Chapter 60
SIXTY
brINLEY
I’d never been one for grand theft auto. It appeared Silas Mercer was truly rubbing off on me.
Criminal activity catching.
I choked over the thought.
Over the drive of the knife that kept piercing my ribcage, allowing droplets of my soul to dribble out.
Gripping the wheel with trembling hands, I sucked it back and tried to focus.
I could fall apart later. That was if I survived this.
I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about heisting the crappy, unkempt car from the neighbor’s back lot.
I had no other choice. It wasn’t like I could hitchhike.
Even going as fast as this car would take me, I kept glancing in the rearview mirror, waiting for an army of vicious motorcycles to catch up and surround me from behind.
Night had begun to descend, the pinks twining with wisps of silvered, darkened blue.
The woods flashed by at the edges of my sight, and the branches almost touched overhead.
With each mile I traveled, they seemed to deepen with the promise that they would swallow me.
Lead me down a hollowed-out tunnel to my demise.
I swiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand, trying to see through the torrent that wouldn’t stop falling as I sped in the direction of the address on that document.
I’d just passed the California state line, and I’d reach my destination in twenty minutes.
What I would find there, I didn’t know.
I tried to call and text Dereck a hundred times since I’d tossed myself over that wall.
Honestly, I’d barely hoped for a reply. It wasn’t like I’d gotten any before, so I wasn’t shocked when they remained unanswered.
The road twisted and wound into obscurity before I finally made it to the turn-off onto a dirt road.
My pulse careened. Nerves firing in every direction.
Fear telling me to run while despair pushed me forward.
Steeling myself, I slowly drove down the lane. The tires crunched over the gravel as I wound around a bend.
Finally, I came to the same massive iron gate I’d seen on the satellite picture.
Every molecule in my body squeezed.
Silas, what am I doing? What is happening? I don’t want to do this alone. Please…
My mind silently pleaded with a man I couldn’t trust, except my spirit screamed that was all wrong.
Screamed I didn’t understand.
Screamed that I was making a mistake.
All while my mother’s face flashed through my mind. “You’ll take good care of him?”
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to find courage. Belief. Resiliency.
How could those words on those documents lie? I knew what they meant.
Still, warnings that I was off base and in peril screamed at the back of my mind as I pulled the car off the side of the drive at an angle.
Shutting off the engine, I sucked for the missing air.
Gripping the door handle like it held the answer to all life’s secrets.
You can do this.
You can do this.
Sweeping my tongue over my dried lips, I clicked it open.
Terror locked my muscles as I climbed out of the car. Night hung heavy, cut by the dull glow of a half-moon.
A gust of wind blew through the trees, the high branches thrashing above, though in it was an eerie silence that crawled across my flesh like a premonition.
I looked around. Into the sinister silence that echoed back.
This was wrong.
Completely wrong.
I had no plan, no idea where I was, and no clue what was waiting for me on the other side of those walls.
Did I really think I could protect Dereck myself? From whatever this nightmare was?
It all came crashing down on me in that moment. I should never have done this. I should have found Silas. Demanded the truth.
Looked into his eyes and found the truth for myself.
Because what he was.
My truth.
I didn’t care what those stupid documents said.
I was missing something.
I had to be and the panic had clouded it.
I turned to run back to the stolen car, set on calling him. Confess what I’d been planning to do and beg him to keep the promise he had made to me this morning.
One that he would bring Dereck home.
Only a figure stepped out from the shadows, stopping me in my tracks.
My heart cracked like thunder. A splintering of lightning as it was severed in two.
I might have never seen his face, but I would recognize the vileness anywhere.
The stench of that night when I nearly lost my life. Where a part of me had died in that vacant, dilapidated house.
But what crushed me was when Dereck appeared at his side.
No.
No, no, no.
He wouldn’t do this to me. He would never get re-involved with the ones who had hurt me.
Dereck’s face contorted when he saw me, his head barely shaking in horror and disbelief.
“What are you doing here?” He wheezed it quietly like I might be the only one who could hear it.
“I…I came to…”
I couldn’t force out the words. Silas would be dead if I did, that was if I hadn’t already condemned them.
If I hadn’t already exposed them and what they had set out to do.
Because this was Kent Ellison. The man who had killed Silas’s mother had also nearly killed me.
They were one and the same.
How?
Regret and confusion spiraled through my senses.
Oh, God. What did I do? What did I do?
Kent Ellison smirked. Dark and foreboding. The grossest kind of wickedness.
“Always the little rescuer, aren’t you? But don’t worry your pretty face,” he tsked softly. “You didn’t disclose anything I didn’t already know.”
He suddenly whipped out a gun and put it to Dereck’s head.
I nearly bolted for my brother. Threw myself between him and the gun.
But I was frozen by terror.
“I already knew what your rat brother was up to, thinking he was going to get revenge on me for you when I had only rightfully taken payment for what he owed,” Kent sneered.
The blood drained from Dereck’s face, the same as it did from mine.
As I realized what my brother had gotten himself involved in.
More so, the why.
This was revenge. His current involvement with this monster was to avenge me.
And his intention had been discovered.
“He should have been grateful that I didn’t come back for you later and instead gave mercy and let you live,” Kent continued.
Horror and confusion spun.
A whirlwind.
“Did he really think I’d just accept him back? Give him the second chance he’d come begging for? I knew the whole fucking time what he was up to. I’m just very good at being patient.”
His demonic grin widened. “But I guess I should thank him for doing me the favor of bringing Silas and his MC to my door.”
The knot in my throat closed off oxygen.
Asphyxiating.
Oh God, no.
He knew that Silas was coming here.
And it didn’t matter what those documents said, I knew Silas would never betray me.
I was the one who’d betrayed him.
Pain sheared through me, and torment dragged me in every direction.
“Run!” Dereck suddenly shouted.
The last thing I wanted to do was leave him behind, but I knew it was the only thing I could do.
I had to somehow get to Silas. Warn him. Save him.
And I knew he was the only one who could save my brother.
Only the second I turned, five men appeared like vapor from the mist.
Surrounding me.
I attempted to dart to the left, but one was behind me in a flash. I screamed as I was shoved to the ground.
My hands bound behind my back as my soul was sundered.
A cry ripped out of me, his name on my tongue as my face was pressed into the dirt. “Silas.”
Silas. Silas. Silas. I’m so horribly sorry.