Chapter 40
C onnor
Through the warehouse, I stalked Everly. I spared enough attention to be sure the place was secure and operating normally, and to check my phone for Arran’s progress, then I was driving my lass into the lift.
Inside, I sank to the floor and grazed my hands up Everly’s legs, stripping her underwear. She’d stood up to her tormentor while wearing a skeleton mask—my fantasy come to life. If I didn’t get inside her within minutes, I was going to lose it.
I pressed my lips to her soft skin, moving upwards until I reached the crease of her thighs. Her centre. Her clit. I kissed her then held her gaze with mine. “I’m so fucking proud of ye. Also, I want ye pregnant fast, so if ye thought I was on ye before, that’s nothing to what I’m going to be like now.”
Hazy-eyed, she dug her fingers into my hair, her nails grazing over my scalp. “I need to explain that pregnancy comment to Genevieve and Cassie, but I told them I’d see them again in a minute. I need this, too.”
I sucked her clit and swirled my tongue over it, loving how she draped against the wall like her legs couldn’t hold her up. By the time we arrived on the penthouse floor, I had her shaking. In the apartment, I carried her straight to the window as I’d done in the past. Under the glow of city lights, I stripped her clothes and took my time over every part of her, praising her, letting her know exactly how beautiful she was.
I made her come with slow fingers and my tongue in her cunt.
Then I freed my dick and stood, lifting Everly to back her to the big arched window. It wasn’t enough that I fucked her regularly on the floorboards of our apartment for the city to see, I needed everyone to know. Positioning her to the glass, I slid inside and groaned in pleasure. Everly curled her legs around my waist, her face buried in my neck.
“The world should see how beautiful ye are, Ev.”
“I love that you think so.”
“Because it’s true.”
She raised her focus to mine. “I love you so much.”
Any reply I could give would be an understatement. “My last breath will be your name.”
The stops were off. I bucked into her, all control lost. Downstairs, in the middle of our little torture-interrogation, she’d told the room she was pregnant. I’d claimed her as mine with actions, words, and fucking tattoos, then she’d done the same. Desperation edged me on, until my balls were tight and Everly’s soft moans then spasms around my dick had me following her into a soul-stealing climax. I came, jerking into her, then dropped my forehead to the cool glass, content for a minute to breathe her in.
My fucking phone buzzed in my jeans.
“You’d better get that,” Everly told me.
I grumbled but released her. “Lie on the sofa with your legs up. Don’t let a single drop out.”
As I swiped to answer the call, she clamped her hand to her pussy and scampered to take up the position I’d ordered.
Down the line, Arran greeted me. It had been a couple of hours since they’d left in the hunt for Alisha, and I hoped for progress.
“Manny’s on his way back. He’s going to take over at the warehouse for an hour. The Four Milers’ management tier including Red have been located and are under our watch.”
“Ye need me out there,” I filled in the gap.
“I found something and I need your take on it.”
Arran gave me an address on a street across town which bordered Four Milers’ territory. From memory, it was a derelict building, which intrigued me all the more. With a few more muttered instructions, he let me go.
I prowled back to Everly. Naked on the sofa, she’d propped a cushion under her backside and hooked her legs over the back. I rounded the furniture and took her ankles.
“Make yourself come.”
Fresh warmth spread pink across her cheeks and down her chest. “You just did that twice.”
“You’re full of my cum. I want one more before I leave.”
She sucked in a breath, but her fingers travelled to the apex of her thighs. Everly rubbed her clit, right under my gaze, and my dick thickened in my jeans once more.
Just when she was panting, her eyes closing, I tapped her ankle for her to stop. “Need to top ye up.”
The back of the sofa was at about hip height, so perfect for what I wanted to do. Freeing my dick, I reached for Everly’s hips to arrange her to receive me, then beat myself off directly over her pussy. Upside down, she stared at me with parted lips and her fingertips indenting her thighs then wandering to her tits. She tugged on her nipples.
