Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
ANDIE
Me and my big, fat, dumb mouth , I mutter to myself once again, my arm sore after hours of scrubbing bathroom floors with a toothbrush. This is such grade school bullshit and makes me want to shave the end of the toothbrush down and shank Keane in the neck with the pointy end. Supposedly, this asinine task is to teach me how to take orders without question. It’s been really, really hard keeping my mouth shut, especially when Keane says shit like he’s doing now.
“You missed a spot.”
I’m sitting back on the heels of my feet, kneeling on the floor, my back hunched over next to the toilet. Straightening up, I blow a few loose strands of my hair away from my face and glower at him. Like yesterday, Keane is dressed in all black; however, today he’s not wearing any shoes and is barefoot. There’s a tattoo on his lower left calf above the ankle that I can’t quite make out, and I lose the chance when he crosses his ankles while leaning a shoulder against the doorframe to the bathroom.
Wishing I could ignore his statement, I raise indignant eyebrows at him that ask where. He points to the spot I just cleaned. Gritting my teeth and holding back the “fucker” that wants to fly out of my mouth, I re-clean the already spotless area. As I attack the tile with the frayed bristles of the toothbrush, Keane lowers himself to sit in a cross-legged position on the floor and rests his elbows on his knees. A memory from when we were younger pops into my head; one of me and Keane sitting on Kellan’s bedroom floor facing one another and playing a game of slaps. The game would irritate the shit out of me because Keane’s hands were bigger and faster than mine, but I was eager and determined to learn how to best him and would beg him to play the silly game with me whenever he came over to the house.
“Why the fuck are you doing this?” Keane asks me after several minutes.
Not stopping what I’m doing, I reply, “That’s a really dumb question since you ordered me to do this stupid-as-hell, pointless job.”
“Jesus, can you stop with the smart mouth and just give me a straight answer for once?”
Yeah, not happening, but I have an idea to get some answers out of him. I put the toothbrush down and stand up to wash my hands in the bathroom sink, then towel dry them with the small hand towel hanging from a ring on the wall. Stepping over to Keane, I sit down in front of him and raise my hands, palms up. One side of his mouth curves upward, his green-flecked hazel eyes lifting to my face as he rests his hands, palms down, over mine.
The man is big. His height and breadth of shoulders take up the width of the doorway. I feel like a daisy in front of a bulldozer sitting across from him. He’s also so much more muscled than I remember. When the hell did that happen? His shitty attitude is still the same, but his body has changed a lot in the last five years. I hum in appreciation before I mentally slap myself.
“So, this is how we’re going to play. For each hit, the winner gets to ask a question and the loser has to answer it truthfully.”
His small half-grin now widens into a full-on smile, and I’m momentarily struck dumb from the blinding beauty of it.
“You know you sucked at this game, right?”
I wiggle my fingers underneath his hands. “I think I may surprise you.”
“You’ve been shocking the hell out of me since the moment we found you in that warehouse,” he retorts, a scowl replacing the smile. “What happened for you to wind up there, Andie? The last we heard, you were enjoying school and looking forward to graduation and traveling the world.”
I almost burst out a laugh at that delusion and shake my head at him. “You can’t ask a question unless you get a slap. Those are the rules. And since it’s my turn—” I quickly flip my hands and get a hit on his right hand before he can jerk them away— “I get to ask first.”
“I wasn’t ready,” he complains.
“Not my problem.”
“That wasn’t a fair win.”
I roll my eyes. “You are such a whiny, sore loser. Stop acting like a two-year-old. I got a clean slap, so you have to answer my question.”
Keane actually huffs, and I bite the side of my cheek to stop my smile from forming. Our hands reverse position so that his are on the bottom, palms up.
“I keep forgetting how sneaky you can be. We’re going to have to put a bell on you.”
“My father already put a tracker on me, and you see how well that worked out,” I grouse, still pissed that my father microchipped me like a fucking dog.
Keane’s gaze lands on my upper shoulder and the bandage that’s still there. “Andie, we didn’t know about that.”
“That’s what Jax said but forgive me if I don’t believe either one of you.”
That gets Keane’s attention, but he doesn’t ask me about Jax, since he knows I won’t answer unless he wins a hit.
“The room I’m in. Why does it look like my old room? Because I wasn’t lying when I said it was creepy.” I’ve never been here before, so why have a room for me? The old picture books and stuffed, plush unicorn just up the creepy factor.
Disgust, and a lot of nausea, burn a hole in my stomach. No one other than my mother and Kellan knew what happened behind my closed bedroom door. My mother turned a blind eye, and as much as Kellan wanted to protect me, he couldn’t. I try to control the sickness roiling in my gut before it comes up and I make a mess all over the bathroom floor I had been cleaning for hours.
From Keane’s reaction, I’m guessing that he was expecting me to ask a different question.
I take a deep, cleansing breath and return my focus to our game. “You have to answer truthfully,” I remind him.
“This place isn’t a safehouse. It’s Kellan’s cabin. A place we could come to whenever we needed a breather.”
“When did he build it? Why have a room for me?”
“That’s two questions, princess, and against your made-up rules.”
Like lightning, his hands flip over, but somehow, I’m ready for him. He misses by a mile.
“Somebody’s been practicing,” he comments.
