Make Me Dream (The Sage Creek Series Book 1) Read online

  MAKE ME DREAM

  DILLON BANCROFT

  CONTENTS

  Looking to Connect?

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Epilogue Part Two

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Looking to Connect?

  Also By Dillon Bancroft

  Copyright © 2021 by Dillon Bancroft

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  Dillon Bancroft

  PO Box 1181

  Wimauma, FL 33598

  http://www.dillonbancroft.com

  Book and cover design by © The Pretty Little Design Co.

  Editing by: Amy Briggs, Briggs Consulting, LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7369012-2-9

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7369012-3-6

  First Edition: January 2022

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my sisters. I see you. I hear you. I stand with you.

  LOOKING TO CONNECT?

  Do you want to stay in the know and receive behind the scenes musings, deleted scenes, and upcoming project updates? Make sure to sign up for my newsletter and follow me on social media!

  Email: [email protected]

  LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dillon.bancroft

  Website: www.dillonbancroft.com

  Bancroft Boulevard Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bancroftblvd

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  While Make Me Dream is a contemporary romance, Aria has suffered a horrifying past in an abusive relationship in which she speaks about with a therapist, and with Derek. Because of this, I urge you not to read this book if domestic violence and graphic violence is triggering for you.

  For a list of triggers, please visit the list in its entirety HERE

  PROLOGUE

  DEREK

  The night is clear and brisk. A blanket of stars shines brightly in the desert while I exhale nicotine into the air. It’s a nasty habit, I know, but when you’re in the midst of a shady kidnapping of the man who killed your sister-from-another-mister, people tend to be more understanding.

  And by people, I mean my brothers.

  In the eyes of the United States, I’m an only child, but when you join the military, bonds are formed. Most of the time, those bonds are stronger than the ones you have with your own blood. Which is why I’m about to help kill a man and destroy the evidence.

  We’re not bad people. The person who’s about to be wailing into the night is a bad person. Johnathan Rockwell. The seller of innocent women and children.

  The door to the shack slams closed, and a familiar presence stands beside me. I hand him a cigarette and my lighter which he takes gratefully and lights up beside me.

  “Are you ready for this, Barnes?”

  Logan Barnes, one of my “brothers” is the victim in all of this. He knows what he has to do even though he knows it won’t bring the love of his life back.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he murmurs. The cloudy smoke he exhales into the air is the nerves leaving his body. The law didn’t serve justice for Heidi but we sure will. “Novak has an eye on the area. Once that shack is up in flames, nobody will come looking.”

  The door slams again, and another bulky figure joins our posse. Nate Olson trudges toward us.

  “Archer’s getting ready to wake him up. Almost done?”

  Showing Olson the nub I have left, I put it out on my boot and shove the butt in my pocket, leaving no evidence of our involvement. Barnes takes one more drag and does the same.

  “Are you all right, brother?” Olson asks.

  “If someone dropped Eve dead on your doorstep, would you be all right?” Logan demands.

  The tension in the air is thick. The peace that flitted in the air is now gone and hostility takes over. This is hard.

  Life is one of those precious things. The whole point is to live a good one and be a decent human being. But when someone you love’s life is stripped away without any warning, the need to exact revenge permeates every aspect of your being. For Barnes, it’s the only thing that’s kept him going for this long.

  Heidi has been dead a year. We’ve been on the hunt for Rockwell for two. And now, that waste of life is sitting bound to a chair inside a one room shack, unconscious, and about to face the longest night of his life.

  “Come on, man. Don’t bring her into this,” Olson pleads.

  Barnes shrugs indifferently and shoulder barges Olson on the way back into the shack.

  “You good, Hawthorn?” Olson asks.

  “All aces, buddy. Shall we begin?”

  A smirk crosses Olson’s lips and he tilts his head towards the door. I follow him into the dimly lit shack where Johnathan Rockwell sits, slumped, and his head lolling to the side. It’s a crowded room with all of us inside. Archer, Novak, Delgado, Barnes, Olson, and myself…plus Rockwell.

  Joey Archer opens a small vile of ammonia and places it under Rockwell’s nose. Jolting slightly, he looks around the room, until his eyes land on Barnes.

  “How the fuck did you find me?!” he demands.

