Chapter 13 #2
Ending Kalea’s tormentor and rapist was a start.
“I already knew about Kalea,” I reminded him. “Tell me something I don’t know, or I go back to pulling triggers.”
What little color was in his face drained away. “Rory,” he gasped out so fast it sounded like “ory”.
My eyes narrowed. We had told him about Rory and what Aloiki had done to him when we couldn’t find Rory’s body on his boat.
It was club business, but we had ourselves spread too thin with the search for Nishi and needed help.
So Aloiki had called on Kayl, whom we had thought to be a friend of the club.
Was his exclusion from the club also something Kayl hated us for?
When we first joined the Royal Bastards, Aloiki had said that he didn’t want Kayl in because he’d be more useful to us on the outside, and Kayl had agreed.
Saying it would cause issues with his bosses if he joined an outlaw biker club, plus it would also cut into his payday if he was part of the club. It seemed to work out nicely.
Had it been a lie? Had he been angry all this time that he hadn’t been invited to join? It seemed so childish, like we’d purposefully excluded him from our treehouse.
“What about Rory?” I asked, unable to guess the connection.
“Rory hates Aloiki almost as much as I do. After Lu left, we rarely saw each other or spoke, but from the moment she came back, he was plotting how to get rid of Aloiki. Jumped the gun when he found out she was pregnant, and the idiot paid the price. We had a meetup scheduled, but he didn’t show.
I was in my car, about to pull out of the marina parking lot when you came in with his body.
” He tried to smile, but his face just contorted in pain instead as he added, “Kalea threw up when I showed her that picture.”
My fists clenched with the need to wring his traitorous neck. I owned what I was, but I never wanted Kalea to see that. There was no reason for her to have that darkness, that image, in her head.
“You saved Rory’s life.” That was why we never found his body. Rory was still alive. “Where is he?”
“You’ll have to do a lot worse to me than fuck me with a gun to get me to tell you that.
” He coughed, but only bloody mucus came out this time.
“I know I’m not walking out of this, and he’s my retribution.
He’s coming for you, for all of you. And one-handed or not, he’s going to make you all bleed. ”
I walked around the whiskey barrel, and without warning, cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger. Kayl screamed, the acidic aroma of piss filling the air. He flailed against the barrel, but much like a fish in a net, it was futile.
Yelling out again and again, he pulled and shook. I stayed behind him, letting him rage while keeping a steady grip on the gun in his ass. When he started to calm down, I pulled the trigger again.
Just for shits and giggles.
I did not remove the revolver as I walked around to his front again. “Only one in four now, Kayl.” I bent down before his face. “Tell me what I want to know.”
He launched himself forward with the intent to bite me, but his binds stopped him an inch or so before my nose.
“You fucking coward!” he spat at me. “Did you forget what I did to Kalea? Do you want to hear more about how much she loved me fucking her? Do you want to hear all about the times I made her go to her knees and crawl to me, made her beg me to suck my cock so I didn’t arrest you?
How about the time I bent her over your couch and fucked her from behind while you stood out on your front lawn, talking to a neighbor? ”
I had no way of knowing if that was true or not, and at this point, he could just be shouting shit to keep some control of the situation.
“Tell me about Rory,” I clarified, not moving away from him.
But he laughed. “Rory isn’t even the best part!
Have you guessed yet?” he sneered, pulling on his binds again.
Blood dripped down into the pool of filth beneath him.
“Kalea ran, brah! She saw me coming down Aloiki’s drive, and the bitch ran!
I had to bring her to heel. And what better way to scare a poor, defenseless bunny than to threaten her offspring. ”
I blinked, straightening slowly. Kalea ran…
He had to be talking about the week she’d abandoned Pualani at Aloiki’s.
I hadn’t known Kayl had been at the house that day.
Aloiki only told me that Kalea had left in a hurry, unexpectedly leaving Pualani with him and Lu.
I didn’t know if I would have put the clue together that Kayl was her blackmailer if I’d known that little fact, but it fell into place now.
Kalea had said she left to get money. Aloiki was selling the farm, and she needed that cash to pay her blackmailer. But what if Kayl hadn’t known that? What if he thought she was running permanently?
