Chapter Ten
Dean
Gwen was going to fucking kill me.
I hadn’t been home in over eighteen hours. We dropped Aiden over at the Jackson’s last night, and after I made sure she was settled, I headed out into the early morning to get intel.
That intel was Kevin Matthews.
Jer’s boys found him locked up under Busch Stadium.
There was a network of passageways underneath the stadium, almost as large as a parking garage. After we left a faceless Tipponi to rot on the pitcher’s mound yesterday, we told members of the street crew to keep an eye on the closed baseball park. The Cardinals were out in California this week.
Five hours after we dumped the body, an anonymous tip was sent in to the STL PD. Red and blue lights showed up at the scene.
Then, Jer got a call from one of his boys, Dontell, this afternoon.
According to him, some mafia goons showed up at the investigation. After they viewed the body, they headed into the stadium going, in the opposite direction from which they came.
He followed them downstairs to the ground level and one secret door led to two, and boom: Kevin. The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon moving him to a safe house outside the city.
Hell, I couldn’t even tell you what day it was.
Everything was about finding the girls. Nothing else mattered.
My days used to blend together when I was under Romano, too.
Sometimes, I didn’t even care whether not the sun would rise the next day, because the darkness I had to immerse myself in drained the life out of me, like my own personal vampire.
Now, I was forced to awaken that side of me again, and a new fear created itself inside my chest, fear for my son—my innocent son.
There was a monster inside me, born and bred by the bloodshed Romano demanded.
His penance.
Spilling blood to protect Gwen was never a problem for me, but now, I had Aiden to worry about. There were sides of his father he could never know, a darkness that would never touch him. He would get to live the life I never could.
“You are bigger than I expected.”
I looked up from my crossed ankles, shaking off my parental worries, to the man bound to a chair.
I'd never gotten the chance to meet Kevin Matthews officially, but I knew he was there the night of his brother’s accident.
Over the years, I had pondered why he didn’t jump into his brother’s fight to aid him, but time gave me the answer.
Kevin Matthews didn’t give a rat’s ass about his sibling; his hatred for him was rooted deep, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
There was jealousy there, and maybe after all this time it had faded. Who the hell knew?
Thankfully, I was an only child, so I didn’t have to suffer the envy and hate most brothers felt. Nevertheless, Kevin stood by that night, witnessing the firstborn’s downfall in the same bar where I fell in love with Gwen, which in the end would be my own downfall.
Life was good then, and it would be again. I would make sure of it.
“Where have you been for the last five years?” I snapped, cutting right through the bullshit.
Kevin disappeared after I murdered his father in St. Louis five years ago. One could only assume Ray had him killed too, but when I was in Italy, I found out that Collin had been hunting him.
“Protecting my family,” he spat.
He was dirty and tired, that much was clear. His dark hair was longer and unkept.
His green eyes were dull, lifeless, aside from the anger that consumed them.
The last time I saw him was in Club Fever, when Romano revealed him to the bosses and regional leaders like a prized pig.
Kevin had bulked up—granted, he was covered in muscles that night, but training your body makes time go by faster as a prisoner.
I knew that all too well. The night I looked down into Kevin’s eyes for the first time, I could feel the Devil’s eyes on my back, waiting, studying…
He taunted me.
Tested me.
He wanted to see if I felt any guilt for murdering the man’s father with a barbed wire bat.
Guilt was a feeling I was unfamiliar with when it came to Cal Matthews.
I slept like a baby that night after fucking my woman ruthlessly on the countertop, worshipping every square inch of her body to make her forget about that man, and as she screamed my name, her body submitting to mine, I no longer cared about heaven or hell.
“How long have you been in St. Louis?” I asked, scratching my bearded jaw.
His eyes widened a fraction at my words, but only for a moment. Suppressing a chuckle, I knew he was trying to appear unfazed. He didn’t know where he was. Damn. Stevens was good. Too good, but I was better. I dropped my hand, folding my arms over my chest.
“Answer the question.” My voice was low and gruff from exhaustion and anger.
“I didn’t even know I was moved here,” he hissed, the muscles under his olive skin straining against the ropes.
Good luck getting out of those…
“When did he move you here?”
