Chapter Fourteen
TYLER
Sunny’s words echo in my mind as I sit in front of a man dangling from chains. My final prey of the four I’ve been hunting over the last few weeks.
You spend all your time saving everyone but yourself. Little does she know, saving people is how I save myself, too. It gives me purpose.
A simple hack of the club’s cameras the night Sam was drugged identified each of the guys responsible for what happened to her and what almost happened to her.
They wanted to play Russian roulette with their dicks and see which one of them could get her pregnant to merge their blood with the Caddell line.
Sam wasn’t their first target, and she certainly wouldn’t have been their last had they not ended up in the basement of my gym. In my interrogation room where they spill their secrets because they succumbed to pain.
So here I am, sitting before guy four of four as he pleads for me to give him grace. He tells me to let him go free and that if I do he will change himself for the better. I know he won’t. They never do.
Max Chambers is just like his father and brothers.
He takes what he wants, when he wants, and doesn’t think of the repercussions.
If you want to take, you have to be fucking smart about it, and he just simply isn’t.
His stupidity got him here, not me. He knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when.
The moment he slipped the pills in my sister’s drink was the moment he gave himself a death sentence.
“I’ll give you intel on some sick fucks. I know a lot of people you can take down!” The guy begs.
Just as everything has tiers, so does our world. He is the middle end of the rich. A trust fund baby that won’t be missed.
“Go on,” I urge him calmly, crossing my arms over my chest as false hope rounds his blue eyes.
Letting out a waivered breath, he tries to adjust himself. “There’s a gentlemen’s club.”
“There’s a lot of those, Max.” I lean back in my chair. I notice my tactical pants are splattered in blood.
“It’s called Barton’s Babes. Lots of guys go there to get their drugs from him.
Lots of guys your company has contracted with.
” He licks his chapped lips. “You could cut ties with them. If you take him down, you can have access to all those buyers and help the women there against their will. I can get you inside,” he says hopefully.
The thing is, I already know this. Barton’s Babes is an extremely high-end club where you need an invitation to even know it exists or gain access.
The criterion for an invite is meeting a certain income a year, which I surpassed a long time ago.
Two drinks max to avoid unnecessary drama and a mandatory five-hundred-dollar minimum cover which doesn’t include services or drinks.
It’s a place all these rich fucks go to so they can get what their wives won’t give them. Anything additional comes at a cost, and you can be denied a service by a woman if she isn’t comfortable with it.
“Is that where you got your drugs, Max?” I ask.
His eyes fill with fear and his body trembles. “It was a mistake!” he yells as I stand up from my chair.
“It’s only a mistake to you because you got caught.” I stand to my full height, getting inches from his face.
His panicked eyes move back and forth, searching for a semblance of hope in my own. But all he will be met with is calm darkness.
These things don’t piss me off. I’m not angered. I’m repulsed.
“No! I know what I did was wrong! I’ll do better. I’ll work under you so you can see! I’ll do anything you ask. I’m so sorry! Please, our fathers are friends, they will know what you did!” He thrashes in his chains, rattling them.
“Our fathers aren’t friends, they are business partners, there’s a difference.”
“Please, let’s just talk this through. We can work out a deal! Please.”
I smile because oh the irony.
“See, you didn’t listen to my sister when she begged you. So why should I listen to you when you beg me?”
The air fills with his stench and pleads, but I don’t care. I look down to see the guy pissed himself.
“I didn’t even actually hurt her!” he cries.
“That’s because somehow, in the haze of the drugs you slipped in her drink, she texted me.” I cross my arms. “But a simple hack in your phones gave me all the details you had laid out for her.”
Walking up next to me, Cole hands me a bag filled with pills. I pour them in my hand and meet his eyes.
These will burn him from the inside out, because they are made with Carolina reapers.
It won’t be a peaceful slip into slumber.
It will be with him screaming, melting from the inside out, starting with his mouth that lied to lure my sister.
They will corrode his stomach and then move through his whole body, circulating into his bloodstream.
“Open,” I command.
Shaking his head, he continues thrashing, as if he can actually stop me. This only makes a laugh slip from me. Cole walks over to him and forces his mouth open. The chains rattle, and screams that will soon be silenced fill the room and bounce off the walls.
I shove the pills in his mouth and clamp it shut with my own hand covering his lips. His screams are muffled, his bloodshot blues now wide as his body convulses.
