Chapter 4
FOUR
Orla
My brain was still trying to play catchup when I felt Bear help me down the few stairs of the jet. We were at another private airfield in Ireland, I could smell the familiar surroundings to identify where I was.
“You good?” he asked me, gruffly. His face held no emotion, and I was finding it hard to read him.
“I just missed being home,” I told him.
All he did was nod, and I felt myself hurtling back to the time when I stood in the middle of the road, watching him as he rode out of my life.
I’d already pushed him away at that time.
Our love had been so real, so devastatingly all consuming that I was scared, and I told him I didn’t want him anymore.
He’d left without a word, just the rumble of his bike down my street. I felt the same heartbreak even now because I knew nothing had changed. He was still that guy whose heart I broke when I inadvertently broke my soul back when we were kids.
“Come on,” he said, pushing me toward the bike.
“How did they get here?”
“We left them here when we flew over to get you guys,” he offered. He jumped on his bike and held out a helmet for me. I put it on and turned to see men in cuts grabbing bags from the plane and putting them in the van. There were more than just the boys’ bags. What the hell did they do in Italy?
I jumped on the bike behind him, wrapping my arms around his body.
My own body hummed to life at the contact, and I had to push those thoughts away.
He started up the bike and we were following Ace and Hawk out of the airfield.
I didn’t see Wolf anywhere, he wasn’t behind Hawk.
I wondered where he’d gone. He had been our protector for so long in Italy and throughout France.
It hadn’t been his fault that we’d been taken and by the look of him, he had taken quite a few beatings for us. I prayed he would be okay.
The boys rode in formation until we got to Kilkenny, and toward the clubhouse. Only when we got off the bikes did I see the van had arrived and the boys were carefully unloading Wolf from the back. He looked like he was in a tonne of pain.
He’d been such a good guy, always taking us where we wanted, putting up with the girls’ behaviour, playing card games well into the early morning with me.
“Is he okay?” I asked Bear.
“He will be,” he said. “He’s tough. Come on.”
He grabbed my hand, lacing his fingers through mine as he led me down to the clubhouse. When we passed the van, I saw the blocks and blocks of drugs in there. “Have you guys taken over the drug business in Kilkenny already?”
Bear didn’t want to answer, he just dragged me through the clubhouse and down the hall before I could say anything to anyone. Inside his room, he slammed the door shut behind us. The look in his eye was feral, almost animalistic.
I wasn’t scared, I was turned on.
“Get some sleep,” he grunted. “You’re safe here.”
He pulled off his shirt and bared that chest of his to me. His body was almost covered in ink, and I found myself jealous that it hadn’t been my artwork on him yet again.
“You didn’t answer me outside,” I said.
“No,” he replied. “We haven’t yet.”
“But, Alex, that’s not territory you can broach on…until you’ve claimed it back. Donald didn’t want to run drugs anymore, and he made that clear.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” he growled at me.
“I’ve been part of this club for longer than you have. When you ran off to join the Nomads, I was here, waiting for you to come back and when you didn’t, I was welcomed as their family. I know things that happen in this town, Alex.”
He was angry, and I had no idea why.
“Go to sleep.”
He grabbed a shirt and pulled it on angrily, before he grabbed his cut. I moved in front of the door before he could open it, the anger seething off him in waves.
“It’s because of us, isn’t it?” I asked him. “The Italians want you to run the drugs here even though it could start something.”
He didn’t answer, but he looked away. That was all I needed to know the truth.
“You can’t, Alex, it’ll get you killed,” I said, reaching out for him. He stepped back, my arms falling beside me.
“We don’t have a choice,” he admitted. “We’ll be fine. The drug business will be ours anyway, it’s just been moved up is all.”
“Alex, please don’t go,” I said, my heart pounding in my chest. “Lay down with me, stay with me.”
His eyes were dark, and he stayed glued to the spot.
“I have to,” he ground out after a moment. “Don’t open this door.”
He bent and lifted me over his shoulder, throwing me down on the bed, before he stomped his way out of the room and closed the door.
Tears ran down my cheeks silently.
He doesn’t want you.
Matteo’s words came back to me and I felt cold, disgusting, unwanted. Curling into his pillows, I inhaled his masculine scent of tobacco, sea salt and leather.
I still fucking loved him.
Even after all these years, I still loved Alex O’Leary.
Bear
Viper, Rebel and Kirby were riding behind me as I took them to the drop off spot.
Savage was driving the van with the stock from the Italians.
Hawk and Ace had some grovelling to do to their women, so I took point on this.
There was no point in them getting caught in this if it truly was something to ignite a war.
I had my guns loaded up and ready, as did Viper and Rebel.
Kirby hung back, keeping an eye on the proceedings. He needed the exposure.
We sat on our bikes as we got there, waiting for the dealer.
Orla begging me to stay in bed with her floated through my mind, hardening my dick was not fucking helping right now.
She had no idea how much I wanted to do that, to be inside her at all fucking times.
I’d done the only thing I could, I’d put distance between us so I could do this thing and prevent a war with rival clubs.
Even though the Rabid Wolves helped us, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t turn on us on a dime.
If we fucked them over with this, and what I could only assume was millions of dollars of drugs, we’d be at war.
A car drove up, followed by two others.
“We’re on,” I said to the boys behind me. Viper stood beside me with Rebel on my other side. Kirby hung by the van with Savage as the driver got out with his goon. His smirk made me want to punch the fucker.
“The product over here?” he asked me, his accent thick and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was Corkish. We’d been at war with the Corkish mafia before, and that hadn’t ended well.
