Epilogue
Fury
The lights blink out in the upstairs bedroom and I check the time.
Same time as the last three nights. She hasn’t left the house once since I’ve been here, and no one has visited.
Blaze has a tap on her phone line. The only person she speaks to is the Kivisto they forced her to marry, who is still hanging around Baltimore.
The last we heard from Rebel’s guy, the stupid prick was getting hookers to the hotel room at The Drake. So much for the wife at home. We still don’t know why he hasn’t come back. Which is why I’m down here getting more pissed each day.
Blaze has been watching Beth Kivisto for weeks. I don’t know why he’s taken such an interest in her or why Nero has agreed to his plan to send us here to watch her.
Timo doesn’t give a shit about her, so what use is she? This is pointless. I should be back at the farm with Stryker and the Demon Sinner we have locked up there, trying to find out everything we can about Storm.
Why we’re following this strand makes no sense to me. Then again, that is why I’m not the one making decisions for the club.
Nero and Rebel might have been at odds over how to deal with the whole mess, but they always work shit out for the good of the club.
They’re two sides of the same coin and always have been. One doesn’t work without the other. I’ve seen people try to figure out how they work.
They’ve been friends since childhood and came through the ranks together. The only thing that matters to me is they protect the club with the choices they make.
Nero’s brain is wired differently. It’s like he can see every path that opens with each decision, and he sets things in motion where he can.
Which is why I’m sat in this car outside a mansion in a rich neighborhood trying to avoid the cops, the Kivisto’s and worst of all, Jackal, the president of the Demon Sinners.
What this woman can do to help is a mystery to me.
A text comes through, and I cup my hand so the illuminated screen isn’t obvious to anyone looking.
Chasm:
He wants to talk
Fury:
You call the Prez?
Chasm:
I wanted to let you know first
Fury:
Put him under and let Nero know. I can’t make it there yet.
Chasm:
Ok
“Fuck.”
I lock the screen and toss the phone into the center console. The man we have locked up on the farm, who was involved in the shooting at the church, has been stubbornly silent for the two weeks since we caught him.
No one expected what the other one did that night in the barn. We all thought if he was scared enough of Jackal to impale his own fucking body on a rusty pitchfork, then his brother would talk.
So far the bastard hasn’t said a word. No amount of beating, starving, or psychological torture worked. We’ve kept him in and out of sedation. There is nothing scarier than waking up having lost time and not knowing where the hell you are.
The temptation to call Nero and ask what the fuck I am doing here is interrupted when it buzzes again. This time it’s Blaze. He never calls. I snatch up the phone.
“We’ve got movement at the back of the house.”
“What kind of movement?”
“A man, wait… It’s Ensio Kivisto.”
“What’s he doing going in the back?”
“I don’t know,” Blaze pauses. “But I don’t like it.”
“It’s his brother’s house. There is nothing unusual about him going there.”
Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. There is nothing usual about a high-ranking mafia man sneaking in the back door of his brother’s wife’s house while she is sleeping.
“This is supposed to be surveillance,” I mutter.
“And we saw someone breaking in.”
“Blaze, he’s the eldest son of a mafia don, what do you think will happen if we burst in there to find out why he is sneaking into her house? Maybe she’s waiting for him. If the Sinners get wind of us being here, we're fucked.” Another reason why I don’t agree with this plan.
“I just got a feeling.”
“You and your fucking feelings,” I groan.
That got us here in the first place, and I’m still not happy with him for that.
“Look, the lights just came on, she was expecting him. You know what these mafia families are like, always sleeping with each other’s wives.”
A scream comes from inside the house. It’s not a happy scream either. It’s one of sheer terror. Blaze is yelling into the phone.
“Fury, this is not good, he’s attacking her. Go now.”
I jump out of the car, looking both ways to make sure no one is around to watch me sprinting across the street. There is no point in us rescuing her from whatever this is if we get caught where we shouldn’t be.
I have to hope Blaze has done his thing and shut down the security cameras as I run around the side of the house, climb up the closest tree like I used to do when I was a kid, and scale the wall. I land on my feet in a crouch as another scream comes from inside.
That is definitely not the sound of a woman expecting someone to come into her bedroom.
I’m a violent man. I’ve done things people would class as abhorrent and downright evil, but it’s who I need to be for the Blackhawk Disciples. My moral compass is skewed, but I do have rules. I don’t hurt anyone who hasn’t done something against my club, and I do not hurt women.
No matter what they’ve done, I don’t have the stomach for that, which is irony in its purest form when I swear I’ll protect the club from all attacks.
There are many people who wouldn’t second-guess hurting a woman, but I’m not like that and I never will be, even if the club demanded it of me, it’s a line I will never cross.
There is no way into the house from the front, but logic says if Ensio went in through the back, then we can access the house that way too.
