Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
ANDIE
It was not fun. It was boring as hell, and absolutely pointless. I know how to fire a gun. But Jax and Rafe don’t know that, and I wasn’t about to tell them. Or show them. So, I stood there and listened to the two of them drone on and on. It was worse than getting a root canal. But I played along, nodded at the appropriate moments, and did what I was instructed. I hit my targets but made sure to hit them slightly off the mark. The guys are already all up in my business about where I learned how to fight, and I don’t need to add to my ever-growing pile of suspicions if I can help it.
And then Jax brought out the knives.
Wincing slightly when my bandages pull, I shift on the sofa and tuck my legs underneath me. Jax got in a few good shallow slices to my arms and torso, and they sting like hell. Evil bastard.
I settle into a more comfortable position on the sectional. I’m going to do my best to convince Keane to let me stay up here tonight. I would do just about anything not to have to sleep in the creepy-as-fuck reconstructed bedroom of my youth another night.
“How much longer do we have to stay here?” I ask the guys.
We’ve been at the cabin a couple of days now. It doesn’t make sense that we haven’t returned home. Not that I’m in a hurry or anything. I never wanted to step foot in that place ever again if I could help it. But my plans kind of require that I do, as much as it makes me sick to my stomach to think about it. Being under the same roof as my father again… Uncomfortable shivers dance down my spine at the thought.
Rafe is sitting beside me on the couch at a respectable distance, pretending that he hasn’t been side-eyeing me for the past hour. Keane is lounging back at the other end, his feet propped up on the coffee table, and Jax is manspreading on the oversized chair, tapping away at his tablet. The television is on, but no one is really watching the football game.
Keane doesn’t pay me any attention when he replies, “Dom is sending a few men in the morning. We leave then.”
“My father already left several of his men here. Why do we have to wait for more to arrive before we can go?”
Keane ignores me and pretends to watch the game.
If Declan Levine is really behind my kidnapping, I guess it’s good that Uncle Domenico is sending his own men to provide us an escort. Safety in numbers. I’d still like to know why Levine is suddenly interested in me. If his plans are to use me to get to my father, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. I don’t know anything. Yet. But when I do, maybe I can make a deal with Levine. Information in exchange for his help with taking my father down. The enemy of my enemy and all that.
Getting up, I stretch and bend my back to get the kinks out. I catch Keane looking over with interest. It’s then I realize that my T-shirt has ridden up and has exposed the diamond and amethyst belly ring dangling from my navel. When I stripped in front of them the other night, my back was to them.
“I’m hungry,” I state to no one, heading to the kitchen.
Rafe pops off the sofa. “I’ll come help you,” he says, walking up behind me.
“I think I can handle microwavable popcorn on my own.”
“Bring me back some red vines,” Keane calls out.
I stop and turn around. “You still eat those?”
Keane and Kellan always had a stash of red vines that I would find and steal. It became almost a game to see if I could find them. Kellan would hide the candy in various places in his room. One time, he actually hid the bag inside the tank of the toilet. Super gross. Food touching any part of a toilet is where I draw the line on whether something is edible. Five second rules do not apply at all.
“And a beer,” he adds.
“I’m not your fucking maid,” I grumble under my breath and stalk out of the room.
Heading straight for the pantry, I rummage around to see what’s available. I change my mind about popcorn once I find a box of brownie mix. Again, I’m surprised at how well-stocked this place is.
When I turn around, I crash into Rafe. Thank God I wasn’t carrying a carton of eggs.
Rafe backs me up inside the pantry and shuts the door.
“I want to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t,” I snap, and try to shove past him, but he blocks me by leaning against the door to prevent me from opening it.
I don’t like confined spaces or feeling trapped. My neck breaks out in a line of sweat as I glare at my ex.
“Get out of my way, Rafael.”
I’m two seconds away from going feral like a wildcat. I take a few slow breaths to calm down. I’m not back in the cage , I remind myself. I’m not back in that room .
