Chapter 63
SIXTY-THREE
brINLEY
Uncountable gunshots were going off, but there were only three that I really heard.
The ones I knew impaled Silas in the back.
I could feel his big, powerful body jolt with each one.
And God, I wanted to grip onto him. Hold him and protect him and shield him the way he was shielding me, but I couldn’t even scream through the shredding agony with the gag in my mouth.
Garbled sobs battering against the soaked, balled fabric.
My hands bound between us, heavy with the hopeless need to wrap them around him.
My voice silenced when the only thing I wanted to do was beg him to be okay. Beg him to forgive me.
Go back to the beginning and trust him with every molecule of my being the way he deserved to be.
It turned out, I was the one who couldn’t be trusted. I was the one who let her pain and wounds and traumas cloud what my soul knew was the truth.
And Silas was that truth.
My truth.
An eerie silence suddenly reigned the smoke-clogged room. A shrill echo that rang in my ears. A disturbed lull that charged my heart into mayhem where I was pinned below Silas.
He was suddenly rolled away, and a man I didn’t recognize was in front of me, tearing the gag from my mouth and dragging a blade through the ropes that fettered my wrists and ankles.
“Are you okay?” he demanded.
I only had one answer.
“Silas.”
It was a plea.
A groan.
Desperation as I managed to roll around, my bruised, battered body protesting as I climbed onto my hands and knees.
Scrambling to where Silas was on his back.
Kent Ellison was dead beside him. His skull opened and spilling onto the floor.
I gasped but kept moving, my hands fumbling for Silas. They were frantic as I ran them over his chest, searching for a pulse.
For this life that we’d just found, even though I didn’t deserve it.
But I’d gladly take his hate just to see the glint in the gold flecks of his hazel eyes again.
I choked over a sob, and tears blurred my sight as I hovered over the top of him. Frenzied hands flitting all over his cut.
I jolted when strong fingers started winding into my hair at the side of my head, and a low voice murmured, “Wildfire.”
My gaze darted to his face.
To those eyes, bright enough to shine through my tears.
He pushed up to sitting. “Wildfire. Are you hurt? Fuck, please tell me you’re okay.”
Gasping around the relief, I fumbled to get to him.
“You were shot. You were shot,” I mumbled, close to incoherent.
His head barely shook, and with his free hand, he took mine and settled it over his cut. “Bulletproof vest.”
“And believe me, that shit fucking hurts.” Brody suddenly stepped forward through the dust and debris, and he tore off a mask and helmet as he howled with laughter.
He smacked himself across his chest, acting like it was no big deal where he’d been hit.
Deliverance sped through my veins, a shuddering of shock and disbelief. Of pain and regret.
Another man was cutting through Dereck’s bindings, and strained air raked from my brother’s throat as he slumped with a groan to the floor.
Though his head was turned, his eyes on me, full of loyalty and an apology.
“Dereck,” I croaked.
“Everything will be fine,” he gurgled. “Like I promised you.”
Love and grief spiraled. Binding me as tightly as the ropes. The anger and burden I’d carried were smashed while my own guilt surged to the surface.
The man who’d cut Dereck’s ropes peeled back his shirt and grunted, “He needs medical, stat. And we need to find out how many others we have down and need attention.”
The man looked at me. “We have a doctor and my wife Charleigh in an ambulance a mile away. Prepared to do surgery. He’ll be fine. I promise you.”
He and another man rolled Dereck over and picked him up, one holding him under the shoulders and another by the ankles.
While tremors rocked through me.
Shame and relief and a love so distinct.
My body juddered. Shaking uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Silas’s promise wrapped me in a dream.
“She’s in shock.” An unknown voice curled through the disorder, words warbled as they touched my ears.
Silas was suddenly on his knees in front of me. Big hands framing my jaw and forcing me to look at him. I could only see him through one eye, my entire face throbbing.
All of me was throbbing really.
My body and my heart and my soul.
“You’re going to be fine, Brinley. I’m right here. Right here.”
A sob finally cracked. Violent in its horror.
And I was being swept up, cradled in his arms, his stride firm and strong as he carried me from the room and down a long hall.
Stepping over bodies, muttering the whole time, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
He didn’t stop as he edged through a rambling, darkened room before we were outside.
Surrounded by the deepest, darkest night.
