Chapter 24 #2
I stared at him for a few seconds. He was right. I clenched the bottle in my fist as Handlebar gave me an encouraging nod. Before I could chicken out, I picked it up. And immediately wished I hadn’t. Because it wasn’t a phone call, it was a video call. And no one spoke when it connected.
“Hello? Declan?” I asked, looking at the dark picture on the screen. Handlebar raised a brow at my question and walked over. I could hear heavy grunting and slapping. “Is he serious? Is he calling me while he’s…”
Handlebar’s face was hard. He shook his head and took the phone from me.
The sounds came clearer as the camera moved.
And I heard what Handlebar was hearing. That wasn’t the sound of someone having sex.
My stomach bottomed out as I pulled the phone back to me.
The picture came clearer as light filled the room.
The sounds of someone being beaten were obvious now.
I stared in horror as the camera lifted.
A man was held up, tied at the wrists, hanging from a bar.
There was blood all over him and he grunted every time he took another punch.
Two men were attacking his torso and back alternately.
He looked defeated, almost dead. It was only the sounds he made after each hit that let me know he was alive.
They’d worked over his face because it was barely recognizable. Only I could see who it was.
“Declan…” I whispered.
Handlebar moved away from me. I heard him making a call. But I couldn’t stop looking at the screen.
“No. Stop!” I shouted. But they didn’t stop, and I realized this was a video clip, not live. The camera pulled away from a screen where the caller was watching the beating. “Please stop, leave him alone!” I shrieked, but all I got in response was a laugh.
I dropped to my knees, my hands shaking as I tried to hold on to the phone. They were going to kill him if they didn’t stop.
“Please, stop. Stop. What do you want?” I roared.
Handlebar appeared in my periphery. He was just ending his call and running back to me. The other guys working in the garage had stopped to see what was happening. I could barely breathe. All I could see was Declan’s destroyed face and body.
Until the phone turned around and I saw the insignia on the cut of a man standing beside the guy holding the phone. Handlebar snatched the phone, his face filled with disgust and rage, and he snarled.
“You want to save him? Come to this address. Maybe you’ll get there before we kill him.”
The call cut out, and I screamed, scrambling to get it back. “I need to call them… Call them back, please. Call them back…”
Tears streaked down my face as the phone screen lit up again with a text message. It had an address on it. Handlebar wouldn’t give me the phone, but I could see how full of rage he was. The mild-mannered southern man was no longer here.
He grabbed a wrench off the counter and threw it, making me jump as it clanged hard against the wall, then fell to the floor with a prolonged clatter. I bent forward, clutching my stomach. I couldn’t stop shaking. I felt dizzy. I was going to black out.
“Waverley,” Handlebar was beside me, lifting me up. “Breathe darlin’ you gotta breathe.”
“I…can’t…” I felt my chest hitching, the video re-running through my head over and over. How did they get him? How did they know who he was or how to find him?
Handlebar kept talking, kept telling me to breathe, his gentle voice finally breaking through and I sucked in a deep breath.
“Where is she?” Hudson came into the garage on a roar. I flew into him, grabbing his cut as I cried, barely able to speak. “It’s okay,” he said, running his hand up and down my back. “I’m here, it’s okay.”
“It’s not,” I cried out, leaning back to look at him. “They’re going to kill him. God, Hudson please you have to help him. You have to stop them, they can’t kill him!”
Handlebar was messing with my phone, Warren was there, Ink and Dirt too and they all looked at the video started playing again, the sounds filling the garage.
“Fuck,” Warren looked up at me. “Wave, who is this?”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight. This was my fault, he was hurt because of me.
He might lose his life because he knows me.
Worse, he could survive this and always remember what happened to him.
No one could get over something like this.
Even if he was intact, he’d always be afraid, always worried that someone might get him. I’d done that to him. Me.
“Waverley,” my brothers face appeared in front of me. He gripped the sides of my face, taking me from Hudson’s arms, and holding my eyes breathing in and out until I took the same rhythm and did it with him. “Honey, we need to know who this is.”
“It’s Declan,” I whispered.
“Shit,” he closed his eyes but when they opened, they were full of ire and determination. “This isn’t your fault.”
“How can you say that? Of course it is. They took him to get to me. I have to go, I have to make them let him go.”
