Chapter 8
EIGHT
Savage
Viper was talking with Keefe by the outer wall when I finally emerged from my room.
The clubhouse was busy, so it was kind of remarkable that they hadn’t woken me up.
Shona told me she was working today so I expected her to be behind the bar, but it was only Kayleigh.
She must be doing stuff out in the lodge.
I joined Lorcan by the bar and leaned on it.
“Rough night?” he asked with a smirk on his face. It was rare to get him to joke around, but when he did, it always took you by surprise.
“I wouldn’t call it rough,” I replied as Kayleigh handed me a beer.
“I’m glad you sorted your shit out with Shona,” Lorcan said. “You seem like a different man.”
I felt like a different man, but she always had that ability to allow me to forget the world around us whenever I was with her.
“Once this shit with the Destructive Sons is dealt with, then we’ll be golden.”
“Slainte,” he raised his beer and clinked it with mine.
I looked around the clubhouse and noticed how at ease everyone was.
We finally had a way to rid Ireland of a dictator of a club.
It felt like freedom in a way. They’d always been an issue, usually siding with the Rabid Wolves and Broken Reapers whenever they needed the assist. With them gone, it meant we could expand the Ghost Rebels into Belfast and that opened up a lot of doors for everyone, especially Eamon and Lorcan.
“Cooper told me who your father was,” Lorcan said suddenly. I felt my stomach drop as I looked back at him. He was so hard to read when he didn’t want to give anything away.
“And?”
“I know him,” Lorcan said. “I’m part of the Onyx.”
“I’m aware.”
“Have you ever met him?” Lorcan asked.
“Not as an adult,” I admitted. “I remember aspects of being a child with him around, but not a lot. I remember his voice, but not his face.”
Lorcan nodded. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you look a lot like him. If you were ever in Europe, I’d be wary. You’d quite easily be mistaken for him yourself. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t recognise it in you earlier.”
“Noted, thank you.”
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know he had a son,” Lorcan added. “But if he knew you were still alive, he’d be after you to train you up to take on his job one day, and he’s a mean son of a bitch. He doesn’t care about anything. Your sisters are just as intense.”
“I’ve heard things, yeah, but I wouldn’t disrespect my mother by seeking him out. She died to protect me from him.”
Lorcan nodded. “Good.”
I took a swig of my beer just as the door opened to the clubhouse, and we all froze. Alasdair stood with three men behind him who all looked frighteningly like Keefe.
Keefe pushed off the wall, his eyes on his father, who held a gun to his side.
“Where is she?” he demanded. “Where is my daughter?”
“She’s safe,” Keefe called out to him.
“You think you can keep her safe from me? One phone call and she’ll come crawling back.”
“Just like your other daughter did?” Viper spat. “Maybe you don’t have as much control as you think you do.”
The smile on Alasdair’s face was malicious. His eyes grazed over to where I stood, worried Shona would show up at any time.
“You…when you walked into my clubhouse, I should have known who you were. It’s funny, the game of genetics, isn’t it?
We always look like a family member in a way that borders on being freaky.
I’m guessing you don’t want your family to know where you are.
I hear your father has been looking for his long lost son for over twenty years. ”
My stomach dropped, but I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
I needed to keep my wits about me. Kayleigh had managed to shrink down behind the bar.
I motioned for her behind the bar to get down the hall and to safety.
She shifted slowly so she could make a run for it.
Luckily, the bar was set up in a way that it allowed her to get away undetected.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. “You must have me mistaken for someone else.”
Alasdair chuckled darkly. “I bet he’d do almost anything if I told him where to find you. That would solve two problems now, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh?”
“I would have one of the most powerful criminals in Europe at my mercy, and no one would be around to keep my daughter from me.”
Fear laced through me and set my nerves on edge. My fingers itched to grab my gun, but it was in my room. The hatred I had for this man was only increasing the longer he stood there. He turned back to Keefe.
“Bring me Darby and I won’t betray your little secret, and all of you stay out of Belfast. We’ll be done.”
I could see by the look on his sons’ faces behind him that he hadn’t run that by them. The confusion told me he was grandstanding, which means he was only playing the part.
“That ain’t going to happen,” Keefe said.
“Finally grow a backbone, brother?” one of the sons said with a sneer. “Pity it’s at the end of your life.”
This was escalating and fast.
“Where is Shona? I hear she tends this very bar, but it’s empty. You can also tell the slut crawling away to stop. We have this clubhouse surrounded.”