“Three weeks ago, I think? A month? The fuck if I know. The guards fed me twice a day.”
I sniffed, rubbing the back of my thumb across my nose quickly before strolling across the dark room, the worn wooden floors creaking underneath my boots.
The safe house was small and worn, most likely built in the thirties, and had two bedrooms, a small kitchen, living space, and cellar.
Jer told me it used to be the place for crew meetings, where all the leaders would meet here once a month in secret, and of course, that cellar came in handy for other reasons…
Well, the house wasn’t so much of a secret, since Sullie would have two little stowaways in his back seat from time to time, curiosity winning over the minds of the innocent. A brown eyed boy and a blonde-haired girl.
I pushed the thoughts of innocence out of my mind as I reached for the baseball bat in the corner—dried, dark blood coated the barbed wire wrapped tightly around wood.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked, spinning the bat in my hand carelessly, moving clockwise three times before my wrist commanded it to move in the opposite direction.
Three and three. It was second nature to me.
It started out as something to do when I felt like showing off, and then it morphed into a crutch when the anxiety became too much before and during games, and now…
Now, it was used to extract fear.
Kevin seemed to sit up a little taller in his chair, despite the ropes. “You killed my father with that bat,” he said, his voice steady.
The darkness in me smiled at the memory, the sounds of his cries and crunching bones, his pleas of forgiveness…no one was forgiven if they touched her. Death would greet them in unhinged violence.
Yes,” I replied, meeting his eyes. I pointed the bat at him, some of the barbed wire touching the tip of his nose. “How many?”
He swallowed, his eyes focusing on the blood stains in the wood, the dried flesh in the metal of the wire. “How many what?”
“How many did the Doctor kill?”
His green eyes met mine, a form of understanding he did not deserve to know flashing behind his pupils. “Not nearly enough,” he croaked.
“At least we can agree on something,” I said flatly, pulling the weapon away from him, not missing the short breath of relief from his body.
“I thought that bat was lost forever,” he said after a few moments of silence.
I frowned, inspecting it casually, like I hadn’t looked at the thing countless times before. His father’s blood wasn’t the only blood staining the wood.
“Just stored in the FBI evidence room,” I said with a shrug, brushing off memories of a different time, a different life, a different Dean.
The front door opened down the hall, and I expected heavy footsteps—not the clicking of heels.
I sighed. She was going to kill me.
“Baby girl,” I called, twisting my neck just in time to see her emerge in the doorway.
She was a goddamn vision, dressed in tight—I mean tight—light blue jeans, the fabric stretching over the valleys and dips of her luscious curves, thigh high black boots that made my cock twitch, and a black V-neck that showed a teasing hint of her tempting chest. Those curls I loved so much were pulled halfway back, the rest falling past her shoulders.
Her blue eyes were burning a hole into my soul, and fuck, it felt so good.
She crossed the space, yanking the bat out of my grasp, my fingers releasing it giving her the power.
“The next time you leave me out of the loop, Dean Connors, I will shove this bat up your ass,” she hissed, getting in my face, baring her white teeth.
“Yes ma’am,” I said with a grin. That earned me an eye roll.
Did I take her threat seriously? Nope.
Should I? Probably.
She brushed past me, lifting the bat up over her shoulder, eyeing the man in the chair. Before I could stop her, she swung, letting out a frustrated shout, as the bat slammed against one of Kevin’s knees.
He howled in pain, the tendons in his neck stretching as his head flew back, the sound of crunching bone and cartilage ringing in my ears. “Fuck!"
She let out a little growl and prepared herself for another swing.
Jesus.
She was going to kill him.
I moved, my arm snatching her by the waist, both of us ignoring Kevin’s screams. She struggled against my body, the bat falling to the floor, but I held her steady, needing her to get her anger in check. This woman was prepared to kill the fucker before we got through questioning him.
She was acting like James.
“Where the fuck are they?” she screamed, her voice bouncing off the walls as she kicked her legs trying to break free of me.
Kevin looked at her in horror, his green eyes wide with shock and filled with moisture due to the pain. “Gwen?”
James walked into the room, quickly took in the scene, and looked at the ceiling for a moment, his scruffy jaw tense with irritation. I almost smiled at that. Almost.
There was the man I knew.