Chapter 3
Chapter Three
ANDIE
Standing under a black umbrella as rain beats down all around me, my bleary eyes scan the fresh mud and the small brown puddles dotting the mound of earth at my feet. Everywhere else around me, slender blades of green grass bend under the weight of the falling rain. The musical plops of the raindrops hitting the fabric of the umbrella is almost hypnotic. I stare at the mud and dark soil and my heart breaks into jagged pieces. Kellan’s body is somewhere under all that. There’s a wreath of white and red roses at the head of the mound. Kellan hated roses. Their scent made him nauseous. He liked lily-of-the-valley, and only because it was my favorite.
I’d watched from afar as they lowered my brother’s coffin into the ground, my anger and rage simmering at the three men standing next to my father, my mother nowhere to be found. Their heads are bowed in lamentation. Kellan’s three best friends who left him to die alone like a fucking piece of trash.
My brother died in pain, taking his last breath while his blood poured out of bullet holes marring his body, and the men who were supposed to stand by his side, ride or die, didn’t even bother to help him when he needed them most. They ran like fucking cowards.
And my father—the evil son of a bitch—he’s as much to blame for Kellan’s death as Keane, Jax, and Rafe. If it wasn’t for him, Kellan would be off at college somewhere, living the carefree life of a typical young twenty-something-year-old. Getting drunk, having one-night stands, doing stupid shit. Instead, my father pulled him into the “business.” Wanted Kellan to rule by his side. He had been grooming my brother for the position since the day he was born.
Yeah, I know who my father is. What he is. The don of the Rossi family. Neglectful husband. Abusive father. Sadistic motherfucker. I saw the evil that lived inside him every day. I saw what he turned my brother into with my own two eyes the night I snuck out of the house and stowed away in Kellan’s Mustang, wanting to know where my brother went most nights.
It had been easy slipping past the guards and into the garage to hide in the trunk of Kellan’s car. I had gotten very good at sneaking in and out of the house over the years. I knew where the cameras were located and when the guards changed shifts.
Over the past year, Kellan had started leaving the house every night. I would know, seeing as I’d been doing the same thing. Naturally, I was curious, especially since the times Kellan left the house coincided with the nights Rafe said he couldn’t meet up with me. Like any nosy teenager who hated being kept in the dark about what her brother was up to, I decided to find out for myself.
I laid in the trunk of Kellan’s car, getting jostled around like popcorn from every bump in the road. It felt like forever before the car eventually stopped and Kellan turned the engine off. Once parked, I waited until I was sure my brother had walked away. Then I carefully popped open the trunk from the inside, using the child’s emergency handle standard in most cars, and watched Kellan go inside a warehouse constructed out of corrugated sheet metal that glimmered silver under the half moon. I used the shadows and quietly snuck around the building until I found a small, unlocked window. It was easy climbing through since I was skinny and limber. I crept closer to where I could hear voices and hid behind a stack of boxes, congratulating myself for not getting caught. However, I wasn’t prepared to witness what I saw.
Through a haze of horror, I watched Keane beat a man until blood poured like a river from his face. I watched as Jax—his expression blank, soulless, almost looking bored that he was being forced to be there—used his red-handled pocketknife to slice off the pads of the man’s fingertips. I watched as Rafe strung the guy up with a rope until the man’s feet dangled inches off the floor. Then my father handed Kellan a gun and said something to him that I couldn’t make out from my hiding spot. Kellan refused, a sharp shake of his head. He never saw the back of Father’s hand until it was too late, the crack of the blow causing Kellan’s head to snap back. I had to slap my hand over my mouth to stop my cries. I had never seen our father hit Kellan before. I was usually the recipient of his abuse. I knew how much Father’s punches hurt. I stood motionless, terrified at what I was seeing. Too scared to run away. Then my father jerked Kellan’s arm up and wrapped his hand on top of Kellan’s around the gun, shoved it into the guy’s mouth, and used Kellan’s finger to pull the trigger, blowing the guy’s brains out.
As vomit-inducing as what I just witnessed was, the gruesome scene wasn’t what horrified me. It was the dead look on Kellan’s face as my father walked off, leaving my brother, Keane, Rafe, and Jax to clean up the mess. It was the night I saw my brother’s soul die.
