Chapter Forty-Five - Elise
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Elise
The red light on the camera goes out.
“Well, damn. You almost had me convinced,” Mason says.
I want to sigh with relief that he didn’t seem to catch either of our signals, but I refrain. It had been a risk to Lyla’s life, but when I caught Ryder’s shoulder sliding downward, I immediately recognized the motion—it was the sign I’d spent weeks trying to figure out.
We need to hope it was enough for Joshua to notice.
I scramble off Ryder’s lap and glare at Mason. “Let Lyla go. You have what you want. She has nothing to do with this anymore.”
He almost smiles. “That’s not going to happen.”
Ryder jumps to his feet. “You motherf—”
He doesn’t get to finish because Nate presses a taser to his neck, and he falls to the ground.
“Stop! Don’t hurt him!” I shout, tears pricking my eyes as I run to my friend.
Before I can reach him, I’m grabbed around the waist and throat from behind. I struggle against Nate… only I’m watching Nate restrain Ryder’s arms behind his back.
“Did you miss me, brat?” The slimy voice brings me back to the worst day of my life.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
My eyes flash to my brother when the realization hits me. “You raided the warehouse.”
Mason shrugs. “No one wants Moreno dead more than Mr. Singleton. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty.”
“Do you have any idea what he did to me?”
“From the looks of it, nothing compared to what Moreno did to him.”
Tripp’s breath tickles my ear as he chuckles, and I writhe in his arms. My head whips back, catching Tripp in the chin, but before I can get anywhere, Mason grabs me in an unrelenting grip. He secures my wrists behind my back before I can stop him.
When Tripp moves into my line of sight, I’m not prepared to see the damage Mason referred to.
This close to him, I can read the words that Ryder carved into his skin.
Coward, useless, nothing, worthless, and other dehumanizing words line his arms, leading over his chest and up his neck.
One hand has no appendages beyond his palm, and his face, which used to only have one single scar across it, is now a mess of light pink markings.
Patches of skin are scabbed over in various shades of red and purple that make my stomach turn.
The videos and pictures I saw in Joshua’s office couldn’t capture the horror before me.
He truly looks like a monster.
“Don’t like what you see?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Tripp’s lip turns up in a sneer, and he grips my chin with his uninjured hand. “You’re really going to ignore me after all we’ve been through?”
I jerk against my brother, who still holds my wrists, but it backfires when he lets go, and I fall into Tripp’s arms. With our noses only inches apart, I breathe in the same pungent scent that takes me back to that horrible day.
“Go to hell.”
He pulls my body against his. “Is that any way to talk to an old friend?”
“How’s your hand?” As expected, his hold on me tightens.
“You little—”
“Now, now, children,” Mason says as he leans against the desk. “Take them downstairs, but in a separate room from the girls.”
He ignores my glare and grins as Tripp and Nate lead us out of the office.
The door slams shut, and the sound echoes through the empty concrete room.
A metal bar that runs along the bottom of each wall is the only décor in sight.
Both Ryder and I are chained to separate walls by handcuffs attached to only one wrist. Even with one hand free, we’re too far from one another to attempt an escape.
Ryder slouches against the wall, looking nothing like the larger-than-life man I’ve come to know. How could I have thought, even for a second, that Ryder was a traitor?
“Ryder, I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he says in an emotionless, empty tone, not raising his dejected eyes to mine.
“The things I said in the car, the way I attacked you, I never would’ve done any of it if I’d known about Lyla.”
When he finally looks up, he gives me a sad smile. “Under different circumstances, I’d be proud of what you pulled in the car.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“There was one mistake though.”
“Oh?”
His smile falls away. “You should’ve shot me.”
“What?”
“Elli, when your life is on the line, you pull the trigger. It’s what you should’ve done.”
“How can you say that?”
Ryder lays his head against the wall. “It’s the truth.”
I think back to that moment and what had been going through my head. I was so mad at Ryder for his betrayal that I hadn’t thought twice about holding him at gunpoint. I even fired a warning shot to scare him.
But could I have made the shot?
“I wouldn’t have done it,” I tell him.
“I know.” Ryder sighs. “Still, I was wrong about you.”
“What about me?”
“When Moreno told me he wanted to consider you for the capo position, I thought he was crazy.” Ryder looks ashamed to say the words.
“Joshua wants me to be a capo?”
My father employs women for two reasons—cooking and cleaning. Joshua’s L.A. base doesn’t even do that. Even associates, the lowest on the mafia family food chain, are exclusively male.
If Joshua were to name me a capo, it wouldn’t just unsettle his family but every crime family in the country once word got out.
Ryder nods. “He settled for having you run the kitchen to start, just to see how you’d do in a position of authority. It wasn’t until I watched you snap at Elijah that I got a glimpse of what Moreno was talking about.”
My cheeks heat as I try to wrap my head around the idea.
“But after everything that’s happened today, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. It takes a lot to rattle me, but upstairs, I could barely think straight, and you handled everything. Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I would never let anything happen to Lyla.”
He only nods, and I know it’s time to address the elephant in the room. “Ryder, what happened?”
He shakes his head with a heavy sigh. “During our session, I got a call from Rachel, but when I answered, it was Mason.” Ryder spits my brother’s name.
“He told me that if I ever wanted to see my daughter again, I needed to go to the garage and wait for instructions, so I did. When I got there, Nate was waiting for me. I was given an earpiece and told not to take it out.”
“Rachel’s here, too?” I hadn’t even thought about Lyla’s mother.
Ryder gives me a tight nod. “Mason knows Moreno will call her the moment he sees the footage of me. He’ll assume Lyla’s in trouble, so Mason will have Rachel tell him everything is fine. I just hope he does a more thorough check than that.”
I hope so, too.
