Chapter 3
Devlin
Ishould have been more careful with Elise.
I should have told her sooner about Bradon and Kendra.
I shouldn’t have let anyone get the drop on me, but here I was, playing dead with a gaping hole in my chest as someone took my Lamb from me.
I didn’t have the strength to move and as I looked up at the man who shot me, I vowed to make him and whoever thought they could take her from me pay with their lives.
I knew if I tried to fight back at that moment, I could end up dead for real, and who would be there for Elise and my sons?
Shifting my eyes, I watched through tears as Elise slumped over as the man holding her shifted her to his shoulder.
The person who shot me walked up to her and lifted her head with a grip into her hair, and her face was slack from whatever they gave her.
They were speaking, but the black tunnel vision I was fighting grew bigger and bigger as they turned and carried the love of my life away from me and into the darkened forest surrounding more than half of the lake.
I tried to fight the growing darkness and as the last visual of Elise disappeared from my sight, I let the nightmare engulf me.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she cried, and I shook my head, wishing she’d get the point.
“Listen, Kendra, it was never like that for me. I’ve been honest from the start,” I tried to reason, but she only cried harder.
My brother, James, and her brother, Bradon, sat off to the side, watching Kendra lose her shit. She had always been emotional and irrational, but her behavior today was the worst I’d seen. I hated that we had an audience, but hopefully, one of them would step in and help me make her understand.
Reaching her hand out, she tried to grab hold of me, and I stepped back. Her red-rimmed eyes lifted to mine as she pleaded her case. “Why her? She can’t give you what I can, Devlin. You know you’ll come running back to me once you see she’s just a little girl, unable to be what you need.”
I lifted my hand and pointed at her, my voice deepening as I warned her. “Do not speak about her that way.”
Kendra swiped the tears from her cheeks and shook her head as she turned away, speaking under her breath.
I looked at James, and he rolled his eyes and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. He’d warned me for months about Kendra and her unhealthy attachment to me.
He said I needed to make space between us or there would be trouble, and it seemed he was right.
Bradon was watching with an unreadable look on his face.
He was more like James than either would admit.
They both watched, observed, and worked out the problem in their heads.
He kept watching his sister—if she even was his sister—and the only way to know he was feeling anything was his incessant tapping of the fingers on his left hand.
It was a tell when he was stressed and something I’d picked up on within the first few days he and Kendra were around.
They showed up a few weeks after I’d killed Marco, and at first, I thought they were just going to be passing through.
Eventually, they started spending more time with James and me, helping with issues.
Once I saw their usefulness, I told James we should keep them around.
He agreed, for a while, but he’d been warning me that Kendra was sinking her hooks into me. Or at least she was trying.
Elise was the only girl for me, but she was still too young and innocent for someone like me. She left for college last month, and I started to divest myself of the seedier parts of my portfolio. If I wanted to be the man she deserved, I needed to clean up my act and become legitimate.
Which led to this conversation with Kendra and Bradon.
I told them they had to move out of the house since I was putting it on the market.
I needed capital to start a business that James and I had been working on for the last year or so.
We wanted to use Marco’s paranoia and our computer skills to start a cyber security business.
“Are you going to say anything?” I asked Bradon, and he shrugged.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked and stood from his seat. I glanced and saw Kendra watching her brother move closer to me as she stood off to the side with anger on her face. “You were honest with us from the beginning, so what can I say to change things?”
“You can tell him to go to hell,” Kendra yelled. “You can tell him he’s delusional to think that wounded little misfit could ever give him what I could.”
I saw red and turned on Kendra. Her eyes grew wide as I stormed across the room and gripped my hand into the tender flesh of her neck as I pushed her against the wall.
Leaning in, I reeled my rage back as I warned, “I will not tolerate you speaking about her that way. If you say one more thing, I will choke you out.”
Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I glanced to see James behind me, giving me a warning look. He would take a lot of my bullshit, but he wouldn’t let me hurt a woman. Not without cause, and Kendra calling Elise names wasn’t cause in his book. It was in mine, but not my brother’s.
Reluctantly, I released Kendra, and she leaned over, coughing as she held onto her throat. I turned to see where Bradon was, and he was standing with his head tilted sideways as he observed me threatening his sister.
I took a step back and ran my hands through my hair. Looking at James, I shook my head and spoke to the room. “You have until tomorrow to get all your shit out of my house. Leave Portstill and do not return. This is my town, and you’re no longer welcome here.”
Turning to leave, I heard Kendra crying, “Devlin, don’t do this. Please.”
I looked at her then her brother before I warned, “Do not speak of what you know, or I’ll bury you where you fall.” Pausing, I added ominously, “And forget everything you know about Elise. She’s doesn’t exist to you.”
Without another word, I left the room as Kendra cried out my name.
Walking out of the house, I inhaled deeply, needing some fresh air.
I didn’t stick around to see how James handled getting them out of the house.
It wasn’t my concern. That may sound crass and cold, but that was the only way I’d survived the years since my father sold me to a paranoid nutjob.
I’d been raised the second son of a man hell bent on running the largest underground society in the country. He pushed my older brother to be his second in command, and I became expendable. By selling me to Marco, my father rose in the ranks of the organization, gaining power and money.
As I traversed the streets of the Flats, I saw fear and respect from the people I passed, but it did little to quell my mind.
I was worried about how Elise was getting on at school.
This was the furthest I’d been away from her since I helped her out of that house of horrors, I mistakenly put her into when she was a child.
When I discovered what kinds of horrible things they were doing to her, I killed her foster parents and made sure she was with good people.