That final image tipped me over the edge.
With a groan, I fitted the end of my dick to her waiting entrance and pulsed into her, topping her up like I’d promised. Then I pulled away to finish the job in making her come again. My mouth to her pussy. My life melding to hers.
My breathing came hard and I backed away. If I didn’t leave now, I’d do this with her all night, but duty called me out.
“Make yourself come again while I’m gone.”
She breathed a laugh. “I’m going downstairs to Cassie’s room, so that could get awkward pretty quickly.”
“Everly,” I warned. I needed to know we weren’t wasting any time.
“I’ll find a minute to slip away,” she promised. “Please be careful out there. I want a life with you. I want all the things we said to each other, and for us to live here and be happy. I want to lie in bed with you while you read your thriller novels and for us to work side by side. Come back to me.”
“I will, I swear.”
I also made her swear not to go down to any of the public floors, and ensured we had guards throughout the building ready and prepared, then it was time.
Arran wouldn’t have called me without good reason. My pulse beat steadily, and I shifted into action mode.
But Everly paused me one more time before I left. “There’s something I forgot to say earlier. I overheard a phone call in my father’s house. Red called the public line and asked my father to pick up. He said he could offer a deal to bring down the skeleton crew and tried to shame me for being seen naked on game night.” She curled her lip. “Fuck him. Anyway, my father picked up and said something about licensing. I didn’t hear anything else but I thought I’d better mention it.”
I thanked her and kissed her goodbye, my thoughts moving at double speed.
The shadows outside the warehouse accepted me. In the nondescript old car we used for recon, I backed out of the space, curling my lip at Riordan’s matte-black bike one bay over. For Everly’s sake, I needed to get to know him. He’d repaired the damage I’d caused, but for a show of loyalty, I needed him to adapt the colours that lit up the machine when he rode. From blue to neon pink and black.
From now on, he’d fly the skeleton crew flag proudly.
For late evening, the traffic was a steady line of red taillights all through town, but eventually, I arrived in a quiet street made of a mixture of run-down housing and disused office blocks. A figure appeared in the doorway of the address Arran had given me, and I recognised one of our crew. Exiting, I prowled over and merged in with the shadows.
He gave a head jerk for me to follow then took off into the building’s gloomy interior. Broken glass crunched under my boots, but I followed, senses alert in the tense air and still night.
Faint music reached me, growing louder as we climbed a set of utilitarian stairs which delivered us to an open-plan office. Here and there, broken furniture littered the floor, desks upended and papers strewn. The crew member silently left me, and I scanned the space until I located the man who’d called me in.
Masked up, Arran watched the street from a window. He was at the far side of the broad building where it adjoined another road, and here, the music was louder still. Carefully, I joined his stakeout, dirt on the window and a cluttered board behind us masking our shapes.
He spared me a look. “Tell me what you make of that.”
I followed his gaze to a church across the street. Last time I’d driven down here, tormenting the Four Milers with a scout around their limits, that church had lain silent from years of disuse. Built of stone, it had an entrance hall and a tower rising above, the bells long since removed. Kids had graffitied the walls, and paint had peeled on the door.
A freshly painted door which now lay open, spilling light to the pavement. Two men guarded the entranceway, welcoming a cautious visitor who climbed the short flight of steps with his eyes wide at whatever he could see through the doorway.
The visitor entered, and I scrutinised the building. This was the source of the thudding music, and I recognised at least one of the thugs playing bouncer from previous gang scuffles.
A car pulled up down the side of the church, and a man climbed out with a woman’s hand clamped in his. She was young, maybe twenty, and her fair hair hung forward over her face so I couldn’t identify her. I didn’t miss the aggression in how he yanked her into a side entrance of the building.
In a heartbeat, I realised why Arran had needed me to witness this.
“Strip club or brothel?” I asked.
“Possibly both. Opening night.”
