Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
AYDA
Pregnant.
It hadn’t occurred to me at all until I’d been standing with a gun to my head feeling half dead and seeing Drew’s face like that.
The hopelessness of the situation… there had been a moment, just one, where my life had become a flicker of images.
Why my period of all things had popped into my brain, well, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to answer that question.
I just knew. Could feel it. As though it were some kind of intuition.
As Drew and I made our way to the training room, I could feel the tension and anger rolling from him like a storm from the ocean.
Angry waves of it crashed at my feet, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was questioning himself on whether it was a good idea to have me there.
What he couldn’t possibly understand was what was going on in my head right now.
I needed to see that applied to the bastard that had jeopardized a future I hadn’t even known I’d wanted.
I wanted to see him bleed. I wanted to hear him scream.
I needed to see him die. For Harry, for Drew, for every one of the guys he’d betrayed, and a little for myself, too.
As the pain started to wind its way through the adrenaline that was keeping me going, my need to see him suffer was my driving force.
Tugging on Drew’s hand, I pulled him to a stop less than ten feet from the training room.
“Drew,” I said quietly, peeking up at him through the one eye that wasn’t as swollen as the other. “Don’t hold back on my account, okay? I know you’re worried about me being in there. Don’t be.”
His jaw ticked, his gaze moving over the marks on my face before he looked me dead in the eyes. “I can handle it, Ayda, if you can once it’s over. Just promise me you can, and it’ll all be okay.”
“I can. I can handle this because I need to see that motherfucker bleed.”
Drew exhaled through his nose and nodded once, his fingers squeezing my hand. “Then let’s go and do this,” he whispered.
I tightened my fingers around his with as much enthusiasm as I could, considering what was about to go down. I’d never thought I’d ever want to see someone suffer in front of me, let alone suffer at the hands of someone I loved, but Owen Sinclair deserved anything Drew thought up for him.
Entering the room seemed to suck the air out of everything—the mood changing from anticipatory to murderous.
It was dark, the smell of blood winding around us as we stepped inside.
Eric, Slater, and Jedd stood in a loose circle around Owen who was on his knees and bound, blood pooling as it seeped from the wounds Eric and I had already inflicted on him.
With one last squeeze to Drew’s hand, I released him, retreating into the shadows a little to give him the headspace he’d need to do what he was about to do.
Though, by the look on his face, he was already there.
Rubin stepped up beside me, the kid’s hand finding mine as we stood together and watched in silence, neither of us really sure of what was coming next.
Drew’s boots seemed to sound like an earthquake going off with every stride he took around his former friend.
His movements were controlled, and his eyes were fixed on the man in front of him as he slowly paced back and forth, with Eric, Jedd, and Slater close by.
The seconds felt like hours, every one of us waiting for Drew to strike, but he seemed in his element, making his victim wait for the pain he had promised.
He looked so calm, so quietly violent—he didn’t look like the soft man who lay beside me every night and swore to love me for eternity.
Right now, Drew looked like he was fit for only one thing:
Murder.
Owen raised his head and lifted his chin, daring to look Drew right in the eye. Drew paced slowly, then stopped in front of his enemy, never blinking as he just… watched him.
More seconds passed. Minutes. Hours. It was torture.
I wasn’t sure he was going to follow through and strike, as he’d forced the whole place into such a bubble of thick silence…
until Drew shifted quicker than lightning, his body spinning around in a full circle, his leg raised in the air before smashing and swinging his steel-toe boots across Owen’s cheek with a force that seemed to make the whole room shake.
Drew was so focused on his prey. He was judge, jury, and executioner.
He was a dark avenging angel who was so calm and collected that he was the only thing I could see.
I felt Rubin’s hand tighten in mine and did my best to support him, but the only thing I felt running through my veins was justification as my other hand found my stomach.
Owen’s body was now laid out on the floor, his hands tied behind him as he groaned and coughed up more blood. That kick alone would have put a regular guy in a coma, but The Hounds had been training their whole lives for this kind of thing, and he wasn’t going to stay down for long.