I close my eyes and will away the memories. I should never have left Kellan. I should’ve refused to get on the plane with my mother. I should’ve fought to stay so that I would’ve been there to save my brother.
“I miss you so fucking much. You promised me that you would never leave me,” I angrily tell him. Kellan left me alone in a world I don’t know how to navigate, in a life that has no purpose without him.
I stand and cry silent tears that fall like the rain beating down on me from above. My shoes are soaked and covered in rivulets of brown, as are both my legs. The late May temperature is already hot and muggy, the humidity made even worse from the liquid precipitation that has been relentlessly falling all day long. I fucking hate this city. I hate this life.
“I hate you for leaving me!” I scream at Kellan’s grave. My eyes widen when I realize what I’d said. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
I drop to my knees in the slick mud, my umbrella flying away in a gust of wind.
“I didn’t mean it. Take me with you. I want to be with you,” I beg him, clawing at the ground, flinging clods of wet, slimy mud every which way. My desperation to be with my brother leading me into darkness. I wish I had died with him.
The throbbing in my head is what wakes me. Feeling woozy and disoriented from the nightmare I relive every time I fall asleep, I slowly breathe in and out of my nose before attempting to open my eyes.
I catalog the information my senses are giving me. I smell something earthy and something metallic, like dirt mixed with stale blood. I notice the sharp edges of the zip ties that bind my wrists and feel something wrapped around my torso, holding me in place to the back of the chair that I’m sitting in. I hear the quiet drip, drip, drip of water, like a leaky faucet. I taste something sweet on my tongue. Chloroform, maybe? Other than the stinging pain on my wrists caused by the zip ties digging into my skin, I don’t sense that anything is broken or bruised.
My eyelids carefully and painstakingly blink open. I’m in a dark room, so it’s hard to make out my surroundings. At least my ankles and feet aren’t bound like my wrists are. As kidnappings go, this isn’t so bad. I was expecting to wake up in a far worse situation than I’m in now.
My right foot hooks around one leg of the chair. It’s hard like metal. If it was wood, I could try to break it and use the broken wooden pieces as weapons. With how I’m secured to the chair right now, I’m not going to attempt to topple it over. All that’ll accomplish is me lying on the dirty floor in an even more uncomfortable position. Fuck . Nothing to do but wait and hope that someone will come in and allow me to use the restroom. Otherwise, I’m going to be pissing myself in the next hour.
What the fuck, Liam? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the man I met a year ago to the man who held a gun to my head this morning. I don’t remember anything after opening my hotel room door, other than a nine-mil aimed at my head and Liam’s handsome face smiling at me. The face of my angel-turned-devil.
Because that’s what Liam was to me when we first met—an angel sent to me on one of the worst days of my life. The day of Kellan’s funeral.
I should have been able to say goodbye to my brother. I should have been allowed to pay my last fucking respects. It’s just one more thing to hate my father for. I knew my father despised me, but fuck . To deny me from even attending Kellan’s burial service. My heart seizes with such a visceral pain at the memory, I flinch in my bindings.
I can perfectly recall that night. It was three days before Kellan’s funeral. The morning of the day I was going to board a plane to come home, I received a message from one of my father’s men threatening me to stay away. That I wasn’t welcome at Kellan’s service and would be promptly ‘dealt with’ if I showed up. The bastard of a father couldn’t even call me himself to issue the threat. He had his fucking lackey do it. I tried for days to contact my mother, but she wouldn’t answer or return my calls.
Depression was, and still is, a nasty, invasive thing that sinks its talons into you and won’t let go, like a pit bull’s locked jaws on its prey. The day of Kellan’s funeral, I was devastated. I was too many things. Too angry. Too depressed. Too full of rage. Too tired. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his dead ones. I saw a pool of blood surrounding his broken body, riddled with bullet holes. So, I tried to escape from my nightmares and find solace in one of the dance clubs in Geneva, needing a place where I didn’t have to think or feel or mourn. I let the loud thrum and pound of the music dull the thoughts in my head. I lost myself in the throngs of sweaty, dancing bodies. I numbed my pain with shots of tequila, chased by glass after glass of vodka. None of it worked.
Until I bumped into him.
“I am so sorry,” I say, as my eyes raise to the man I crashed into on the dance floor.
