Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
TANK
My nose tickled as if I were about to sneeze. I wiggled it, then moved to scratch it only to stop short.
Except, I couldn’t move my arms. Like at all.
I searched through my memory to see if anything came to me. The last thing I recalled, we’d been eating dinner and chatting about life. Things were calm in a way they hadn’t been in a while despite the fact we hadn’t caught our targets.
But then…
That’s right, I’d fallen. And then Chance had. The whole team went down like we’d taken some kind of sleeping potion.
Fuck.
We’d been drugged.
How though? Was it in the food? We’d gone to the restaurant to grab it. Or rather, a few of the guys had. There wasn’t a chance for someone to get to it like there would have been for delivery.
Oh, shit.
It was clear to me what happened. That fucking water delivery guy.
I knew something had been off about him, though I couldn’t decide what. Ronan had noticed too. Which is why he’d followed him out.
There were seals on the water that should have prevented anything, however, a needle was small enough we wouldn’t have noticed. Especially if he’d done it before coming upstairs.
It took far more energy than normal to force my eyes open. When I did, my heart sank.
The guys were all tied up around me, their bodies in chairs and their heads slumped to the sides. Whatever dose was in the water, it was affecting us all in different ways.
Just how deadly was it? Could they all be…
No! I couldn’t think like that.
It wasn’t hopeless.
My eyes found Mindy and Stabler off to the side. They were also tied up, though not to a chair. They’d been positioned back-to-back, like some old school movie moment.
“You’re awake, I see,” a voice called out from the door.
When I turned to look, my jaw fell open. Diestro Lune was far more charming than anything we’d had on him had shown. He stood in a casual manner, though power exuded from him. His suit spoke of money, yet his tattoos were beacons of the beast underneath.
“Lune.”
He nodded as a smirk graced his lips. I watched as he strode into the room, his gaze never straying from me. Behind him, another figure filled the doorway. This one was familiar too.
Pratt was here.
They were both within reach, yet I couldn’t take them out. Without even trying, I knew the restraints they had on me would hold up against anything I did. Lune wasn’t the type to underestimate their enemy.
And I had no doubt that’s exactly who I was to him.
Only, I didn’t know why.
“What do you want, Lune?” I asked once he reached me. “What is all this about?”
“I can’t believe for a second you haven’t pieced it all together. You have some of the brightest minds in this room with you. Tell me you’re completely ignorant, and I’ll call you a liar.”
Dropping my head forward, I groaned. “I have theories, yes. I’m not sure how reliable they are.”
Lune hummed as he motioned Pratt forward. “Tell us what you think. We’ll correct you should there be a need.”
Well, this was fucking strange.
I could admit that I didn’t think they’d be the type to give an evil villain speech, however, this exchange was also not on my bingo card. Explaining my own working theory to the men I’d been hunting felt ironic.
“I believe you want me gone because we’re too close to finding you and ending whatever work you’ve been doing.” My head tilted toward Lune. “And I think Pratt hates me because of something I can’t remember from our shared past. He’s held a grudge all this time. Now the two of you are working together to stop me. Am I right?”
Pratt let loose a dark chuckle. “Partially.”
“Yes, brother. He does have some of it right. Should we tell him the rest?”
Ah, so I was wrong. They’re definitely here for the show and tell of it all.
Rather than answer, Pratt moved further into the room. He dropped into a squat in front of me, bringing him directly into my line of vision.
“It’s strange seeing you like this, Bruno. I never thought I’d get to the see the type of man you became.”
I shook my head. “I barely remember those days. What did I do to you?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“What?”
My frown brought a smile to his face. It grew with the silence that surrounded us.
“You didn’t do anything. When you showed up at the home, you were just a sad kid. No matter what anyone did, you ignored us in favor of being alone.”
“So now you want to hurt me? Maybe kill me for it?”
