Chapter 7
SEVEN
Rebel
Everything was going dark but her screams echoed through my mind. He wasn’t here to save her, he was here to take her back to Belfast to continue his father’s sick legacy and for some reason she was the key to that. I could feel it…
The hit to the back of my head had me dazed with a possible concussion. I knew the signs. I knew what was going to come but I needed to get to her first.
I couldn’t lose her.
He’d slammed the door shut with his boot as he trudged her to the car. I entered the code into the keypad but nothing happened. I did it again and looked down at it to see the code was wrong.
No it wasn’t.
Fuck.
They’d finally changed the code…and it had happened in the split moment between them leaving and me getting to the fucking door.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The car started up and I tried to bust through the door. My energy levels were severely depleted. I felt weak, my body barely able to move.
My body hurt where I’d hit the door hard. My head ached like I’d split it in half, the throbbing making me nauseous.
I needed my phone.
Everything swayed as I tried to move. My stomach emptied on the hall floor as I tried to close my eyes to get some equilibrium. Holding onto the walls, the hallway swayed like I was in a melting Salvador Dali painting.
One foot in front of the other.
Finally, I got to my door and moved inside, falling to my knees as I fell over our discarded clothing, until I got to my nightstand. Grabbing the phone, I tried to enter my code but I could barely see the keys. I slammed my fist against the nightstand out of frustration, the darkness creeping in.
No…I had to get help.
I had to get to her.
Slowly, I found the number I needed and dialled. Fury answered almost immediately.
“What’s up?”
“Hel- took…”
That’s when I felt my back hit the floor and everything went black.
Darby
Two days.
It had been two days we’d driven around Ireland, making sure we weren’t being followed by the Ghost Rebels. I didn’t know why nor did I care. He’d been so concerned with me being a captive, and yet now I was his captive.
From one prison to another.
I hadn’t felt captive with Rebel. It felt nice, comforting, warm.
I had anger burning in my gut, not fear, this time.
Rebel was constantly on my mind, my gut churning with the memory of how he clambered after me to save me even when he was clearly concussed.
He’d come after me. I knew he would, but if he hadn’t caught us by now, I wondered just how committed he’d been. Maybe I had worried him when I said I was home with him. Maybe he was backing away because I said I would go with Riagan and he was hurt by that.
So many conflicting ideas in my mind were giving me a headache.
Riagan had been nice enough to tell me he’d dropped Bran’s kid off at an old family friend’s house in Cork before retrieving me, but I still had no idea why he came for me. It wasn’t like he was all about being a family and needed me back for that reason…or even to keep me safe.
I had to believe it was about something else.
And that filled me with dread the closer we got to Belfast.
“What?” he asked, looking over at me. At least he’d let me sit in the passenger seat now, but that only made it more difficult to hide my rising hatred of him.
“Why do you need me, Riagan?”
“I told yo-”
“That you want your sister who you barely acknowledged to be home with you…even I’m not naive enough for that.”
He grunted but didn’t say anything, keeping his eyes on the road. I could feel the tears burning in my eyes. My fantasy of hearing Rebel’s bike coming up behind the car was quickly fading. What if he’d passed out with a concussion? What if he was…
No.
I refused to believe he was gone.
“I can’t believe you want to stay with that bastard. Rebel…how can you trust him over your own family? After what his father did to his?”
My head snapped to the side. How could he know about Rebel’s history and I don’t?
“He didn’t tell you…typical. He was using you, Darby. He wanted in your pants and you gave it to him. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”
I recoiled at the insinuation I was just like my mother.
I hated that woman, and I hated that she left me with them.
She knew what would happen to me…she knew what they intended to do because she’d seen it with Shona.
All she cared about was her next high…so much so that she handed me over to a biker just for a hit while he leered at me and checked me out.
I was thirteen at the time and I knew exactly how dangerous of a situation I was in.
Luckily, Keefe found me in time and hid me away until it was safe for me.
But it had never been safe.
Not really.
That’s when I had chosen to harden myself against everything. I acted like a naive girl because it meant I wasn’t taken seriously and I could find things out without anyone noticing. I had turned it into my super power.
But Rebel had seen through it.
The only one who made me feel like I was something more than what I appeared, and I knew…damn it, I knew I’d fallen for him. I could feel it in my gut and in the way I gave myself over to save him.
“How do you know about Kendrick?”
Riagan scoffed. “Kendrick Quinn is the son of Thomas Quinn…the murderer. He killed his wife, then killed his sisters-in-law and his mother-in-law.”
I gasped, only because I had no clue who Thomas Quinn was.
No wonder Kendrick didn’t talk about his family…
only his grandmother. I knew Riagan was trying to get me to see there was no hope that Rebel would come after me, that he didn’t care, but he didn’t know what I experienced.
He didn’t see the way Rebel was with me…
how he cooked for me…he shared things about growing up with his grandmother, he laid next to me all night and made sure I was okay after night terrors, even if he didn’t sleep at all.
Kendrick was not his father.
He was my saviour in so many ways.
I knew it was only a matter of time.
He would come for me.
I had to believe that.