A friendly smile spreads across his drop-dead gorgeous face as he meets my gaze. He looks to be in his early twenties, dark mahogany hair and soft steel-gray eyes. He’s wearing denim jeans that hang low on narrow hips and a charcoal-gray button-up that accentuates his sculpted shoulders and chest. But it’s the tattoos peeking out of his collar and the cuffs of his sleeves that catch my attention—a mix of bold designs in blue, gray, and black. A guy with ink has always been my kryptonite. Well, one guy in particular. The guy who ruined me years ago. Don’t you dare fucking think about him, Alexandria.
The handsome stranger smiles down at me. “No need for apologies,” his deep voice replies. “I’m Liam,” he introduces himself, his voice close to my ear.
My body reacts to the smooth timbre, and I’m momentarily taken by surprise. Flutters suddenly swarm in my stomach, and a punch of sexual attraction jumps out at me from nowhere. It’s a foreign sensation, one that’s been dormant for years. I haven’t felt any kind of sexual desire in a very long time. Not since —Stop it!
How can I be feeling anything right now, today of all days? The day that the brother I love more than life itself is being dropped six feet under, and I’m not there to say goodbye. I’m not there to tell him how much I love him. To tell him how sorry I am that I wasn’t with him when he needed me the most. To know that in his final moments, the person he called was me, and I was an ocean away, helpless to save him.
Pain slashes me in the heart like a physical blow. A heaviness falls upon me, crushing my chest to the point where I feel like I can’t breathe. I would do anything right now to have the pain go away. Just a second to catch my breath and not feel like I’m drowning. Just one tiny fraction of time where I’m not lost to thoughts of blood and death and Kellan’s dead eyes staring at me. To feel anything other than the knives slicing my soul or the deep sense of loss that now pervades my every waking moment.
I look at the man I bumped into. He seems to be waiting for me to say something. He’s absolutely beautiful, with his dark hair and light eyes. Like an angel who suddenly appeared in front of me. An angel is exactly what I need right now. Someone to save me. To take away the pain. This man may not know it, but he’s the lifeline I’m going to desperately grab ahold of.
The memory is broken when I hear voices outside the room, low and jumbled. Not Liam’s deep tenor. I must still be feeling the side effects of whatever he knocked me out with. My mind fogs back over briefly, my eyes blurring in and out of focus. I blink to clear them.
We crash together as I’m shoved roughly against the wall of his hotel room. A framed painting rattles at the impact. He palms my face, such a gentle caress compared to the violence of desire in his stormy eyes that seem to glow in the moonlight that’s spearing into the room through the floor-to-ceiling window. My head lilts, just a fraction, as I take the piece of gentleness he gives me, knowing that soon, the turbulent maelstrom we are creating will come and sweep us away.
The hand that was seconds ago so tender, grips my throat as his lips take mine in a kiss that is both pleasure and pain. His tongue demands entrance and I obey. The way he kisses me is both possessive and ravenous. My hands grip his shirt, the fabric so soft, I sigh into his mouth. He drinks my breath into his lungs like delicious air.
As his fingers curl into the pliable skin of my neck, his other hand slides along my bare thigh, bunching the silk folds of my dress up until the thin strip of red lace is uncovered. My underwear is soaked with my arousal. He pulls back sharply, his nostrils flaring as if he can smell how much I want him. His mouth is tinged red and slightly swollen from the brutality of our kiss. I cry out when he roughly impales me with two fingers, and my body immediately goes up in flames.
“I’m going to fuck you until your voice is hoarse from screaming my name. I’m going to take everything from you, Alexandria, until all you taste, see, and feel is me.”
While his fingers fuck me to a quick orgasm, his mouth latches on to the sensitive patch of skin just above my breast exposed by the deep V of the bodice of my dress. I moan loudly when he bites down, marking me.
A thin stream of light breaks the blackness of the room, as a door slowly opens in front of me. I jerk my head to the side, squinting my eyes almost shut, the bright light too intense and making my eyes burn and water.
My brain is still slightly hazy with memories of my night with Liam. There’s something there in my daydream, right on the edge of my subconscious that niggles at me.
“I’m going to take everything from you, Alexandria, until all you taste, see, and feel is me.”
I never told Liam my name.