Chapter Ten #2
Jer followed in a second later with a scowl, his dark eyes finding Gwen in my arms. “Seriously, G?” he asked with a raised brow as he tucked his gun into the waistband of his jeans.
Kevin was still staring at her in disbelief, his leg shaking in pain, the tears now free falling from his face. I couldn’t blame him; that shit looked painful.
“Answer me! Where are my fucking friends?” my lover shouted at him. James’ eyes flicked to mine for a second.
“I thought I was one of them!” Kevin cried.
She stopped moving then, frozen in place. “Let me go, Dean,” she demanded as I tried to process an old, but familiar anger rising up inside me. Kevin was not her friend—just like Collin. My jaw tightened.
They used her. Betrayed her.
He was no friend of hers, and it was decided then that the next time similar words fell from his weak mouth, I would be breaking that jaw.
“Dean,” Gwen said, interrupting my violent thoughts.
“You going to be good?” I asked, fearful she would kill him now. I didn’t care in the slightest, but there were still answers that we needed.
“Please.” Her voice cracked somewhere in the middle but recovered quickly. Fuck. Couldn’t say no to that even if I wanted to. I released her immediately, her body sliding down mine until her boot hit the floor.
She stepped up to Kevin, silent in her approach, no doubt trying to rein in her emotions, and he was looking up at her like she was supposed to be his savior. I shook my head as I looked at Jer, a similar look of anger on his face.
Kevin was once a member of their little friend group while I was swinging my bat for the Chicago Cubs. My shoulders tensed; this wasn’t the time to brood about the past. We needed to get the girls back home.
She bent down, getting an inch away from his face, her curls falling over her shoulders, her blue eyes piercing his green ones.
“Did you know about Collin?”
He shook his head. “Gwen—”
“Cut the shit,” she hissed. “Did you know he wiggled his way into my life only to get information on him?” She pointed at me, her attention still on his face.
Kevin’s face softened, suddenly looking like a great place for the bottom of my boot. “He was only doing what my father told him to,” he replied, his voice trembling.
She slapped him hard, the sound echoing through the room, making the silence that followed louder. My eyebrows rose, but I remained where I was. She could handle this on her own.
“Fuck you.”
In a flash, she lifted her booted foot and kicked him in his injured knee, causing him to cry out once more. “That was for Alex Greenval. He didn’t deserve to die,” she said, her voice deadly.
“I did what I had to do,” he grit out, and she kicked him again.
“So am I. Alex was decent. He was a better man than you will ever be,” she snapped. Alex Greenval worked security at Club Fever, and she was right. He was a decent man. His body was found in the alley behind the club.
The room remained silent for a few minutes, the mistakes of our pasts settling in the air around us.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin finally sobbed, his head bent. “I am so fucking sorry, Gwen. None of this was supposed to happen.”
She stared down at him, disgust written across her beautiful face.
“You and Collin were my friends. I let you in—both of you. I introduced you to Haley…to Kay. You both manipulated your way into our lives, sinking your mafia claws into us…” She trailed off, gathering herself and wiping the tear that escaped away before he looked back up at her.
My woman didn’t want him seeing her weakness, and he didn’t deserve to.
She rolled her shoulders and backed up until she was leaning against the table I was at a few minutes ago, her ass resting on the surface.
“Where are they?”
“For every wrong answer you give, Gwen gets to continue her batting practice,” Jer added, his voice a low growl. He scooped up the bat and handed it to her, his pissed off eyes never leaving Kevin. She took it and placed it by her thigh.
Kevin shook his head. “I swear to God, I don’t know anything.”
“Wrong answer,” James hissed, speaking for the first time as he came up behind the bound man, yanking his head back by the hair and pressing a gun to his shoulder. “This won’t kill you, but it will hurt like a bitch, which is fun for me, because I’m enjoying your screams.”
“Easy there, agent,” I warned, folding my arms back over my chest.
“I don’t know anything, I swear. Not about Haley. Whenever I would bring up Kay—”
“What did you just say?” Jer growled, stepping forward.
Kevin started stammering now. “We-well wh-whenever Collin would come and see me, I would use Kay to press his buttons. Yo-you know, to get under his skin.”
“My sister is not a fucking chess piece.”
None of them were.
“I know that, man…I—”
Jer’s hand shot out, wrapping around Kevin’s neck. “I am not your friend, you little bitch,” he growled. “You lost that chance years ago.”
