on ten men? A hundred?"

She had no idea where this kid had picked up a few moves, but clearly he'd gone and convinced himself he was invincible.

Wyatt knew there was no point arguing. Nothing he said would change their minds, and since they so clearly wanted him gone, there was nothing left to do but leave. Dragging this out with a woman like Doris would accomplish nothing except make a scene.

He turned and crouched beside his daughter.

"Nora, this is Daddy's phone number. If anything happens, anything at all, have your mom call me, and I'll be there before you can blink."

He pressed a scrap of paper into her small hand, the number scrawled across it in a hurried line.

"Daddy, are you leaving?" Nora's eyes, bright and clear as glass, welled up with confusion and something closer to grief. Young as she was, she wasn't slow. "Where are you going? Why can't you stay with me and Mommy?"

"Don't worry." Wyatt looked at her for a long moment, his gaze soft with an ache he couldn't fully hide. "Daddy's never going to be far. I'll always be watching over you and your mother."

Then he stood, turned, and walked out of Whitlock Manor without looking back.

"Mommy, wake up! Daddy's leaving!"

Nora shook Elena's arm hard, watching the door where Wyatt had vanished.

Elena finally stirred, blinking her way back to consciousness just in time to see his retreating back disappear through the gate. Something tangled and complicated rose in her chest.

For years she'd carried a well of resentment toward this man, deep enough to drown in. But she also knew, somewhere beneath the anger, that what happened back then hadn't been his doing. It was the drug. Now she'd watched him appear like something out of a legend, bring her daughter back into her arms, and beat Julian bloody for daring to force this marriage on her. He'd settled a score she'd never been able to settle herself, and despite everything, she felt something shift inside her when she looked at him.

"What did our family ever do to deserve a curse like him walking into our lives?" Walter sighed, long and weary, and sank into the sofa as though his legs had simply given out.

"Walter, what do we do now?" Doris's face was tight with worry. "Do you think the Calloways will come after us?"

"What do you think?" Walter's voice was grim. "You know exactly what kind of man Augustus is. His own son got beaten half to death inside our house. We're finished."

"There's only one way out of this," Doris said, her jaw set. Her eyes slid toward Elena.

"I suppose there's no other choice," Walter agreed, nodding slowly.

"Mom, Dad... what are you saying?" A cold, sinking dread settled into Elena's stomach.

"You're going to marry Julian," Doris said, her voice leaving no room for argument. "Once our families are tied together, they won't dare touch us."

"Mom, I..." Elena's face crumpled with anguish. She would rather do almost anything than marry that man. But with the family facing ruin, what other way out was there?

The front door exploded inward with a violent crash, kicked off its hinges from the outside.

A mob poured through the entrance, over a hundred strong, armed with everything from steel pipes to machetes. At the head of them walked Augustus, Julian's father, his face a mask of fury. Beside him strode his brother Victor, a powerful Harborcrest crime boss. Both of them looked ready to tear someone apart with their bare hands.

Behind them, men carried Julian in on a stretcher. He'd insisted on coming. He wanted to watch Wyatt beaten to death with his own eyes.

"Where the hell is he?" Julian's voice was a snarl as his gaze swept the wrecked living room, searching and finding nothing. "Where's that son of a bitch who put his hands on me?"

He scanned the room again, and his face twisted when he found no trace of Wyatt.

"Hand him over right now," he barked at Walter and Doris, who stood frozen and pale, "or I swear I'll make sure nobody in this house sees a quiet day again."

"Mr. Calloway, he... he already left. We don't know where he went." Walter's teeth chattered so badly he could barely force the words out.

"Fine. If that coward already ran, then his daughter can pay the price instead." Julian's eyes landed on Nora, standing close to Elena. "Grab that little bastard."

Two of his men lunged forward at the command. Nora saw them coming, two hulking men with murder in their eyes, and screamed, "Daddy, help me!"

"Your worthless father already ran off and left you behind," Julian spat. "Today you're going to pay his debt for him. Beat her!"

One of the men reached out, his huge hand closing in on the girl.

"Don't touch my daughter!" Elena lunged forward, desperate to pull Nora into her arms, but she was nowhere near fast enough. The man's fingers had already brushed the hem of Nora's dress.

"You'd lay a hand on my daughter? How many heads do you think you have to spare?"

A voice cut through the chaos from behind the crowd, carrying a weight and authority that silenced the room instantly. Every head turned, and there, standing tall and unshaken, was Wyatt.