  “You’re not as slick as you think you are,” Tanner Novak answers nonchalantly, a Cheshire smile beaming at the sick bastard before us. “Took me a while to figure out where you were hiding, but I found you. I leaked all of your data to the world, so your prissy parents will know how much of a disappointment you were, and now, so will the rest of the world.”

  Rockwell’s swollen eyes widen.

  “Why do you even care? She wasn’t yours, she was his,” he snaps, looking at Barnes.

  “Because she was our sister, you stupid waste of life!” Archer shouts, punching his right eye.

  Rockwell scans the room for a weak link, for an ally. He won’t get
one. What he’s done is too painful.

  “She was nice and tight. I got to have her one last time before I ended her.” He wheezes when he laughs, gasping for air that won’t be there for him when this is all over. Without even a single beat, Barnes cocks the handgun in his hand and fires a shot right through Rockwell’s right thigh. His screams echo through the shack.

  I get pleasure knowing nobody will hear him.

  “You are a child,” Barnes seethes. “She tried to see the best in you, but you couldn’t take no for an answer. Have you ever been told ‘no’ before, Johnny? Did it hurt your fragile ego when she agreed to marry me?”

  Rockwell growls and tries to break his ropes.

  “She was promised to me!”

  “And yet, she said yes to me.” Barnes smirks.

  “My people will be looking for me.”

  His empty threats are laughable. We’re the shadows in the night. Invisible to cameras and the guards we drugged.

  “I doubt it,” Barns retorts.

  “If you’re going to kill me, then do it already!” he screams.

  “Buddy, we’re just getting started,” Archer says, the leader of the pack, inching dangerously closer to him. “You tortured and killed our sister. We’re not letting you off so easily.” Plunging his blade into Rockwell’s other thigh, his screams once again fill the shack.

  My turn.

  “This is Bubba.”

  I cringe at Archer’s nickname for me. He knows I hate it, but we’re not giving away our identities. “Bubba’s a vet, and, he’s going to fix you up.” His weary eyes meet mine, but there is no hope. I’m keeping him alive long enough to inflict maximum pain.

  “In the service, I was a SARC, but you won’t know what that is,” I announce, grabbing my kit and opening a package of sterile gauze. I slam it down on the open wound while he growls in pain. “You see, SARC stands for Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman. I can dumb it down for you if you’d like.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “It basically means I can save your life. I can take you away from the brink of death and have you walking within a day.” Lie. “But you took something of ours. So, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to keep bringing you back into the land of the living until Barnes has had enough. The sun comes up in four hours. By that time, you’ll be dead and then we’re going to set the place on fire. The whole world is going to be looking for you, but they’ll never find you.” I stitch up the knife wound, but I don’t bother numbing him up.

  Every prick of my needle has him squirming and screaming. I wish he’d stop only because the blood is getting in my way.

  It won’t matter, anyway. It’ll reopen again, and I’ll restitch it just so they can reopen the wound.

  “I will find your family,” he seethes. “What I did to Heidi will be child’s play compared to what I’ll do to your bitch!”

  Smirking, I tug the stitching so tight his hoarse scream echoes again. “Then it’s a good thing I’m single and ready to mingle, buddy.”

  The door of the shack flies open, and the man who could end us with one keystroke enters with narrowed eyes and balled fists. His salt and pepper hair is only cosmetic, because even though he’s over sixty, he’s a force to be reckoned with. Stephen McKenzie is more fatal than we are all put together.

  He storms through the shack and pushes Rockwell’s chair back, so the chair is only standing on two legs and his hair is barely an inch away from the roaring fire behind him. His hand clamps tightly around his throat while Rockwell screams at him to stop, along with more choice words.

  “You’re going to tell me everything you know about Charles Franklin Dodge III.”

  Recognition crosses Rockwell’s prim features. His dark eyes finally lighten. And whether he’s laughing out of hysteria, or if he finds this fucking hilarious, it’s all unsettling.

  “He has one of yours, doesn’t he?”

  1

  ARIA

  If there’s anything I learned about being the youngest of three children, it was to be light on my feet. While my sister was constantly getting caught for trying to sneak out, I learned from her mistakes. I knew which stairs were creaky, and which floorboards upstairs would groan under my weight.