I quickly turned to see Kayleigh freeze in her spot, leaning against the wall next to the bar.
“She’s busy,” I said.
“Pity…I wonder if you even know where she is…”
The smug look on his face was enough for me to wonder if she was out in the lodge or not. He seemed a little too smug for my liking.
“Bring Darby home,” he directed at Keefe.
Keefe scoffed. “She’s not coming back there ever again.”
Alasdair sighed as if he were bored and pulled his gun up. “Neither will you.”
The gun fired too quickly for us to scramble and get him out of the way.
I ran for Keefe as he stumbled back until he hit the wall behind him, as blood spewed out of his shirt.
He looked down at the wound, sinking down to the floor.
I slid across the floor on my knees, pushing my hand down on his wound to keep pressure on it.
“Stay with me,” I yelled at him. I looked down into the same eyes as Shona, and something pulled inside of me that hurt me to my core. This was her saviour, her big brother who protected her when she needed him the most. He couldn’t die. “Get Morena!”
Hawk was already out the door, Alasdair and his sons gone, and from what I could see with other club members coming in, they were gone. The clubhouse crowded around us as we tried to save him.
Morena was here in the next moment, looking down at the wound. She lifted his shirt and more blood flung out of his wound.
“Shit…it’s…” she didn’t want to say it, but I could see it in her eyes.
“Bastard was always a good shot,” Keefe said, blood flowing out of his mouth.
“He couldn’t be that good, he missed your heart.”
“Not by much,” Morena said. She turned to Keefe. “I’m so sorry, we can’t move you…even if we were in a hospital, I don’t think they could save you. It’s too close.”
“Like I said…he’s a good shot. He wan-t-t-ed me to s-s-s-uffer.”
Fucking prick! How could he get in here without arousing any suspicion?
“You haaa-ve to pr-r-rotect them.”
I nodded down at him. “I promise, they will be protected at all costs.”
I saw the light leave his eyes, his hand falling to the ground next to him. His body slumped further as life left him.
Fuck!
I was going to enjoy ripping every fucking limb from Alasdair’s body when I got my hands on him. I sat back on my ass, blood dripping down my arms. Morena teared up as she checked his pulse, but we all knew he was dead.
“Brother, you good?” Viper asked me.
I shook my head. “No…I’m going to fucking track him down and mutilate him. He killed his own fucking son.”
“He’s yours,” Ace said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “We have to figure out how he could have gotten past our gatehouse undetected.”
Orla came into the clubhouse and looked at the havoc. “You may not want to go to the gatehouse, guys.”
Her eyes were watery, which was a new one. She never fucking cried.
“He killed the prospects?”
She nodded. “All of them.”
Fuck.
Alasdair’s taunts came back to me then. He was smug and I hated it, but I especially hated it when he spoke about Shona…like he knew something we didn’t.
Kayleigh was being comforted by Morena at the bar. We always had two behind the bar…my concern had been what if she came in but…I knew she wouldn’t leave Kayleigh without help.
“Where is she?” I asked, getting up from the floor, the blood dripping over to the bar where I came to a stop as I looked at her. “Where is Shona?”
“She…she…wasn’t here.”
“What do you mean?”
“We were out of some stuff and she said she was going stir crazy, so she went to go get it.”
“Alone?”
My mind was about to break. She knew not to do that.
“Everyone was busy with the planning. She said it would only take five minutes.”
“How long ago did she go?” Ace asked her.
“Um, well…it would have been about an hour ago now.”
No, no, no, no!
Shona was gone…and they had her. White hot rage drifted across me, and I fought the urge to tear everything apart in my line of sight.
I felt a hand on the back of my neck pushing me out the door. Lorcan rounded on me then, his hands on my shoulders as he forced me to breathe in fresh air.
“You scream, you cry out, you yell…you get whatever the hell is bottled up inside you right now and we find a way to get to her…okay?” he said.
I couldn’t breathe, I felt like the entire world was shifting and I was standing still.
My chest ached with an intensity I could hardly fathom. “Do it. Scream…get it out. We need your head clear.”
I fell to my knees and let out a roar of agony, the birds from the trees in the woods surrounding our compound flew away as I let the pain of losing her again release from my body until I slumped onto the ground.
“We’ll get her back,” Lorcan knelt beside me. “We have resources.”
“Lorcan…you know my father. If he has her…she’s already dead.”
Shona