Chapter 7
Vienna
The gunshot cracked through the basement with a violence that seemed to shake the walls.
Hidden within that bang was everything that had led up to this moment.
From the two little kids in the park, defying fate by striking up a friendship, to the idiotic teenagers sneaking around with stolen kisses and emotions they couldn’t decipher.
To the forced abortion, the heartbreak, and the years alone, and everything in between.
All leading to now.
The empty silence.
And in the end, all that silence represented was Gabriella’s heart breaking when she inevitably learned what I had done.
The silence of finality. That signalled something irreversible had happened. When it seemed even the air understood there was nothing left to say.
And as I pulled away from Michelle, noticing the tears on her cheeks, I gently reached out to close her eyes and straightened to my feet, her blood still dripping down my cut.
Now she was free.
“Did I—”
The gun was ripped from my hands before I had the chance to finish my sentence, and the fucking brute animal beast I called my brother brandished it at me, smacking it around the back of my head and jabbing it into my shoulder.
Pain exploded behind my eyes with the first whack. The second almost made me cry as it hit against the shoulder I was positive was dislocated.
“What the fuck!” I hissed at him, dodging the next blow.
The next second I was pulled into an embrace so fierce I was surprised it didn’t crack the remainder of my ribs Nico and his men had managed to spare.
“Do that to me again, man, and I swear—”
“I won’t, brother,” I replied, feeling a shudder run through my best friend.
He squeezed me tighter for one brief moment, and then he was clapping my back, pulling away from me, and shaking his head with a sniff, clearing the tears.
That was it. That was all that needed to be said.
“I’m telling Rachel you hit me with a gun.”
Dante chuckled. “You think you’re going to be able to get a word in when Rachel sees you? You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t gut you where you stand. I can already hear her.”
“If you want to die so badly, Vienna, be my guest,” I said, mimicking her voice.
“Here, I’ll even do it for you,” Dante mimicked back.
I paused for a moment and then said, “She’s not going to care that you hit me, is she?”
Dante gave me a tight grin that let me know smacking me with a gun was a generous move, all things considered.
And then our gazes drifted back to Michelle.
“You did the right thing,” Dante said quietly, and I released a relieved breath.
I knew that, but hearing it from someone else, someone like Dante, just gave it more weight.
I knew I had saved her from a life she had long since given up on. Now that she was still, unable to hide anything, more and more evidence was showing—evidence of Nico’s cruelty, of her starvation, of everything she had suffered and lived through. Even if she hadn’t wanted to.
I knew I had saved her from a far more painful death.
But knowing something and accepting something were two very different things.
“You did, Vienna. It might not feel like it right now. But you did the right thing. She was dead anyway.”
I swallowed, though my throat felt like it had been lined with broken glass. “I know. But will she see it the same way?”
“Probably not,” Dante answered after a beat. “But she’ll forgive you.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, turning to face him.
“Because I forgave Rachel,” he shrugged back.
“She may not have killed Kitty directly, but she handed her those pills. She lay by her side and watched as my mother committed suicide. And sure, that’s a simplified version of what happened, but at its core, that’s what took place.
And I forgave her. Just like Gabriella will forgive you. ”
“I suppose,” I murmured.
“We can tell Gabriella I did it if you want?” Dante offered. “She doesn’t need to know. I don’t care if she hates me.”
“Thanks, but…” I sighed heavily. “She needs to know the truth. Lying to each other is part of the reason we’re in this fucked up situation.”
“Speaking of which,” Dante said, looking around the room. “What the fuck happened in this club?”
“Nico,” I said simply. “I don’t know all the details, but from what we’ve learned from Riley, and then what Michelle told me tonight… it’s not great, Dante. In fact, it’s fucking disgusting to even think about.”
“How much was done to Gabriella?” he asked.
“A lot.”
Dante paused, scanning my face as though he were assessing my response. “You know there’s nothing we can do tonight, right?”
“I—”
“No, Vienna. We came for you, we got you, we’re leaving. I’m not willing to lose another brother or my old lady because we pushed our luck and overstayed a welcome we were never given.”
“He’s still out there.”
“Yep, and if our brothers haven’t found him by now, that means the worm has completely fucked off and hidden.
And from what we know about Nico, it’s not surprising that he’d leave his club to deal with his mistakes.