Rafe’s dark brow drops, and his blue eyes heat. I have never seen him lose his temper before. Not once during the entire time we knew each other or even after we started sleeping together. Not even the night he was forced to watch me be beaten almost to death. He didn’t fight the men holding him down or fight to get to me. He didn’t erupt in a rage to protect me from the lashes my father inflicted. But right now, I can tell he’s close to tipping over the edge, and I’m honestly curious to see it happen. What would he look like if he released the beast inside of him? I know it lurks there, hidden. Keane may be intimidating. Jax may scare the hell out of me. But it’s Rafe who has the power to destroy me.
Sliding up until the tips of my nipples brush against his chest, I lick my lips and gaze at him from under my lashes. Lifting on my tiptoes, my breath feathers across his lower jaw, and a thrill goes through me when I see the rapid pulsing in his neck as he grits his teeth.
“What do you want to talk about?” I breathe, the sultriness of my voice barely a husky whisper.
“Andie,” he growls, his anger quickly turning to lust.
“It’s Alexandria to you, remember?”
I lean in closer and clench the box of brownie mix tighter, so I don’t do something completely stupid like reach out and touch him. My fingertips remember how his smooth, hot skin felt. How it tasted. I lick my lips again, and Rafe dips his head down at me, his eyes following the path of my tongue.
Teasingly, I say, “Do you want to talk about what I said earlier? Because I meant every word. Or should we backtrack a bit and reminisce about how you fucked me, then didn’t do anything to stop my father from beating me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he bites out, his accent thickening. “You know damn well?—”
I don’t let him continue. “Or do you want to tell me now, in person, that we are over, and you never want to see me again, instead of saying it in a fucking text message .”
The animal I knew that was clawing itself to the surface emerges, and I gasp in shock as Rafe lifts me up by the backs of my thighs and slams us into the shelving. The brownie mix falls from my hand as I clutch at his shoulders to gain purchase, grunting when he swoops in to force my lips apart and plunder my mouth.
The taste of him is so damn good, and God help me, as much as I hate him, I want to fuck him. I want him to shove his dick so deep inside of me, I forget my own name.
Rafe sucks on my tongue, sealing his mouth to mine, and I whimper as a flood of heady arousal drenches my underwear. My fingernails score down the soft fabric of his T-shirt and dig into the firm muscles of his back. I finally come to my senses when his hand pushes under the waistband of my sweatpants, and he begins tugging them down.
“No.” I bite his bottom lip, piercing the skin and drawing blood, hoping to snap him out of it. “Rafe, stop.”
“Fuck you, Andie, and your goddamn stubbornness.”
He grips my ass with one hand while his fingertips slide over the soft hair of my mons to pinch my clit. All brain function shuts down when his fingers slick between my folds, testing me. Toying with me. I curse myself and him when he plunges two fingers inside of me, and my hips take over, riding his hand, so hungry for the orgasm his skillful ministrations are quickly delivering. It takes a matter of seconds before I go off like a fucking bottle rocket. Rafe always knew how to make me come fast and hard. I have no control over my body, as I shake like a leaf in a windstorm, wave after wave of pleasure sending me on a high I never want to come down from.
A sudden burst of light falls over my closed eyelids.
“Well, isn’t this interesting?” Jax says with amusement from the now open door to the pantry.
Shit!
Rafe immediately releases me, and I plant shaky legs to the floor. Feeling mortified at what I allowed Rafe to do, and even more embarrassed for being caught, I straighten my clothes and step over the dropped food on the floor. I’m no longer hungry. Well, I am, but not for food.
“Bite me,” I tell Jax, as I rush out past him.
“I think Rafe beat me to it.”
“Alexandria, we aren’t done,” Rafe declares.
Whether he’s referring to our talk, what we were just doing, or about us in general, I don’t stick around to find out.
“We were done five years ago.” I throw up my middle finger as I speed walk away, then pause when I spot Keane, his shoulder propped against the wall of the kitchen.
He scans my flushed face and swollen lips with penetrating accuracy. Were they both in here listening to Rafe finger-fuck me?
“I’m done with the tests. I’m done being stuck in this house with the three of you. Get Uncle Dom on the phone. He can send Nico or Ezra to come get me tonight.”