Pratt shook his head. “Not because of that. It didn’t really bother me at first. It doesn’t matter if you were a sad orphan. That made you like the rest of us. Except it didn’t.”
I was trying to keep up with his line of thinking. It wasn’t easy given he wasn’t really telling me anything useful. I knew all this already. Or at least my version of it.
“Your trauma was too fresh. The rest of us had years to deal with our grief. You hadn’t. The Linds treated you differently because of it. You became their pet project. The child they loved more than the rest. It was obvious to us all, though you acted like you didn’t care.”
What?!
This was what the basis of his anger was rooted in? Jealousy?
“I barely remembered to shower back then,” I admitted. “I had no clue I was some pet project as you say. I only wanted my mom back.”
If I’d been any less confused, I might have broken into tears at the admission. It was always hard thinking of her and the loss that came at my stepfather’s hands. The bastard deserved more than I gave him. He should have suffered for years rather than the short time I gave him.
Lune scoffed. “Doesn’t matter if you knew or not. The Linds ignored everyone else in order to focus on you.”
“And then you ran away.”
Pratt’s words brought a wave of grief with them. I’d heard basically the same thing from the older couple not that long ago. They’d told me what it was like to find out I’d left. They’d told me of their search for me and how they didn’t want to give up hope.
Now I saw it wasn’t only them my choices affected.
“What happened after I left?” I asked Pratt, curious to see what he’d say.
His expression turned dark. He looked at me, though I suspected he no longer saw me at all. His mind was somewhere else completely.
“They focused on trying to find you. Everything was centered around Bruno-this and Bruno-that. They’d forget to pick us up from school or to have dinner ready because they were too busy talking to the cops or chasing down a lead. It was as if the rest of us didn’t exist.”
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“DON’T FUCKING TELL ME YOU’RE SORRY!” Spittle covered my face from his screaming.
Lune’s hand grabbed Pratt’s shoulder to pull the other man back. “Easy, brother.”
After waiting a beat, I asked the question I still didn’t have answers for. “And how did you two reconnect? You’re brothers by blood, right? Were you both in the system?”
The questions were tricky. I needed them to keep talking until one of my team members woke up or someone else came to find us. But I also didn’t want to rile them up too much or else they could go on a shooting spree and end things too soon.
“I found him as soon as I could,” Lune said softly.
“On my sixteenth birthday, I got a letter from him stating he wanted to meet me. He said we were family and that he’d have my back no matter what.”
Pratty spoke with such pride in his voice. I wondered if the hero worship there was what fueled his delusion.
There was no way they’d get out of this alive. Not if I knew my men at all.
Though, admittedly, I might not either.
The odds were stacked against me.
“In his letter, Lune told me about how we’d been born of the same parents and how we’d been split up when they both died in an accident. He spent years looking for me, even going so far as to hook up with a criminal organization to find me.”
Lune smiled softly. “I did. And then my sweet brother decided to protect me in his own way by becoming a man of the law. He’s kept an eye on my business ever since, and I’ve ensured he has no connection to me anywhere that matters.”
The pieces clicked into place.
“That’s why there’s no online presence for either of you. It’s why you’ve been able to hide so easily too. Because you’ve had people hacking from both ends.”
Pratt tapped his nose. “You got it. I’ve got a buddy in IT who helps me. And Lune hired some thug ages ago to wipe what my guy couldn’t. It’s been a beautiful setup.”
“That it has,” Lune agreed. “We wouldn’t be here without it.”
I shook my head as I tried to think of something else to ask. The obvious question was, “Have you been holding a grudge all this time, Pratt? Or was it only when I started taking out Gilded Ones that you decided I needed to be stopped?”
“You sure do have a smart mouth for someone at a disadvantage.” Lune noted.
I shrugged. “What have I got to lose?”
He pulled a gun from inside his suit jacket. The barrel was aimed directly at Chance’s head. There was no surviving a shot like that.
“Now then — what’s this about not having anything to lose?”