Chapter 3
Wizard
I haven’t succeeded in getting myself entirely under control by the time I get to the security room.
Dravin immediately shoves out of a chair so ergonomically expensive that I still want to cry just thinking about how much Tyrant spent on it, and he bought them years ago.
I didn’t call Maverick in, but he’s here too.
They’re both bleary eyed, but Maverick more so.
He’s still rumpled, his hair tousled and his patchy beard somehow looking unshaven.
He doesn’t seem like he’s had the benefit of a strong cup of coffee yet.
Dravin gives me a sheepish look. “I hope it’s okay that I called Maverick. I thought we could use all the help we could get.”
Maverick’s chest puffs up, but it’s mostly fake ego.
He’s a decent guy. He’s fairly new to the club.
Came here because he had nowhere else to go after being in jail for years.
One wrong bounce, and his luck could have been mine.
I’ve done far more shit online that I could have been caught and punished for than he ever has.
“Not prying or anything, but isn’t that your brother’s fiancé?” Dravin asks.
He crosses his arms over his chest and leans casually against one of the desks.
The room isn’t really all that small. It’s just so crowded with screens, computers, laptops, and other tech that it feels more claustrophobic than it is.
I set it up a long time ago. It’s fucking crazy how many years I’ve been a part of this.
I’m honored. This is my home and my family, it truly fucking is, but sometimes I have to shake my head at how seven years can just… evaporate.
Maybe because I’ve always been so busy, but I also hardly ever sleep. I never have. Three to four hours a night is all I ever need. With all the extended hours in a day, you’d think they’d slow down.
“Yeah.” I lift my hand and cup the back of my neck.
Dravin is definitely prying and he’s far from finished.
“I haven’t been here long, but you’ve always been known as the quiet guy passionately dedicated to his work.
You barely ever go out. You don’t talk to anyone outside the club that I’ve seen.
” His face blanks and he sizes me up. He must decide I’m not going to swing at him, so he continues.
“Is it true that it’s always the quiet ones that you have to watch out for? ”
Anger blasts through me, radiating pain like standing too close to an inferno.
It’s a thoughtless question and I know that Dravin doesn’t mean to hurt me with it, but he didn’t grow up here.
He doesn’t know a thing about me. No one does.
No one knows the fucking agony that I’ve put myself through.
No one knows just how badly undone I am every single time I’m anywhere near Esme.
I should have broken my addiction to her years ago, but it wasn’t possible.
He doesn’t know Esme either. How everyone in this town wrote her off before she even started, and how hard she had to work to prove them all wrong.
I roll my eyes to try and cover how badly rattled I am. That desperate, ugly hope keeps surging in my chest. “Weren’t you the one who told everyone that your old lady was your sister when you got here, and then we saw you kissing?”
Dravin has a great face. He thinks it’s not very expressive, but it is. It’s kind of fun to watch it scrunch up when he realizes that he’s not the only one who can play at giving shit. “She wasn’t,” he sputters. “That was just our cover. You fucking know that. Fuck, man, that’s disgusting.”
“Obviously.” Maverick puts in, eyes tracking between the two of us.
“Obviously as in obviously not the same thing at all?” Dravin asks, confused.
I’m confused too. My head is going to split open.
I promised Esme I’d have my brother found in an hour.
That wasn’t a flex. I had no doubt I could do it, but I didn’t anticipate other people taking up my time with total nonsense.
It’s not finding James that’s going to be the issue. It’s getting him back here.
“I’m not making a cuckold of my brother,” I snap and sit down in the chair Dravin shot out of earlier.
I slide my laptop along the desk while the wall of screens steadily illuminates every aspect of the clubhouse.
The left and right walls are for feeds that belong to our businesses, buildings, and houses.
We’re accumulating so many that we’re going to need to fill up another wall soon.
“That’s a very big word and it’s still very early,” Maverick says, groaning.
“You know what it means.”
“Can you tell us what the hell is going on?” Maverick begs. “I know Dravin didn’t call me down here out of the good of his heart.”
