8
G
unner’s Mustang was parked down the road as Bitchtective and her silent lackey pulled up, and I climbed into the back seat. As they drove away, I glanced to see if Gunner would follow. My heart hammered in my chest, seeing his face when he took off his mask. I held back my facial expressions while chaos was bestowed internally.
It was conflicted, though, because Rourke was a man I had been romantically and sexually involved with, and I should’ve reacted when he showed me his gorgeous face, but all I saw was my foster brother, the boy I loved who’d grown into a beautiful, rugged man. So, not reacting was bad, but also reacting was bad, and this was why I needed to escape this shithole.
“I need a gun” were the first words that escaped my mouth.
Bitchtective laughed and assumed I was joking, then checked my serious expression in the rear-view mirror. “You can’t be serious.”
“I haven’t been more serious in my life,” I told her straight. “I need protection. I’m dealing with the most dangerous men in the city, and you want me to open myself up to get killed. I know you disagree, but I’m worth more than being bait laid in a trap so a dirty cop can siphon information on crims.”
“Are you calling me dirty?” she scoffed.
I needed protection from her, the Royal Bitch as well as the Kaisers, but I won’t tell the Royal Bitch that. As soon as she flipped the tables and betrayed my trust, she became my enemy. She believed that she had a hold over me, but she didn’t know what I was capable of. Never underestimate a girl born in the dregs and raised in the bloody grips of the criminal underbelly.
“You’re hardly toeing the line, though, are you?” I pressed her to see how she’d react. “I mean…is setting me up and forcibly throwing me to the lions legal?”
“We have to do what we have to do,” she stated arrogantly, which pissed me off.
She believed that she was untouchable, and that only made me want to hurt her even more. If I had a gun, I’d shoot her and the silent lackey at the wheel, then I’d run. I am my mother’s daughter, and fuck knows who my father was, but my mother stated that he was someone to fear. But Mom often changed her story, especially when she was on the game, with needle tracks on her arms, dried lips, sunken eyes, greasy hair, and slurred the weirdest of shit.
“I thought I was supposed to be protected. Wasn’t that the deal? I make up some shit about my foster father, and you protected me and my mom from the Kaisers. Wasn’t that the deal?” I hit, holding back my anger.
Bitchtective assumed I was a pushover and started to learn that it was all an act from the beginning. I was only sixteen, yet I was older than my years, and they put me in a difficult situation. The photograph of my little brother, who was adopted out to a loving family, was what she used to blackmail me into doing what she wanted. It was a threat to destroy his world. Liam was an innocent stuck in the middle and used as bait. Born to a drug addict only eight years ago, the Kaisers organized his adoption to a loving family because that’s what decent people do.
I had never met him in person, and I only found out when my mother told me about him after she gave birth, and that’s when Sylia Kaiser intervened. Apparently, the baby was starving and lying on the floor in dirty diapers while Mom was passed out on the floor. I didn’t even know Mom was pregnant, and once again, the father was non-existent, a miraculous insemination.
“We dictate the deals, Riley,” Bitchtective reminded me as I swallowed the urge to find Gunner again out the back window.
The rumble of his Mustang engine was in the far distance, and if he got too close, The Royal Bitch would notice, so I hoped he stayed away, or maybe I wanted her to see. That boy didn’t seem to understand the word ‘inconspicuous,’ walking around campus in a freakishly scary mask and driving around in a classic vehicle, roaring engine shuddering the buildings, music blaring. Hardly invisible.
“We’ll see,” I murmured as the vehicle cruised down streets lined with dorms searching for a place to park, so give me the third degree. “How is Sergeant Tindale?”
They remained quiet as Bitchtective kept her eyes glued on the wing mirror as if something caught her eye, but the intensity grew at the mention of the name as if I was threatening to call him. It had crossed my mind. My fingers inched toward his number in my contacts, and the only thing that stopped me was the warning I received from Bitchtective. If I did something stupid, she could destroy everything good and virtuous, the little brother I’ve never met.
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly. I checked the door handle and found it was internally locked.
“Correct answer,” she asserted as if she were Queen of the World. Or maybe Bitch of the World was a more accurate interpretation. “He retired.”
“Pardon? We only spoke days ago. How did he retire so soon?” Then it hit me that Bitchtective had organized his exit from the police force. If she could end a man’s career, what else had she done?
“We’ve got company,” the silent lackey urged, and Bitchtective swung around to gaze out the back window.
She grunted and shot me a fierce glare before turning back. “Did you do that?” she hissed at me.
I looked back to see the Mustang following two cars behind us, still on our tail, persistent and obsessive—that’s our Gunner Kaiser. Bitchtective caught my smug smile in the rear-view mirror as I locked my stare with hers, letting her know that something had changed in me. Riley Laws was slowly peeling away, and Annika was starting to emerge bit by bit.
“Of course not,” I replied far too sweetly.
“Do you want me to lose him?” the silent lackey asked because he couldn’t think for himself.
Judith hesitated a couple of beats before answering, “No. Pull up in here. " She pointed to the college garden entrance that leads to a sports field where I sat, sometimes dreaming about my other life. Maybe Mr. Kaiser would like a little chat.”
I scoffed at her comment as Gunner Kaiser wasn’t a ‘little chat’ sort of guy. Predictably, Gunner didn’t follow and instead drove further along the road, which was out of my view. “Don’t worry; he doesn’t know who I really am,” I assured her.
She snorted as if I were stupid. “Obviously. You’d be mysteriously missing, and maybe we’d find remains of your body ten years later in a refuge dump or by the river.”
“That’s so romantic,” I crooned sarcastically to disguise my anxiety because she was right. The Kaisers would kill me and toss my lifeless body away.
