Braxton
Chapter thirteen
When I went to Vanessa’s room last night and found all of her shit gone, I was far from relieved—which is fucking ridiculous, considering she was planted here by the Russians.
I was hoping she would tell me I was wrong.
I was hoping it was someone else—anyone else—who fed those assholes information.
But the second I said Carl’s name, I knew I had the right person. And that fucking stings.
Instead of chasing after her since I know she’s staying at some fucking motel in Ayre, I made close personal friends with a bottle of Irish whiskey. I usually prefer tequila, but last night I could barely stand seeing Vanessa’s favorite bottle on the shelf.
“How you feeling, mate?” Jude says, coming to sit next to me at the bar as I nurse a cup of coffee and a scone Cece made the other day for us.
I grunt and take a sip of my coffee.
“Ah. That rough, huh?”
“Yeah,” I reply.
“You want to go find her? Bring her back and question her?”
I shake my head. “We got everything from Carl. I doubt she knows anything else.” And I’m afraid of what will happen if I see her.
I don’t think I can stomach looking at the woman I was falling for who turned out to be a traitor.
My gaze darts to Jude, who has a cup of coffee sitting in front of him that he’s pouring an ungodly amount of sugar into. “Did you sleep here?”
He nods. “Yeah. Me, Ozzy, Cash stuck around last night. Just in case we needed to calm you down. Good thing, too, considering you grabbed every bottle of tequila you could find and smashed them on the ground.”
Blowing out a long breath, I shake my head. “Fuck, I don’t even remember that.”
“Don’t worry, Danny and Logan cleaned it up. But we wanted to make sure you didn’t pull something even stupider than wasting perfectly good alcohol.”
“What time did I go to bed?”
Jude tilts his head back and forth a few times. “I think you passed out on the couch around midnight. Then we dragged your ass to your room.”
“Thanks.”
“You would have done the same for me. Hell,” he says with a chuckle. “You have done the same for me.”
There’ve been plenty of parties in the clubhouse where Jude was drunker than shit and needed to be put to bed.
Most of us have had nights like those here.
Last night wasn’t a party, though, and I was drinking to forget, which I apparently accomplished.
Though I still can’t manage to get my mind off what I set out to forget last night.
Vanessa is front and center in my head like she’s been for weeks, and I doubt any bottle of whiskey could get her out.
The clubhouse door opens, and in walk Linc, Barrett, Wyatt, and Knox. Logan comes out of the kitchen and goes behind the bar, pouring coffee for everyone.
“Heard I missed all the fun yesterday,” Barrett says, standing next to me.
“It was loads of fun. I had a great time,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my words.
He slaps me on the shoulder. “Sorry, man. That’s shitty about Vanessa. I thought you guys really had something.”
“Shut up, Barrett,” Knox says.
Barrett steps back, and I glare at my brother. Love the guy, but he has a special way of putting his foot in his mouth.
Ozzy walks out of his office and tells us it’s time for church. We still need to tell the other brothers everything Carl shared with us yesterday and figure out what the hell to do with that information.
Knox is the last one in the room. He shuts the door behind him, then takes his seat to Ozzy’s left.
Ozzy bangs the gavel, then sets it next to him.
“So we have names, and we know they’re after us.
We know who was funding them.” He looks at Barrett.
Carl’s description told us it was Camryn’s dead father.
“We still need to find the fuckers, though. I’m thinking about bringing Petrov into this since we know it’s the men who defected when he took over.
He’s got to want them dead almost as much as we do. ”
All of us nod our agreement, then Ozzy looks at me. “We need to talk to Vanessa. Maybe she can give us a clue about her stepbrother and where he might have any stash houses, or at least a list of clubs he owned.”
My jaw tics with irritation, but he’s right. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.
“Do you want someone else to go pick her up? We know where she is. I’d like to think it would be simple if she’s as sorry as she said, and that she’s willing to help us out,” Knox says.
“Maybe.” I swipe a hand over my face. “Fuck. No, I’ll do it. She’s my mess.”
“She was more than that, brother,” Ozzy says, reading the tension on my face.
I scoff. “Yeah, then she sold us out.”
“Not completely. Those wily bastards put a tracking device on the van before we retrieved it. She was honest about only telling her asshole stepbrother about Boston,” Jude says.
