Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
LEON
Their voices reach me at the top of the stairs. Not quiet whispers, but full blown conversation. Blake’s tone of concern, Damon’s terse responses, Jasper’s frustrated comments. They’re all awake, all talking, which means Falin’s already told them everything.
Fuck me.
I pause when I get to the bottom of the stairs, taking a beat to prepare myself for the verbal ass kicking I’m about to get.
They’re all gathered in the kitchen around the small table.
Blake’s arms are crossed, Damon’s leaning back in his chair with a calculated look on his face, Jasper’s pacing the length of the counter with Falin in front of him trying to get him to listen to something she’s saying. And Bailey…
Holy hell.
Her hair is gone. Well, not gone. Just cut. Transformed. When did she have the time to get a haircut? She looks… incredible. The choppy layers suit her. She looks older, stronger somehow. Beautiful.
I step closer, still unable to look away from Bailey. She’s holding a croissant almost possessively, like someone will take it from her.
“—reckless doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Blake is saying as I step into the kitchen. “Do you have any idea what kind of attention this brings? What if there were cameras? Witnesses?”
All eyes turn to me, and the conversation dies. Jasper stops pacing. Damon’s chair creaks as he sits forward. Bailey’s hand tightens around her croissant, but she doesn’t look away from me this time.
“Morning,” I say, in a rougher tone than intended. “I see you’ve all caught up on current events.”
And suddenly everyone’s talking at once… everyone except Bailey, who’s still just looking at me like she doesn’t know her place in any of this.
“Bro, I know I’ve done some stupid shit but this… why didn’t you call us?” Jasper asks.
“He was in the moment. I get it,” Damon says. “But yeah, it was pretty fucking dumb, Lee. I’m surprised, actually.”
“What’s done is done,” I say. “Yes, I acted out of character. But I don’t regret doing it. I wish the whole damn place burned to the ground.”
They start talking in unison again but I swear I catch a hint of a smile on Bailey’s face.
“The question is, what should we do now?” Blake cuts through the chatter with that calm authority she gets in crisis mode. “We can’t undo the whole fire thing, so we need damage control.”
Falin opens her laptop, typing furiously. “I’ve been monitoring the news coverage and police chatter. So far it’s just being treated as a targeted attack. No mention of suspects or descriptions.”
“Yet,” Damon adds.
“Security footage? What do they have? ” I ask.
“That’s where we might have a problem,” Falin says, pulling up what looks like a map on her screen. “You disabled his system, right?”
I nod. “Of course.”
“But you didn’t think about the neighboring properties? Their cameras were running just fine.”
Fuck. Of course they were. I can’t believe I let myself get that focused on making Alfred pay that I forgot all my normal precautions.
“So we’re screwed,” Jasper says flatly.
“Not necessarily,” Falin continues. “Your plate’s a fake… That’s good. The camera footage would be grainy at best, and with your helmet and jacket...” She shrugs. “But we need to be smart about next steps.”
Her eyes narrow and dart between me, Jasper, and Damon. I guess I get it. We’re usually the problem.
Blake raises her hand, cutting off another round of overlapping conversations.
“Okay, let’s all take a step back here. We’re jumping ahead without knowing the full picture.
” She looks around the table. “I think we need to get on the same page about everything before we start planning anything else.”
The kitchen falls quiet, and I find myself looking at Bailey again. She’s finished her croissant but hasn’t moved to get another. She’s just sitting there, watching our chaotic family try to figure out how to fix my mess.
“Bailey,” I say gently, “are you ready to share anything? About what happened to you? We need to understand what we’re really dealing with here.”
“And what about you?” Jasper asks, looking directly at me. “Are you ready to share with her?”
I sigh and pull out a chair. “We talked this morning. Briefly, but she knows about Alfred.”
All eyes are on Bailey as she wraps her arms around her chest. “I’m okay. It’s just a lot to take in. I don’t need your pity looks though. Especially you, Jas.”
Jasper raises his hands in front of him. “Sorry, I just can’t help it. It’s all so fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, I hate to say it but Alfred wasn’t the worst of them.
” She clears her throat. “There were the two that took me from the club. One of them… he hurt me, hurt all of us. He called himself King. Russian accent.” Her fingers are gripping her arms hard enough to leave a mark. “He’s a monster.”
I glance at Jasper, who looks like he wants to kill Alexander Orlov all over again. He opens his mouth to chime in, but Bailey continues.
