Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
Ingrid
The lounge smelled of tobacco and blood.
I sat paralyzed beside Tristian, my gaze fixed on his knuckles.
Split open, weeping red. The last twenty minutes kept replaying: Brandon cornering me in the shadows, the sheer terror of it, the frantic chase up those stairs before I fell into Tristian’s arms. The sound of my own sobbing breaths as Tristian transformed into something primal, tackling Brandon to the floor while Darragh’s goons struggled to tear them apart.
Now, violence over, the atmosphere had settled into a suffocating silence. Tristian didn’t look at me; his eyes glared daggers at Brandon. Across from us, Brandon sat motionless, dark red and purple bruises spreading dark across his jaw.
Darragh was settled back in his leather armchair, cigar in hand, exhaling slow.
“What were you even thinking, eh?” he muttered, his voice quiet and dangerous.
Brandon said nothing at first. His eyes cut to me in a resentful glare that made my skin crawl. Tristian, feeling my tremor, clamped his hand down protectively over my knee. He was still vibrating with anger.
The silence continued to stretch. Brandon finally shifted his eyes toward Darragh before dropping his head.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Darragh stood up with a slow, deliberate nod, taking another long pull from his cigar. “No… of course you weren’t.” He shook his head. Eyes narrowed into slits. “After all I did to fix you. Broke you in, trusted you… and look how you repay me. Think you’re a man now?”
Approaching Brandon, he handed his cigar to one of his men, before his hands dropped to his belt. Brandon’s eyes flashed with panic. Beside me, I felt Tristian freeze, his body going rigid as his breath hitched in his chest.
“Boss—please, I’m sorry. I—”
Darragh tsked. Hands worked the buckle free with practiced ease. “Apologies aren’t going to cut it now, lad. Actions like these have consequences. You know that. “
Two of his men moved as one, gripping Brandon before he could scramble out of his chair. He thrashed, shouting, but they forced him to the floor like they’d done it a hundred times before.
“N-no,” said Brandon. “I’m sorry. It was Amber—she said the girl would be here, she told me I should—”
“Shut it,” Darragh seethed. “You’ve disappointed me tonight, Brandon, acting like a dog. I don’t take kindly to that sort of behavior from my boys.”
“No!” Brandon cried, bucking and fighting to stand, but the thugs forced him down to the floor by Darragh’s feet.
The Irishman wound the belt in his fists, admiring the leather and the dragon etched into it. Finally, the buckle: he stroked the gleaming silver.
His gaze flicked to me. “If you don’t like blood, I’d avert your eyes, doll. I’m told some find this… unpleasant to watch.”
Brandon let out one final protesting shout. Then the goons hauled up his shirt, exposing his back—and Darragh let him have it.
The first crack of the belt was so fast I almost missed it. The crack that reverberated was sharp, the sound hitting the air like something splitting.
Brandon’s scream was louder. The metal pin had torn a chunk from his back, like a creature snapping out for meat. A gob of flesh flew, blood arcing behind it in a spray of crimson.
My breath hitched. I’d never seen something so vicious, so awful. Yet I couldn’t keep my eyes away, horrified as I was.
I saw the blur of leather and metal as Darragh struck again.
And again.
And again.
Leather and metal tore through skin with wet, sickening cracks.
Blood spattered, Brandon’s screams turned ragged, then hoarse, then finally into pleading whimpers.
“There,” breathed out Darragh when he was finished. He stepped backward, cocking his head at the heaving mass that was Brandon, sobbing in between the two guys holding him steady. Brandon’s back was now a mass of gouges, flesh open and oozing blood in a thick river of red. Gore spattered the floor.
Darragh stepped back, satisfied, wiping a fleck of blood from his forehead. “What do you say, Brandon? Has that taught you your lesson?” he asked mildly.
Brandon sobbed. From somewhere deep down low to the ground, he gasped out, “Yes, bossman. S-sorry.”
Darragh nodded. “Anything to say to the girl?”
“S-sorry,” he wheezed without looking at me. “I’m—I’m so s-sorry.”
“That’s better. You can let him go, boys.
” When they had, Darragh handed over his belt.
The leather was flecked with droplets of blood.
The buckle and its pin were coated with it.
“Clean this up,” he told them. Then he turned to me.
“I understand you’ve been asking questions. Reckon I can answer them.”
I looked to Tristian, but he had gone deathly still. His face was pale. He hadn’t moved a single inch. His eyes fixed on Brandon, not blinking.
He was somewhere else in his mind.
Somewhere far away, somewhere darker, somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I pressed my hand to his arm and slowly he came back. He glanced between me and Darragh as if waking from a dream—or a nightmare.
“She doesn’t need to talk to you,” he rumbled, low.
“She came to talk to me, son. Just like you did.” He flashed a shark-like grin, voice dropping into something almost tender. “She’ll be safe in my hands, don’t you worry. Then you can take her home. That’s a promise. I’m a man of my word, Tristian. I’d have thought you’d know that about me by now.”
Tristian was quiet. The strength had gone out of him. So when Darragh pointed at me and said, “Up. My office. Now,” I found myself going, and Tristian didn’t move to stop me.
Swallowing hard, I followed.
Darragh led me toward his office, and I winced with every step; my bare feet felt every grain of grit, every microscopic shard on the floor.
I threw one last look over my shoulder. Tristian was still leaning back, a dark silhouette lost in thought. But the moment I rounded the corner, I heard the heavy thud of him standing up and the deliberate, weighted sound of his footsteps heading straight for Brandon.