“I had to wait until you and Moreno fought, then download the files onto the flash drive and get you to leave the base with me willingly.”
“But Nate told me to meet him in the garden at eight. He said he’d get me away from Joshua. How would the plan have worked if I’d actually gone?”
“I was the one waiting for you in the garden. Had you come, I would’ve told you I work for your father. But when you didn’t meet the deadline, I went to find you.”
I spend a long moment under Ryder’s analytic gaze before asking, “What?”
“Why didn’t you come to the garden? You know he lied about Tripp, so why didn’t you leave?”
The mention of Tripp’s name makes me feel sick all over again, but the ache in my chest is far more painful.
I don’t even notice the unshed tears pooling in my eyes until I look up to see a blurry Ryder.
“I love him,” I whisper. “I love him so much that it hurts, and I was furious with him for lying about Tripp that I—I just lost it… I said terrible things.”
“Like what?”
“That he’s a cruel man who ruins everything he touches. That his parents didn’t love him, and neither do I.”
Ryder shrugs. “That’s noth—”
“That he could keep me at the base, but I would never love a monster like him.”
“Still, that’s—”
“That his sister is better off dead than seeing the man he is today.”
Ryder’s eyes widen more than I’ve ever seen before.
“Dammit, Elli.”
“I felt horrible about it. That’s why I didn’t go to the garden. I was on my way to apologize to him when I ran into you.”
Ryder mutters a string of profanities.
“He’s going to believe the video, isn’t he? He’s already mad at me, and he’s been jealous of you before.”
“I don’t know, Elli. A few weeks ago, I’d have been sure that Moreno would analyze every second of that video and see through it, but his judgment is clouded with you. Your performance was a little too good, and I’m worried he’ll stop watching after the kiss at the beginning.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing my tears to stop. Now isn’t the time to dwell on things I can’t change.
“What’s our play?”
“There is no play,” he says with an undeniable finality.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, my daughter’s life is on the line. Mason already let Tripp mark her up with cuts,” he says with a ticking jaw. “She’s three years old. I won’t risk it.”
My jaw goes slack. My brother’s actions go beyond unforgivable.
“We can’t just sit back and let Joshua and my dad have a shootout. Do you have any idea how many lives will be on the line then? We’re dealing with the two most stubborn men on the planet. If we don’t do something—”
“Elise!” His use of my full name silences me. “I won’t risk her life.”
“And how do you know she won’t get caught in the crossfire? Do you think she’s safe down here? You think Mason is above using her as some sort of shield?”
He flinches at my words, but I don’t let up. “Her best shot at surviving is if we do something to save her and Rachel.”
The muscles of his arms tense when he balls his fists.
He knows I’m right.
Ryder gives a deep sigh. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I know that we can figure something out if we just—”
My words are interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Both Ryder and I tense when we see the visitor.
Tripp strides in with a cruel smile and a water bottle in his good hand. “Thirsty?”
As much as I want to spit curse after curse at him, I stay silent.
He waves the bottle like a hundred-dollar bill, and I hate that my parched mouth is begging me to ask for a sip. Tripp chuckles when he reads the thirst in my poorly camouflaged expression.
He takes slow, taunting steps toward me, and I’m ready to tell him to screw off when he sets the bottle of water on the ground and pulls a knife from his pocket. My spine straightens when the blade snaps free, and I can’t stop my mind from flooding with the ways Tripp could use it to harm me.
“Why don’t you ask nicely, brat?” he says, stopping to stand at my feet so he’s towering over me.
I stay silent knowing how badly he wants a reaction out of me.
“Maybe I’ll make you beg for it.”
I actually bite my tongue.
“Back off, Tripp.” Ryder seethes, and I notice that he subtly pulls on his cuffs.
Tripp flashes a wide smile at his former underboss. “You’re not exactly in a position to tell me what to do anymore. Unless you’d like me to go visit the kid again?”
Ryder freezes at that, his stony features cracking at the mention of harm coming to Lyla.
Tripp turns back to me, crouching until we’re at eye level, and I can’t help but stare at the knife still poised in his hand.
“I bet you like to beg,” he whispers.
I don’t have the self-control to stay silent.
“Go to hell, you bastard,” I bite out.
He laughs, genuinely amused by my reaction. “And here I thought I broke that spirit in the basement.”
I refuse to let him see how much his words bother me, so I make a show of eyeing his fingerless hand and the words etched on his body.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who’s broken here.” I breathe a laugh, relishing in the fury that dances behind his cold, hard eyes.
In one fast move, Tripp is pressing the blade of the knife into my throat.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
The vengeful gleam in his eyes grows with every second that he pushes the blade deeper, and I can’t hold back my wince. The metal slowly pierces my skin, warm blood sliding down my neck and soaking my shirt.
Ryder is shouting at him to stop, but Tripp ignores him so thoroughly that I wonder if he even remembers we aren’t alone. I put every ounce of my focus into staying as still and quiet as possible.
He looks down at me with such pure hatred that I realize I’ll be bleeding out on this floor in a few moments.
Just before he digs the blade into my carotid artery, he stops, though his rage-filled glare screams that he wants to keep going.
So, why doesn’t he?
That’s when the plan comes to me.
I force my voice to sound authoritative. “You need to let Lyla and Rachel go.”
His billowing laugh makes my skin crawl. “And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you don’t want this.”
His raised brow matches his amused sneer. “You chained up and Moreno walking to his grave? I think I’ve got everything I want.”
“You don’t want Joshua to have a quick death. You want him to suffer the same way you did. This isn’t the revenge you want.”
I feel a sense of victory when his eyes spark with interest. “And what exactly is it that you’re proposing, brat?”
“Let Lyla and Rachel go, then I’ll give you what you really want.”
“And that is?”
“Me. I’ll let you finish what you started in the basement.”