26. Riley
“Oh fuck,”I gasp, digging my fingers into Dante’s shoulder as my gut twists.
My sister is standing on a small round pedestal about five feet above the edge of the dance floor, wearing nothing but a g-string and a smile that looks like she’s dead inside.
I’m vaguely aware that there are other pedestals around the place with similar dancers on them, but I only have eyes for Chloe.
And as if she can feel the weight of my gaze on her, she looks over at me.
Her eyes widen, hope, fear, relief, and shock all flashing through them before her expression settles on panic. Her gaze darts around like she’s looking for her captors, and she never stops moving, as if they’ve already made sure she knows better than to try.
Shit. I have to help her. I have to get her out of here.
It’s the only thought I have as I shove away from Dante and start pushing through the crowd in Chloe’s direction.
But I don’t get more than a step or two before a strong hand closes around my arm, stopping me in my tracks.
At first, I think it’s Dante, but as he yanks me backward against his body and his scent reaches my nostrils, I realize it’s Maddoc.
“Keep your shit together,” he says coolly into my ear, his grip around my waist like iron.
“That’s my sister,” I gasp. “They can’t—Maddoc, I need to… They… She—”
I can barely string my thoughts together, much less any words. Fear and anger churn inside me, an emotional whirlpool threatening to suck me under.
“I know,” he says, his voice low. “I know you’re pissed. But what do you think you’re going to do that will help her right now?”
Do? Save her. That’s what I need to do.
I struggle against him, trying to twist free so I can get to her. “Let me go. I—”
“Think, butterfly,” he says sharply, spinning me around to face him. “What can you do?”
The blunt question cuts through my chaotic emotions. He’s right, and I hate him for it.
There’s nothing I can do right now. This club is owned by the men who captured her. They must have security around. It’s not like they’re going to just let me walk out with Chloe, and by the panicked look on her face, my sister knows it too.
I can’t save her like this.
A helpless rage wells up inside me, so overwhelming that it feels like it’s going to break me. Like it could shake me apart and shatter me into a million pieces. My only anchor is Maddoc’s cool gaze, locked on to mine.
“Count to ten,” he says, his voice somehow all I can hear despite the blaring music.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. Come on now, just take a breath and count for me.”
A shudder rips through me, a sob clawing its way up my throat. It feels like he’s asking for the impossible, but he’s so fucking solid, so immovable, that it doesn’t matter.
What Maddoc wants, Maddoc gets. He’ll make it happen with his will alone.
I take a breath.
“That’s it,” he says, surprisingly gently, still staring down at me with that unblinking gaze as he creates a bubble of space for us in the midst of the crowd. “Another one.”
I do it. I take another breath, then another, until it feels like some of his calm steadiness transfers to me.
It helps.
I still feel like I’m going to break, but maybe not right this second. I already knew we weren’t here tonight for Chloe, so I just have to remember that this is a win. At least I’ve seen her. At least I know she’s… well, I can’t say she’s all right. Not after seeing the hopeless emptiness in her eyes while she danced.
But I’ll make her all right.
I’ll fix this.
I force my muscles to relax, giving Maddoc a nod so he knows I’ve got my shit together. His eyes search my face with a look that I’d almost call soft if that was a word that would ever actually apply to this man.
Once he’s satisfied with what he sees, he jerks his chin toward the back of the club. We start moving again, and Dante crowds up behind me as we make our way to the private area there that overlooks the floor.
Logan is already waiting at a roped off area when we reach the back of the club, his eyes as cool and unreadable as always as he watches us approach. He steps aside when we get there, and Maddoc tells the bouncers that they’re here to talk to Austin.
My chest starts to tighten up as they move the rope aside and let us in. Austin McKenna is lounging on a plush leather couch, his legs kicked out in front of him like he’s fucking royalty. There’s a curvy brunette tucked under one of his arms and half a dozen men positioned around him, but neither Maddoc, Logan, nor Dante look the slightest bit intimidated by his bodyguards.
“Maddoc,” Austin says, greeting us with a smirk. “Treating your seconds to a night out?”
Maddoc answers with some comment about how they’ve got better taste than to come to this club for enjoyment, but between the loud music and the way my pulse is pounding in my ears, I don’t even try to follow their posturing.
The girl sitting with Austin is watching Maddoc with a calculating gleam in her eye, while Austin himself assesses each of the three men with barely concealed hatred. His gaze flicks over me too, but he immediately dismisses me.
I grit my teeth. I can’t tell if he recognizes me or not, and even though I know I’m a thousand times safer if he doesn’t, the idea that he cares so little about what he’s taken from me that he’s already forgotten who I am infuriates me.
“So if you didn’t come to enjoy the club, then what the hell are you doing on my turf?” Austin finally asks as he casually picks up a drink and sips at it, raising his eyebrows in an invitation to the Reapers to get on with it.
I fucking hate him. Seeing him look so relaxed and casual while he’s got my sister dancing practically naked on a pedestal makes me want to rip his eyes out with my bare hands.
I curl my fingers into fists, my nails biting into my palms.
“We know what you’ve been doing, McKenna,” Logan says in a flat tone.
“Enjoying myself?” Austin says with a shark-like smile, draping his arm over the back of the couch, behind the brunette. “I am, thank you.”
“You really want things to get ugly?” Dante asks, his demeanor just as casual and charming as Austin’s, but somehow coming across as twice as deadly. Then he jerks his chin toward the girl. “Uglier than they already are, I mean.”
“Fuck you, Dante,” she spits out.
