Chapter 8 #2
I startle as behind me, the double doors to the rehab fly open.
They’re double glass doors, but Luke makes them slam back and forth like saloon doors as he comes charging through them.
They shatter into a million pieces on the second swing as he walks toward me in a long, but largely unbothered stride.
“Oh.” I say on the phone. “Never mind.”
“Why, Leo?”
“Gotta go, Aiden. Luke’s out. Don’t worry about any of it. I’ve got it.”
“Leo…”
I end the call.
That’s going to piss him off, but I have no desire to explain any of this to Aiden.
I wish I hadn’t called him in the first place.
That feeling of being in trouble annoys me greatly.
I am a grown man. My older brother does not have the right to make me feel as though I’m ten years old and just got caught doing something criminal.
Luke looks slightly disheveled, but otherwise unharmed. His hair is a little mussed up. He is wearing jeans, a black sweater, and the institutional socks and sandals.
“Let’s go,” he says. “They’re definitely going to call the police.”
“What did you do?”
“Is the car nearby?” He doesn’t want to answer to me any more than I wanted to answer to Aiden.
“Fuck, Luke,” I curse. “Let’s go.”
We go to the parking lot, which is only a few feet away, and get in my new rental car. I drive. Luke’s in one of his wild moods, and he’s a shitty driver anyway. He has a tendency to get distracted, and get aggressive.
“Do we need to contact a lawyer?”
“No,” he says.
“Maybe,” he says after that.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “I’m not going to be welcome back there.”
“Luke,” I sigh. “What the hell kind of plan was that? Making us think you’d relapsed? We were fucking worried about you.”
“We’re all worried about all of us,” he says.
“You know it. I know it. I wanted to get out from under Aiden’s thumb.
He’s been fucking suffocating since Teddy died.
He’s everywhere. He’s in everything. Even more than usual.
If he popped up from the back seat right now, I wouldn’t fucking be surprised. ”
We both glance over our shoulders really quickly as he says that. He’s not wrong. Aiden has a certain omnipresence that lives rent free in our heads that comes from him having the tendency to just fucking be places he shouldn’t be.
“So who were you going to hunt?” I ask him the question.
He glances over at me briefly. “I will tell you who I was going to hunt if you tell me who got you looking more strung out than I have ever been.”
We keep driving, looking dead ahead, neither one of us wanting to give in and give the information. For a good hour, we both hold out, playing a game of conversational chicken. Then it starts to feel like just normal driving and I forget that we’re waiting each other out.
“The girl at the funeral,” Luke says suddenly, jolting me very much back into my body.
“What about her?”
“Teddy knew her. He wanted to date her. Or was dating her. And I was going to try to find her. I figured if I could do it while the two of you were busy looking in other places, or Aiden was taking care of business or whatever.”
“Teddy wanted to date her? Or he did date her?”
“Teddy loved her,” Luke says. “I think he wanted to marry her. But I also think she’s caught up in all of this. There’s something about her.”
“Yeah,” I say. “There is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean she’s the reason I had that involuntary bender,” I tell him. “I took her and wanted to get information out of her, and have some fun along the way.”
Bam!
The steering wheel jerks to the side. I fight to control the vehicle with one side of my head ringing. Luke has just punched me in the ear, a blow that jolts me into a fury and makes me slam on the brakes.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Luke demands, his fist cocked for another blow.
“The fuck, Luke,” I curse. I may not be Aiden, but I am still his older brother. I can still beat the shit out of him if I have to.
“I know what you do to women. If you did that shit to her, to the woman he loved? I’m going to beat your ass…”
“First of all, little brother,” I growl. “We don’t know if Teddy was being tricked or not. She’s not as innocent as she looks. And none of us owe allegiance to a dead man’s date. If you hit me again, I am going to make you regret it.”
Something in my tone and my eyes gets through Luke’s oafish aggression. He lowers his fist.
“What did you do to her?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
“You slept with her?”
“Yes.”
“Get out of the car,” Luke growls.
“Why?”
“Because I want you to be able to defend yourself the next time I hit you.”
I am not in the mood for this, but Luke’s decided to play knight in shining armor to a girl he doesn’t know.
“You know she could very easily have had everything to do with his death, right? She could have been the one who fucking killed him? She was happy enough to leave me for dead.”
“He loved her.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“Get out of the car and fight me like a man,” Luke demands.
“If I get out of this car, I am going to put you in the fucking hospital, you little shit,” I growl. “Don’t be angry because I got to her first. You had the same chances I had. You just decided to get fucking high first.”
“That was a ruse!”
