Chapter Twenty-Four
Leah
My throat feels dry. It aches like I am fevered and sick. The rest of my body hurts too. There is a strange pressure on my chest, and my legs feel like they are on fire. My brain feels sluggish, slow in sending commands to my heavy-lidded eyes.
When I finally pry my eyes open, I have to blink against the darkness. It coats the strange room like fog.
The first thing I hear is my father’s voice. He’s speaking in hushed tones to someone, but I know I’m not in the house.
It all comes back to me. My father. That man. Running. Being tackled to the ground.
I remember fighting, and the instinct roars back to me.
I strain and struggle, but I realize that it’s useless at the same time as my brain processes the fact that I’m sitting on a rough wooden chair in the middle of a huge warehouse.
It has to be a warehouse as it’s dusty, grimy and dark, with no windows.
There’s a rough wooden floor with strange stains spreading across the boards, a thick layer of dust coating almost everything, and dim lighting that floods from a few weary looking industrial fixtures above, but not nearly enough to penetrate the shadows skulking around the massive area.
My eyes do a slow sweep of my surroundings. I take in the pallets packed with a massive amount of plastic. Drugs. It has to be drugs. There are so many pallets that they take up the entire far end of the warehouse. The rest of the area’s dedicated to a series of ramshackle tables and chairs.
I’m guessing this is where they cut the drugs and package them for distribution. Though to be honest, I don’t really know how any of it works.
“Look. The princess awakes,” someone says.
The cold, reedy voice brings me back to the present.
I curse myself for being so obvious about being awake.
I glance down at my body, which is tied to one of the wooden chairs.
The assholes didn’t choose to bind my wrists or anything so civil.
Instead, they wrapped thick layers of rope around my arms, pinning them at my sides so tight that I can’t even move. They did the same to my legs.
I watch as my father and Wraith, who were discussing business and God knows what other shitty deals they had going on, turn as one.
They stalk towards me and come to stand a foot away.
The smug smile on my father’s face makes me want to vomit.
I almost wish I could, so that I would spray his fucking thousand-dollar suit and those stupid shoes that are always too shiny.
Wraith draws back his shoulders and studies me. “It was stupid of you to run. You’ve only made things hard for yourself. It didn’t have to be this way.”
I almost believe him because, unlike my father, his voice is a little softer. He’s fucked up, strung out on a hard life, and no doubt on drugs, but beneath it all, the sheen in his dark brown eyes tells me that maybe, just maybe, he’s not a bad man.
Yeah, well, two can play at the games my father has going on. I might be tied to a chair, but I am not about to go down without a fucking fight.
“I’m sorry that you had to get involved with a man like Donovan Harris,” I say nicely, amazed that the words push out, light and airy past my dry and aching throat.
“He’ll double cross you the first chance he gets.
He wanted me to betray Steel, but, of course, I couldn’t do it.
He knows about you. About both of you. He’s coming for me.
They’re probably on their way now. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to be here when he comes knocking at your door. ”
Wraith shifts and I don’t miss the spark of discomfort in his eyes. He runs a hand over his sharp jawline.
My father, on the other hand, looks perfectly composed. He looks at me without a shred of feeling and the words he flung at me back at the house burn inside of me like shrapnel.
“You think I don’t know that? Did you think I’d be so stupid as to trust you?
I wanted Steel to know about us. I wanted him to know that this is where we’d take you.
No doubt he had his men watching the house.
They’ll know you were taken and by whom.
They’ll know where you end up. The thing is, they’re outnumbered here.
Outgunned and outmatched. That piece of shit you spread your legs for is going to die in a puddle of his own blood, and when he does, I’ll be sure that one of Hughes’ men cuts off his head and brings it to you for a final goodbye kiss. ”
I won’t let his words get to me. I can’t let that seed of doubt burrow into my skin.
Instead of surrendering, crying or hurling angry words at him like he obviously wants, I smile.
I stay perfectly calm, even though on the inside, I’m a wreck.
I’ve had enough practice for this, twenty-one years of living in his house, pretending to be something I’m not, forced to be someone I didn’t want to be, forced to live in that cage. Not anymore.