A chill moved down my spine.
Darragh ushered me into his office and closed the door, sealing out the sounds of the lounge. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“You know, you’ve caused me much more trouble than I expected. Especially since Tristian is pulling out all the stops to keep his little doll baby safe,” he said, almost admiringly.
He disappeared into the bathroom, saying only, “One moment, please,” before vanishing.
When he returned he carried a porcelain bowl of water and a small, white cloth. He set them down and watched me with an unnerving intensity as he wet the rag and extended it toward me.
I looked at it questioningly.
“For your feet,” he said. “Must’ve cut them up real good, running from that brute out there.”
I took the rag cautiously, my fingers trembling. Slowly, I lifted one foot and then the other, wiping the dirt and grit away in turn. Stones from the street had cut tiny jags into the bottoms, and I grimaced as I washed them away.
Glancing up at Darragh, I muttered, “Brandon said Amber told him I’d be here. Did she…?” I couldn’t bring myself to ask it. It felt so terrible to face up to the possibility that my friend had done that.
“A question for the two of them I’m afraid,” Darragh said. “Not something I have any knowledge of.”
I nodded, my heart still sinking at the thought.
“Why was Tristian here tonight?”
“Ah!” He leaned against the desk, almost pleased with the question. “We were actually having a meaningful discussion, him and I… Who would’ve guessed Brandon would be the one to make it all go to shit...”
“What... what was the discussion about?” I asked softly, my voice barely a thread.
He tilted his head, a small, terrifying grin ghosting his lips. “A business proposal. Seems money is tight for him and he needs it desperately. So he came to me.”
My heart clenched. Tristian was actually going to work for Darragh? I thought he wanted to be done with him.
“I—I don’t understand,” I stammered.
Darragh smirked. “No? It’s not complicated. His daddy is stopping the payments for his mammy’s care. Tristian doesn’t want to work for him, but he can’t cover the costs alone. He needs a little help is all, sweetness.”
He tsked, watching my face fall. “Oh don’t look like that, doll. It’s not the worst arrangement in the world, throwing some fights, playing the betting odds to our favor. Everybody wins! Except Tristian, of course, but that’s the game.”
“But… but if he doesn’t do what you say, then…”
Darragh quirked a brow. “Then what?”
“Then you’ll… you’ll do to him what you did to Brandon… won’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.
The Irishman was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, he was quieter, and deathly serious.
“I do hope it won’t come to that again. It’s not nice having to discipline my boys, you know. I don’t take pride in it.”
But you do, I thought. I could see it in the way he carried himself from the moment I met him. The belt always front and center. The way he hooked his thumbs in the loops deliberately, a presentation and a warning all the same. He wanted us to see it. He enjoyed every second.
“Ingrid, Ingrid, Ingrid,” Darragh sighed. “Do try not to worry. Together, we can all benefit from this arrangement. Tristian’s mammy gets her hospital bed and machines paid for. Tristian gets to know that you’re safe. And you… well, what would you like, eh? Think hard now.”
My lip trembled. “For you to leave us alone.”
Darragh threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, petal, that’s a good one! Ah, but no, no, I can’t do that. Think harder. There’s something else you’re looking for, I understand. Something you asked one of my bartenders about this evening…?”
My thoughts went to Camila.
“My—my sister,” I breathed. “He told me she was working here. She got… hooked on drugs. That she might have been—” I couldn’t say the last word. “You know where she is.”
Darragh gave a small nod. “I do.”
“Where is she?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.
Your dear sister has run up quite a debt.
I sympathize with her, you know, I really do.
She talked a great deal about your father and the way she was treated.
Paraded around like a piece of meat at business meetings to entice pervy men to make business deals—hardly a life, is it?
For her, or for you.” The concern in his voice felt almost genuine.
“So we helped her to cope. We gave her a job to help her stay afloat. But she kept running those debts higher and higher. And so we had no choice.”
I whispered, “No choice but to what?”
Darragh paused. “To send her away,” he said levelly. “On a temporary basis.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that. What I can tell you—” he chose the word carefully “—is that Camila is safe.” The way he said it made clear it was more complicated than that.
“And if you behave, if you play ball and keep Tristian in line and ensure our arrangement works for everyone… then I’ll see to it that your sister comes home. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Camila, home, in one piece, and safe from the terrible men in our lives.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, please.”
Darragh nodded. “Then do we have a deal?” He extended a hand across the table.
I looked at it, my mind racing. I wanted desperately for Darragh to be out of our lives, even more tonight after seeing the way he had dealt with Brandon, and how he would surely deal with Tristian if ever he were to defy him. I was terrified of the man and hold he had over us—over me now, too.
But Tristian’s mother would die without care, and Tristian didn’t have the money to pay for it now Mr. Noah had cut him off.
And Camila, wherever she was, would only be in more danger by the day.
Girls who disappeared into that world didn’t come back.
Everyone knew it even if nobody said it out loud.
I thought about how few choices I actually had and how I couldn’t allow that to happen to her.
So, my heart thrumming, I made a decision… and I shook his hand.
His face lifted, lighting with genuine joy. “Fantastic! Oh, I’m on top of the world!” Pumping my hand, eyes glinting, he said, “Brilliant choice, doll, brilliant choice.”
I didn’t think it was. The moment his hand released mine I knew it was the worst decision I’d ever made. I just couldn’t see another one.