“Jeremy,” I snapped when I noticed the color draining from Kevin’s face. Was I the only one in this room not hellbent on killing the suspect?
Christ, I sounded like the old James.
He let go of the man, taking a step back, and allowed Gwen to approach. She had the bat perched on her shoulder again, and fuck, that did something to me. The anger in her eyes, the violent thoughts I knew were swarming her head.
Fucking hell.
I shook my head and cleared my throat. “Why is he keeping you alive? I thought he hated you.”
Kevin was still coughing, which caused James to lose his already thin patience. He yanked his hair harder, looking to my woman. “Batter up, Gwen.”
She didn’t hesitate.
She swung, the bat crashing into the same knee as before. I knew that was her form of mercy; she would leave the man with at least one leg. The fucker should be grateful. He cried out again, thrashing in his chair as Jer rolled his eyes.
His cell began ringing. Grunting, he stepped away, fishing the device out of his jeans to look at the screen. Then, he looked at me. “It’s Dontell.”
I tipped my chin to him. Good. Jer stepped out of the room. “Whatcha got, D?”
“Answer the fucking question,” Gwen hissed.
My chest ached at her tone. She was never meant to feel this kind of hatred, this anger, this pain.
This life was never meant for her. She was a light, always had been.
Regret settled on my shoulders, weighing a thousand pounds.
I should have done better. I should have taken her far away from this the second I got that first threat nine years ago.
She deserved to be happy and free, but instead, she was bound by darkness, an aftermath of evil.
“I don’t know, okay! Romano wants me dead, I know that much. When I refused to play for him again, that was the final straw. He wanted me to play for him,” he said, looking at me. My body tensed.
“Kevin Matthews and Dean Connors, the best pitcher and batter in the MLB. Can you imagine all the money we could have brought in?” he sneered before looking back up at Gwen.
“Where is your brother? Your mom?” Gwen questioned, a hint of softness in her voice, mostly like for Ian. She'd always pitied Ian Matthews. As a result of the accident, he was paralyzed from the waist down, his baseball career gone. My jaw clenched at the memory of their father’s cruel words.
“You should have let him die. By saving his life, you reduced him to a goddamn chair!"
Cal Matthews stopped loving his son the second Ian was placed in that chair.
I didn’t lose sleep over killing Cal Matthews, never had. Hell, I wished I could go back and do it again. I looked up from my feet to find James staring at me, his dark eyes cold and emotionless.
“You still playing, Connors?”
I looked at the bleeding, broken pitcher in the chair. “I'll never play again,” I growled.
Kevin stared at me, and eventually, he nodded. “Baseball isn’t fun when bloodshed is involved.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I enjoyed killing your father,” I drawled. He didn’t even blink.
“I wish I could have been there to see it.”
“Where were you that night?” Gwen asked, putting the bat on her shoulder, a hint of impatience in her voice.
He looked at her. “My father threatened to kill my mother and Ian if I didn’t get my shit together. I was there, but only for a few minutes. My father struck me in the face in the employee hallway.”
I remembered that. I was watching from the air vent.
“I left and never looked back. I took my family to the border. My mother—” He looked away, his jaw jumping. “My mother never wanted this life. She was sold into it.”
“Sold?” James released the captive’s hair and came around to face him directly.
“Ray Romano runs several sex trafficking rings across the world,” Kevin answered.
“We know,” all three of us said.
His eyes went wide. “Damn, you guys are good. That has been a secret for—”
“Over thirty years. Yes, we know,” James snapped. “Your mother was sold to Cal?”
Kevin nodded. “She told Ian and I everything once her withdrawals started to settle down.”
“Drugs?” I prompted.
He nodded solemnly. “Pumped full every day for years to numb the pain. My mother was from Italy, and my father got to pick his wife. He had been running for Romano, climbing the ladder. My father was power hungry. In exchange for my mother, he owed Romano sons to play baseball. If my mother had girls…they would be sold into the rings.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Christ above,” James growled.
Gwen put her hand on her chest and looked at me, her eyes filled with tears.
I know, baby girl, I know.
“When did Collin come into your life?” James asked after a few moments of heavy silence. Jer came back into the room, leaning against the opposite wall.
Kevin began to tell us about the day his father brought him a dirty, black-haired little boy. He was covered in glass and blood. Cal told his sons they weren’t allowed to talk to him, and he stayed in the basement. Ian was too busy playing baseball to care.