“I’m Steel’s woman. His old lady. His everything. And when he comes for you, it’s your head that I’ll be saying goodbye to. And it will be goodbye. The happiest ending possible for you.”
My father growls, and Wraith glances around nervously.
like he expects the place to burst into flames around him, and yeah, he’s fucking right.
He’s screwed now. The way Wraith is acting isn’t like a president of a powerful MC.
More like someone out of his depth. I wonder if my father’s holding something on him and he’s actually being coerced…
I glance around at the warehouse. It doesn’t matter if they have a real fortress. Steel is coming for me, and he won’t let anything stand in the way of his fury.
As if to prove my words, a sharp, staccato burst of gunfire rings out, so close to the warehouse that it is obvious they’re outside.
“Looks like your ending is coming sooner than you thought,” I say, my voice dripping with fake sugar. “Steel and his men are already here.”
Wraith shoots a murderous look at my father before he rushes off, barking out commands. A few dark-clad figures assemble, but it makes no difference.
In a matter of minutes, it’ll all be over.
Wraith’s men crouch down behind the pallets at the far end of the warehouse. They get themselves in place, but it doesn’t matter. The gunshots grow closer, the shouts of the men outside filtering in through the cracks in the warehouse.
Somewhere, close to the back, a door bangs open so hard that the echo reverberates through the warehouse. There is a feral roar among the screams, and my heart leaps. My body might be numb with near shock, but my heart is soaring. I know that roar. That voice. That feral rage.
Steel.
I watch everything in a strange cloud of detachment that I realize is shock. I watch as the black figures on the other side of the warehouse attack each other, the blaze of gunfire partially deafening the screams of the dying and wounded.
I can only hope it is not our men. Steel’s men.
I let out a cry of triumph when my eyes spot a dark figure, clad all in black, his raven-black hair tied up at his neck. He takes on a man who comes at him with a knife, but deftly dodges the attack and uses one of the guns he has palmed to put the prick down with a shot to the chest.
Someone shoots back, but Steel is too fast. He dodges to the side again before the scream of warning can tear from my throat. Another one of his men takes the shooter down with a shot I don’t see because it is all happening so fast.
My eyes blur with the violence, and I lose track of Steel. I search the room frantically for him, but all I can see is men falling, screaming, dying, running, shooting.
“Oh God, no,” I whimper.
I hate this. I hate that it has come to this. Two clubs at war with each other because of one man’s hatred and greed. Men murdering each other, spilling blood and taking lives just because another man commanded them to, paid them to.
I blink and try to breathe so that the stench of gunpowder and death doesn’t singe my nostrils. When I open my mouth, it floods my tongue anyway, coats it like a thick, sickly slime that I can’t swallow down without choking on it.
All I can do is sit in the damn chair and watch the carnage playing out in front of me like a macabre theater. Another man falls, but he’s not an actor. Even across the massive expanse, I see a dark stain seeping out from underneath of him.
This isn’t some stupid play; this is real.
I breathe out a sigh of relief when I spot the patch on his vest. He’s not one of Steel’s men. I hate that I can be so cold. I hate that any of this is happening.
I blink hard again, willing away the tears pricking the backs of my eyelids. I can’t cry. I won’t cry. I have to be strong. I have to make it through this, to be a warrior. I’m not the one fighting and dying. These men are losing their lives because of a man who is, by genetics, my father.
As if my mind has the power to conjure him, I feel the cool metal butt of a gun at my temple, just as Steel breaks away from the cesspool of butchery and starts pacing across the warehouse, coming for me. The look on his face furious as he sees my father pointing his gun at my head.
Steel stops a few feet from my chair. His eyes don’t meet mine, and I know that to look at me would be his undoing. It would send him spiraling down into a pit of rage.
I stare at his hands, hands that have touched me, hands that have brought me the greatest pleasures, and taught me what it means to be wanted, needed, loved. Those beautiful hands are stained with blood.
“Steel. What kind of stupid name is that anyway?” my father spits out. Not realizing his time has come. “You think you’re untouchable, that this bullet won’t explode your waste of a head just like it would the next man’s?”
Steel snarls. “Nope. I know for a fact bullets work on me. Taken a few before. I’m also sure that you don’t know how to use that thing. You should put it down before you hurt yourself, old man, and we can talk.”