Bound To Protect. Anya Summers
in the seventh district neighborhood of New Orleans.
She had gotten maybe a grand total of three hours of sleep. But she had a smidge over one hundred thousand dollars in her bank account. Michael had made good on his word and fulfilled the terms they had hammered out overnight.
And she would do her part, because the money she would end up with would grant her freedom. Freedom from worrying about money all the damn time. People who had never had to worry about where their next meal would come from could count themselves fortunate. She also now had freedom from worrying about her brother, and struggling to take care of him with his demanding disease. It wasn’t Alex’s fault that he was sick, that the cost of his care had drained first the insurance money from their dad, and then from their mom, and the small amount of savings Sabrina had put by.
This deal would give her the freedom to rest, to do nothing for a change, if she chose. Sabrina couldn’t the remember the last time she’d not had any responsibilities—when she had been able to take a break from them, or had just had a day to do nothing.
She spent the time she had before Dante arrived to pick her up getting an appointment scheduled to meet with the administrator at Houmas, paid the outstanding balance on the rent that was owed, paid for next month’s rent, and called Daisy’s Diner—where she waited tables three times a week—and quit. Once Alex was situated in the living facility, she would pack up the belongings she wanted to keep—the things that were handed down heirlooms, like the dresser in her bedroom, and family photos that were irreplaceable—and get them moved out. She didn’t know where to, maybe a small storage facility. And then she could start looking at where she would like to live after her time pretending to be Michael’s fiancée was up.
She had sold off almost everything else that had been handed down to her to pay for Alex’s medicine.
At the knock on the front door, she closed out of the program and headed for the door with her purse. Dante stood on the small stone front porch, looking like a big, bad, and dangerous alpha. He was dangerous to her sensibilities, she thought as her gaze dipped to his full lips shrouded by his dark scruff, and she couldn’t help but recall the way his mouth had felt on hers, nor that it stirred up elemental longings. Even in his plain black tee and blue jeans, the man was downright edible.
She pasted a smile on her face when he shoved his aviator sunglasses on top of his head and scanned her sparse living room with its threadbare couch, scarred coffee table, and old style television with a gargantuan back.
“Morning. Ready, or do you need a minute?” he asked her. His expression remained neutral, giving nothing away as to what he thought of her home.
“No, I’m ready.”
Nancy came shuffling down the hallway with Alex walking beside her. It was a good morning. Alex’s eyes were glassy from his medicine but there was an angelic smile on his face. It meant he wasn’t lost in his own personal hell and being tormented by things no one could see but him. Her brother looked like Sabrina in many ways. They had the same nose and similar hair coloring. But his eyes were brown, and his shoulders tended toward frailty from years of being dosed with medicine, and a sedentary existence.
“Dante, this is my brother, Alex, and Nancy, his caretaker. Nancy, I should be back by six.”
After assessing the situation, Nancy gave Sabrina a sly grin and jutted her chin. “You go on, this one and I will be just fine now, won’t we, honey?”
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. Alex.” Dante nodded before he escorted Sabrina out the door to his waiting vehicle.
Alex didn’t respond. When he was in that happy state and flying on his medications, he typically didn’t.
A block away from their home was a group of guys in their late teens, surreptitiously glancing at the fancy SUV parked in Sabrina’s drive. Dante, being a gentleman, helped her into the passenger side before heading around to the driver’s side. He stared the boys down while he did so, projecting his usual touch of badassery that was always beneath the kind veneer. None of them moved away, but then again, none of them advanced toward them or brandished a weapon in their direction. Sabrina knew that group: if provoked, they had no problem throwing down and attacking.
“It’s best to leave them alone.”
Dante gave a confident shrug, like they were nothing but flies to be swatted away. “I can handle them. Bullies will continue to be that way unless you stand up to them.”
Sabrina snorted. “It’s your funeral. The former leader is doing ten years hard time in the state penitentiary. They aren’t a group people mess with around here. It’s best to steer clear of them.”
“And yet you live a block away from where they hang out. Are they on that lot frequently?” Dante asked, pulling out of the drive.
“They typically don’t hassle me.” It was the best way she could answer him without getting him all riled up like he needed to defend her. They didn’t bother her—at least, not much beyond a few catcalls. There had even been one who had stated she should suck his dick.
While it wasn’t harmless and made her sick to her stomach, what was she going to do, call the cops on them? Please.
If she had done that—reported them, even anonymously— she would have wound up dead, or worse. Yes, there were worse things than death out there. It would have left her brother with no one to care for him, and that was something she couldn’t risk.
“They will never hassle you again. How long have you lived here?”
“Five years. I had to sell the house our parents bought to pay for Alex’s bills.” She shrugged as they drove past the group.
“That won’t be a problem ever again. We’re moving you out of there tonight if at all possible,” Dante stated, as if it were a done deal already.
“Dante, I appreciate the sentiment. But I can’t move Alex without having professional help for him. Change of any kind agitates his condition. He’s already going to have enough difficulty being moved to live somewhere else. I can’t bounce him around like that.”
“You can’t possibly stay where you are at,” Dante replied, with abject horror lacing his voice.
Frustrated, her pride stinging from his unspoken revulsion of her home, she said, “Why not? We’ve been there for five years without incident. A few more days won’t hurt. I have arrangements to meet with Houmas Assisted Living Facility administrative management tomorrow to move Alex in by the end of this week, before I leave with Michael for Los Angeles on Saturday.”
“That was fast.”
“I’ve wanted to—needed to, really—move him into the facility for a long time. It’s the best place for him, to meet his needs and manage his condition. I just didn’t have the funds until now.” She would do her part, ensure she made the full amount. That way, she would never have to worry whether she had the funds to cover his care and see to his specialized needs.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dante asked as he drove. His relaxed confidence as he wove in and out of traffic drew Sabrina to him. When she looked at him, she thought: now there was a man she could lean on who wouldn’t buckle under the weight of the burdens she carried. Had she ever noticed just how powerfully built the man was, from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers?
She had known the question about Alex would come up eventually. There was no point in hiding his disease. “Severe dissociative schizophrenia. Basically, it means most of the time, he doesn’t know who he is or where he is at. He’s on a cocktail of medicines that keep him stable, for the most part. But any change in his routine disrupts things for him. If I’m going to move him, it’s going to be a one-time only deal to minimize the disruption as much as possible.”
“Understood. I still don’t like the thought of you in that neighborhood. If we had known…” Dante trailed off and shook his head, his face grim.
Pride straightened her backbone. It was time