“You don’t know any such thing, darlin’,” Dravin drawls.
Maverick is a pretty good guy, like most guys here. No one comes to blows over bullshit like that. We can all rib each other without it getting mean.
He’s right. I do need to tell them both what the hell is going on. I make even briefer work of it than Esme did, but it’s clear from Maverick and Dravin’s pinched faces that they’re less than impressed.
“Maverick’s really good at finding people,” Dravin says, spelling it out for me.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah. Got that. I don’t need help, but thanks for worrying about me.
“I could get Tyrant and Raiden together,” Maverick offers, trying to be helpful in any way he can. “Order some breakfast. Have it ready for whenever you are.”
Fuck. I shouldn’t have mentioned me telling Esme that I’d only need thirty minutes to find my brother. It’s more like fifteen now, I’ve wasted so much time.
“If you need help, holler,” Maverick says. “Until then, I’ll be ordering breakfast. Do you want me to call any of the old ladies? They can check on Esme? Sit with her maybe? She could join us for breakfast. I think Tyrant and Raiden will want to talk to her too.”
“I was counting on it, just wasn’t sure if they’d want to talk to me first, and then the club together, or what their timeline would be.”
“Right.” Maverick heads to the doorway. “I’ll talk to them and let you know. And about the old ladies?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I should have asked her.”
“How about I have someone on standby? Maybe Ella? She’s only teaching a few summer classes right now. I’d call Loreena, but…”
“She would have preferred to come with you already,” Dravin fills in. “How’s she doing?”
“She keeps meeting with Lockwood. She’s doing so much better. I’m so proud of her.”
Loreena is sort of agoraphobic. She went through some traumatic stuff and that’s basically how she met Maverick.
She was his prison pen pal. When he got out, she tried to shut him down because she didn’t want him to find out she couldn’t leave her house, but he wasn’t having any of it.
He kind of kidnapped her and brought her heal because he wanted to help her.
As wild as that is, most of the guys at the club have some pretty crazy love stories.
I’ve watched my club brothers fall for women who are perfect for them.
Watched them go from living solitary lives, often pretty lonely despite the brotherhood of the club.
They’ve been unseen. They’ve felt unwanted.
Through the club, they found brotherhood, friendship, redemption, and healing, but their women were their missing pieces.
I’m not jealous. I’m really not.
At least, I’ve tried very hard not to be.
“Ella’s probably the best bet then, if we can’t get Lark. She’s home with Penny though, since it’s summer.”
“Penny loves coming here. She loves getting spoiled,” Dravin protests.
“I’ll ask Tyrant and Raiden. You had best get to tracing that douchebag down.” Maverick frowns. “Uh, have you ever thought about legally un-adopting your brother? Or divorcing your family? Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I think the best I could do is write him out of my will, but I don’t have a will, and he’s not in it.”
“You don’t have a will?” Maverick gapes at me.
“What the fuck?” Dravin asks. “Not even a living one?”
“No. Tyrant and Raiden know me. They know what I’d want if anything happened to me. My bike and shit can go to whoever. Rock paper scissor championship for it.”
Maverick laughs his hearty, booming laugh that he never can seem to tone down. Dravin studies me carefully but doesn’t say anything until it’s just the two of us in here.
I snap my laptop open and start punching keys.
This shouldn’t be that hard. Not when Esme gave me the date James left.
As I said, he wouldn’t have had fake ID.
Probably wasn’t smart enough to get it in advance and then didn’t have time.
He’d be wearing a shit disguise and would have left a paper trail a mile long.
Dravin twists one of the chairs from the corner and sits down hard. He tucks his hands between his knees, trying not to distract me, but his thoughts are so damn loud that I huff and glance up for a second. “What?”
“I—it’s just…”
“Go ahead. You’re not distracting me.” He’s not. I’m flying through this. Two more minutes, and I’ll probably know where James is.
That thirty minute benchmark was me seriously downplaying my skills.