I wasn’t lying to you when I said the other charters are arriving tomorrow.
We go home, we regroup, we lick our wounds—you in particular—and then we strike again. ”
I knew he was right. I knew the second the adrenaline wore off and my body had a chance to catch up with everything that had been inflicted upon it, I was going to be a hell of a lot sorer than I was now.
I knew that. I knew I was pushing myself to the extremes, and I was in a dangerous place, but that didn’t take away the sting of allowing that bastard to breathe a second longer than he deserved.
“We’ll sort it, Vienna. We will.”
“I know,” I nodded, accepting defeat.
“Now come on,” Dante said, nodding towards the entrance. “Let’s get out of here before you bleed out all over my boots.”
“I’m touched by your concern for your footwear.”
“I’m serious, Vienna.”
“So am I. Those boots are hideous.”
His glare should have killed me on the spot. Honestly, it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.
“Your beard is horrible.”
I gasped.
“Dante… I have been stabbed, kicked, beaten, burned and thrown into a fucking basement. But that? That hurt. I think we need to schedule a meeting with Doctor Ashleigh. This has marked a point of no return in our relationship, I think. In fact—”
“Vienna?”
“Yeah?”
“Your woman is outside. Maybe we should get her home and pick this up later?”
Home.
It was a strange word to use for my clubhouse when talking about Gabriella. Stranger still that Dante was the one to say it. And even more strange that after all these years… it still felt right.
“She really came to you?” I asked, knowing my brother wouldn’t lie to me, but needing to hear it anyway.
“No. She came for you. I was just the next best thing once we realised how stupid you were.”
I closed my eyes as I processed what that meant.
After all these years, after everything, she had finally—finally—come to me.
And that gave me the strength to move.
I forced myself away from the wall I had stumbled into. Or at least attempted to. My knees had developed a personality of their own and, unfortunately, that personality seemed to be cowardice. Dante stepped in before I hit the ground, taking my weight with a muttered curse.
“I can walk,” I said.
“Sure you can. That’s why you look like fucking Bambi.”
“I think Bambi is cute.”
“I think you can’t walk,” Dante shot right back.
“I’m walking now!”
“You can barely stand.”
“I’m also standing now.”
“You’re also leaning on me.”
“This is typical of you, Dante, you know that? I’m not just leaning on you. I’m allowing you to feel useful.”
“You’re about two seconds away from being carried.”
“Try it and I’ll bite you,” I said, baring my teeth at him and gnashing them together.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That was one time, and in my defence, Rachel dared me.”
“She dares you to do a lot of things. Most grown men learn to say no.”
“Most grown men are boring.”
Dante snorted, but he didn’t let go of me.
And I let him pretend he wasn’t holding me up.
That was the thing about brotherhood. It wasn’t always pretty. It wasn’t always soft. Sometimes it was a man insulting you while discreetly keeping you on your feet because he knew you were too proud, too stupid, or too broken to ask.
We left Michelle behind.
The guilt of it nearly brought me to my knees, but Dante’s hand tightened at my side, and I forced my feet to move.
One step. Then another. Every movement sent agony tearing through my ribs and down my spine, and by the time we reached the stairs, I was sweating so badly I could feel it running cold beneath my cut.
The climb up was a personal attack.
By step four, I had reconsidered every decision I had ever made.
By step seven, I was fairly certain the stairs were multiplying.
By step twelve, I decided that whoever invented basements deserved to be dragged outside and shot.
By the top, I was breathing like an old dog in hot weather, and Dante was pretending not to notice.
The house above looked like the Devils had taken my earlier instructions to bring the cavalry and interpreted them with their usual delicate touch.
A door hung from one hinge. Glass glittered across the floor.
A Rider was face down in the hallway with his hands bound behind his back and Hacksaw’s boot between his shoulder blades.
Somewhere further inside, a man groaned, and someone told him to shut the fuck up before they gave him something real to complain about.
My brothers had come for me.
All of them.
Because I had been too stupid, and too blinded by grief, to ask for their help in the first place.
Hacksaw looked up as we reached the hallway, his eyes sweeping over me once before landing on Dante.
“Jesus Christ, princess,” he said. “You look like shit.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. Starting to think you’re jealous of my natural beauty.”
“Obviously. Been losing sleep over it for years.”