The week Pualani had been at Aloiki’s house with him and Lu, a group of us were hunting Bloody Scorpions on the Valley Isle.
We found a warehouse with surveillance pictures of Aloiki’s house, farm, and barn, including a hand-drawn floor plan.
Seeing it made me rush back, especially when Aloiki hadn’t been answering his phone.
We got back just in time to see the destroyed house, an injured Aloiki, and Pua and Lu stashed away in a Conex box I used to store weapons in at the house.
The surviving Bloody Scorpions had named Kahoku as their benefactor, who had sent a redhaired man to pay them.
A redhaired man we had assumed to be Rory until Kayl had provided us with a different redhaired man.
A man whose tongue had been cut out by Kayl before our friend had delivered him to us.
A man who was now bound to a fifty pound weight plate at the bottom of the sea next to Kahoku and nine of his guards.
The triumph on Kayl’s face spoke volumes. Kahoku hadn’t paid the Bloody Scorpions to kill Aloiki. Kayl had, and then he had them point the finger at Kahoku.
We’d killed the wrong man. We’d condemned the wrong friend.
I couldn’t process how easily we’d been manipulated. But why wouldn’t we question it, when multiple sources were all pointing their fingers at Kahoku and screaming “guilty!” at the top of their lungs?
Kayl opened his mouth to speak again, but I didn’t want to hear it.
None of it. Like what he’d done to Kalea wasn’t bad enough.
Now I had information that he truly had been manipulating our lives.
There likely was more, a lot more, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t give a shit. It changed nothing, and he was enjoying talking about his genius far too much.
I shoved his now vomit-soaked underwear back in his mouth before going behind him and pulling the trigger twice more. His body and the whiskey barrel beneath him muffled the blast. I didn’t know if the bullet had hit anything vital, and I didn’t care.
I walked out of the room without a backwards glance.
The cargo plane shook violently as we started our descent.
Kayl wasn’t looking good. Still bound to the whiskey barrel, he was strapped to the plane by multiple tethers.
If he’d lasted this long, the bullet hadn’t hit anything too vital.
Which only drew out his death. I had no issue with this outcome, though he probably did.
We’d been flying for about six hours, and that didn’t include the time it took to get him loaded up and buckled in.
Safety first, and all that shit.
The pilots hadn’t even blinked when a naked, bleeding man with a soiled pair of underpants in his mouth and a gun up his ass was wheeled onto their plane by a forklift.
Knowing these smugglers, this probably wasn’t the oddest thing to be brought onto their plane.
But then again, they were paid an exorbitant amount of money to look the other way and to not ask questions.
There was an estimate of two million uninhabited islands in the world for various purposes, like terrain, dangerous wildlife, and conservation efforts.
The world was a big place, and unless you’re big and loud, you tend to be forgotten.
Just east of Fiji were a number of these islands, and who was I to correct World Leaders on their misconception that they were uninhabitable.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and patted Kayl on the head.
“Almost there,” I promised him over the roar of the engines.
I wondered if he was going to hold out long enough for the grand reveal.
Be a bit anticlimactic if he died before I got to show him his final resting place, but it wasn’t like his knowledge would change anything.
It was a bit of a miracle he’d lasted this long. Fucker was resilient, I’d give him that.
My club did not know where I was or what had happened at my warehouse.
I’d only sent a message to Mako that the back room in my Kalihi Kai warehouse needed cleaning.
I did not pay attention to the time or anything else.
This wasn’t just about Kalea anymore. Kayl had been fucking with our lives for far too long and about far too many things.
This was about creating a clean slate.
The landing was rough, but my tight hold on the cargo netting on the ceiling kept me steady. It was like riding a wave on a twenty-seven ton surfboard.
By the time we got Kayl rolling down the payload bay, our plane was surrounded.
Many of the indigenous people here were dark-skinned, some dressed more modernly than others, and they all had weapons of some sort.
Their leader, Cakobau, had only recently taken power, and he was not as happy about his island being used as a smuggler’s pitstop as his predecessor.
Only reason he allowed me here was because I brought him things his people needed, like medicine, clean water, weapons… and the occasional sacrifice.