I nodded and led him to the van, Kirby opened the doors and his eyes bugged out at the product.
“We can’t move this much,” he gasped. “We’ll take half of it.”
“You’ll take all of it,” I reiterated. “Get your goon squad to come and lift it, then we’ll handle business and you’ll be on your way.”
The guy wasn’t the leader. He was all bravado before he saw this, and now he looked behind him.
I located the guy with a brass upper lip and knew this was a set up.
I grabbed for my gun in my waistband before I felt a sharp upper cut that winded me.
Shouts and gunfire were let off from every direction as the guy continued to pound on me.
I landed on the ground, the force of the impact on the hard dirt winding me.
The leader looked down at me, the gun in his hand, barrel aimed at my face. Images of Orla floated through my mind as I suspected I wouldn’t see her again.
A sharp bang and I thought I was done, but nothing happened.
I wasn’t hit. I opened my eyes and saw no one standing over me.
Turning over, I looked up to see our guys had gotten control.
Then two faces I recognised turned around, their guns by their sides.
Lorcan stood over me and hauled me to my feet.
“Sleepin’ on the job?” his brother Killian asked with a smirk.
“Funny fuckers.”
“We heard about this going down yesterday, and drove down as soon as we heard they were trying to take you guys out,” Lorcan added. “Foley is a big guy, and his trial isn’t going to put him away. I know the judge hates him, but the jury has been tampered with.”
Fucking great.
“Ace is going to riot.”
Lorcan nodded. “We’re helping with protection of the families of the jury, but Foley knows a lot of people. He also doesn’t want anyone encroaching on his drug business.”
“The Italians had us do this drop.”
“The Barone’s?”
“Rabid Wolves.”
“Shit,” Killian muttered.
“We can handle them,” I lied. “The Barone’s are almost all taken out anyway.”
Lorcan and Killian shared a look before they turned to me. “What happened over there?”
They’d helped us get a ride over there, and given us the guns when we arrived, but they’d steered clear of it due to their own involvement with the Barone’s.
It had been Lorcan who had killed the older brother, Saverio, which is why I assumed Matteo had a bug up his butt.
I relayed what had taken place and how Matteo had wanted revenge.
They knew that part but they had no idea of what he’d done to his prisoners.
“We would have come if we’d known he had turned into Saverio,” Lorcan said. “I’m sorry, Bear.”
I nodded quickly. Saverio had been the eldest brother, and the one who betrayed his old pal Lorcan and almost raped his woman.
“I thought Matteo understood,” Killian muttered. “Maybe he needs a lesson in old school rules.”
“No need,” I said, just as Savage and Viper were finished piling up the bodies of the drug runners in a nice and tidy bow for their men to find. “Bastian did nothing to help his brother, he knew what he’d done was wrong and aided us in locating him.”
“Bastian is a good kid,” Lorcan nodded. “Either way, I’ll head over there to make sure there won’t be another reprisal.”
“Thank you, brother,” I said. He shook my hand and nodded.
“Killian’s gonna stay with you, just for a little while during this trial. I don’t like the fact he’s calling the shots from prison.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I said.
“You’d do the same for us,” Killian offered.
We would. The O’Farrell’s, although not an MC, were hard as nails and they had the resources that we needed from time to time.
“Plus Sloane is already at the clubhouse and from what I hear, halfway through a drinking game with someone named Shona.”
I laughed with Killian. His woman was quiet to say the least, and the least likely to be part of any mafia empire or clubhouse but she was genuine, and I liked that about her.
She was kind and sweet, and she loved her man with a vengeance, and never wanted to part with him.
The two couldn’t be any different, and yet they worked.
Lorcan left to head home and I got Killian loaded up in the van while I grabbed my bike and led them back to the clubhouse.
Once we got back, I thought about Orla, and how much I wanted to curl up behind her and never let her go again.
She’d been begging me to open up, to talk, but I hadn’t been able to. I’d never been able to express my feelings. That had been beaten out of me on too many occasions to count before but for her, I would.
“Kill,” I called out to him as he was about to head inside with the others. He turned and headed back to me, away from earshot. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That Sloane was the only one you wanted? You know, you dated and you stopped, she married someone else. But…you kept waiting for her.”
Killian sighed. “I don’t know…she wasn’t about this world, you know?
She wanted a normal life, but the thought of sharing my world with anyone else made me want to puke.
I hardened myself into thinking I’d never end up happy, delved into what I liked doing and that was making people bleed, to pay for what they did to our family.
But then she came bounding back into my life.
I couldn’t let her leave again, I just couldn’t.
She’s the light in my darkness. The one I come home to when I can’t pull myself back, she does that.
She saves me every fucking day just by being her. ”
“That’s fucking powerful.”
“If the woman you’re tearing yourself over does that for you, Bear, then you don’t fucking let her go. It’s hard to find.”
I nodded and he turned and headed back into the clubhouse. I pulled out my cigarettes and pulled on one hard, trying to sort my shit out in my head. I’d almost died tonight, and yet my last thoughts were about her.
I’d felt peace at knowing she was safe and I could go happily up the staircase to heaven or into the pits of hell, whatever the case be.
I finished my smoke and headed inside, past the party that was happening at the bar and down the hall to my room.
Opening the door, I expected to see a sleeping Orla, my shirt swimming over her features and my cock hardening as I slid in behind her.
Instead, I saw a cleanly made bed and a note sitting on top.
Picking it up, I read the words, almost a mirror of the one she’d sent to me when I had joined the Nomads.
FUCK YOU, ALEX.