I’ll be the last thing he sees before he dies.
“Sweet dreams, Max.”
SUNNY
The dreary day is only a small testament to how I feel. The loom of waking up with a sore throat only grew to panic when it wasn’t washed away with a sip of water.
Hours later, here I am on the couch with a throat so sore it hurts to drink, congestion that makes my head want to explode, and a body that feels worse than the night I left Ryan.
Family dinner is tonight, despite the fact we all saw one another at the restaurant opening a few days ago. Sam includes me via video chat because I can’t get the energy to pull myself from this couch and refuse their offers to bring it here so I don’t pass this plague to anyone else.
They place the phone in my usual seat at Anthony’s place.
I can’t help the smile that forms my chapped lips at the gesture.
Lounging on my couch, wrapped in a blanket, I watch my friends through the screen.
Everyone’s faces chipper, smiling, laughing as they share food and conversation.
It’s the connection I realized I lacked and needed.
The hole in my chest doesn’t feel so big anymore.
“Okay family,” Tyler stands up. “I’m going to bring our Sunny darling some food.”
“Tyler the man!” Anthony chimes.
“I’ll package up some food.” Sam gets up.
“Guys, that's really unnecessary,” I protest.
“I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.” He flashes a smile complimented with a wink. Soon enough, he’s grabbing his keys and is out the door.
Shortly after, I say my goodbyes to the rest of the family and end the call. My eyes are heavy, and the sound of Friends on the TV settles me into a purgatory sleep. An in-between of reality and my own mind.
My eyes fly open as a knock sounds on my door. “Food service,” Tyler calls outside my door.
I sit my aching body up, feeling the peak of the virus so profoundly that even my joints hurt. With the blanket still wrapped around my feverish body, I walk to the door and see Tyler standing outside through the peephole.
“You can just leave it on the floor. I don’t want to get you sick,” I say without opening it.
“Sunny, come on. I don’t care. Open the door.”
“I look awful. Like a zombie, really. You sure you want to see that?”
“I want to see every version of you.”
You’re good at this, Tyler.
I open the door.
TYLER
While it may not be her best day, I still like this version of her. Even with the wild bun and red nose. “Looking good, Sunny.”
“Comical,” she deadpans, leaving the door open and walking inside, granting me access to her apartment. That fire may be dim but damn does it still burn.
“Tyler, you're going to get sick.”
“I have the immune system of a god,” I say proudly, placing the food on her counter.
I make sure to take good care of myself and with that, I’m rarely sick. But nothing would stop me from coming here tonight, even if it meant I’d get put on my deathbed.
“You need to eat.” I pull the food out of the packaging.
“I don’t feel very hungry.” She sits on the couch.
I smile. My stubborn little thing.
“Why did you come? I already told Sam I didn’t need anything. Really, I’m fine.”
But she doesn’t look fine. Let me take care of you.
“You should know by now, that I don’t take no for an answer. And I always get what I want.” I place the food in her microwave, eyeing her as I push the buttons to warm it up, further proving my point.
She scowls. “Yeah, yeah.”
She gives up that argument quickly. Which means my statement is true; she isn’t fine. She is tired and sick, and I’m ready to fix those problems.
I sit next to her on the couch. “What are we watching?”
A small smile quirks on the side of her mouth. I’ve been trying to get a full smile out of her. So far, I’ve failed.
“How do you not know this show?” She finally turns to me, her nose somehow redder.
“It’s called Friends, right?” I ask. “TV was never a pastime in our house.”
“Okay that’s it, we are starting from the beginning.” She grabs the remote, determined with wide eyes.
“Does this mean we get to have a sleepover?” I arch a brow.
Sleeping next to you would be even better.
She just looks at me, despite being tired, her eyes sparkle. I can only hope it’s because of my sleepover suggestion.
I like your eyes, Sunny.
A smile pulls at the side of her mouth again. So close. “Don’t you have work?”
“I guess that’s the good thing about being heir to the company, I can pretty much make my own hours.”
“This is the one where it all began,” She says, putting the show on.
Yeah, it really is.
After a few episodes, I try coaxing her into eating, but she only takes a few bites. Stubborn. I fucking love it.
“Tyler, we need to talk about the conversation at the party.” She tries deflecting my begging her to eat.