Hot breath caught in my lungs.
The rising, shared anger between us could seem hypocritical, but that was surface level only. Divine, our strip club, and the unnamed brothel above operated for the benefit of women who chose to work there. Typically women who’d been trafficked and abused yet decided to flip the narrative and make money on their own terms. We provided protection and security. We offered a safe space and took predators off the street.
What I was looking at now was undoubtedly a sham version. One where the women were coerced rather than enabled. Red didn’t give a fuck about hurting people. He’d sell his own grandmother if offered cash for her bones.
The Four Milers had expanded beyond their territory of drug-running and blatantly breached ours.
I exhaled fury, facts adding up across the past couple of weeks.
To Arran, I quietly outlined the call Everly had overheard between Red and the mayor. “We’ve had women quit, too.”
Arran kept his gaze on the church. “Paired with the fact that Red made a direct threat to take staff from me, now we know why.”
I brooded on it, mentally dismembering each man who showed up to the steps. They weren’t significant in number. Nothing compared with our thriving business. But a single woman hurt under those terms was too many.
“Do ye think Alisha is in there?”
But before he could answer, he stilled. “Incoming phone call. It’s Convict. I sent him a message an hour ago, hoping he could get away.”
He handed me a headphone, then under the cover of his jacket, answered the call.
“Dad, hi, what the fuck is that about Rachel?” Convict asked.
I couldn’t smile, either at his pretence of who he was dialling or at the use of Alisha’s real name. The fact she’d even told it to him spoke volumes. No one called her Rachel.
Arran kept his voice low. “She left earlier this afternoon to find you.”
“Why would she come after me?”
“Weren’t ye a couple?” I asked.
“Ma, good to hear your voice, too. No, we, uh, shared a night together once,” he dropped his voice, “but she turned me down when I asked to cook dinner for her. Figured I screwed up or was out of luck.”
Fuck. If she hadn’t made it to him, where the hell had she gone? I was ready to ask about the new club when Arran gripped my arm and pointed, hidden beneath the level of the windowsill. Across the road, Convict limped out of the shadows on a patch of scrubby grass to one side of the church.
He was here.
Around his throat, he wore a fucking Four Milers spiderweb motif. That, I despised, but seeing him again gave me a strange burst of sadness. I missed him. From Arran’s soft stare, he did, too.
It also meant he needed to be even more careful over what he said.
He twisted to gaze down the road, unaware that we were twenty yards away. It pained me, too, that he favoured one leg, maintaining the illusion of our beating being worse than the skin-deep display he’d helped direct.
“Could she be inside the brothel Red opened?” I asked.
He shook his head, not that he knew we could see. “Naw. I’d know.”
“Because they’ve taken you to the heart of their new business,” I prompted.
“Exactly. People know me.”
I got his meaning, even if he couldn’t speak openly for fear of being overheard. Red had welcomed him into the fold based on his knowledge of how our warehouse operated. That had worked out better than expected.
“Answer this carefully,” Arran said. “Are some of our women there?”
“Got it in one, Ma. Not Rachel, though. I wish I knew where she was.”
Arran continued, “And Red’s bringing in others. Is he abducting them?”
“Can’t say for sure.” Convict kicked a stone. “Would it…would it be okay if I came home for dinner?”
He was asking for an out. I wanted to give it to him, and Arran undoubtedly did, too, but Convict was our man on the inside. Without question, we needed to bring Red’s new venture down and break up any trafficking routes he’d established, but that involved planning and time. A recall of all crew members and a lockdown of the warehouse.
There was another connection I’d asked him to explore, a link to the murders in the city by who in the Four Milers had access to the sedatives.
Arran gave me a slight but sorrowful shake of the head. He needed him to stay, too.
“Soon,” I said. “We need ye to keep an eye out for Rachel but also to discover who’s knocking out the girls Red’s bringing in, if that’s what he’s doing.”
