Chapter 9
NINE
Darby
Riagan held me beside him, his fingers digging into my elbow, hurting me.
I tried not to wince, to show him I was in pain, but it was hard when he was crushing my skin under his fingers.
Two men had come into the house and stood with guns on their hips.
It looked like they were bodyguards, but I also knew by the look of them that they meant business and judging by the way my brother stiffened, he wasn’t expecting them.
“Where’s your boss?” he asked, angrily. “I was told to only hand her over personally and everything would be fine.”
They didn’t speak. In fact, they didn’t even look at us. They just stood there like we didn’t exist. Riagan was losing it. I could feel the sweat coming off him in waves. His eyes were frantic, like he was paranoid.
Fuck.
Since when did he do drugs? He’d always been the serious one, the one always looking after all of us…
he never did drugs, or drank heavily. I hadn’t seen it before but now all I saw was a shell of the man I once knew and he was about to hand me over to someone he didn’t even know to pay off debts that had landed on his shoulders.
I should feel sorry for him.
But I didn’t.
I felt nothing for him.
A few moments passed, his fingers digging into me further, and the sound of click clack on the tiles of the floor filled the room before I saw a woman appear between the men and come to stand in front of us.
Her hair was pulled back in a tight pony tail that still hung halfway down her back, super fine, straight black hair that looked fake yet somehow I knew it wasn’t.
She removed her sunglasses and looked straight at my brother, no expression on her face, cold, uncaring eyes.
If she hadn’t been human, she’d definitely be a shark with the way she honed in on my brother before they shifted to me.
She looked me up and down, like I was meat on display for her.
Something about it had chills going up and down my spine. She was the apex predator and we were all food for her to rip apart as she saw fit.
“This is her,” she asked. Her Italian accent was heavy, but it was mixed with what I could only assume was Russian or German. I couldn’t quite tell which. “The daughter promised.”
“Yes…but she wasn’t promised to you.”
“Well, let me educate you, son of Alasdair. When a father dies, the duty falls on the eldest, does it not?”
Riagan physically blanched and his fingers loosened slightly. “He’s dead?”
“Yes, now…before you join him out of sheer annoyance to me, hand her over.”
“Who are you?” he asked. “I want to know who I am speaking with.”
One of the men stepped forward, probably to defend his boss, but she held her hand up and he stepped back without a word uttered. The power this woman held was impressive.
“You do not need to know these things. Hand her over. Is that not what you had intended anyway?”
Riagan hesitated, and for a moment, I thought he may pull back and give me protection from her. He would save me…be the brother I always wished for.
Instead, he handed me over to her.
I stood in front of her, visibly shaking, and unable to stop it.
“You are a pretty one,” she said, her accent thicker than before. She motioned to one of the men and he took my arm and pulled me over behind the woman. His fingers weren’t quite so hard on my skin as Riagan’s were but they were firm enough I knew I couldn’t run.
“The deal is done,” Riagan said. “We are squared away.”
“You would give your own sister up so easily?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
“You said I had to.”
“No. I offered for you to pay off the debt yourself.”
“Darby was the deal,” Riagan said, his voice cracking. He was higher than the clouds in the sky right now.
“I said we needed a body. Her name was never mentioned. You chose to give her over to save yourself a lifetime of servitude. Family means nothing to you.”
“I can fix this…”
“No,” she said, firmly, raising her gun and aiming it at his face. “You can’t.”
Bang!
Riagan fell to the floor, his eyes wide and one bullet wound directly in the centre of his forehead.
I screamed as I looked down at my fallen brother who had made no movement to avoid the bullet.
The woman turned around and led us out, leaving without a word.
The men held me in the air between them, flailing and screaming to get away.
I expected to be thrown into the boot and taken somewhere to be disposed of.
Instead, I was placed, carefully, in the back seat of a limousine.
The woman sat opposite me, one lithe leg crossed over the other, as she looked at me.
“You are lucky…someone loves you a great deal to do this for you. It is not easy to outdo a debt such as the one your father made with my father.”
“Rebel?”
“I do not know this name. It was someone else who has handed over something for your return that I never thought he would, so you are lucky, young one. You will be taken to wherever you wish to go,” she said.