Chuck and Blaire, loved her, understood her, and helped to make her whole while I remained in the shadows, keeping a close eye on her.
It was killing me to not know what she was doing, but she needed some space to spread her wings.
The thought of pimple faced boys touching her, loving her, and breaking her heart was something I had to live with.
She needed to become the woman she was destined to be, and she could achieve that if I was constantly monitoring her. Even if she wasn’t aware.
Because once I had myself in a position to claim her, I was going to make my move. And she would be mine forever.
The beeping of machines roused me from the dream I was in.
Elise was tied to the bed as I lay between her spread legs.
She was begging me for more and I was happy to oblige when I heard the noise.
It drew me from the happy place I was in and back to the present.
I didn’t understand what was going on as I blinked, trying to figure out where I was and what happened.
“I think he’s waking up,” I heard someone say and felt a hand touch mine.
It wasn’t Elise’s. I knew her touch anywhere and this wasn’t it. Where was I and where was Elise?
Fighting against the pull to go back to my dream, I managed to blink a few times, clearing my eyes.
Looking around, I saw a worried James, my brother Lucian and our friend, Skid.
My sisters Stella was holding my hand as our newly discovered sisters, Regan, and Hannah, were standing around the bed, all with worried looks on their faces.
I looked around the room and turned to James, “Where’s Elise?” He glanced at Lucian, then Skid before looking back at me. The worry on his face was clear as day and when he didn’t answer me, I asked again. “Where is my wife?”
“Devlin, what do you remember?” James asked with a guarded tone.
I tried to think and was coming up blank. Trying to remember how I ended up in this room, surrounded by family, was impossible. Gently shaking my head, I admitted, “I don’t know.”
Lucian stepped closer and I felt Stella rubbing the back of my hand where the IV was inserted as my older brother explained. “You and Elise were in the park and someone ambushed you.” He paused and lowered his eyes as he said. “Someone shot you and Elise is missing.”
“Missing?” I yelled and tried to sit up, only to fall back onto the pillow before I got to a sitting position. The room spun and I tried to stop from throwing up as I asked, “What happened?”
It was my brother James who answered, “The security guards said you and Elise went to the park for a picnic around seven and one of them heard a gunshot shortly after eight thirty. They came to investigate and found you on the ground and the only thing they found from Elise was her shoes.”
“Who . . . who took her?” I asked, feeling like my world was imploding.
I should have been able to keep her safe, but somehow, someone took her from me. She must be terrified and the thought of someone hurting her was almost too much to take. If she wasn’t okay, the boys and I wouldn’t survive. Elise was the glue that held our family together.
James turned his eyes to me and replied, “It’s time to fill everyone in, Devlin. We need all the help we can get.”
I didn’t want to tell my siblings how I had broken a young woman, causing her to splinter. How do you tell someone that you used another person for what you could get from them, and tossed them aside when they weren’t valuable to you anymore?
“I can’t,” I admitted and closed my eyes, trying to remember who took Elise so we could begin tracking them.
I listened as James filled everyone in on the threat we’d received from who we believed to be Kendra and Bradon. He explained how his sister, Aubrey, had been helping Skid look for the siblings, and how we kept coming up empty on every search. I saw disgust from my sisters and shock from Lucian.
Skid stood behind everyone, not judging me or offering commentary. He had been loyal from day one and throughout all the bullshit we’ve been through, he and the Death Hounds were always there to help. I just prayed once they heard everything, they didn’t throw me away.
When James concluded the explanation of what we believed to have led to today, tonight, however long I’d been here, I cleared my throat and pushed myself up to a sitting position.
“I know you probably hate me, but I’m not the same person who did all those things.” I reasoned, and when Stella went to speak, I talked over her, not needing placating at that moment. “I need to know if you will help me find Elise, and after that, you can hate me all you want to.”
It was James who spoke. “No one hates you, Devlin. We just need to find Elise and neutralize the threat. No matter who it’s coming from.”
“Where do we start?” Stella asked.
Lucian inquired, “What security is at the lake? Are there cameras and does someone monitor them?”
I perked up, remembering the paranoia I experienced over the last few weeks. Looking at James, I saw him offer a smile as I responded. “I had cameras put throughout the area. If someone can get to the server, they will be able to pull all the footage.”
Skid stepped forward, “I’ll get Aubrey, and we can get started going through the footage. We have a timeframe and the location, so we just need to go back and see who came into the area, and where they went when they left.”
He went to walk out of the hospital room when Hannah offered, “I can help, and I know Rhys will offer whatever help he can.”
I looked at my sister, who we just discovered last year and simply said, “Thank you.”
“No thanks are needed big brother. That’s what family is for.”
“I think the more eyes we have on this the better,” Lucian reasoned and started to walk to the door when he paused, looking at James. “You coming?”
James looked at me then to Lucian before he answered, “I’m coming.”
Stella and Regan sat with me as everyone left, hoping they could locate who took Elise from me. I didn’t want to engage in conversation, and it seemed my sisters understood. Stella only said, “No one hates you, Devlin. We all did things we’re not proud of to survive the hell Sergey put us through.”
I nodded and glanced over to the darkened window before I closed my eyes, trying not to let them see me at my breaking point. All I could think of was what Elise could be experiencing and if she was hurt. Surviving without her wasn’t an option.
And then thoughts of her returning to me and not wanting anything to do with me for the secrets I kept bombarded me from every direction.
My Lamb had been the most important person in my life and if she was through me with, then what purpose did I have anymore?