  I knew the window in the hallway next to my brother’s room was silent when you opened it—probably because he fixed it up so he could sneak girls into his room without our parents ever catching on.

  So I would know when to walk on eggshells in this vast, sterile, and luxurious apartment while my warden works silently on the island in our kitchen, to avoid the beating of my life.

  That’s what happened last night.

  He took a phone call in the bedroom. I didn’t know he was on the phone. I was telling him dinner was ready. I interrupted the phone call to the whale of a client his family has been trying to lock down for years.

  He held me against the stove while the burners singed the skin on my back.

  I can’t see the burns. Even using a mirror, I can’t look at them. It sends a wave of bile up my throat—that I let it get this bad. I allowed him to push me in a corner and strip my freedom away.

  He says he loves me. Then he says I’m disgusting and useless. I’m the biggest disappointment to him, yet he won’t let me go.

  Why won’t he let me go?

  “Does your face hurt?” His baritone voice breaks through the silence of the room. I’m afraid to answer. I’m afraid not to answer.

  “No.” My clipped answer forces his blond head to snap up and glare at me with his icy, cutting eyes at the insubordinance.

  It happens so fast I don’t think it fully registers in my mind. It’s like a record scratch or a car accident happening in real time.

  The barstool scrapes against the marble floors and his long strides reach me before I can even dart the other way. His large hand wraps around my throat and he pins me against the refrigerator.

  This is a typical Friday.

  I hate when he works from home.

  “Are you forgetting something?”

  “Sir,” I add quickly. “No, sir. I’m sorry.” As much as I try to sound sincere, I can’t. I’m sick of this.

  I’ve been praying for death for months. Living with Charles Franklin Dodge III was supposed to be a fairy tale. I was supposed to be whisked away to a man who loved me, farm girl blood and all. Instead, I was bamboozled into a solitary life. A life where I have to wonder if today’s the day he snuffs my life out like the rest of the women he got close to.

  “Was last night not lesson enough?”

  I gasp for air, but I can’t get enough of it. Black dots swirl in my vision as the grip on my airway gets tighter. I beat against his forearm to no avail.

  “I-I’m s-s-sorry—"

  “Enough with the apologies!” He cocks his fist back and punches me directly in the bruised eye from yesterday. He releases his grip and I slump to the floor, coughing and gagging. “I don’t like hurting you, Aria. Why do you make me hurt you?”

  I don’t make you do anything, jackass.

  The front door is busted open, and suddenly dozens of men in black swarm the apartment. Silver handcuffs are slapped around Charlie’s wrists.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he shouts. One agent reads him his Miranda rights. Other agents start processing the scene. Meanwhile, I’m left in the middle of the kitchen like chopped liver.

  “Charles Dodge, you are under arrest for embezzlement, extortion, domestic battery…” the agent’s voice trails off as Charlie is walked out of the apartment.

  “Are you okay?” A figure sinks down next to me and carefully takes my face in his hands, looking for any signs of cuts.

  “Just dandy,” I reply darkly. The man I’ve only met twice, Agent O, stares at me with concern. If I wasn’t swearing off relationships forever, I’d probably make a pass at him. He’s pretty. Sandy blonde hair styled smart, Disney Princess green eyes, and a jaw that could crack a nut. Charlie was pretty too. I’ve learn
ed my lesson. Romance and relationships are not in the cards for me.

  “You should see a doctor before we leave.”

  Over my dead body.

  “Absolutely not. The faster we get on the road, the better chance I have at surviving.” When I’ve finally caught my breath, I shakily stand up. My legs feel like Jell-O. Agent O steadies me by placing his hands on my shoulders.

  “Are you sure? Maybe we should talk about going into witness protection again—"

  “Are you a trust fund baby, Agent O? Is your family wealthy beyond belief? Is this god forsaken city in your family’s pockets?”

  He sighs in impatience. “No. I’m not.”

  “Charlie is. All it takes is one fat stack of cash and someone swings to the other team. I need to go home.” If they’ll even have me.

  I haven’t spoken to my family in over a year. My daddy warned me about Charlie, but I knew better.

  Agents and crime scene techs swarm my home. Someone seizes the laptop he was working on, and more enter our bedroom to find God knows what.

  “Let’s step outside at least. You don’t need to watch this.”