My mind drifted to Cheetos and Katerina, and my hand itched toward my phone to message her. Why was Ronan so pushy about finding out who my twin was? I hoped he didn’t organize someone to visit her and pressure them to discover her surname. And why did they want to know that? That socially awkward girl hardly posed a threat, and so what if she did? Why did they care?
The silent lackey parked the vehicle under a hanging bush, cutting out the sunlight. Still, Gunner was out of view, but I knew he was there. I always sensed him—the Rourke effect. Hairs prickled along my forearms, my stomach was twisted in knots, and my heart rate increased.
“Right,” Bitchtective exhaled impatiently when the engine was switched off, and she seemed convinced that Gunner Kaiser was gone. I knew better. “Update. Now. Have you managed to search Mikael’s office?”
I snorted, assuming she was joking. “Are you serious? How do I check his office when he’s always in there?”
She opened the glove compartment and took out a bag of hard-boiled aniseed sweets. She offered me one, but I declined. Then, she tossed one in her mouth and crunched down on it before addressing me: “Find the fire alarm.”
“What?” I was horrified at how dumb this suggestion was. “You want me to trigger the fire alarm so he leaves the office? Do you know who these people are? I mean…they virtually invented fake emergencies to bamboozle unsuspecting citizens. They’re criminals. Practically the mafia.”
“Practically?” she chuckled. “They are the mafia. That’s why we want information on them, so they don’t hurt any more people.”
“Like who? Who have they hurt recently? Got a list?” I challenged her smugly.
Yes, I knew they hurt people, but my impression was it was their enemies who they whacked, who were just as dirty as they were. So, it was hardly as if they were sawing body parts of children or busting into retirement homes and shooting the elderly residents. They had specific targets who were just as sordid and perilous as they were.
Unsurprisingly, she ignored my question because she would be unable to give an example of someone the Kaisers murdered who wasn’t a criminal.
“I’m starting to worry about where your priorities are, Riley, or should I call you Annika?” She swallowed the aniseed boiled sweet, then opened the lid of a drink bottle. “What else can you give me?”
“Nothing.” I snipped at her. “I haven’t had the chance.”
“We need you to take action on this, Riley. The next time we speak, I want something. Anything.” She took a sip of the liquid in the water bottle, and I wouldn’t be surprised that there was more than water. “Have you tried getting into the basement under the Science Library?”
“What? Basement?” I was confused, but I knew I wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I thought you already knew,” she blurted, checking the wing mirror as a vehicle drove in, but it wasn’t Gunner. “The Kaisers have an on-campus headquarters, a basement under the Science Library. I mean…don’t you study a science? What was it? Shrimp or seaweed or something. Since you spend time in that building anyway, we need you to search it.”
“It’s probably locked and alarmed,” I told her. “How do I get in? Do you honestly believe they’d have their headquarters open for anyone to walk in and snoop about when no one was there?”
She sucked in her lips, showing her shrinking patience with my attitude that she hadn’t seen before. Under her watch, I was always well-behaved and did as I was told because I was on a tidal wave directed by the people around me.
“Find a way, Riley,” she said sternly, putting pressure on her. She opened the glove compartment again, took out a small white box, and handed it to me. “Place those where they’re unlikely to see them, but in a good, clear viewing position. Understand?”
I swallowed over a lump in my throat, too reluctant to take the box from her hand. My trust for Judith had vanished, so whatever was in the box might as well be poison. “What is it?”
“Listening and viewing devices,” she informed me, placing the box on my lap since I didn’t want to touch it. When I looked at her blankly, she clarified, “Cameras. Bugs. Whatever.”
“Okay. Umm…” I was a little stunned as a brick of anxiety landed on my chest, weighing me down. There was no way I could escape this.
“Good. The next time we speak, I will assume that you’re not on our side if you don't have information on them,” Bitchtective concluded.
“I have loyalties to me and me only,” I told her, and she wasn’t pleased. I wish I hadn’t said it aloud because her suspicions would grow toward me, which meant she’d constantly be on my back.
“Don’t become a problem for us, Annika,” she warned as she tapped the forearm of the silent lackey for him to start the engine to leave.
“Wait. Can you let me out? I’d rather walk back to my dorm,” I pleaded. “Please. I need some fresh air.”
Bitchtective thought about it for several beats before unlocking my door. “Fine. But before you go, remember that you will have some information to give me the next time we meet.”
“And if I don’t?” I was wondering how far I could get away with playing dumb.
Her nostrils flared in annoyance. “We’ll pay Liam and his parents a visit and maybe uplift him from that loving family to be placed back into foster care since that adoption was done illegally.”
“You would take a little boy away from loving parents just because you want some information on the so-called mafia,” I growled at her angrily.
All I could think about was purchasing a gun. I already knew how to use one because Gunner taught me when we were teenagers. Even though it’s been three years since I had fired a weapon, I was sure it was like riding a bike. I might be a little rusty, but it’ll come back to me like clockwork.
“Just do as we ordered, Annika,” she stated cooly as the door was unlocked, and I climbed out.
“Do I have a choice?” I groaned and was about to slam the door shut when she yelled, “Don’t forget the box.”
Dithering for a second, fearful they were going to change their minds and drag me back inside the suffocating vehicle, I finally succumbed and seized the box. Her hand firmly claimed my forearm as she brushed back her jacket to show me the Glock resting in her belt.
“Don’t do anything stupid, will you, Annika?” she hissed slowly as I wrangled her hand off me and pulled away.
As soon as I was free from their venomous snare, my feet pounded the ground, starting with a brisk walk, falling quickly into a jog, and then a run. My heart pounded hard against my chest, breath heavy, thighs strong, and I didn’t stop running until I reached the foot of Hallen Hall.