Jude got that information out of Carl before he shot him in the head.
Too good of an execution, if you ask me.
But I suppose Jude’s questioning “techniques” made him suffer enough.
Their plan was to jack the van, steal our shit, then eventually let us know where it was to fuck with us some more.
It’s all about making us chase our tails like I told Cash after we got beat to hell.
We found the van before they could send us a message.
Apparently we’d missed them by mere minutes.
Sure would have been nice to take out those assholes then, but I’m not worried. They aren’t long for this world now.
Nah, that asshole deserved more after what Vanessa told me about him.
“You know,” Linc starts. “I think all of us around the table can understand the pressure Vanessa was under. Remember, it was only a few years ago that Charlie showed up here with a shit ton of baggage, and she kept secrets from me, too. Shit, it almost got me killed.”
When Linc saved Charlie from her abusive ex, she fled with a notebook full of information about our dealings with the Monaghans—information her now-dead ex-boyfriend had planned to sell to the Italians.
She came clean about it, but that asshole found Linc and her at a safe house and shot Linc before kidnapping Charlie.
“Maizie hid Colby’s bio-dad’s identity from everyone.
And that piece of shit and his club wanted us dead like the Russians do.
She was a mess when he showed up in town and didn’t tell me or anyone else who he was.
It fucking stung that she thought she couldn’t trust me.
And I’ve known Maizie for years. Can’t imagine how Vanessa felt when she got here and didn’t know any of us.
She probably thought we were like her stepbrother and his buddies,” Wyatt chimes in.
“She didn’t sell you out to the Russians, though, did she?”
“No,” Wyatt agrees. “But she also didn’t have a deranged stepbrother threatening her little sister and mom.
She didn’t grow up in a life where she was basically sold into slavery and made to become a stripper before she was even eighteen.
That girl was fighting to survive, man. Who knows how anyone else in her situation would have reacted. My guess would be about the same.”
I sit silently, stewing with anger, hurt, and the fucking truths my brothers are laying at my feet.
“Could any of you honestly say you would be comfortable having her here, knowing that she’s the reason Cash and I got beat the fuck up and our guns got jacked?” I ask, looking around the room.
“Considering the circumstances and the threats she was facing?” Cash asks. “Yeah, I would.”
That actually surprises the hell out of me.
“When Cece came here, she came with shit none of us could fathom, let alone handle well. She was a sex slave to her husband and the fucking Bone Breakers—may they all be rotting in hell where they belong,” Cash says, and we all nod.
“She didn’t know which way was up or who she could trust. We can’t blame Vanessa for making the wrong choice when she felt like she didn’t have any other option.
She didn’t know us, had no loyalty to us.
As far as she knew, we were just another criminal organization, and that meant something different in the world she came from.
That meant there was no code, no honor. They sold women—girls—for chrissake. ”
“They could have killed us,” I remind him.
“But they didn’t. And you said it yourself—Vanessa told her stepbrother she wanted out. She knew about the run to Michigan and didn’t contact him. She needs help, man. Not another person throwing her away,” Cash finishes.
“Look, we aren’t going to tell you to forgive her and marry the girl or some shit.
But we are saying we understand where she was coming from.
She wants out, and we need information. It could be a win-win for all of us,” Ozzy says.
“Whatever you decide to do about her personally, that’s up to you, but you have our support either way. ”
“Thanks.” I rub a hand over my tired eyes. “I have some stuff to figure out, I guess.”
“I can go with you to pick her up. Show her there’re no hard feelings,” Cash offers.
“Nah, I’ll go alone. I think Vanessa and I are due for a long conversation without the yelling.”
“Or breaking shit,” Jude adds.
I throw up a middle finger. “Fuck off, asshole.”
I knock on the door to room 109 at the motel where Vanessa is staying.
When she told me to take out the tracking device from her car, I may or may not have listened.
I definitely didn’t listen, actually, and she never brought it up again, so I’m assuming she forgot about it.
All it took was a hundred-dollar bill slipped to the man at the counter and I had her room number.
No one takes security seriously these days, especially front-desk attendants at run-down highway motels.
“Shit,” I hear from a quiet voice on the other side of the door.
“I’m just here to talk. I promise not to yell,” I say through the old wood.
“Or break things? I don’t want to have to pay for a lamp because you can’t keep your temper in check.”