Chapter 4
Vienna
When I came around again, I was fairly certain my brain had swollen to twice the size of my skull. It was pressing against my bones, furious and angry, exploding in pain.
I could practically hear Rachel mocking me, telling me that there was plenty of room for my brain to grow. Which may have annoyed me any other time, but this time it brought me comfort.
Because it reminded me of what was out there, what was waiting for me should I get out of this.
It reminded me of everything I should have remembered before grief got the better of me and made me act stupid.
I could admit that to myself. I had been stupid.
And now I was paying the price.
My tongue felt too big for my mouth, my lips were cracked and swollen, and every breath I dragged in made my ribs protest so violently that for one brief, glorious moment, I considered simply not breathing anymore and saving everyone the trouble.
Unfortunately for me, there was an annoying droning happening to the side of me, repeating my name over and over again. It sounded far too distressed to be Rachel, far too feminine to be Dante, and far too alive to be Gabriella.
“Luke! Luke, wake up!”
Oh, hell to the no. That was a step too far. Not content with simply screeching my name, the unknown assassin had taken it upon herself to shove me.
I forced one eye open and glared in the general direction of the noise, limply swinging my arm like a half-cooked string of spaghetti. “Imagine that, but with me at full strength. Maybe you’ll think twice before shoving a dead man.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Luke!” she said, shoving me again.
“That’s two,” I warned.
“I haven’t seen you in over ten years, but you’ve still not matured a damned bit.”
Hang on a minute…
I opened both eyes and took a moment to steady myself against the swimming room. This was definitely worse than any hangover I’d had, but at least I had a bit of experience with the old atmosphere sway.
“Mrs Rider?” I croaked.
What the fuck was happening?
“Michelle. It’s Michelle. I’ve told you this a million times.”
Gabriella’s mother? Here?
I had to be delirious. It looked like Michelle. It sounded like Michelle, but—
“No offence, but you look like absolute shit,” I heard myself saying.
Charming as always, Vienna, you old rogue.
“Right back at you, buddy.”
“You once said I looked like Thor.”
She laughed then. “That was Gabriella. I said you looked like a prick in a cape.”
“Thor never wore a cape.”
“I’m not having this argument again,” she snapped, shoving me for the third time.
“I’m dying here, Mrs Rider. Please.”
“You’re too annoying to die. You’ll outlive us all just to be spiteful.”
“You’re probably right,” I grinned back, and then found myself drifting back into the darkness.
“Luke,” she said again, leaning over me with one hand pressed to my cut and the other hovering near my face like she was debating whether or not to slap me awake. “You need to stay with me.”
I closed my eyes anyway, and then the sting of her slap snapped me back into the light.
“Dante hits harder,” I muttered, though the words came out thick and mangled, made worse by the fact half my face didn’t seem interested in working.
I tried to move and immediately decided against it when pain tore down my side, wrapping around my ribs and dragging a hiss from between my teeth.
“Fuck me. Did he use the pole again, or did the bastard drop a building on me?”
“No building,” she said, her voice trembling slightly despite her attempt to keep it steady. “Just half the men upstairs by the look of you.”
I blinked at her slowly, waiting for the room to stop spinning long enough for her face to settle into something recognisable. “Looks like half the men got to you, too.”
There were faint bruises along her jaw, joining the fresh ones marring the rest of her face. Her lips were dry and split, her cheeks sunken, and her hair hung limp and greasy around her cheeks.
I could see the bones in her chest, along her shoulders and down her arms. She looked as though a strong wind would snap her in two.
Her collarbone had a bump in it—telling me it had snapped and not been set properly.
And that was just what I could see. Who knew what she was hiding beneath her clothes?
What the fuck had been happening here?
She looked as though she was someone who had spent years being punished simply for living—if this type of existence could even be called living.
“Stop looking at me like that, Luke. I’m fine.”
“I think we both know that’s not true, Mrs Rider.”
Her eyes snapped to mine with a flash of irritation so sharp and familiar it almost made me smile.
“Michelle,” she corrected, and there was no softness in it, no gentle reminder, just a tired woman who had clearly had enough.
“Harley has been gone a long time, Luke. And his surname was never fucking Rider.”
“Never said it was,” I grinned back, and then tried to sit up.
“Steady!” she fussed, trying—and failing—to push me back down.
“I’m fine. Just like you’re fine. But I’m solving nothing lying on this floor and feeling sorry for myself.”
“I don’t care. Lie down!” she snapped, shoving me with all of her strength.
I looked down at her hands, having not moved my body a mere inch, and shook my head at her. “That was utterly pathetic. And dramatic. And also a little bit sad.”
She sat back on her heels, trying to hide a wince, and eyed me with disdain. “You always were a brute. Lay off the steroids.”
“Oh, wow. Here we go again,” I rolled my eyes. “After everything—”
“Spare me an infamous Vienna rant. Not the time. Not the place.”
“Fair point, excellently made,” I nodded back. She gave me a small grin, and I took that as my opportunity to sit up straighter, resting my head on one of my knees for a moment as I adjusted to the spinning and pushed past the pain.
I’d seen Michelle a few times over the years Gabriella and I were together—and even afterwards.
As the old lady of the ex-president, our paths had crossed frequently.
Especially in my old role as peacemaker.
But she had never looked like this. Even after Harley had died and she had spat at me in the street, she’d still had fire and strength—it was where Gabby got it from.
Now she just looked… broken.
It was the way she held herself. The way she moved as though every part of her had been broken at some point and had healed wrong.
