Chapter 23
River
“What are you going to do about it?” I throw back at him.
Kasen has made all of us put our lives on hold for Dove.
He shut down my bar yesterday and all. It was a hunch, a fucking feeling that she was still in trouble from a few dodgy things Bodhi saw on her surveillance, and what do you know, the fucker was right.
The shit we emptied out of that safe she had hidden in the combi had my blood running cold.
It explains why she and her dad ran for it after her mum was murdered.
Her dad must have known the two of them were in trouble and her mum had some deranged stalker sending her threatening blackmail.
Looks like Dove might still be in trouble.
“Every man I know is out looking for the guy Bodhi described. Including the cops. He’s armed and dangerous.
We will catch him, but until then, Dove’s to be with one of us at all times.
We don’t know exactly what he wants with her yet.
For all we know he might even be the man who killed her mum, and we can’t take any risks.
He hasn’t actually asked for any money like he did with her mum, not yet anyway, but the threats are very similar, and perhaps this is how it started with her.
Threats that turned into blackmail. Is he after money?
Probably. But any blind fucker can see she doesn’t have a dollar to her name, so maybe there is more to it.
” Kasen’s mind is in a panic, words vomiting out of him as fast as he thinks of them.
He is driven by an erratic energy, worse than normal, pacing his office that he has all of us holed up in while Dove sleeps upstairs.
She was supposed to make him better, but instead of being a zombie, he’s now fixated on a sole purpose. Her.
When we got back here last night, she cursed every profanity under the sun while they locked her back in her room.
Bodhi didn’t give a fuck, he plucked her up and carried her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, dumping her on her bed like she weighed nothing.
The deranged fucker was probably getting off on the thrill of the catch.
He’s sick like that. Me personally, I don’t want to see the poor girl locked up, no one should be, especially a free spirit like Dove, but even I had to agree with K on this.
She’s not safe out there in the wild, and I have been quite enjoying having her around.
Selfishly, I need to know where she is and that she is safe. Even if she hates us for it.
“What did you extract from her phone? Her socials?” K asks Bodhi.
“Not a lot. She had quite the following as Elsie, but she hasn’t posted in a while, like she knew she was going to be leaving that life behind for some time before she left.
There’s a guy who keeps calling her, Talon.
I looked into him, and he owns a psychiatry business in Breakers Point.
Looks harmless enough, and from the messages he’s left, it sounds like she’s missed a couple of appointments, and he’s concerned. ”
K’s brow pops up. “Maybe pay him a visit, he might know something we don’t.”
“Could it be a copycat?” Bodhi asks, his forehead creasing in a way that makes him look even more psychotic than normal.
He’s just as on edge as Kasen, standing by the security monitor, watching Dove.
He has been for quite some time. Not that he would admit it to us.
He would make up some bullshit about being head of security and it being his job to watch over her.
But I can see the truth; the big guy’s got a soft spot for her, he wants to keep her just like we do.
I nod, agreeing with him. It’s what I’ve been thinking since last night.
Someone who knew her mum was being blackmailed might be trying to do the same thing to her.
It’s the only logical thing that makes sense, unless the original blackmailer is still around.
Then we have a murderer on our hands, and that option is far from ideal.
Kasen’s frown deepens to deadly. He’s so on edge I can feel the tension radiating off him from the other side of the room.
First Keller dies suddenly, forcing him into a position he clearly despises, then she comes back, his lost love—or all of ours, not that any of us would have admitted it back then, but we all had a thing for her, that was fucking obvious.
It was one of those un-talked-about things between bros.
None of us could touch her because that would have caused chaos among our adolescent brains.
But now things are different. We can survive this—her.
She doesn’t have to start a war, she could be the only one who can bring us all back together.
“At this point, it could be anyone with the means to slip a note in her pocket unseen and get away from Bodhi after graffitiing the van. This dude knows what he’s doing.
He’s got to be trained; think military or a cop she could have pissed off.
Someone who’s good with a knife and able to disappear without leaving tracks. ”
“You’re ruling out the Southern Breakers?” I check, just to make sure. The last thing we need is some biker club turning up on our soil looking for a fight.
Kasen pours himself a drink from his mini bar and throws it back. Not the first he’s had this morning at the ripe time of ten am, but who’s counting. “Not completely, but you really think those dumb thugs would bother to pull something like this off? It’s not worth their time.”
“Nope. She might have been worth a bit of money to them, but this is someone calculated. He wants to mess with her, scare her,” Bohdi agrees with him.
The way he says she was worth money to them makes me sick to the stomach.
Like she’s a product they could profit from, that’s what they turned her into.
The images of her in those videos are hot as fuck, I’m not going to deny it.
She’s a goddess behind the camera, with her dirty-talking mouth and rocking body.
But it’s disgusting to think of who was paying to see her like that.
My innocent friend exploited for some gang members’ gain.
I have no idea what made her do it. How she could have gotten herself in such bad debt, but I know if I ever come face to face with one of the fuckers involved, I will personally make sure they never have the chance to do that shit to anyone ever again.
I still haven’t ruled out an ambush, maybe light up their clubhouse and celebrate as the thing burns to the ground with ‘em all inside. That could be a fun Saturday night. I’m sure Bodhi would be up for it.
But he tells me he has them under control, and the pain they will endure will go so much deeper than a simple arson job. They will be left with nothing.
“Exactly. And we need to find this psychopath before he gets the chance to scare her again.” Kasen growls, his glass clattering with the steel tray as he finally collapses into a cream recliner. He hasn’t slept, for days maybe.
Bodhi shares a subtle look that tells me he notices as well.
Someone needs to snap him out of this before it brings him undone completely.
If I can just get her to go easy on him, spend a little quality time with us all and see this is where she belongs.
She doesn’t need to run from us because she’s one of us. It could bring him back to us as well.
“What happened the night her mum was murdered? You two were there,” I ask, sure it’s got something to do with this, it has to.
I should have been there as well. Those times were so crucial in the set-up of Throne Enterprises, it was all hands on deck no matter that we were practically kids.
Truth was, we all wanted different lives than the ones we had been dealt, and Keller painted us a picture too good to refuse.
All we had to do was sell our souls. Only we didn’t know that at the time.
But I was sent to deal with another mess with Jayden, a job the two of us would never be the same again after.
Bodhi and Kasen came back different as well. That night changed all our lives.
“Shit was going down. It was all over the cop radio, a factory fire on the outskirts of town, a drug bust that put away some local thugs for years. Shit we didn’t fully understand at the time.
We were just there to listen and help if things got out of hand with the mayor.
That’s what Keller said. Right, K?” Bodhi explains.
But we all know it was more complicated than that.
That night was Keller’s big chance to throw the power of the authorities into his hands.
He saw his chance, something so much bigger than any individual, bigger than anything anyone had seen before, and it worked as well.
That night he got what he wanted. Money, power, control.
Every event was carefully calculated by the man himself.
What happened to Juliet Dawson is no coincidence.
It was all related, same with the shit Jay and I were up to, and the boys waiting outside Dove’s house while the old man sealed a deal with the most influential woman at the time.
Kasen glances up at me, a haunted look in his eyes.
He knows more than Bodhi that’s for sure.
“Dove saw something that made her run. We don’t know what.
Keller gave instructions to bring her home safe.
We did what we were told, end of story. That was the last I thought about it until we found out Dove and her dad were gone and her mum was dead in the house.
” And now I know my mate is lying through his teeth.
He knows something big. Something even Bodhi doesn’t know from his expression.