Chapter 13 Ronan
RONAN
It was probably the hardest thing I had ever done; walking into a room, and looking everywhere but where she was.
Even without staring head-on, I knew she was the most stunning creature within these four walls, without a doubt.
The dress I picked out fit better than I could have predicted and it took every ounce of restraint I had to not stand there drinking her in.
So, I faked my attention at the others, earning a few coos and awes from them as I made my way to the couch, sitting on the furthest side of it, away from her.
Yup, this was exactly where I wanted to be, with three fucking blondes in between the bronze goddess who ruled my soul and haunted my every waking moment.
There was so much tension in the air I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or if my brothers could feel it as well, but the rest of our guys were clueless and enjoying their well-deserved party to celebrate our successes this year.
Tonight most, or hopefully all three of the blondes would sign their agreement with the Black Crows and we could begin making use of their knowledge. Then we could work on taking down the Russian’s trafficking ring.
We’d never nabbed two girls from the same stash before and this year we took a risk with the Bratva that Santos was sure would pay off as soon as they started spilling secrets.
The weight in my chest pulled me down like an anchor though, and I couldn’t focus on anything but the woman who had already signed herself to us.
Once they signed, we let each girl decide who they wanted to be responsible for them for the next few months.
We’d take care of them until a certain rapport was created between us, fostering trust while something of a relationship was built.
It was always business for us, though more than once I’d seen Kane and Santos catching clingers before we were ready to turn the girls out to freedom.
It was shitty to do this to these girls, I knew it.
They knew it.
Everyone knew it.
We weren't the good guys.
It was the double-edged sword I swallowed gladly knowing that at the end of the day, all of the cruelty, fake love, and mistrust they experienced at our hands would be the ticket to freeing possibly hundreds of other women from the Bratva human tracking market this year.
Yeah, maybe we worked them too fast and too hard, but we didn’t have the time to lose, and we needed to be efficient; it was how we were able to keep doing this without any of our rivals getting on to us.
These fuckers spent years brainwashing these women before bringing them to the United States. We had to break the loyalty to the assholes these women somehow felt a need to protect even though they would have thrown them to the wolves at the first sign of a fat stack of cash.
I was pretty convinced the Japanese girl, Chiyo, needed more time in the kennels, but I worried that with the other two being ready, this would create a sense of jealousy. Any small feelings could tip the scales in the work we were doing and we needed the utmost of trust established.
We never got picked by the same two girls because we picked our type before we even broke them, offering them kindness and warmth at every chance so they thought they were picking us, but the reality was we were picking them.
If by chance they picked wrong, we had rules in place for that too.
The other could challenge the selection made and they would spend however much time it took convincing the captive that they should rethink their choice.
That only happened once, when a Cuban got confused and thought I was cozying up to her, when she should have chosen álvarez instead.
Poor bastard had to spend three weeks going the extra mile with neck rubs and shopping sprees while she was getting the cold shoulder from me before she realized she needed to choose again.
Throwing a fourth into the mix was definitely going to screw things up, but Cecilia didn’t know the rules of the game, and as far as I was concerned, she wasn’t a player.
Yes, she signed herself away to me, but for different reasons and I wasn’t going to let the situations mesh no matter how much álvarez was convinced I would.
Time passed, the drinks flowed freely, and I avoided the demoness to my far right like she was Medusa, and a single glance would turn me to stone.
I already felt like it anyway, guilt weighed me down, kept me frozen.
I was a mere reflection of the man I had become in attempts to seek the truth out of her lips.
There was a sense of urgency that tugged at me, that told the most inner part of me that she was in too deep.
I would do whatever it took to get the answer.
If protecting her meant she would hate me, I would take that hatred tenfold.
Because If death is what waited for her outside of my doors, I would keep her locked away inside until that death came knocking, and even then, it would have to cut through me to get to her.
But for the sake of my own men, and the people that followed us we had to find out what was coming. We couldn’t take the chance that this was some small-time bookie coming for a debt, or a drug dealing ex-boyfriend on her tail she’d likely stolen from and took off during the night again.
I was hurting her, to protect her, but I was hurting her for me too.
Every time I threw her in that box, I was breaking open a piece of me that I shut away and covered with the hard exterior I built in my time serving our country.
I wasn’t a patriot like the rest of them, and neither was Kane.
We were misguided youths with no future left, who enlisted to get out of the clutches of our past and our mistakes.
Every person I killed, every choice I made to hurt someone was made for me, not for freedom or the illusion of it that was promised by our superiors.
There was nothing about us that even whispered red, white, and blue.
We knew the truth about war and the cost of it, and we didn’t buy into it at all.
At the end of the day, it was just a means to an end for both Mateo and me.
The party was in full swing, a mixture of guys and women throughout the room, some of the women were our own soldiers and some were the plus ones of our higher-level guys. Since almost everyone lived here in the high-rise, some floors were meant strictly for business, and some for living quarters.
There were some older members of the Black Crows with full families, they chose to live away from the high-rise to keep their personal and work life separate and we respected the hell out of that too.
Shit got messy sometimes and we knew what could wash up on our doorstep if anything we did caused blow-back.
Sure, maybe we weren’t making announcements about where the Black Crow HQ was, but I doubted it would take much if someone really wanted to find out.
It was clearly easy enough for Cecilia to do it.
The one named Anya kept crawling closer and closer to me until she was almost perched on my lap.
My attention was on Fletcher and even though I wasn’t completely paying attention to the words coming out of his mouth, I was at least giving him the fantasy that I cared.
Fletcher was a damn good right-hand man, and I never took him for granted, but sometimes he just talked too damn much about shit I really didn’t care about.
“Yeah man, I trust you to deal with it.” I said and his eyes widened with surprise, and he thanked me for the confidence in him.
álvarez stood to gather all three of the blondes and take them to the other side of the living area. Dez quickly picked up his briefcase and followed. There was a guest room in the back that we kept mostly empty aside from the bed in it.
He would explain to them the rules extensively and present them with the contract to go over.
Once they agreed to sign, he would tag them with a tracker and then bring them out of the room and announce it to the entire party where the rest of the guys would cheer and make a huge fuss about the whole thing while they signed in front of them.
“What’s happening?” I heard Cecilia ask Kane and he moved from the chair opposite her and sat down next to her to explain in a hushed tone.
My skin prickled at the thought of him so close to her, but I knew my jealousy had no ground here. I still hadn’t turned my neck to acknowledge her presence and it was quickly killing me to pretend like she wasn’t here, or that she wasn’t constantly taking up all the free space in my mind.
I didn’t want her here tonight, nothing about having her next to me made it easy for me to convey an image of power, but I was outvoted and the fuckers I called my brothers kept bringing up the damn contract.
The woman made me completely weak, from the way she looked to the intoxicating scent of coconut and vanilla that seeped out from her with the flick of her hair. I knew it, and my brothers knew it.
She was my beginning and my end.
Anya came out first and sauntered over from across the room with a cat-like gait that would have been sexy had it been anyone but her doing it.
She was too skinny, and her arms hung long at her side awkwardly.
Her face was pretty, but it wasn’t the first face I’d look for in a room.
I could see she had her eyes set on me as she continued to prowl her way over.
Before she had sat down the door opened again and the other one, Oksana, followed suit almost identical to Anya.
I began to notice their similarities for the first time since they had been here and as I stared at their matching cheekbones, and eye shape I began to wonder if the similarities ran deeper.
Fuck.
They were sisters.
There was no way they weren't.
That was going to complicate everything. What the hell was Santos thinking when he nabbed these two?