Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Then
Donnel - A couple of decades later.
“What’ll it take to get you off our tail and leave us alone for good?” Donnel asked. “You already have my share of the inheritance. I helped you get more pups. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
Donnel didn’t know how many more people Faegan might send after them, but he didn’t want to have to uproot them yet again.
And if this kept up much longer, he would start running out of ways—and places—to dispose of the bodies without detection.
Not to mention, eventually their luck would run out. So far, none of the men had discovered where they were living, but the latest encounter he’d survived two weeks ago was more than close enough that Donnel was ready to talk to the head of the snake directly and get some answers.
Even though he hadn’t set eyes on his brother in decades, Faegan’s cackle still raised Donnel’s hackles over the phone connection. “I want Bryn.”
“I don’t know where they are. Plus, Callum’s a Prime, if you’ll recall. I’m not even a shifter. Not sure how I’m supposed to help you do that.”
“I’m not asking you to take him down. I want you to arrange a meeting between you and her. Just her.”
“Why?”
“Because I know she’s pregnant. I found out about it through one of his relatives who owes me money.”
Donnel’s blood literally ran cold. Despite everything they’d already endured at the hands of his brother, he didn’t know that was a literal expression. “I told you, I don’t know where they’re living.”
“But you have a way of contacting her, don’t you? As close as you were to her, I can’t imagine the two of you didn’t set up a way to contact each other.”
Faegan paused. “We had a deal, Donnel. That you would help me find her. Besides, I know you helped her run in the first place. I let that slide when you helped me out with our… arrangement. And while you said you didn’t help Hamish run, I’d be willing to bet you tipped him off that night when you delivered the care package to him.
Awfully strange how he disappeared that same night and sent me a letter telling me to go fuck myself.
I told you to tell him I wanted to talk about buying out his share of the estate, and I can’t imagine that would have made him run. Did you reveal the real reason?”
Bloody fucking hell.
“I told you I had nothing to do with him leaving,” Donnel lied, because it wasn’t like Hamish was alive to contradict him.
“I delivered your message. That’s all. I took the food and drink over, hoping to soften him up.
Told him you wanted to talk to him about the future of the estate and have dinner in the big house.
I never said anything about your other plans. You think me daft?”
At least he could lie to his brother without hesitation or guilt.
“Why don’t I believe you, Donnel? Anyway, you want me to leave you alone? All right, I’m offering you a chance to get your wish. Do this for me, and I will never again contact you or try to find you.”
“Or her?”
Donnel thought Faegan might have growled. “Or her.”
“Or send people after us or try to kill us?”
“Yes, I’m not splitting hairs. If you do this for me, as long as neither of you ever sets foot in this country again, you will no longer exist to me—either of you. You’re not a shifter, and I need shifter blood in this pack. She’s worthless to me now that she’s barren.”
At war within Donnel, the peace he and his mate so desperately craved and deserved versus the love he held for his sister.
Except she was married to one of the strongest Prime Alphas ever known.
If Callum couldn’t keep Bryn safe, then no one was safe from Faegan.
“How do I know that you’ll keep your word?” Donnel asked.
“I let you both leave. I didn’t have to do that—I could’ve had you killed back then once Callum wiped Frannie’s memory. But I let your plan play out and, surprisingly, it worked. You helped me then, and you’ll help me now.”
Donnel winced, another sting of guilt that he’d sacrificed that woman for a chance to be free and save the woman he’d truly loved.
Although when Donnel proposed she could become the Pack Alpha’s mate, she’d eagerly agreed.
She hadn’t exactly been a romantic back then, and he might have exaggerated how her standard of living would suddenly improve.
Not that she’d remember any of those circumstances, but his guilt remained.
“But you keep sending people after us,” Donnel said.
“More accurately, I keep sending them after you, yes, and you keep killing them. I doubt you have enough money to pay for people to do that on your behalf. The reason I’ve been sending people after you is to deliver this offer.
Had you let any of them tell you that, you could’ve saved us both a lot of trouble. ”
Donnel thought that was bullshit, but he let the silence lie between them for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“I don’t trust you,” Donnel repeated.
