Chapter 41 Ronan
RONAN
No.
She fucking said no.
It felt like I was being eaten alive by my own frustration, consumed entirely by the choices I made, and the choices she made for us.
But it didn’t matter that she hid everything from me for the entirety of our relationship.
It didn’t matter that the Cecilia I knew was a fabrication, a make-believe fantasy, a role that she played to get through that chapter of her life.
Because she was fucking right.
All her lies had merit. Everything she hid was to keep me safe.
At any point, if Rafael Flores thought that I was a liability, he would have put me six feet under. I also watched enough of those videos to know that he would have probably made her pull the trigger, as a lesson.
Who was I kidding? I watched all of the videos, all two hundred and fifty-six of them.
The man was a monster, but even now I could see she didn’t think of him that way.
And how could she? He was her father, in her mind this was always how it was supposed to go. This was the path he laid out for her.
Her destiny.
I was worse than him because I should have protected her without question.
I should have kept her safe and instead, I let my rage take the driver’s seat while I played tricks on my mind, telling myself that it was for her own good.
I didn’t deserve her forgiveness. That’s what made it even more painful to see her look at Kane the way she did.
He’d earned that.
I’d spend every day trying to earn it too, now.
I got up from the table, grabbed a clean t-shirt from my room, and headed to the elevator, pushing the down button.
I knew I wouldn’t have to look far to find the other asshole.
My brothers gave me shit for pouring all of my emotions into a punching bag, but at least my rage never left a permanent scar on anyone.
Maybe just a few black eyes.
When Santos got like this, he didn’t spend hours in the gym sweating it off until his muscles screamed at him.
You wouldn’t find him channeling these feelings in a healthy way like Kane did with his instruments.
No, the sick bastard went down to the fifth floor to cut his demons out of him by bleeding others.
He always picked the most deserving of them to feel his wrath.
The ones who were absolutely not going to make it out of here no matter how many secrets they spilled, or how many promises they made.
The ones who were marked for death because the weight of their sins was too heavy for us to allow them back out into the world again.
It wasn’t just about him though, the minute Kane mentioned the tracker, a thought popped into my mind that I couldn’t shake, I needed to confirm my suspicions for myself before I could make another move.
I stepped onto the fifth floor, hearing the pained cry of a desperate man echoing off of the concrete floors and bouncing through the metal bars. Hughes stood in the corner, giving me a hesitant look.
“You didn’t try to stop him?” I asked him, and his face twisted up in conflict.
“I’m not getting in his way when he’s like this. Sorry boss,” he looked away and I couldn’t blame him. We didn’t pay him to deal with Santos’ shit. He kept it together for the most part, but we’d noticed a pattern the last couple of years. Anytime he went to Ocean Valley, he came back real murdery.
This time seemed worse.
I stepped through the walkway looking to the cells on my left as I admired my brother’s handiwork.
There was a guy laying on the ground in a puddle of blood with both his arms slashed from the wrist all the way up to the elbow, his cold dead stare looking past the cage like he was searching for salvation.
But every man who found his way here was guilty of more than one unforgivable atrocity.
I didn’t pity them.
Nor would I get in my brother’s way.
But I couldn’t risk him offing the girl, just in case, he got a little too bloodthirsty.
The next holding cell had a guy with a knife handle sticking out of his ear, the blade clearly embedded deep into his brain. The unfortunate fuck who shared that space with him must have tried to put up a fight, because álvarez straight up disemboweled him.
He didn’t usually get that personal unless you really annoyed him.
I picked up the pace and hurried my way past all the formerly living prisoners until I found Santos about two cells away from Oksana. Or maybe it was Susana now. I didn’t actually give a fuck either way.
He had some guy pinned to the ground as he bashed his face in with what looked like the remnants of Hughes’ coffee thermos.
The girl screamed in horror, my head nearly imploding from the unending screeching.
I approached him slowly, knowing that when Santos got like this, he tended to see a little… red.
I rested my hand on his shoulder as I stood behind him, keeping a small distance between us, just in case.
“What do you need, brother?” I asked in a low, soft tone.
