Chapter 27 #2
A minute later, James walked down with a little girl who couldn’t have been five years old yet firmly in his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder, and she looked like she’d been crying.
His eyes were hard and his face was stone as he walked up to me and Hannah.
She brushed her hand down the little girl’s black hair and gave me a broken look.
“Who is she?” I asked, and Hannah shook her head.
“We’re going to take her out to the Death Hounds, so we can handle this. Is she okay to stay or. . .” James asked as he nodded to the teenage girl who was now standing next to Skid.
“Pearl,” Hannah said, “this is my friend, James. He’s going to take you and this sweet girl outside while we take care of things here. The men he’s leaving you with are good and honorable men who will protect you until I can get there. Is that okay?”
Pearl looked from Hannah to James, and then she stared at Skid briefly, who offered her a reassuring smile. “I’ll go with him.”
They hugged again, then Hannah stood with me, her hand linked with mine as we watched James and Skid escort the two innocent girls to the Death Hounds for protection. When they were safely outside, Hannah turned to me with a look of pure rage.
“That woman is my mother, and she said the man’s name is Sergey the second and, supposedly, he’s my brother.” Her words confirmed my suspicions. “He calls her ‘Mother’, but she’s not his mother, Rhys. Something’s seriously wrong, and we need to figure out what it is.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go outside with the girls? It’s . . . it’s going to get bloody, and I can’t promise your . . . she will survive.”
Hannah squeezed my hand and looked up at me with a hardened gaze as she replied, “Good.”
I would take her out if I saw it was becoming too much, but I believed she needed her revenge.
Or maybe just a reckoning. Just as we got to the doorway leading to the banquet room, she tugged my hand and whispered, “He thinks he’s Sergey’s second son and has a place at the head of the table since the first son disappeared when the Syndicate broke up. ”
I felt a smile push onto my face as I asked, “Is that so?”
She nodded and looked at me through her lashes, showing her bright blue eyes alight with merriment.
She thought she knew what to expect, but with the madman, there was no telling what he would do with that information.
I knew he would kill the little fucker, but how much he’d mentally tortured him beforehand was another story.
I kept Hannah’s hand in mine as we waited outside the door.
There were muffled voices, and twice I heard a screeching sound.
Turning to look at Hannah, she shook her head and explained, “Kelly thinks by getting louder, she’ll get her way.
She was the exact same way when I was a kid, and usually, she could get some sucker to give her what she wants. ”
“She’ll get nothing today,” I replied and opened the door.
The shaggy-haired man was sitting at the table with his arms crossed and one of Lucian’s men standing behind him.
The anger in his eyes was clear as he stared at the man and woman across the table from him.
Turning toward the other side, I saw Kelly trying to convince Devlin he was making a mistake, and the crazy bastard was listening to her, nodding at appropriate times like she was going to get her way.
The fake look of concern was comical, and when I turned to the other man, the one Hannah said was named Sergey, I could see hatred in his eyes directed at Hannah.
If he kept looking at her like that, I was going to gouge his eyes out with my thumbs and shove them up his ass.
I glanced at Hannah, and she was staring the little fucker down, silently daring him to make a move.
Fuck, I was so proud of her strength, but it seemed they’d tapped into her anger, which I was curious to witness.
Lucian stood behind him with a gun pointed as his head.
Otherwise, I had no doubt the asshole would have tried to get free.
Hannah lifted her eyes to Lucian, and he returned an almost evil smile as he motioned for Johnson to cover the angry man.
Inhaling deeply, he walked to the head of the table, pulled the chair back, and took a seat.
His arms crossed over his stomach as he linked his fingers together and, slowly, he looked at everyone at the table before he began to speak.
“It’s been brought to my attention that you’re trying to resurrect the Syndicate, and I want to know why you think you have a claim to anything.”
The man went to speak, only to be drowned out by Kelly. When she started, I felt Hannah tense up next to me. Her mother wasn’t even looking at her as she spoke to Lucian. “My son is the rightful heir, and I’m helping him fulfill a promise made by his father, Sergey Lenkov.”
“Who the fuck are you to fulfill a damn thing where his father’s concerned?” Lucian spat, and Kelly gave him a confused look.
“I’m Sergey’s wife,” she explained as she sat up straighter in her chair.
James entered the room behind us and whispered to me, “Stella and Hawk are on the way.”
I gave him a nod as I watched the shitshow unfold in front of me. Kelly was digging herself a hole she had no way to get out of, and the bemused look on Lucian’s face said just that, but he maintained the hard persona as he spoke.
“We both know that’s not true, Kelly, so why don’t you unravel this for me, so I can understand?” Lucian requested.
She placed her hands flat on the table as she began to speak. “How would you know anything? This has nothing to do with Hannah or her boyfriend, so why are you suddenly so worried about what I’m doing?” She paused and asked, “Who are you, anyway?”
Lucian leaned forward until he was face to face with her. The man tried to move, only to be pushed back into the chair by Johnson. “Since you have no manners, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lucian Lenkov, and you have some explaining to do.”