Austin pulls her back. “Don’t worry, Sienna,” he all but purrs. “I’ve got this.”
“We’re offering you one chance to back off before we escalate things,” Maddoc says, coldly ignoring the exchange between Dante and the girl.
Austin relaxes back against the couch as he banters back and forth with the Reapers, as if they’re not talking about wreaking havoc on this corner of the city. About the possibility of a bloody, violent gang war that will no doubt spill out onto the streets and leave chaos in its wake.
I don’t care. I really didn’t think I could hate Austin McKenna more than I already did, but I can’t even be curious about whatever history there obviously is between all of them. Not when my sister is less than fifty feet away, on display for the club’s patrons like she’s nothing more than a cheap accessory Austin picked up.
Worse, she saw me too.
She knows I’m just… leaving her there.
As the conversation between the men goes on, I can’t help glancing over in her direction. I can just make out the pedestal she’s on from where we’re sitting, and my gaze finds her just as one of the men in the crowd reaches up, snagging her ankle and trying to pull her closer so he can grope her.
The shithead makes her fall on her ass, and something inside me snaps at the sight.
My pulse skyrockets, hot fury blooming inside me like a bomb exploding. I’m past the bouncers and on the other side of the rope before I even realize I’ve moved.
I don’t care that the tension between the Reapers and West Point is already balancing on a razor’s edge. I don’t care how my actions could fuck up whatever Maddoc is hoping to achieve here tonight. I only care about protecting Chloe, and I charge the motherfucker who still has his hands on her—who’s laughing about it—and attack him like a fucking banshee.
“What the fuck?” he grunts when I barrel into him.
He’s bigger than I am by a lot, but I caught him by surprise, knocking him off balance. I keep going, lashing out with a punch that connects to his jaw. It hurts like hell, my knuckles stinging, but I do it again, barely even registering the pain.
“Don’t you ever touch—”
Someone yanks me off him, and my threat ends in a grunt as I’m suddenly hauled backward and locked in a tight embrace.
“Let me go!” I demand, struggling against the muscled arms that hold me. “Let me—”
“Stop.”
Dante’s voice is low and deadly, and it breaks through the red haze in my head. I realize in a rush that Maddoc and Logan are standing on either side of us, the three Reapers facing off with what looks like at least a dozen of the West Point gang.
Somewhere in the middle of my attack on the guy groping Chloe, the music was cut. Heavy silence fills the space, club goers all turning to look at us as the two groups square off.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Austin growls, stepping forward as he all but spits the words in Maddoc’s face. “This is what you bring to my house? This is how you disrespect us after I let you in?”
Maddoc’s jaw ticks, his entire body like a coiled wire, and I swallow hard. None of them have their guns drawn yet, but I can see several of Austin’s men reaching for concealed weapons, and I know it could all explode in an instant.
Oh fuck. What have I done?
“It was a mistake,” Maddoc says, his voice low and even as he stares Austin down. “A simple misunderstanding. It was nothing, McKenna. We’re willing to let it go.”
“Starting a fight on my turf isn’t nothing. It’s a fucking insult!”
And if his men start shooting, it will be more than that. It will be blood and chaos and terror in a packed club like this.
“Like I said,” Maddoc repeats in a calm tone undercut with steel. “We’re willing to let it go and walk away as a gesture of goodwill… this time.”
Austin scoffs. “You mean you’re begging us to let you go. That’s not goodwill. That’s the kind of weakness that I’m going to wipe out in Halston.”
Maddoc raises an eyebrow. “Do you honestly think we’re the ones The Six will be looking at if something goes down at the club you run? You know they wouldn’t appreciate you drawing the attention of law enforcement.”
Austin spits on the floor. “Yeah? Well, fuck The Six.”
Maddoc smiles grimly, as if Austin has just said something epically stupid. But all he comes back with is, “We haven’t forgotten that you’re trying to fuck us over, but your call, McKenna. What’s it going to be? Am I going to take my people out of here without trouble, or…?”
For a second, I think the West Point leader might actually be bloodthirsty enough to risk his own people by escalating things just for the hell of it. There’s a manic gleam in his eye that makes him look seriously unhinged.
But then he huffs out a breath and shoves his gun back into the waistband of his pants, yanking the curvy brunette into his side and groping her as he gives Maddoc one of his shark-like smiles again. All teeth and pure threat.
“I’ll allow it,” he says with an arrogant smirk. “This time. Go.”
Maddoc doesn’t say a word. He just turns on his heel and grabs my arm, yanking me away from Dante and dragging me from the club as Logan and Dante bring up the rear.
The crowd closes behind us, the music starting up again before we’ve even made it to the door.
I look back as Maddoc pulls me along, desperate to see if Chloe is okay.
My throat closes up, tears pricking my eyes as I stumble along in Maddoc’s wake.
She’s not okay.
She’s not hurt. She’s still alone and untouched up on that fucking pedestal. But her sad, scared face as she watches me go guts me to the core.
She looks just as hopeless, just as helpless, as I feel.
The minute we’re outside, all traces of Maddoc’s calm demeanor disappear, and he explodes in a string of curses that only cut off when he roughly shoves me into the back of the Escalade. That surprising gentleness he showed when he helped me calm down earlier is nothing but a distant memory now.
Not that I can blame him. I fucked up. Badly.
The drive back to the house is tense, and the closer we get to their place, the more tightly my stomach twists with nerves.
No matter what might have happened between me and any of them, the truth is that I’m just as disposable to the Reapers as Chloe is to West Point.
And I don’t know what they’re going to do to me now that I’ve made myself a liability in the middle of their war.