Chapter Seven
Drew
Her bedroom door was open. He wasn’t being a freak, a peeping tom.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. He’d tossed and turned all night at the thought of her just one door down.
Just one door away from him was the woman of his dreams. The very woman who was only here because he’d put her in danger.
The kiss had only confirmed it. At the time every sensible, logical thought had rattled from his head at the first brush of her lips, but in the cold light of day, they had returned.
There was no getting out of this. He would return to them .
.. to Max. He had to, and he had to do it today before he changed his mind.
His parents would be safe, should anything else go wrong, she’d seen to that, and he would see to it that she was safe.
Because if he belonged to the gang again, if he did what Max wanted, he had no reason to hurt her.
The early morning sunlight stole its way through the curtains, falling on her, like it couldn’t help but highlight her. In turn, mocking him: look at her, look at the future you can’t have because the other you, the long-buried half of you, decided to ruin everything.
Goodbye Alana, he said internally. Maybe in another life...
He couldn’t fully fall into his thoughts, they were like a bottomless well brimming with pain, but for her.
.. She brought out something in him that he was going to have to let go of.
He wouldn’t write a note, no. It was better this way.
To be in her life one day and gone the next.
No long, drawn-out cries or goodbyes. She would be safe.
When he had everything together, he’d sign the house over to her, for if the day came when she ever needed somewhere to go. Somewhere to just be.
With that, he sent a text to Max, asking him where to meet. Time to get this over with.
He’d chosen a bar, of course, not far away from the club.
Two men stood outside the door, flashing him a grin.
He grinned right back. They must be new recruits; he didn’t recognize them.
They let him pass without any fuss. The bar was dimly lit, with a few tables and chairs laid out.
There was no one behind the bar, nobody working.
What had Max done with the workers? He could only hope that he had sent them home with their day’s wages.
He could be like that sometimes. Thoughtful, even.
But other times, he would kill someone for looking at him the wrong way.
He didn’t even know what constituted the wrong way anymore.
“You’ve cleared this place out,” he said, walking toward the table where Max was laughing, beer in hand, cigarette in mouth.
“Well, well, the man of the hour. What do you want me to call you, by the way? Michael? Drew? Or maybe something completely new? A fresh start.” He grinned lazily.
“Drew is fine.”
He pulled up a chair.
Max threw his arms out wide. “What can I get you, Drew? The world is your oyster.” Before he could answer, he shouted, “Get the man a beer!” He took a few swigs of his own. “This is my bar now.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Such an insignificant, unintentional action, but Max could read him like a book.
“Aw, come now, Drewy. All legal, I promise. We’re going to need a base here, after all.
And what with your contacts,” he whistled low, “business will be booming in no time. Imagine, our little Drew all grown up, and a self-made billionaire to boot. Well, not completely self-made. I lined those pretty pockets of yours. The gang lined those pretty pockets of yours, did they not?”
His heart was ice, any thawing that Alana had done was gone. He couldn’t let it show. He put on his mask, feigning interest, indifference.
“Oh, really? You’re ready for the New York market?”
“We.” Max corrected him. “We are ready for the New York market. Expanding has always been the idea. It’s a whole new world out here, as you well know, Drewy, full of millionaires, billionaires, businessmen, models. The world is ours and it’s in New York. I want a bite of that apple. We all do.”
As if on cue, two men leaked out from the darkness. He recognized them; faces he never thought he’d see again. Faces he never wanted to see again.
Harry, Max’s second in command, looked him up and down like he was a piece of meat. He flipped his knife in his hand like a circus act. Curly stood by him, his hair just as unruly as ever, ready and waiting to do whatever he was told.
There was a flash before his eyes and a beer was placed in front of him.
“I do love a reunion.” Max grinned.
Drew knew who it was before he looked up into the eyes of the boy, now man, who had made him flee. The one with the matching scar to him. Max liked to mark them young. Projects, pets, to him. He was a man now, but he couldn’t be older than twenty-one.
“I’m not sure you two ever got to meet.”
Silence hung heavily over the room.
“Introduce yourselves. You’re not fucking cavemen.”
Drew held out his hand to the man. “Drew,” he said.
“Eric.” The man’s voice shook slightly, like he was unsure. Like he wanted to be anywhere but here. Drew didn’t even want to waste a second on wondering what his life had been like since he’d left. He could’ve stayed. Could have protected him, guided him, helped him get out too. But he hadn’t.
“My two boys. Finally meeting properly.”
The glint in Max’s eyes was wrong. He knew that in his bones, his marrow. There was more to this.
“Expanding our empire. Although Eric here misses home, don’t you, Eric?” Max rose from his seat and flung an arm around his shoulders. Eric flinched, as Max’s knife got whisper close to his face.
Drew’s heart began hammering.
“The thing is, when people begin to miss home, they begin to talk, and when that talk turns to the wrong people, it trickles back down to me.”
“I didn’t talk—”
Max cut him off by placing the knife on his lips. Eric wriggled uselessly against it. “It’s useless now, Eric.” Max sighed, sitting back down. He clicked his tongue and Harry and Curly held him tightly, their grips vise-like. He knew how that felt. He’d been there. He’d been disciplined.
“You talked to your mommy and daddy, didn’t you, Eric? And they went to the cops. And I just can’t have that, I’m afraid.”
His eyes were black, gleaming, like a predator about to get a taste of their kill, a taste of blood.
“I’ve dealt with them. They won’t be speaking anymore.”
Eric began to wail. Drew closed his eyes against the sound, as if that would block it out. Block everything out.
“But what to do with you? You’ve handled some rather tricky customers for me this year, with great success, I may add.
And it does take such an awful long time to train you young ones up.
Although, clearly, I’m not doing such a good job of it of late.
So, I’m going to keep you.” Curly and Harry both kicked the back of Eric’s legs, so he was kneeling before him.
Alana’s words flashed through his mind. You kneel to no one.
“But I’m afraid you don’t get to keep your tongue.
I can’t have you spilling any more secrets now, can I?
” And with that he grabbed Eric’s tongue and began slashing it, a grin on his face.
Eric’s screams sang through Drew’s ears.
He gripped the arms of his chair so hard that he thought they might break.
“There, there, it’s over now.” Max stroked his face, the way a loving parent might comfort a child. “Sleep now.” He cradled his head as Eric passed out, placing him on the floor, blood running from his mouth like the bloody maw of a predator. But he was the prey.
An icy calm settled over him, and he put the mask back on as Max joined him at the table.
He held his beer up to him. Max’s head jolted, just for a second, and he almost smiled before he clinked his beer with his own. “To working together again.”
Max’s lip curled. Happy that his pet had returned, had come home.
He made a show of looking at his watch. “I need to get to work.”
Max nodded. “Good. Got to keep up appearances, Drewy. We’re going to need that respectable cover of yours. Carry on as normal until we call on you.”
He downed the last of his beer. “Will do.”
Max smiled. Drew could read Max as well as Max could read him. He saw how pleased Max was that he’d come back with no fight, automatically fallen back into the fold, not blinking an eye at his violence.
But he knew what he had to do now. He had no choice.
Because Max had demonstrated today that no one was safe.
The world was a spiderweb, and everyone was connected.
He had too many people he cared about now, and everyone he loved had someone they loved .
.. the cycle would never end. But it would.
It would end with him, because he would cut the head off the serpent. He would kill Max.