“Not happening.”
I looked over at Hudson. Ballistic had appeared and was watching the video, they had at least turned the sound off so I didn’t have to hear it again.
“He’s been calling and calling, and I’ve ignored him every time,” I screamed at Hudson, before looking back at my brother. “Who knows how long they’ve had him? How much they’ve tortured him. Please, Warren, I can’t let him die. I can’t. It’ll kill me if they kill him. Please?”
Warren and Hudson looked at each other. I didn’t want to see Hudson’s face.
I’d heard the way I sounded when I talked about Declan.
I still cared about him, of course I did, and I couldn’t stand the thought of this happening to him.
Hudson could be reading more into it but at this point I didn’t care. There was only one thing I cared about.
“Clear the room.”
I clutched Warren as my father came in. Everyone but his officers, me, and Hudson remained.
Handlebar gave my shoulder a squeeze before walking out.
I couldn’t believe less than fifteen minutes ago we had been joking around without a care in the world.
That I’d thought everything was settling down, going my way. That I was happy.
“Tell me what is happening. I don’t need to see the video, I already heard what’s in it.”
Warren straightened up, but it was Dirt who filled him in. I listened, frozen in my brother’s arms. I was losing feeling in my legs, and he felt it, wrapping me up tighter and stopping me from falling. I looked up at him. “Don’t let him die,” I whispered. “Please, Warren. Please?”
“This is likely a trap,” King said, rubbing a hand over his jawline.
“Yeah,” Dirt said. “We thought it was suspicious how quiet they’d been.”
My father looked at me and I knew what he was thinking.
Was it worth risking his men for? Did saving Declan mean enough to him or was he just collateral damage.
I pleaded with my father without saying a word.
Warren’s arms tightened, and I knew he was giving my father the same look.
Warren wanted to do this for me. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Hudson.
“What about the locale?”
Ink spoke then, telling my father about the area around what I presumed was the address they said to go to.
I didn’t know the local area anymore. I didn’t even know if the place they had chosen was local.
It could be miles away. And the longer they stood here deliberating, the longer they had to hurt Declan.
I was so close to the edge right now. The cut on my head was aching, the pain shooting through my skull was almost debilitating, but it was nowhere near what Declan was suffering.
“It’s no riskier than anywhere else, given the situation,” Ink concluded. “All we need to decide is if we’re in.”
I sucked in a breath, a sob breaking out and Warren pulled my face to his chest, turning me away from them all, no doubt giving them a hard look.
“We let them do this, they’ll think we don’t care about my sister.”
“That isn’t true. They know this guy means nothing to the club, they’re desperate.”
I didn’t recognize whose voice it was, but I wanted to turn around and rip out his vocal cords for even saying it.
“Easy, Wave,” Warren murmured, running his hand down my back again, still not letting me turn away from his chest.
“Dad, we can’t let them kill an innocent man,” Warren said, and it showed how much this meant to him referring to him as dad, rather than King or Prez.
“It’s not even about that. It’s about her,” he added.
“You heard Wave, this will kill her too. Is that what you want? To destroy your own daughter.”
“I don’t mean any disrespect VP, but this isn’t our fight.”
“What? Let me go,” I struggled but Warren was stronger than me, he tilted my chin up to look into his face again.
“Stop, Wave. Please, you shouldn’t even be here for this discussion just let me handle it okay?”
The others had continued arguing as my twin tried to handle me.
And it was taking a lot for me to let him.
The one voice I hadn’t heard was the one I needed to hear from the most. I turned my head and found him amongst the group of men.
He had his hands on his hips, and he was staring at the floor in complete silence.
It was as if he wasn’t even in the room.
“We’ve already lost Itchy over this, are we going to lose another brother?
Look, I get it, this is your daughter, and I would die to protect her but she’s right here,” Banshee pointed at me, and I realized he was the one opposing this so vehemently.
“We could be walking into an ambush, and you all know it.”
Everyone was quiet, and I was about to burst out of my brothers arms, steal a bike and get Declan myself when Hudson spoke.
“You’re right. It likely will be an ambush. That’s why we can’t all go.”
“Hudson,” I spun out of Warren’s arms and stared at him in shock. Tears filled my eyes as he stared back at me, his jaw hard.