“Name the place and I will have the driver take you. It goes without saying that you did not witness what happened in that house. Your brother’s body will never be found.
You are understanding what I am saying, aren’t you? ”
I nodded, unable to form words.
“Good. Now, where do you want to go?”
I thought about it for a moment, unsure of where to say.
I so desperately wanted to go to Rebel, to run into his arms, to tell him I loved him, but something was stopping me.
I needed to…I needed to find out more about him, to understand him.
He didn’t believe in himself, he didn’t believe that he was worthy of love and I needed to know why.
There was only one person I could get that information from.
I told her where to take me and she nodded.
The car lurched forward. We sat in silence until we headed to our destination.
“Who are you?” I ventured.
“My name is Tasi Markov,” she told me. “And I do hope we’ll never see each other again.”
Rebel
I kicked the door in, storming past the splintered wood and into the room. The club bunny screamed and scrambled out from under Wolf. He sighed deeply and pulled a smoke from the side table before he lit up.
“Get the fuck out,” I said to the bunny who I hadn’t even bothered to learn the name of.
Bunnies didn’t interest me anymore. She did as I told her, disappearing through the door of the room with a busted door, naked, and into the clubhouse.
I turned to Wolf now, angry that I’d had to find out from Fury about what went down in Belfast. “Speak.”
“There’s nothing to tell you, Rebel,” he said, inhaling deeply. “She wasn’t there. My contact handed her off where she asked to be dropped off. It wasn’t in Belfast, it wasn’t here, or Dublin. I don’t know what you possibly think I know.”
“Your contact have a name?”
“She does,” he said. “I’m not telling it to you.”
I pulled my blade out of my holster and closed the distance between us. Pulling a weapon on him in this clubhouse was a mistake, one I was happy to make if it meant I got answers.
“Kendrick…”
“I don’t give a fuck…tell me where the hell she is or tell me who the fuck knows.”
Wolf nodded and I backed up. “She asked to be dropped off in Naas. At a correctional facility.”
The air left my lungs quickly and I stumbled back. How the hell did she know? She knew? Is that why she hadn’t come to me…she thought of me as trash just like him.
“Whatever she wants to do there, I don’t know, but she was insistent to be taken there and not here.”
“‘Who the fuck is your contact?” I asked again, fresh anger piling onto me like I was about to lose control.
“You don’t need to know her. She’s gone. She won’t be back here again.”
I left it like that. He was right. I don’t need to know. I needed to get to Naas so I could find her and explain what I’d been keeping from her. I had no idea how she could possibly know about my Dad, I’d left that little tidbit out, but I had told her about Naas.
Heading back into the clubhouse bar, I saw everyone looking at me. I knew I was a madman right now, and thankfully that meant everyone would keep their distance. It was probably best.
It felt like I was losing my goddamn mind.
“Church,” Ace called out. I stood, my hands on my hips, trying to calm the fuck down as the brothers filed in. Fury grabbed me by the neck and hauled me inside, probably realising I was about to take off.
“What’s going on?” Ace asked me. Everyone turned to me. “You need time?”
“I need…fuck…I don’t know what I need.”
“It’s clear she means something to you,” Ace said. I looked up, noticing how blurry he was. Was I fucking crying? In fucking church?
“She chose not to come home.”
“Take a week off,” Ace ordered. “You know how you like to camp under the stars when you need time. Do that. It’s not a request, Kendrick.”
Shit.
Every fucker was dropping my name now.
I nodded once and headed outside before I let them all know just how fucking whipped I’d become.
No one followed me. No one dared to.
I jumped on my bike, looking back at the clubhouse and my home for a moment to gather my thoughts. Fuck. There was only one place that could give me answers right now. I headed to the only place I swore I’d never go again.
Naas Correctional Facility.
Darby
A few days later
It had taken me all of fifteen minutes of threatening to rid Viper of his balls for him to give me the information I needed and to confiscate his phone so he didn’t warn Rebel.
The code to the door worked and I pushed the door open to the same smells I knew came from his cooking.
He was here, or he had been earlier. I sucked in a deep breath and moved down the hall.
I’d been at war with myself over the last couple of days, ever since I’d gone to Naas instead of coming here.
I wondered if he hated me for it.