Drew bent down, his knees cracking as he came to rest an arm over them and lean closer to Owen.
“That hurt?” he whispered roughly.
“Fuck you,” Owen spat.
“I’ll make a deal with you.” Owen looked up, blinking wildly as he stared into Drew’s eyes and waited for him to go on. “Tell me everything you know, and I’ll kill you quickly.”
Even when he was crippled with pain, Owen was still capable of unleashing a slow, cruel smirk. “I’d rather burn in Hell for the rest of my life than share anything with y—”
Drew’s fist swung so quickly, we almost missed it, his arm driving his punch under Owen’s chin to rattle his teeth and make his brain practically bleed from the force.
“I could punch the living shit out of you all day.” He sighed dramatically.
“Asshole,” Owen hissed, his body rolling him onto his back, despite his arms being trapped there. His chest rose, his spine coming off the floor before he coughed roughly and brought his knees up to his stomach.
Drew pushed himself forward, digging his fingers into the cut on Owen’s body and tugging him back up until he was on his knees again. Once in place, Owen’s head hung low, and blood dripped in one long stream from the corner of his mouth.
Drew tugged Owen closer, so close he could say everything he had to say right next to his swollen ear.
“Ever loved anyone, Owen?” he asked him, Drew’s voice menacing as he looked up at Jedd, Slater, and Eric in front of him as he spoke. “Ever really loved anyone in your whole life?”
“W-what?” Owen gasped, his brows creasing when he dared to try and lift his head.
“I asked you if you’ve ever loved someone besides yourself.
I’m not talking about that hag of a wife you pretend to love just so you have someone to suck your dick at night—someone you can push around and make yourself feel like a king in your own home.
I’m talking about true love. Someone you’ve kept hidden from all of us.
A girl. A boy. A woman. Two men. A fucking horse.
Ever woken up in the morning and thought shit, I’m gonna die without them in my life.
I’m gonna stop breathing if I don’t get to hold them or see them today? ”
Owen’s answer came a moment too late. That moment’s pause indicated he had, as did the way he searched the floor with his eyes, trying to find a way to hide his impending lie before he responded with a firm, “No.”
“Liar,” Drew whispered, his smile growing like he knew something I didn’t.
His hands curled around Owen’s leather cut even tighter, pulling his entire body up in front of him like he didn’t weigh two hundred pounds.
When their eyes met, it was the first time I’d ever seen even a flicker of fear on Owen’s face.
“If you don’t tell me everything we need to know about Walsh and The Navs before I kill you, I can promise you one thing, Sinclair: I’m going to spend the rest of my life, no matter how long it takes, digging, clawing, fighting my way through every single fucking inch of your history, and I’m going to find that one person—maybe two, three, four-fucking-teen of them—who you’ve loved and kept hidden from all of us, and when I find them, I’m going to kill them even slower than I plan on killing you. ”
I barely blinked, even as Rubin tensed beside me.
I tugged him closer and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
It was a shocking approach to take, but if me being in his life had taught Drew one thing, it was that love sometimes made your priorities shift.
Kill me? Whatever, we’re all gonna die one day.
Kill the ones I love…? That gives you pause.
Someone you love will die just because you were in their life.
I felt sorry for anyone who loved Owen. A woman, man, child…
his brand of love was worthless. The way Owen had treated his brothers was proof of that.
Owen remained silent, staring into the eyes of his executioner.
“Have it your way,” Drew said coldly, dropping Owen to the floor and standing over him, once again. With a nod to his brothers, Drew slowly began to remove the cut on his own back before he turned around to drop it carefully and respectfully onto a nearby bench.
He never had to give the order verbally. The others seemed to know what to do.
Jedd and Slater moved fast, dropping down to Owen’s body and making fast work of stripping him of his cut after slicing through the ropes they’d only just bound him with.
Owen cried out in agony as they pushed and shoved him this way and that, shedding him of his leather first, then the shirt beneath it, until Owen was left in nothing but the dark, bloodstained jeans covering his wounded legs, and the boots on his feet.