The way she kept one arm tucked close to her ribs.
The way her fingers shook when she smoothed them over her skirt, trying to make herself look presentable in a basement that smelled of damp, blood, and old fear.
Michelle always had the sort of expression that made men think twice before opening their mouths. It was why she had been Kitty’s biggest rival.
This woman still had pieces of her, but only pieces. The rest had been chipped away by whatever Nico and the club had done to her.
And beneath it all, a realisation was slowly dawning on me.
Had this been the real reason Gabriella had stayed? Is this what she had lived with?
Had this been what she’d experienced?
Rage simmered beneath my skin, blocking out some of the pain.
I didn’t want to ask. Out of respect for Michelle, I didn’t want to pry. But I needed to know. I needed to know exactly the kind of man I was dealing with.
“What did he do to you?” I asked, though the second the words left my mouth, I regretted them.
Because the sheer amount of hurt and pain reflected on her face almost gutted me. But finally she sighed, as though she knew this was the end of the road and she couldn’t hide it anymore.
“Truthfully, Luke, what hasn’t he done?” she replied quietly.
“Nico likes an audience, and when he doesn’t have one, he makes one.
Sometimes that was me. Sometimes it was Gabriella.
Sometimes it was innocent girls he’d picked up, promising them a better life.
Gabriella did her best to protect them, but… ”
Her words trailed off, and my stomach twisted.
“Do you know what happened to her?” I asked quietly.
“I know enough, but she never went into detail.”
That wasn’t what I was asking. I didn’t want to know the details of the past either. It wouldn’t change what had happened today—or was it yesterday by now?
“I didn’t mean that. I meant with Gabriella. I—”
“Why are you asking me? Surely you should know?”
“Why on earth would I know?”
“Dear God,” Michelle gasped, as though something had suddenly dawned on her. Me? I was just confused and struggling to keep up with the direction this conversation was taking.
“For the love of God, Luke, please tell me you saw her tonight.”
“Saw who? What are you talking about?”
“She was coming to you!” she practically screamed at me. Her hands shot forward, clutching at my cut. “She said she was going to find you. That she was going to get help. Where is she, Luke? Where is my daughter?”
My throat closed.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry, and there was too much blood, too much pain, too much of everything pressing against my chest.
A flash of Gabriella’s pale face swam behind my eyes.
Her cold, dead face.
I turned my face away because I couldn’t look at her when I said it, couldn’t look at Gabriella’s mother and tell her I had failed, that I had seen her daughter laid out beneath a sheet and lost my fucking mind before asking enough questions.
“She didn’t come to me, Michelle. She didn’t ask for my help. I did see her tonight, but—”
Michelle made a small sound. “No,” she wailed.
“I’m so sorry. By the time I found her, it was already too late.”
“No,” she said again, but her voice was no longer shaking. “He wouldn’t have killed her. He loves her in his own way.”
“He doesn’t fucking love her,” I growled, and then caught myself. I shook my head, forcing down my rage, and then said, “He didn’t. She… it looked like she killed herself, Michelle.”
Why didn’t that feel right?
What was niggling in my mind, just out of reach?
“She wouldn’t do that! She was leaving to get help! She was going to get us both out of here. She… Natalie!”
“What?” I frowned, once again completely lost at the change in direction.
“Where is Natalie?”
“You’re really putting me on the spot here—”
“Where is she?!” she screamed.
“Nico shot her,” I said, narrowly dodging another of her slaps. “Michelle, listen to me. What we’re up against is…”
And then a flash of a memory.
Of Natalie looking at me, wanting to tell me something, Gabriella’s name on her lips.
“Wait,” I whispered to myself, more than anyone else.
“Wait? Wait, what? What is happening?”
I stared at her, waiting for my battered brain to catch up with the words, but they didn’t make sense. They hovered there, wrong and impossible, brushing against the memory of Natalie’s face, of the panic in her eyes, of the way she’d looked at me right before Nico shot her.
I had been too far gone to understand it then. Too angry. Too broken. Too desperate to tear the world apart because the only world I cared about had supposedly already ended.
But now, lying on a basement floor with Gabriella’s mother looking at me like I was the one who had misunderstood everything, the pieces began to shift.
“Mrs Rider, I think your daughter may be a genius.”
She frowned at me. “You just said she was dead.”
“I think she may be a perfect, sneaky, brave, insane little liar is what I think she is.”
“You’re not making any sense!”
I beamed at her. “Nothing about this makes any sense. But…”
I stopped as the sounds of chaos rang out above us. And then I laughed out loud, feeling a strange emotion bubble up inside me.
Hope.
If I were right, and Gabriella had faked all of this, that meant somewhere out there, my girl was alive. And for the first time since I’d seen that fucking sheet, the grief inside me loosened enough for something else to slip through.
“Luke?” Michelle said, looking at me with wild eyes.
“She’s alive, Michelle. I’m sure of it. I think she faked her death to get out of here. That’s how she was going to get help. That was her plan.”
Gunshots rang out, causing Michelle to flinch and me to laugh.
“And it sounds like she brought the entire fucking cavalry.”
Michelle stared at me like I’d lost what remained of my mind. Maybe I had. Maybe hope had finished the job the metal pole started. But I knew those sounds. I knew the rhythm of my brothers tearing through a place that had dared take one of their own.
“What’s happening up there?” she whispered.
I pushed my hand against the floor and forced myself upright, every part of me screaming in protest as I got one knee beneath me. “That,” I said, tasting blood and victory in the same breath, “is Nico realising he should’ve killed me when he had the chance.”