“When you walked in with Esme, I was watching the feeds.”
“As you should have been. I don’t doubt you were doing a great job.” My fingers flick over the keyboard. My eyes never leave the screen.
“I don’t know how to say this any other way, Wizard. You might never have forced your way into your brother’s relationship, but you’re in love with this woman.” My head snaps up and Dravin immediately gives me his palms in a peaceful gesture. “Whatever. It’s okay.”
It’s really not okay.
Am I that obvious? I wish I had an answer, but the room twists, the screen dims, the roaring in my ears is back. The world is going to implode.
“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Dravin goes on. His voice sounds like it’s coming across some vast distance, the words muffled but decipherable. “How long?”
I ram the heels of my hands into my eyes until bright lights burst behind them. “Always.”
“Always?” he chokes.
“Yeah. Well, ever since I was old enough to realize what want and love were. That it was more than just being friends. I guess my brother pointed it out to me. When he started dating her, she went from being one of my only friends to being one of my only friends, but also his girlfriend.”
“Jesus. That’s rough. Maybe you should just… leave him to his own fate?”
I laugh but it’s cold and unhappy. “I would consider it if Esme wasn’t in trouble.
They’re going to come after her if he doesn’t show or doesn’t pay.
But otherwise… yeah. I’d love for him to get himself out of his own mess.
Although, I don’t know if I could just let him die.
He’s still my brother, even if he never did deserve the title. ”
“Not being able to choose fucking family is a real bitch.”
“He’s a product of what my parents made him, I guess. They always defended him. He couldn’t do anything wrong. They were so proud of him.” My hands finally freeze on the keys. “I have this insane childish urge to go over there right now and rub it in their faces.”
“Don’t do that.”
I snort. “I won’t. I’m not gonna waste any more time on James than I have to. They’ll find out soon enough, and the fact that I helped and never told them will be pretty telling.”
“You don’t have to do this all on your own. We’ve got you.” Dravin squeezes my shoulder right as I bring up exactly what I’m looking for.
“Mexico,” I grunt. “How unoriginal. Five star resort, no less. Wow. Hiding in plain sight and doing it in style. That’s pretty much James exactly. Ego the size of a small city.”
“Mm. You could just transfer the debt to the cartel.” When I sigh, Dravin winces. “Sorry. I had it lined up to say that you could pull a Maverick and steal money from some rich assholes to pay the loan sharks, but that didn’t work out so well for him.”
“Rich assholes, especially if they’re criminal, dangerous ones will usually notice something like that.”
We both pause for a moment. “Are you gonna call him? If we weren’t pressed for time, I’d say wait and I’ll make popcorn.
” Dravin can’t help the shit-eating grin when I aim a dirty look in his direction.
“Got it. That’s a hard no.” He walks to the door.
“I’ll leave you alone. Just one more question.
What are you gonna do now that she’s probably finished with your brother. ”
We’ve been through so much, but the one constant was always those lines drawn in the sand.
Walls kept in place. Boundaries that could never be crossed.
The lines weren’t in my head. They were distinctly real.
The world has held its shape for so long that I have no idea what will happen when all of that looks different.
It will be like waking up, a stranger in a foreign land, with no clue how to speak the language or how to find myself.
I’ll always have the stories of our friendship, the memories, but I have no idea how to exist.
My throat is so dry and closed up that the words barely scrape their way out. I give Dravin the only truth I know. “Nothing.”
I hate the sympathy that softens his face.
“Chances are, if things were this bad and your brother was always a pretty epic cunt, she’s been moved on for quite a while.
Trapped, maybe. Scared. If she’s angry or sad about anything, it’s being betrayed, but the relationship?
Just because she’s moving on as of today, doesn’t mean she hasn’t been checked out and over it for a long time. ”
“That might be the worst advice anyone’s ever given.”
He shrugs. “Is it?”
He leaves me alone, not unkindly, to call my asshole brother, and then to try and figure the rest of this out.