Chapter Two – Zane
I paced back and forth as I stared at her, passed out on the bed, one arm secured to the bedframe.
Her red hair was splayed out around her head, and she looked almost peaceful as she lay there before me. I would never have guessed, if it hadn’t been for the zip tie wrapped around her wrist, that she was being held here against her will.
It had been nearly three hours since I had snatched her off the street, hit her with a heavy dose of chloroform, and dragged her back to my car. The cops steered clear of that part of the city, knowing the Dogs would have caused them too much trouble if they showed their faces around there. Which made it that much easier to steal her away before anyone could catch on to it.
I didn’t know how long it was going to take for someone to notice that she was missing, but I knew it was going to be chaos when it clicked. I wasn’t even entirely sure who she was, but I was certain she had to be a Dog. There was no way she would have spent the whole night at the Kennels if not. She had been pretty drunk when she had walked out of there, and those fuckers were too arrogant to make sure she got home safe. They thought they ran this city after they had taken Lombardi down, but they didn’t know who they were dealing with when it came to me.
This apartment I’d brought her to was dingy as hell, but it would do for as long as I needed it. I wasn’t sure exactly how long I was going to be here, but one way or another, I would get what I wanted out of the Dogs. I would either destroy them financially, bleed them dry with demands that would leave them with nothing, or I would crush them mentally by killing one of their own.
And this girl was part of the younger generation, maybe even the daughter of one of the Dogs, and that was going to hurt even more. I almost felt a little bad for her, given how young she was. That crop of bright red hair, her freckled skin, those green eyes—she looked fresh, which was rare for women in this line of work. She hadn’t seen a lot of the world, which explained why she was wandering down dark alleyways all alone when she should have known better.
But I had to get that sympathy out of my head. She was part of them. Probably knew what they had done to Lombardi, what they had done to my brother. Celebrated that victory along with the rest of them. She didn’t deserve anything from me. Not a damn thing.
I didn’t even know what I was waiting for. When she came to, she was going to scream bloody murder, but there was nobody here to hear her. I had made sure of that, scoping this place out for days to make certain nobody would interrupt us.
Not that I had any intentions to do anything other than get revenge. There might have been guys out there—shit, guys like my brother, if I was being honest with myself—who would have taken a sexy young woman tied up like this as an invitation. But that had never been me. Never would be, either. I might have hated the Dogs, but sex wasn’t going to bring me closer to what I needed.
All at once, her eyes flipped open, and she tried to sit up on the bed, but the binding on her wrist held her in place.
“What the fuck is going on?” she spat at me, her eyes blazing with fury as they locked on to mine.
“You’re going to be staying here with me for a while,” I replied, doing my best to keep my voice even.
“Like fuck I am,” she snarled back. “Let me go. Let me out of these cuffs right now or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what?” I demanded. I couldn’t stop the anger getting the better of me, though I knew I should have been smarter than to give her a reaction.
“Or I’ll set my dad and his men on you,” she warned me. “You have any idea who the Dark Dogs are? Because you just—”
“Of course I know who the Dogs are,” I cut her off. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
“What does that mean, you asshole?” she demanded, struggling against her binding again.
I moved toward her, and all at once, she stilled, staring up at me. For the first time, I could see fear in her eyes replacing the anger. She was smart to be scared. She must have known all the hell those Dogs had caused for so many people, and it was only a matter of time before one of them came back to take what they were owed.
“Your father and his fucking friends killed my brother,” I snarled at her. Her eyes widened.
“I— I—”
She couldn’t string together anything more convincing. I straightened up again, the smell of her perfume filling my senses this close up. Something sweet, with a little bite behind it, like salted cookies.
“That’s nothing to do with me,” she fired back, pulling herself together again. “I’ve been away at college, I don’t—”
“And you were drinking at the Kennels tonight like you were one of them. You really think I’m going to let you off that easily?”
Her face paled, draining of color. It was starting to settle in now, just how much trouble she was in, just what she was up against here. And if she thought I was going to back off and just let her go, she had another thing coming.
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she warned me. “When they find out what you’ve done, they’ll—”
“Oh, I intend to let them know myself,” I growled back at her. “You think I brought you here just for fun? No, I want something. And I’m sure as hell going to get it. You hear me?”
Her jaw tightened, and I noticed a sheen of sweat on her brow as she took in those words.
“What— what do you want?” she whispered, as though suddenly away of just how vulnerable she was, laid out on the bed in front of me like that.
“Not that,” I sneered back at her. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
She let out a gasp of relief. But she was still just as much tied up and restrained as she had been when all of this started. Whether or not I wanted to fuck her, that was barely relevant. She was still at my mercy, and she knew it.
“If you just let me go now, I won’t tell anyone about this,” she pleaded with me. I laughed.
“You really think I’m that fucking stupid?” I hissed at her. “You think I’m going to let you walk, after everything your Dogs have done to my family?”
She swallowed hard, then parted her lips again, still clearly intending to reason with me, but my mind was made up. I knew what I needed, and I wasn’t going to let her change my mind.
I stormed out of the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind me, her voice echoing through the small apartment as she called out to me, pleading with me to come back so we could talk about this, work things out before they went any further. I ignored her. I wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. Her Dogs hadn’t given my brother a chance to fight for himself. Why should I give her the same thing?
I padlocked the door and headed to the kitchen to make myself something to eat, even though I was far from hungry. No, the adrenaline was still coursing through my system from that confrontation—and from knowing that I was going to crush the Dogs in this city, once and for all. I was going to destroy them.
And I was going to use the girl in the next room to make it happen. No matter how much she protested, I had her right where I wanted her, and I wasn’t going to let her get away.