Savage Reign (Tiernan Crime Syndicate #3)

1. Silas

1

SILAS

I stood behind the desk in the office and looked down at the kneeling woman in front of us.

It took everything in me not to fucking jump over the table and kill the fucking bitch.

And I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling like this. The tension in the room was high, and there wasn’t any noise save for the fucking sobbing.

Did she really think crying was going to get my sympathy?

If anything, it just made me want to lose control. I glanced over at Maverick standing beside me. His face was encased in an impenetrable mask of indifference. I quickly looked away and back at Zoe.

She clasped her hands together, more tears flowing down her face. What an ugly sight.

“Please. I didn’t realize how important she was. Please.”

“No?” Maverick asked, his voice mild. “You think we make it a habit to track anyone? Spoil them? Keep them locked up with us? ’Cause we sure as hell didn’t do that with you.”

Zoe flinched, her eyes downcast. She fucking knew Mila was different. She fucking knew when none of us had even touched her since we took Mila.

And she didn’t fucking like it. Perhaps it ruined her fantasy of becoming Mrs. Tiernan, living a life of luxury, or hell, because it reminded her that she was essentially powerless in this world, and no matter what she did, she wouldn’t have held an ounce of the magnetism that Mila did simply by existing.

It didn’t fucking matter because she helped Mila escape. It had been three fucking days since she disappeared.

Three fucking days since I’d last looked into those sea-colored eyes of hers.

Three days away from us, from our protection. And Sebastian Cline, the previous VP of the Heartless Saints MC, now the fucking president, was gunning for her.

My fists clenched at the thought. We had spent the last three days scouring every inch of the city, looking for her. We didn’t think she had gotten far, but fuck, where was she?

“Why did you help her escape?” Killian asked Zoe. I frowned at him. I had thought it was obvious, but something about the way he asked it gave me pause. “You wouldn’t have risked our wrath otherwise. Not unless you didn’t plan on sticking around.”

I had thought she was scared before, but it was nothing compared to the way the blood drained away from her face. The tears stopped, and she tried to push away, struggling against the binds around her wrists and ankles. The makeup she had on three days before when we had locked her up was smeared all over her face.

Besides the first interrogation for her to tell us what we already knew—that she had helped remove the tracking from Mila’s back and showed her to the back door—we kept the bitch in one of the cages we had down in the basement of the club.

“Someone paid you to do this, didn’t they?” I guessed. “And you were going to use the money to run away, get out of Chicago, and away from our wrath.”

She shook her head.

“Who?” Killian asked. Maverick placed a hand on Killian’s chest when it looked like he was about to jump over the table to get to her. I had a bad fucking feeling.

She shook her head.

I leaned forward, resting my weight on the table. “I don’t give a fuck what you thought about us. Let me assure you, we’re much worse. And I’ll show you exactly what I mean if you don’t fucking talk now.”

“I don’t know who the man is. He was just loitering around the club. He approached me one night and said he would pay big money to anyone willing to run an errand for him.”

I took in a deep breath, trying to keep myself from losing control. “What did he look like?”

She shook her head. “I don’t… he was good-looking, if not a little rough. Short blond hair, almost bald, and green eyes. Please, that’s all I know.”

The description matched Sebastian, but there was no way to know until we scoured all the cameras nearby to see if we could get an image of the bastard on camera.

“How much?” I asked.

She looked like she didn’t want to say, which told me the amount would have been ridiculous.

I made my eyes harden.

“F-fifty thousand.”

It was with years of practice that I was able to control my expression. “And you believed him?”

“Not—not at first. But he gave me twenty-five to start. Said I would get the rest once the job was done.”

“And that was?” I asked, though I could probably guess.

“Help the girl escape from all of you and contact him once that is done.”

“And did you?” Maverick asked, his voice impassive. I knew better.

She looked at him, her eyes begging him. What did she think would happen once we got everything? She wasn’t fucking hanging from the ceiling while we tortured her for information. She should count herself lucky. But being a woman only afforded her so much.

Resignation hung in her eyes when she realized there was nothing she could say or do that would help. She nodded.

Fuck me.

Mila was somewhere out there while Sebastian Cline and what was left of the Heartless Saints MC were hunting her.

“When was he supposed to drop by to give you the rest of the money?” Maverick asked.

“The drop was supposed to happen the day of. But I didn’t show up…”

So the fucker probably guessed that we had Zoe. Which meant he would double his efforts to get to Mila before we could. I couldn’t even think what he would do to her once he got his hands on her.

A small, insidious voice in my head whispered that maybe he had her already, and that was why we couldn’t find her in this city. I pushed away the thought once it entered.

Maverick pulled out his gun, causing her tremors to worsen. “P-please. I’m so sorry. Just let me go, and I promise you won’t ever see me again.”

Killian shook his head and grabbed the gun, pointing it at her. He didn’t hesitate when he pulled the trigger, hitting her squarely on her forehead. Her eyes remained wide open as blood splattered from behind and beneath her.

“No loose ends,” Killian muttered, placing the gun back on the desk. He turned away from us and toward the window.

I didn’t fucking care what he was thinking or how he was feeling.

There was this terrible, ugly feeling inside of me, and I didn’t fucking know how to get rid of it.

“We’ll find her,” Maverick said. I wondered who he was trying to convince, Killian or himself, ’cause it sure as hell wasn’t me. He said we would find her, but I didn’t fucking know how. Even with the resources we had, there had been no sightings of Mila anywhere. So either she had been able to get out of Chicago, out of our territory when she didn’t even have a car, or…

“Fuck!” I shouted, flipping the desk over.

None of my brothers stopped me. And it wasn’t fucking enough. I jumped over the desk lying on its side and moved to the couch, tearing apart the fucking fabric with my bare hands.

Still not fucking enough.

I destroyed everything in the office my hands came into contact with, but that ugly feeling only grew, and I didn’t fucking know where to put it or how to get rid of it. I had never felt so out of control before.

Someone placed their hand on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around to see Maverick standing there.

His eyes held the same desperation I felt.

He nodded. He didn’t need to say anything. I knew. No matter what we had to burn or who we had to kill, we were going to get her back. There was no other alternative.

We were going to get her back. Because if we didn’t get her back, I was going to destroy everyone and everything in my path.

We were going to get her back.

And once that happened, Mila had better prepare herself. She won’t ever escape my grasp, ever again.