“I know you don’t. My youngest, Ben, is dead. His mother hasn’t caught again yet despite my best efforts. Our pack needs female shifters for breeding who can catch. Neither of my sons has yet produced any shifter pups at all.”
“It’s not like you can breed with your own sister.”
“That’s not the point. I want that baby. Get Bryn for me,” Faegan continued. “I’ll take care of Callum.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Do better than that, brother. According to my man, the new curtains your ‘wife’ put up last week look rather fetching.”
Donnel thought his heart might actually stop. “Leave her alone,” he whispered. “Didn’t you do enough? You got what you wanted.”
“Write down this number.” Faegan recited it.
“When you arrange the time and place, call that number and give the person who answers the phone the details. Meet with Bryn, then walk away and don’t look back.
That’s all you have to do. I have no further use for you or her.
The only reason I kept tabs on you was for this purpose, because I knew you’d eventually help me find Bryn.
Do this for me, and you will finally be free.
Mostly because you’ll no longer have anything of worth to me to wring from you, and it’ll be pointless to pursue you. ”
Donnel closed his eyes and let his head hang. “Again, how can I trust you?”
“You can’t. I have much larger plans in the works than even your scheming brain can comprehend. I’m talking on a global scale. I have new business partners, and we’re taking things in a different direction.”
Donnel felt sick. “And whatever that direction is requires women who can give birth to shifters?”
“Shifter women,” Faegan emphasized. “And shifter men. Charles Bleacke and Trevor Clarke and the rest of those soft-hearted plonkers will no longer look down their snouts at me once we take over. Arrange the meeting and call that number. If you don’t do it within the next four weeks, I will have you both killed.
Oh, and I knew you’d likely kill at least some of the men I sent, so I sent men I wanted out of my way, hoping you’d off them.
You did me a favor, brother. Had you been caught, I would’ve sent an attorney to represent you with a plea bargain.
” Another cackle. “But the sharpshooters I’ll send after you if you don’t do this?
You’ll never see them coming. And I’ll make sure they kill her before they kill you—and that you witness it. ”
Faegan hung up on him.
Donnel’s hand trembled as he laid the hotel room receiver back into the cradle. He’d told his mate he had to travel to Detroit for a business trip. Donnel had sent Faegan a telegram that he’d call him tonight. The long-distance charge would be astronomical, but worth it.
Except…
Well, if Faegan really knew where they lived, and it appeared he did, moving would likely not work.
It’d only be a matter of time before he caught up with them again, and Donnel didn’t have Faegan’s financial resources.
He’d walked away from his inheritance to finally have the woman he loved back in his arms, and while he’d stashed plenty away and made more since, it was still a pittance compared to Faegan’s worth.
Donnel wanted to throw his head back and howl with incandescent rage, but he was wasting time and he knew it.
He picked up the phone and placed another long-distance call, his stomach threatening to upend as he waited for the call to connect.
A woman answered. “Hello?”
“How’s my little sister?”
He didn’t blame Bryn for sounding wary. “What do you want, Donnel?” Like him, she’d Americanized her accent decades earlier.
“I have to take a business trip to Cleveland this coming week,” he said. “Feel like meeting?”
There was a long pause. “Why now?”
“Because I know you said you’ll move once the baby’s born. No telling when we might get to see each other again.” He hadn’t even told his mate he was in contact with Bryn, much less that she was expecting.
If Faegan was that determined to find Bryn, he knew his only option was to go along.
Whatever fuckery Faegan was up to would likely keep him busy once Donnel capitulated.
He didn’t have her address, only this phone number, which was unlisted. Whatever Callum had done when they’d taken the number meant not only was it unlisted, but apparently it didn’t even exist in the phone records.
Donnel knew, because he’d tried to have it traced.
It was the latest in a series of numbers Bryn had given him over the years, sent to the PO Box he kept in Detroit, via a postcard and using their personal code. Each number one digit lower than what was actually printed and written in reverse order.
He didn’t know exactly where she lived, only that the postmarks were from post offices surrounding the Cleveland area.
She never gave him an address, not even a P.O. Box.
He suspected the only reason she kept in touch was that she considered him an ally since he’d brokered the deal between Callum and Faegan so they could all make their escapes, and Hamish was dead.
They were all the family they had left, such as it was.