Chapter 6 #3
“Cookies?”
His smile was everything as he plated them up from the wire rack he’d been cooling them on. They were thick, the kind all the influencers ate. I broke open one and smelt the warm gooey middle before taking a bite. Swirls of chocolate and cookie butter assaulted my senses and I moaned.
“You do that again, princess, and we’re going to be fucking on a plate of cookies.”
I giggled. “These are so good.”
“I’m glad you like them.”
I was about to bite into another cookie when I heard the door unclick down the hall. Rebel stiffened for a moment, his smile dropping before he pulled me behind the kitchen counter.
“Stay here.”
I nodded, fear hitting me hard. Rebel eased around the corner of the hallway. I heard a scuffle like someone was throwing down and then I heard my brother Riagan’s voice.
Jumping up, I saw he had Rebel around the neck, and a gun to his temple. My gut clenched when I saw blood trickling down from the top of his head, onto the gun pressing into his face.
“Riagan,” I gasped, dropping what was left of my cookie. “What are you doing? Put him down.”
“Now, now, sister, I’ve come to take you home.”
“‘Riagan, please, let him go.”
“This is one of the pigs that burnt our clubhouse to the ground, who killed our family and you’re okay with playing house with him?
” he glowered at me. I felt the same fear I had when I grew up with him.
He may have been nicer than my Dad and brothers, but he was still carved to be like my Dad.
He still had that same hatred running through his veins that we had in all of us.
Keefe, Shona and I were the only ones who cared about others.
“He’s protecting me.”
“From who?” Riagan asked. “From your own family?”
“My own family who would pawn me out like a common whore?” I spat viciously at him. My own anger was coming barreling at him and I knew once I really lost control, I wouldn’t stop. “I have never been safe there.”
Riagan let up a little. I could see the brother coming out in him, and not just Alasdair’s son. “You belong in Belfast with us.”
“There is no home there anymore. My home is here.”
Rebel tensed a little, his eyes shooting over to me. I couldn’t read his expression but I could see it meant something to him. I couldn’t let Riagan take him from me. I couldn’t let him kill Rebel.
“With him?”
“Riagan…let him go.”
“I will let him go when you agree to come home with me. I won’t retaliate against the club. I just want you to come home with me. You’re my own family left.”
Something in my chest pulled at the way he sounded so vulnerable. Could it be he thought I needed saving?
“Why didn’t you just call and talk to me? You came down here like you were hunting me.”
“I thought you were being held captive,” he answered, and truthfully I was, but it wasn’t all bad.
I had Rebel to keep me smiling and I wouldn’t have given that up for anything.
Seeing him being held by my brother with blood seeping out of a wound I couldn’t see, yeah that made me re-evaluate things.
It was at this exact moment I realised I would do anything to protect him.
“I’m not, so drop the gun and let him go,” I urged.
Riagan hesitated.
“I will only do that if you come with me right now,” he said. “Away from them. They got one sister, they aren’t taking you, too.”
“I’m here of my own free will, Riagan,” I yelled. “Let him go.”
“Then why is this place locked down? Do you have the codes to leave?”
My eyes shot to Rebel who winced at the words. Riagan may have a point. Had I been a captive this whole time? If it really were to protect me, why wouldn’t they give me the codes in case there was a fire?
“Let him go and I’ll come with you,” I told him.
Rebel went to protest just as Riagan let him go.
He stumbled forward just as the butt of Riagan’s gun came down on the back of his head.
I screamed as Rebel fell to the tiled floor with a thud.
I bent down to check his pulse and looked up at my brother who simply grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall.
His grip on my arm was painful, not letting me move away.
Riagan yanked me down the hall, kicking and screaming for Rebel.
I screamed out for him just as I clutched onto the open doorway of his room to stop Riagan from dragging me out the door but he was too strong for me. With a hard yank, my fingers flung from the doorway and I was being pulled out of the house.
Rebel’s groan echoed in the distance. I saw him stumbling down the hall, groggy, trying to get to me. My heart seized when I saw how bad he looked, the blood still flowing out of his head, and his eyes darting everywhere like he was concussed and yet he still clambered toward my screams.
“Riagan, no!”
My brother didn’t listen. I saw the door close in Rebel’s face as Riagan threw me in the back of his car. The child lock had been installed so I couldn’t get out to get to Rebel.
He needed me.
As the car started, I realised he hadn’t burst through the door like I thought he would.
Had he passed out?
Oh god, don't go to sleep, Rebel.