For a split second, when I see the man running towards me, a spike of fear ripples my spine and I reach for my gun, but the familiar gait and the long beard stop that.
“Shit,” Blaze pushes the door open.
“What the fuck is he doing?”
“Hurting her,” is all he says.
Something smashes upstairs, and I push past Blaze and run through the kitchen out into a large hallway. There is a massive staircase that takes up far too much space than required, but I don’t give a shit about that, or the rest of the décor. Rich people are stupid about their homes.
There is more smashing and yelling. She is fighting for her life up there.
At the top of the stairs, I pause and listen to figure out which way, but Blaze pushes me to the left. He’s studied the layout of the house, so I trust him.
Good job he’s right because when I burst through the door, the fucking asshole has her pinned to the bed, her hands above her head and his enormous body forcing her legs wide.
A noise starts up in my ears, like water rushing over the edge of a cliff, growing louder as I stare at what he is trying to do to this woman. It drowns out everything else, her screaming, Blaze yelling at me, the bastard shouting in her face what he is going to do to her.
Nothing stops me grabbing the back of his suit jacket and yanking him so hard, he flies backwards. Luckily, I spend a lot of time working out so even this tall motherfucker doesn’t stand a chance as I launch him across the floor till he hits his head against the wall.
Unfortunately for him, he’s still conscious. Not for long.
He’s too stunned to get his guard up, so his face is open when my fist strikes the first time. His nose explodes with the second hit, and his head swings to the side with the third.
“Fuck, stop. Stop!”
Blaze drags my arm back before I can hit him again, and I stagger back, turning and ready to take a swing at whoever is stopping me. Blaze acts first and punches me in the gut.
“You can’t fucking kill him,” he snarls in my ear, getting close enough so the woman doesn’t hear.
Like hell I can’t.
“Don’t forget whose house we’re in.”
Blaze smacks his palm into my chest, and I look down at the sorry piece of shit on the floor. His face is badly beaten, his nose and eye socket are broken.
My foot itches to kick him in the ribs, break a few of those, or his dick. He can’t fucking rape anyone with his dick broken in half.
“Shit,” Blaze whirls around as a flash of white nightshirt and long dark hair runs past him.
“We’re fucking helping her,” I hold up my hands. “Why is she running?”
Blaze looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “She’s scared shitless, you idiot, she doesn’t know who we are.” He runs out of the room calling for her to stop.
It’s a good job he stopped me killing this little bastard. Now that I’m coming to my senses, I understand the repercussions of that.
This isn’t good for us, or the fucker at my feet. Better for him to have to explain how he ended up in her bedroom, beaten unconscious, than for us to have to hide a body and have a whole mafia family on our ass.
More shouting draws me out into the hall, and my brows lift at the sight of Blaze trying to calm the flailing woman down without touching her.
I almost, almost lean against the wall to watch, but she grabs a vase from the side table, and Blaze is more of a tech nerd than a fighter.
I grab her wrist before she can swing it down on Blaze’s head. I won’t hurt her, but I press my fingers into the space between her wrist bones. It only hurts for a second, but is enough to force her to uncurl her fingers, and the vase smashes at our feet.
She screams, and I grab her hands and press them down at her sides.
“We will not hurt you.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she yells.
I was not expecting that.
“Get off me!”
“I’d rather walk out of here with my eardrums intact.” She kicks my shin and winces. “Not a good idea with bare feet, sweetheart.”
“I’m not your sweetheart. Who the hell are you? Why are you here?”
“I’d think you’d be thanking us considering what just happened back there.”
“How about fuck you instead.”
Wow, this is no wilting little mafia princess, fighting like a cornered cat and swearing like a sailor.
“Beth. We’re not here to hurt you.”
She takes a second to register Blaze is talking. She’s too busy fighting against my hold and looking like she’ll take a bite out of my face given the chance. Then I notice the tears welling in her eyes, and the torn shirt she’d been sleeping in. A bruise is forming on her cheekbone.
Without a second thought, I let go of her and step back so suddenly she almost falls down.
“Beth, it’s okay, we will not hurt you.”
Her lip quivers as she turns to look at Blaze. Her eyes roam over his face and beard, the tattoos on his neck. We’re not wearing our cuts because we’re trying to keep a low profile.
That worked out well.
“You don’t know what you just did,” she glances back at the bedroom. “Is he dead?”
“Unfortunately not,” I mutter.
“You can’t be here when he wakes up. I’ll make something up, tell him you left, just mess the house up a little, take some things with you. I’ll say it was a robbery.”
“We’re not gonna do that,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.
Both of them wait to hear my plan. It’s not great, but it’s one that won’t get us killed, either by the Kivisto’s or the Demon Sinners. It also gets her away from a rapist and the fucking moron of a mafia man she married.
“What are you going to do?” Beth asks, clutching her shirt closed at the base of her neck.
The only thing we can fucking do.
“We’re taking you with us.”