Convict’s shoulders slumped. “You’ve got it. I’ll find Rachel, if I can.”
On his patch of grass, he stilled then slowly turned. To face what, we couldn’t see.
“The fuck you doin’ out here?” a voice challenged him.
“My dad called.” He shoved the phone in his pocket, leaving the line connected.
Quickly, Arran muted our end.
“Thought you were an orphan?” The man prowled closer, a slice of streetlight falling over him and giving me an identification. Fifties, smartly dressed. He was Bronson, Red’s right-hand man.
Convict stayed silent.
“And who’s that Rachel bitch you’re trying to find?” Bronson shoved Convict’s chest.
I jerked upright. Arran laid a pausing hand to my arm.
“My sister.”
“More family climbing out of the weeds. Funny, that.”
I didn’t like his tone. Or the way he was closing in. Convict was taller than him and bulkier, but Bronson was twice his age and quick with deadly anger. And with his fists. I’d gone toe-to-toe with him once but nearly lost my life in the process.
Convict could fight, but Bronson was a stone-cold killer.
“Seems to me Red made a mistake with you,” Bronson pondered. “He jumped at the chance of bringing in one of Daniels’ crew and didn’t think through the consequences. Such as where your loyalties lie.”
“Arran Daniels kicked me out after he caught me working for you,” Convict bit back.
“Shut your fucking mouth. I’m thinking here.” Bronson held his gaze on Convict. “Red’s out, so I’m running the show, and he’s been blinded by pussy and power. A hundred people watched that spectacle of your exit. Some came running to me. Said you’d gone missing for weeks then were dragged through Daniels’ club, with the man himself making a drama about kicking you out. Never done that with any other reject, far as I’m aware. So why you, unless to draw attention to his spy in the making?”
What happened next moved so fast it took me by surprise. Bronson snapped out an arm and hooked Convict by the throat, then dragged him backwards into the shadows. The call disconnected, leaving dead air. Without the light on them, I couldn’t see shite, except for when Convict’s legs abruptly stopped kicking.
The two of us leapt to our feet.
Arran swore. “What the fuck just happened?”
My heart hammered. “He’s been made. And unless Bronson learned a chokehold in the past few weeks, I think he jabbed him.”
“Fuck. Fuck!”
My friend crept from the window, the chair he’d appropriated in his hands and anger directing his movements. Emotion held his features, and he went to throw it, catching himself before he made a clatter that would have people coming to investigate our hideout.
I paced after, horrified at Convict’s fate and the knowledge we’d gained.
One thing was certain, we couldn’t plan here.
“We’re leaving,” I stated.
“Or we walk straight in and get him back.”
“Not like this. I don’t want to explain to Genevieve why I’m bringing home your corpse when we could’ve done this another way. We’re outnumbered, and Leesh is still missing, too. We’re doing this right.”
Catching Arran by the shoulder of his t-shirt, I hauled him with me down the stairs to the exit.
“Give me your keys,” I ordered.
Arran handed them over, and I passed them to the waiting crew member who’d posted sentry while we watched. Then we climbed into my vehicle unseen.
Down the road, I smacked the steering wheel. “Bronson never messed with sedatives in the past. He’s too much of an old fucking dog to pick up a new trick. But the way he took Convict down…”
“Makes him a murder suspect for Natasha. And he’s got our boy out cold.”
My heart hurt. “Convict wanted to come back. I said no.”
“I said the same with a gesture.” Arran scrubbed a hand over his face. “One word and he would’ve vaulted the church wall and been out of there safely. Fucking fuck!”
The two of us fell into silence. The city lights strobed over us on our retreat through the town centre, tension thick in the air between us.
“We’re getting him back tonight,” I decided.
It was inevitable. Already, Arran had his phone in his hand and an all-crew alert underway.
His savage smile said it all. “We’re bringing Convict home and shutting that church down. Red won’t know what hit him.”