13. 13 – Maverick
“Where the fuck have you been?”
My bellowed words make Ryder jump as he tries to sneak past the open door, but I’m past caring.
“You’ve been fucking hours,” I snap. “No contact. Radio fucking silence. So where the fuck have you been?”
There’s no sign of Enzo, and it tells me all I need to know. “Did you bring Moore back with you?”
I swear to God, if he’s downstairs in the dungeon—
“No!” Ryder slides his hand to the back of his neck, squeezing. He looks… sheepish.
Ryder doesn’t do sheepish. Petulant, yes. Dramatic, absolutely.
But sheepish ?
I cross my arms, waiting for an explanation and fucking hating the way he shifts on his feet. I’m not his fucking father – I’m nowhere near old enough. But damn if it doesn’t feel that way sometimes. Between Ryder and Enzo, it’s no wonder my hair is greying at the ripe old age of fucking thirty.
But damn it to hell, someone has to keep order in this house. And as much as I hate that it has to be me, I hate the idea of them both spiraling even more.
I tip my chin at him. “Talk. Now.”
He starts to sidle towards the lounge, and I stalk after him. “A conversation like this is probably best with wine.”
“You hate wine,” I snap.
He shrugs helplessly. “Maybe I’ve developed a taste for it?”
Crossing to the bar, he pours a large glass and holds it out to me. Blinking, I stare at it. It’s nearly overflowing.
They’ve definitely killed someone they shouldn’t have.
“Just tell me,” I grit, snatching the glass and throwing back a large gulp, sucking down at least two hundred dollars’ worth of vintage merlot in one fortifying swallow. “Who’s dead?”
Ryder laughs nervously. “Er – no one.”
Raising my eyebrows at him, I wait. He squirms, not sitting down. Just standing there looking awkward as hell. “Where is Enzo?”
His shoulders slump. “Downstairs?”
I take another sip, not much smaller than the first, with the strong feeling that I’m going to need it. “Ryder. Just spit it out.”
He rotates his shoulders, drawing in a big breath. “ Westoleagirl .”
Blinking, it takes me a moment to decipher the garbled words. Then a good thirty seconds of trying to work out what he means, and then praying that it doesn’t mean exactly what I think it fucking means.
Another sip, as he watches me warily. “Say that again. A little slower.”
His teeth sink into his lip. “We… stole a girl?”
Carefully, I place the wine down on the table next to me. “See, I thought you might have said that. Except, then I realized that couldn’t possibly be true. There’s no way that you and Enzo would be stupid enough to kidnap a girl off the street. So, I must have misheard. Yes?”
“It wasn’t off the street,” he nearly shouts. “She was in the warehouse.”
My hand reaches out for my wine again. “In the warehouse.”
A headache is starting to form behind my right temple as I watch him twitch. “For Christ’s sake,” I snap finally. “Sit the fuck down and tell me exactly what happened.”
He sits.
And I try to take in the information he’s throwing at me, my hackles rising as I fight to keep my breath even.
“Let me get this straight,” I begin, sitting forward and holding up a hand to cut off the flow of absolute shite spouting out of his mouth. “You broke into the warehouse.”
Ryder nods, his hair flopping over his forehead. “Well, the main doors were open, but there was a false wall…”
He trails off as he gets a look at my face. “Yes. Yes we did.”
“And you found a girl, chained to the wall.”
He nods again. “With really long hair. Proper Rapunzel in the tower shit. And her name is Zella.”
More wine needed.
“And instead of calling the authorities,” I begin slowly, massaging my temple as I get up to refill my glass, “you made a bargain… to bring her here.”
He shrugs. “She didn’t want to be on her own. She was right, too. No way she would have survived if we’d just let her run off.”
I stare at the dark liquid inside my glass. “So you made a deal with her to bring her here, broke the chains off her ankle, and then… Enzo knocked her out.”
Ryder looks obstinate when I turn to him. “I didn’t agree with that.”
I think I’ve run out of words.
“And… she’s where, now?”
I think I already know the answer to this. Ryder drops his head. “In the dungeon.”
My fingers trace the edges of the glass. “So you kidnapped a girl who would have come willingly, and then took her into a torture dungeon.”
Ryder grimaces. “I mean, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound like the best idea. Enzo was pretty insistent, though.”
My mouth dries.
Maybe this… this is it.
The moment I’ve been watching for, dreading, for years. Where we lose him to the darkness completely, lose him to the shadows covering his soul and I can’t bring him back, can’t fix up the tears in his psyche with the blood of evil men.
The pain in my head explodes into a full-blown rage.
I’m not losing him. Not to this. I won’t let the shadows have him.
We’ve fought too hard to let him slip away now.
The glass smashes into the floor as I spin and head out of the lounge. Ryder follows me as I stride to the door covering the inside entrance to the dungeon, the one we rarely use.
“She’s fine. He won’t hurt her, Mav.”
Fuck, I hope that’s true.