“Was it? Was it a ruse to get into an illegal fighting match? Come back high as a fucking kite? Was that all a ruse? Because, little brother, I was fucking her the whole time you were crashing and burning.”
He tries to punch me in the face again, but I deflect the blow and he catches an elbow to the jaw.
He’s right about fighting in a car being stupid. I throw open the driver’s door, Luke hurls himself over the hood of the car and the two of us fight as we haven’t since we were teenagers.
I never imagined Luke would be so protective of a girl he doesn’t even know, but deep down he’s not fighting me.
He’s fighting for Teddy, the way he never got to.
All that rage he needs to get out is being unleashed on me.
As for me, I take the blows and give a few back.
He will always be my little brother, and I will never truly hurt him.
I will, however, put him in his place when he needs it, so I have no intention of letting him win.
He can tire himself out, and then he can apologize.
We’ve traded blows for a few minutes when a sleek black vehicle draws up alongside us.
The window rolls down, and a man wearing dark sunglasses and a dark suit lowers the sunglasses to address us as we grip one another, bloodied and panting and feeling better, I hope and assume because I do not have the energy for another round.
“Mr. Levin wishes to enjoy the pleasure of your company,” the man says.
We know they’ll be mercenaries, ex-military for sure. Aiden’s private army is legendary. It’s things like this that make it feel so very strange that Teddy could ever have been killed. But no army is infallible, and no surveillance is perfect.
“I have the rental car,” I say.
“We’ll take care of that,” he says. “You gentlemen are welcome to travel in this vehicle.”
We are not really being given an option. Aiden has been on top of this the whole time, as usual. Which means the bastard either left me to possibly die in that cabin, or he had someone keeping an eye out but not actually stepping in to rescue me. Either one of those possibilities is real.
The rear of the car opens and a man in a similar suit steps out to usher the two of us in. He then shuts the door behind us, goes to my rental car, and we are swept away from the scene of our scrap.
“There is a first aid kit under the driver’s seat if you’d like to tend to your wounds,” the driver says. I don’t know his name, and he doesn’t introduce himself.
My phone rings. It’s Aiden, of course.
“Hello?”
“I want the both of you home. Now. We have important things to discuss. And tell Luke, if he does not come quietly, I have no qualms whatsoever about having him taken to a much higher security facility that will hold him against his will.”
I hold the phone away from my ear and look over at Luke. “Did you hear that?”
Luke makes a two-fingered gesture that indicates he did.
“We’re on our way,” I say.
I don’t have the energy to fight this shit. I didn’t have the energy to fight Luke either, not really. The two of us dig out the first aid kit and dab the grazes and cover the cuts with bandages.
“We look like shit,” Luke laughs.
“Yes,” I have to agree. “We do.”
The two of us don’t get a chance to shower, shave, or change our clothes. We are delivered to the family home looking, for all intents and purposes, shambolic and unhoused.
“Mr. Levin is waiting for you in the drawing room,” the driver tells us as something of a parting shot.
Sometimes we deal with people who work for Aiden who seem to think that we are the fucked-up little brothers of a great man. It has been a long time since I got that treatment, to be fair. I usually have more independence, better fashion, and less unruliness about me.
As soon as we step into the drawing room, I stop thinking about the fight, what we are wearing, or anything else at all. The world stops as I see Ella Chick kneeling at Aiden’s feet, her dark head bowed.
“Is this what the two of you were looking for?” Aiden grabs her by the back of the head and forces her to lift her face.
Her cheeks look flushed. Her eyes sparkle with an emotion that lands somewhere between humiliation and defiance.
She’s so pretty. There’s a sweetness to her features.
Even after everything she put me through, I feel a bolt of attraction to her.
“That’s Teddy’s girlfriend,” Luke says. “Let her go.”
“Oh, I won’t be doing that, and when you understand a little more, you won’t want me to,” Aiden says smoothly. His eyes go back and forth between the two of us, then settle on me.
“I’m aware you’ve already had an entanglement with this young lady,” Aiden says to me. “Quite ungentlemanly, Leo.”
“And I’m sure you’ve been nothing but a gentleman,” I say.
She smirks with her head lowered where Aiden cannot see her. Or so she thinks. Aiden’s fingers tighten in her hair and her breath hitches. I spark with jealousy. He’s touching her. That’s bad enough. But she’s responding to him. And I like that even less.
All three of us want this woman, I realize.
Luke wants to save her, because he needs to be saved.
I want to break her, because I need to be broken, perhaps.
And Aiden, I don’t know what the hell he’s done to her.
Bent her to his will, superficially, at least. I still see the fire in her eyes.
Aiden is a creature unlike the rest of us, but he is not infallible.
I wonder if he thinks she has broken, when all she has really done is bend.