Chapter Two – Lee
”I’m telling you; we need to go find her,” I argued with Chuck, who rubbed a hand over his face and looked up at me.
”It’s been two days,” he reminded me. ”She could just be busy with her personal life.”
”She would have called in,” I protested. Chuck cocked an eyebrow at me.
”You know her well enough to make that call?”
I fell silent. I knew he had a point. I didn’t open up to anyone, let alone Liana, the bartender at the Kennels, but when I heard that she hadn’t turned up for a couple of shifts, I had started to worry my ass off about it. I got the feeling that something had happened to her, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to relax until she was back behind that bar, red hair pulled into the usual braid, those green eyes flashing with amusement as she looked up at me with a smile on her face.
”With everything that’s been happening with Lombardi, I don’t think it’s a risk we can take,” I replied, changing my approach. ”It’s exactly the kind of shit he would pull. Getting into our space, taking someone who works for us. And Liana...”
I trailed off. I didn’t need to tell him what I was thinking. Liana was a striking girl, and Lombardi used women like her to fulfill all the preferences of his sick client base. He was buying and selling girls across the city, and this new venture of his...yeah, it wasn’t something I was willing to fuck around with. If he had done something to Liana, and I was almost certain he had, then we had to get her out of there. And fast.
”What makes you so sure he’s got something to do with this?” Chuck asked me, leaning back against his chair. He had been distracted with everything that had been going on with his new woman, Abbey, and I got it, I did. But I needed him to give me the go-ahead to get this done. Just to stake out Lombardi’s compound and make certain that there was nothing going on there that shouldn’t be. Of course, I knew his line of work was dark and twisted, but if Liana was involved, we had to get her out.
”Because Liana’s not a flake,” I replied firmly. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her well enough to see something steady and strong in her – the way she smiled at the regulars, cracking jokes with them and making them laugh, the way she dealt with the guys who took a shot with her – she was certain of herself, and she wouldn’t have just flaked out on the rest of the staff at the Kennels without a damn good reason. Or without notice.
Chuck eyed me for a long moment. Something in him seemed to shift. The two of us had worked together for the better part of ten years now, since I had stumbled into the Kennels drunk one night and he had seen the state I was in – he”d seen that I needed some kind of purpose, though he had never asked exactly why. He’d just offered me some cash to take care of a job, accompanying a new member of the Dogs on a drop-off, and the two of us had developed our friendship from there.
He trusted me, and I knew I had earned that trust. I worked my ass off in the time that I had been a member of the Dogs, throwing myself into everything he asked of me – at first, it was just to take my mind off everything that had happened with Dina, but as time when on, I felt a sense of duty to these guys. I wanted to do the best by them. I wasn’t going to let them down, I had sworn that much to myself, and I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep the club on top.
I didn’t normally go against Chuck, I wasn’t that kind of guy – I did better when there were rules around me, something to guide me and keep me in place, so I could focus on what needed to be done and not make rash decisions around it. But, with the way Lombardi had been inching into our territory, I knew we couldn’t risk waiting too long to stake out his compound and check on what was happening with Liana.
Lombardi had mostly kept to himself during the time I had been working for the Dogs, but, ever since Star had joined the club, things seemed to have...shifted. I knew Star’s father had planned to sell his daughter off to Lombardi, and Lombardi had taken that falling through hard. Hard enough that he wanted to buy and sell women on his own terms. He had opened a brothel in the city, a few blocks down from the Kennels, and the place was usually crawling with too many guards for us to get close. I knew none of the girls there had agreed to be a part of that business. He had fooled them or kidnapped them or got them hooked on his product and forced them to work for him to pay back their debts. A good money-making scheme, but I didn’t know how the fuck he could sleep at night knowing he was pimping out those girls to men who wanted to do God knows what to them.
And the thought of Liana being in the midst of that, fuck, it made my skin crawl. Chuck let out a sigh.
”Look, man, you can go out there and stake out the compound tonight,” he replied. ”But don’t get into anything without the other guys there. If you see Liana, don’t do anything stupid, alright?”
”I won’t,” I replied, even though I knew there was no way I could promise that. I didn’t know why, but there was something about her that made me feel...protective. I doubted she even looked twice at me, but she had this kindness to her, this warmth, that made me feel comfortable in a way not many people could. Most of the time, I felt like a coiled snake, ready to strike, ready to make a move and take down anyone who got in my way – she convinced me to put my fangs away, at least as long as it took to get me a beer.
I turned and strode towards the door, and Chuck called to me one last time before I vanished.
”And hey, Lee?”
I turned to face him. He cocked an eyebrow at me.
”Don’t get yourself killed.”
I grimaced in response. It was a fair point. Lombardi had switched things up these last few months, and I got the feeling he would have relished the chance to take out the Dogs’ second-in-command. I didn’t hold myself in particularly high esteem, but if Lombardi did, then he might use that to push a little further into our territory.
Not that I cared much what happened to me, not really. Fuck, if I got hurt, so be it – I had plenty of battle scars from over the years, knife wounds, bike accidents, whatever. I barely even felt them most of the time. It took someone else pointing out I was bleeding for me to even notice that there was anything wrong. Most of the time, I felt so numb I could hardly tell when I was hungry, let alone when I’d been hurt.
I was going out there right now. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, tossing and turning, wondering what was going on with Liana – if she was alright, if she was hurt, if they were already selling her through that twisted, fucked-up brothel. My gut instinct was warning me that there was more to her absence than there seemed, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to risk the possibility that I could be right.
I headed to my room in the compound and grabbed a gun, shoving it into the holster at my hip – the same as I had done on that night, all those years ago, when I had gone after the man who killed my daughter. I brushed that thought aside. That was the last thing I needed to get hung up on right now, there were more important things for me to deal with, and I couldn’t let myself get distracted.
Once I was armed, I headed outside to my bike, throwing my leg over it and revving the engine. Just a stakeout, that’s all Chuck had given me permission for – he knew that if Lombardi’s men saw one of the Dogs in their part of the city, they might take it as a declaration of war, and that was the last thing we needed right now.
But fuck it – if I saw Liana there, then I was going to go after her. No doubt in my mind. I was going to bring her back safe. I didn’t care what it took.
Caring about someone this much felt...dangerous. Risky. Like I was putting more on the line than I even knew about. I barely knew Liana. She’d worked at the Kennels for a few years, and I had always found myself looking forward to the grins she flashed me across the bar when she handed me my beer. She’d tried to make conversation with me a few times, but I always brushed it off. A sweet little thing like her, she didn’t want to hear my life story.
Nobody at the club knew what I had been through before I joined the Dogs, and that was the way I wanted to keep it. Nobody needed to hear that shit, nobody needed to know the details. I had been through enough as it was, and I wasn’t about to turn my life story into some tragedy so everyone would feel sorry for me. It had happened, it was in the past, and all I could do right now was move forward.
I revved up the engine and pulled away from the compound, heading out on to the dark city streets beyond.