“The other one was different. Still bad, but more... businesslike about it. He never touched me… not like King, but he sat by knowing what was going on. He’s the one who handed me over to Alfred. Sweeper.”
Blake goes completely rigid in her chair. “What did you say?”
“I don’t know their real names. Sorry I can’t be much help. But I can give some descriptions. Sweeper had dark hair… maybe like, mid-thirties—”
“Oh my God,” Blake gasps and sprints from the room out the front door.
Damon follows. “Be right back.”
Bailey’s eyes widen. “Did I say something?”
The three of us exchange looks across the table—Jasper looking like he swallowed poison, Falin wide-eyed, and I can’t see myself but I’m sure my own expression shows the weight of what we just found out.
Bailey catches on immediately, her gaze darting between us. “What’s going on? Why did Blake run out like that? What aren’t you telling me?”
I look at Jasper, raising my eyebrows in question. Should we? I know it should come from Blake, but I don’t think she’ll be able to speak on it. Not soon enough, anyway.
He nods slowly, his jaw tight. “She needs to know.”
I lean forward, choosing my words carefully. “Bailey, Sweeper... His real name was Brennan Whitaker.”
“Okay,” she says, still confused. “I mean, I figured he had a real name, but—”
“He was Blake’s brother,” I say quietly. “Her older brother. She had no idea what he was involved in. Thought he worked for a shipping company.”
The color drains from Bailey’s face as the pieces fall into place. “How? This doesn’t make any sense. Is that how you met her? Did you find Sweeper?” She claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh God, I just told her that her brother stood by while King…”
“It’s a long story, but King was after Blake too. She only found out the truth about her brother when we rescued her,” Falin says gently. “Before that, she had no clue about his double life.”
“What happened to him?” Bailey asks quietly.
Jasper’s voice is grim. “King shot him. During the rescue. Blake watched it happen.”
Bailey stares at us for a long moment, processing what she just heard. “So he’s dead?”
I nod. “Yes. We were able to get into some of his files after. Without them, we might not have found you.”
“You said King shot him? That means you know who he is? Is he still out there? Still hurting people?”
Another look passes between us, and I realize we have more to tell her than I thought.
“Jas, you should tell her,” I say.
“Fuck, guys, just say it. You’re freaking me out.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
Jasper kneels in front of her and takes her hand. “He’s dead, Bails. King is gone.” He glances back at Falin, who’s looking at him with such love in her eyes. “Falin shot the bastard, and he fell off a fucking roof.”
Bailey’s breathing grows louder and she blinks rapidly as tears stream down her face. “He’s dead? You’re sure?”
“Positive,” Jasper says. “Come here, sis.”
He opens his arms and Bailey falls into him, burying her face in his shoulder. I can’t hear what they’re saying to each other, not through Bailey’s sobs and Jasper’s whispers, but watching them reunited like this lifts a whole fucking boulder off my chest.
For eighteen months, I’ve imagined this moment—Bailey safe with us. But I never pictured it happening like this, with so much pain between then and now. With so much damage that can’t be undone.
They stay like that for a while, until Blake and Damon come back inside. Blake’s eyes are red-rimmed but she’s composed herself. She sees them and instantly knows we’ve told Bailey everything. Well, not everything, but the important parts.
Blake sits on the floor beside them, her hand on Bailey’s back. She’s fighting back tears too. “I’m so sorry, Bailey. I had no idea about my brother. Who he was… what he was doing…”
“It’s not your fault,” Bailey whispers, lifting her head from Jasper’s shoulder to look at Blake. “You couldn’t have known.”
Damon sits beside her, holding her tight, and before I know it all six of us are on the floor, surrounding Jasper and Bailey, holding each other, crying, saying all the things we’ve held inside for over a year.
Between the tears and the comfort of finally being together, Bailey opens up. She tells us fragments—about the food deprivation, about being moved from place to place, about the other girls who didn’t make it out. More… about the violence and the abuse… Only bits and pieces but enough.
She was right. Alfred wasn’t the worst of it. Not even close.
Every word she speaks feels like a knife twisting in my gut.
I should have been there. Should have protected her from all of it.
And Orlov. Fuck, I wish I could have been there to see that bastard fall off that building.
I wish I could have been the one to put a bullet in his chest instead of Falin having to carry that weight.
I’d happily watch him die knowing what he did to Bailey.
“So I don’t know about anyone else, but my ass is asleep,” Jasper says with a smirk about an hour later.