He turned his head to where my hand rested, and he snarled, peeling his lip up in discontent.
“What I need is for the people who are supposed to have my back, to not lie to me,” he raised his voice in anger.
“It’s not like that álvarez, nothing’s that black and white,” I tried to explain but his rage was getting in the way of his reasoning. I knew that feeling well myself.
“Black and white enough for you and Kane to decide what’s worth telling me. When did we start keeping secrets? Or is that her poison affecting us all?” He narrowed his eyes at me, and his accusation confused me even more.
He wanted to blame Cecilia for the way we were all coming undone, but I could see the truth in his eyes after Kane’s little revelation this morning.
He was jealous. If he felt a lot more for her than he ever let on, then I could take a guess these feelings had been around much longer than since my girl reappeared out of the ashes of her past.
“You tell me, when did we start keeping secrets? Ever since you came back from Ocean Valley you’ve holed yourself in your room like a hermit.
If you’d come to me, I would have told you whatever you wanted to know.
But something is eating at you, and if you can’t tell me what it is, then you deserve to feel this way,” his eyes widened in surprise at my words, but he knew I saw through his bullshit.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but in an almost animalistic move, he turned his head to the side and snapped his mouth shut, clicking his teeth together.
“I’m busy,” he said, pushing past me and walking back towards the entrance. I barked out a laugh loud enough for him to hear so he’d understand he wasn’t fooling anyone here.
“Sure, let me know when you stop being busy brother, and we can finish this conversation,” I chuckled again, purposefully antagonizing him in hopes that pushing his buttons would at least force him to open up to me, even if it was out of spite or rage.
He stormed out of the fifth floor without looking back at me, and I turned my attention to Oksana, whose fear was starting to fade from the scene she’d witnessed.
“Why do you think your daddy hasn’t retaliated against us over you yet?” I asked her, “I mean, he obviously knows where we are. Surely, he has the men to take this whole building down if he wanted to. Am I wrong?” I cocked an eyebrow at her while I waited for a response.
The look of disdain on her face said it all, but she decided that wasn’t enough and spat at me, nearly getting it on my shoes.
“Don’t be like that. It’s not my fault he doesn’t love you.
I mean he probably thinks you’re dead though, since we gave your sister back,” I lied, she didn’t need to know how Anya ended up back where she belonged.
“Does he really need you when he’s got another just like you who can take your place?
” I kept poking to see if I could crack through the facade she put up every time we came here to get information from her.
“Maybe he’s just waiting to make the right move,” she spoke, her accent rough and cutting through each word sharply.
“You don’t sound so confident,” I smirked, knowing I was seeing right through her.
“My sister, he trusted her more. My job was to marry for the benefit of the family and then kill my husband. You kept the wrong sister.”
Swallowing the hard knot in my throat from her words, I pushed down my feelings so I wouldn’t feel pity for her. I remembered Fletcher was still in a drug-induced coma in the ICU and any ounce of empathy I felt was soon gone.
“Why were you locked up in that trafficking ring when we found you? And if you don’t tell me, I’ll get my friend back in here to get the answers out of you, and you’ve already seen his methods,” I pointed to the rest of the room where the bodies lied lifelessly.
“Are you ever going to let me go?” She crossed the cell and made her way to the tiny cot that was now her bed.
“That depends, you can either be useful to me, or you just end up as the filth we gotta wash down the drains later. Like the rest of them,” I jerked my head again towards the bodies Santos left behind.
“Maybe if you’re really useful, I can send you far away from here.
Where even Daddy won’t bother you,” I whispered the words like they were dangerous, and her eyes grew large at the idea, like that was something she might actually want.
“A new life?” She crossed her legs with the question.
“If you help us,” I nodded.
“He is smarter than you think, he knows I am alive. He’s been one step ahead of you the whole time.”
“Of Course,” I said, realizing that if Anya was the favorite there was a good chance Sokolov wouldn’t be wasting any more of his men on Oksana.
She walked towards me and stuck her arm through the space between the bars, letting out a heavy sigh.
I yanked her through it, nearly slamming her face against the metal as I examined her underarm and noticed the small bulge.
There it was.