Shouts echoed around us. Organized mayhem as Crows ran through the carnage, piling fallen bodies, liquids being spilled and dumped, no question erasing all traces of their involvement.
All evidence eradicated.
Once again, they had become soldiers the way I’d thought of them the day that man had come in the office to drag me to Kent as an offering.
Precise and efficient.
This motorcycle club so different than I imagined. Its importance hung on the horizon, tickling at the edge of my awareness and scored on my conscience.
I wanted to beg for Silas’s forgiveness, but I couldn’t do anything but cling to his neck as he strode with me across a vast lawn. My eyes were wide with shock as I peered over his shoulder.
At the fire that suddenly leapt high, quick to consume that massive building.
Silas didn’t stop. He carried me into the thick of the woods and dipped us through a hole that had been cut in the fence, his feet sure and his hold strong as he angled us down an embankment and up the other side.
A second or an hour passed as I clung to him, I couldn’t discern, before I was back on his bike, planted in front of him the way he’d had me before.
Fierce, unrelenting arms surrounded me as he gripped onto the handlebars and rode us out of the labyrinth of the twisting, twining forest.
No words were said except for the whispers of his breath that he released into my temple as we rode.
He took the roads like a puzzle. Riding further south into California before he wound around and headed north again.
He didn’t slow until we crossed the border, then he pulled off onto a rugged, worn path and weaved us back into the sanctuary of the woods.
The stars were beginning to fade as night slowly gave up its hold.
Silas stopped under a canopy of verdant trees, planted his boots on the ground as he killed the engine, then he shuffled me around. He wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled my chest to his.
His arms unrelenting as he held me against his rigid, perfect frame.
“Brinley.”
I never would have thought my name could hold such meaning.
Relief.
Love.
Redemption.
But it was all there, surrounding me like I had earned any one of them.
I crushed myself against him. My own relief. My own redemption.
A love so big and heavy that I feared maybe I’d succumbed from it.
Maybe I’d died back in that room and this meeting was otherworldly.
Because how could Silas shower this kind of mercy on me after what I’d done?
“I’m sorry.” It was a muddled, disjointed cry. “I’m so sorry.”
Silas’s arms only tightened, and his head shook, his stubble brushing over my cheek. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I almost got you killed. All of you.”
His head shook again. “No, baby. We found out he already knew we were coming for him. Your actions actually confirmed it. We would have been walking into a full ambush if all of this hadn’t happened.”
There was a low, searing pride in his voice before it cracked with dread. “Not that I ever want you to put yourself in that kind of danger. I was so fucking scared.”
Tears kept spilling, and I had my face pressed into his neck, his warmth heating me through. “I should have come to you.”
“Yeah, you should have. But I was keeping secrets from you, and how is a person supposed to fully trust when they’re in the dark?”
I sniffled. “But I should have. You’ve proven it to me time and again, and I…I panicked. Those letters…”
I trailed off. Still not knowing how to make sense of them. Of what they meant.
A ripple of aggression rolled through Silas. “Wasn’t me.”
My spine stiffened. I could feel that something was coming.
Something big.
That energy thrashed and thrummed.
“It was Phoenix.”
Anger burst in my blood, and Silas pulled back, palms coming to my cheeks as he stared down at me through the faint light that began to suffuse the air.
“I know you’re mad, baby. I was fucking furious. Thought I was gonna have to put a bullet in one of my best friends. But—”
He clipped off, hesitating before he rushed, “He truly believed Dereck was setting us up. That this whole thing was somehow a ploy at infiltrating our crew.”
I blinked, giving him an invitation to explain.
“You see, I’ve been trying to get to Kent for years.
Ever since he killed my mother, even though at the time, I didn’t even know his name.
I wanted it out of vengeance. Out of a thirst for revenge.
I thought it was the only thing that was left for me, so when my grandmother packed me and my siblings up and moved us to LA where her sister lived, I fell even deeper into the game. ”
His tongue stroked over his lips as he gazed at me, eyes flicking everywhere like he was looking for understanding.
“I let wickedness take me over. I ran with a brutal MC. Sought that lifestyle out, all while I continued to search for any clue of who it was that had killed my mother. Finally, our vice president of that MC came to me with a name. It was the name of the guy who was the only runner in the area of Crimson Creek at the time my mother was killed.”
Pain blistered across his face. “Kent Ellison.”