“You wish. Not like I had any friends to practice with.”
His mouth turns down. It’s my turn again. I get another hit, and he curses.
“You mentioned Declan Levine in the backyard. Was he the one responsible for kidnapping me?”
“The warehouse we found you in is owned by one of Levine’s shadow companies. Jax was able to find the record of sale and transfer, then traced it back to one of his dummy subsidiaries.”
Declan is the head of a rival syndicate in the city. He and my father have been enemies since before I was born. Wealth, power, and control of the city are the only things they are concerned about. It’s rather quite pathetic, actually. But from what I’d been told, Declan Levine has been in federal prison for the past several years for, of all things, insider trading. I guess he’s still calling the shots from his cushy, white-collar jail cell. However, that doesn’t explain Liam’s role in my kidnapping.
I saw Mr. Levine once from afar. It was at some black-tie event Kellan and I were dragged to when we were kids. Our father often used us as props to show how much of a family man he was. Yeah, right. Furthest from it. There isn’t one loving, fatherly bone in Maximillian Rossi’s body.
I recall being stuck with my great uncle Domenico the entire evening as my father paraded Kellan around like a trophy. When my father heard that Declan had arrived at the function, he lost his shit and ordered that I immediately be taken back to the estate. It made me feel like I was the dirty little secret that was to be kept hidden away and never seen.
Keane and I position our hands again, and this time he wins. Slap .
“Why did you really come back?” he asks me.
I knew he wouldn’t let that go.
“Like I told my father, I came back to take what should have been rightfully mine,” I baldly lie. I’m hoping if I say it enough, they’ll believe it and shut up about it.
“That makes no sense, Andie. You were never part of the business. Kellan made sure of it.”
Slap . My turn.
“Why are you, Jax, and Rafe still working for my father? I could, maybe, sort of, understand before because of Kellan. But now? Not so much.”
I’ve never understood the concept of ‘made man.’ How you can give up your entire life and who you are to someone or something else. To be controlled and never able to decide for yourself. Humans have free will for a reason. It goes against our nature to relinquish it or hand it over.
Keane chews on his bottom lip and it makes him appear younger, like the teenager I remember. “Loyalty. Duty. It’s our job.”
“Bullshit,” I reply, not buying it.
“Because we don’t have a choice,” he angrily states, before reigning in his temper.
I mull that over. His confession holds more secrets than truths.
Slap . Keane.
“Did the men who took you say anything?”
And here comes the interrogation. He couldn’t get me to talk before, so he’s using our game as his way in.
“The Italian suit-wearing guy said Declan’s name and that I wasn’t to be harmed.”
Keane snorts at that. “They did a piss-poor job of following orders.”
His pointed look tells me that I’m also grouped in with people who don't follow orders.
I ignore the innuendo and flip him the middle finger. He gives me a mirthless chuckle.
“That’s exactly what I told them as Brass Knuckles punched me in the stomach after punching me in the face.”
“That’s not even funny. How are you able to laugh at that… and that wasn’t a question,” he quickly adds.
“Are you serious? What the hell were you and your fellow dumbasses doing to me yesterday?” I remind him. I point to the knife wound on my arm, compliments of Jax.
“That first part was a question.” He smirks at me, and I go for the slap. Miss .
Slap . Keane. Dammit !
“When did you learn how to fight?” he asks next.
He and Jax keep asking me that question, and it makes me wonder why they are so interested.
I clench my hands into fists and hold them up between us. They look worse for wear, my knuckles bruised and scabbed over, but I know they’ll heal soon.
Again, dishonesty slips off my tongue like water.
“Took some self-defense classes at school.” Lies, lies, and more lies.
I actually started learning Krav Maga a year ago. I also practice parkour and know the ends and outs of various weapons and how to use them. I sought out anyone, no matter how shady, to teach me every skill I would need that could help me take my brother’s killers down. Turns out, I hadn’t needed to look any further than my Irish relatives.
Slap . Me.
“When is this stupid initiation going to be over?”
Unfortunately, I’m now forced to readjust my plans and play to my father’s whims, pass his stupid initiation tests, and earn my place. Even though it’s not what I had anticipated, things couldn’t be working out more perfectly. I’m now the big, bad wolf in sheep’s clothing among the herd of sheep. In the story, things don’t fare too well for the sheep.
“When I say it is.”
Slap . Keane.
The backs on my hands are red from his hits, and one of the scabs on my left knuckle is now bleeding.
“You really want to take over Kellan’s position in the business?”
I suck on the oozing, split skin, trying to soothe the area and stench the flow of blood. Not the most sanitary thing, I know.
“Why? Afraid I’ll be better at the job than you?”
He cocks his pretty head at me. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was a rhetorical one formed as a question.”
Keane suddenly stands up before I can get another win and ask him about the deal I overheard him and Rafe talking about earlier in the kitchen.
“There’s a first aid kit under the sink. Finish up and be upstairs in thirty.”
Keane looks so much bigger from my sitting position on the tile floor, and the way he’s looking at me sets me on edge.
“Is that an order?” I ask him.
His mouth twitches. “Yeah,” he states softly, turning on his heel and walking away.
But not before I catch a glimpse of the tattoo on his lower calf when his pants leg rises up. The one of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan .