Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
NOAH
Vice burst through the door with a couple of kicks to the lock. The wood splintering as he kicked through and we tore through the entryway. Ethan let out a girly scream as he realised the door wouldn’t hold and ran up the stairs, falling every couple of steps.
“This is the asshole who fucked up her security and trashed her place?”
He had a point. This guy was a pencil pusher. He wasn’t a criminal.
Something didn’t add up.
Vice chased him up the stairs, with me on his flank. This was Vanna’s ex? Why would she be happy with a guy like me if she had this?
Pushing all the bad thoughts out of my head, I moved into action. I ceased being Noah, and became Devil.
For Vanna.
Ethan ran into a room at the end of the hall and slammed the door. We could hear him struggling to move furniture behind the door.
“Hold up,” I said to Vice, holding him back. “Something ain’t right here. You see Vanna dating a guy like this?”
Vice hesitated for a moment, looking around us, and then at the man frantically trying to protect himself behind the door. She’d never hide who she was, or her connection to the club, and yet something was off about this.
“Only one way to find out.”
I nodded and followed his lead. He moved to the door, and I pushed. The doors were loose, which meant he hadn’t been able to secure the doors yet with furniture.
“Come on, Ethie, boy,” Vice called out. “We just wanna chat.”
“About what?!” he screamed back. Pure terror in his voice.
“You know about what…about Vanna.”
“Vanna?” he asked, his voice a little less terrified. “What about her?”
I shared a look with Vice, who was equally as confused as I was. The fear had disappeared from his voice and he was genuinely curious.
The door opened to the bedroom and the refined guy in a suit appeared. “This is about Vanna? She’s okay?”
“How the fuck do you know her?” I asked, my senses tingling at the familiarity in which he spoke about her.
“She’s a friend,” he replied.
“She’s my sister,” Vice said. “You’re her ex?”
Ethan seemed to relax a little. “Oh…that. I didn’t know she was still keeping that pretense up. No, well, she was pretending to be my girlfriend to help me out.”
“Explain,” I all but growled. Vice put his hand on my chest to hold me back if it came to it.
“I needed a girlfriend to look more…I don’t know, stable I guess, so I could get a promotion at work.
My company are old fashioned like that. She and I were friends, well we had friends in common, and she wanted to help me out so she pretended to be my girlfriend for a few months until I got the promotion. Why are you here? Is she okay?”
“Why did you run from us?” Vice asked him.
“I thought…fuck—I thought my brother had gotten in trouble and you were coming after me for money. I know how these things go.”
“Your brother?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We look alike and he uses my name sometimes, so I just…fuck…I’m sorry, you must get that a lot…the whole reputation of being bad guys and people running.”
I flipped out my phone from my back pocket and showed him the grainy image. His face paled.
“That’s Vanna’s shop.”
“I’m aware,” I grunted. “This you or your brother?”
“It’s definitely him. He’s got a tattoo on his neck, you can sort of see it here,” Ethan said, pointing to a dark mark on the grainy image. He was right, he had no tattoos, and this guy seemed to have a couple from the image. “What’s he done?”
“Vandalised Vanna’s shop, and stole stuff off her.”
Ethan paled again. “Fuck.”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Vice asked.
“Well, I…I didn’t think he still had a thing for her but he clearly does.
He tried to date her, after I got the promotion and we went our separate ways.
He asked her out. She said the date was weird, and he seemed a little obsessed so she gave him space.
I told her it was best. He’s mixed up with some bad shit. Is she–”
“She’s safe,” I told him. “In a safe house with no ties to the club or her name.”
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked.
“Why?”
“Well, the thing with Larsen is…he’s really good with tech.
Like super good. Underground, gets-paid-well kind of good.
He also pisses people off for a living and…
well, you don’t really need to know that part but he knows how to find people.
It’s why he gets calls from criminal organisations all the time for help. ”
I thought about my apartment. There was no way it traced back to the club. I’d paid for it in deposits from my mother’s maiden name. No one would have known that. Half the club didn’t even know her real name.
Then it hit me.
The name of the apartment wasn’t my own, for obvious reasons. It was under Vanna’s name. Her real name.
Vannahra Rose Marsden.
If this guy, Larsen, knew her. Knew all about her. He’d know that.
“We gotta go,” I said to Vice.
Never in a million years did I think Vanna was ever going to have a stalker after her. I thought, out of the two of us, she’d be the safer person.
As we ran to the bikes, Vice looked at me, and I saw the realisation in his eyes. She was a sitting duck in that apartment and she had no way of calling out.
I was a fucking asshole and could have just gotten my ol’ lady killed.