Keane gives me a blank stare, saying nothing, which just infuriates me more.
“Keane! I’m serious. Enough?—”
There’s a loud beeping noise. I spin around to see Jax look over at Keane with alarm.
Everything happens in slow motion. Jax throws a kitchen drawer open and pulls out two guns, tossing one to Keane and then taking a third for himself. Rafe shouts something and lunges for me. But it’s too late. The front wall of the house explodes.
My body is violently thrown backward by an invisible hand. Rafe and I were standing nearest the front wall of the room, and the blast from the explosion propels us through the air several feet. My elbow slams into a chair before I fall like lead to the hard floor, a paroxysm of pain bursting forth where my head smashes against the travertine tiling. Dazed, I squint at the light penetrating through the smoke and floating debris, my ears buzzing with a high-pitched ringing. Five hulking silhouettes fill the space where there was once drywall. At first, I think it’s the guards my father stationed here when he left.
“Andie!” a voice roars, but the sound is muffled, like I’m underwater.
“Jax, do you see her?”
Suddenly, gunshots punctuate the white noise filling my head. My vision begins to clear, and the shadows take form. They aren’t shadows, but men with guns. Wait. Where’s Rafe? He was right next to me. I frantically search the area, but the room is filled with so much billowing dust and particulates, it’s hard to make out anything except the shadowy gunmen.
One of the men approaches nearer to my prone position, a semi-automatic held in his hands. What the hell is going on? I jolt when I hear Kellan’s deep voice warning me, telling me to get up, just as my eyes lock with the intruder’s. He’s wearing a black face covering, but the light brown of his irises is like a beacon in the chaotic darkness. Okay, the bad guys are wearing masks. Good to know. Not that knowing it will help because this guy has a gun, and I don’t.
What do I do? I scan the floor, looking for anything I can use as a makeshift weapon. I’d even take the box of brownie mix. I could toss the chocolatey flour into his face. Anything. Every second counts when you’re trying to escape a gunman and save your life.
My eyes fall on the outline of a butcher knife lying on the floor five feet away from me.
“Target located,” the gunman says.
I realize he means me when he swings his automatic my way, approaching quickly.
Get your ass up and fight, Tinker Bell! Kellan’s voice screams in my head, and it spurs me into action.
Just as the man looms over me, I kick up with my right leg, sending his weapon flying sideways. Using every bit of strength I can muster, I propel myself off the floor, colliding into him like a linebacker. A roll of dizziness hits me, and I stumble, giving him an opportunity to take something out from a side holster attached to his utility belt. I see an arc of electricity flare to life just in time. No way am I going to let this asshole tase me.
Jutting my open palm sideways to push his arm away, I wrap both of my hands around his forearm and duck under his arm, popping up on the other side of him and twisting his arm in the process. Applying pressure to the radial nerve, the man’s hand goes limp, and he drops the taser.
“He said you’d be a spitfire,” the man says, right before his elbow connects with my ribcage.
My lungs seize up and I gasp for breath. Rough hands grab my arms to subdue me. I’m almost to the point of passing out from lack of oxygen when a loud pop bangs next to me. The sound is enough to jolt my lungs into working again, and I heave in a desperate gulp of oxygen. The left side of the man’s head bursts like a gory pi?ata, and I’m suddenly covered with blood and brain matter.
This is the second time in my life that I’ve seen a man’s head explode. Arms catch me and band around my chest, dragging me backward, but all I can see is one of the guy’s pale brown eyes staring at me through his black mask. I go limp like dead weight in the second man’s arms. Memories from the night at the warehouse when I was a teenager—when I witnessed another man being tortured, witnessed my father shove a gun in the guy’s mouth—melding with the scene before me.
“Baby, I need you to move.”
Rafe .
Shouts and more gunfire. The melee around us is like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. Movement from Rafe’s side has me disengaging whatever autopilot I was on. I don’t hesitate this time. I grab Rafe’s wrist and swing his arm around, wrapping my fingers around his hand and applying pressure on his trigger finger to fire his gun. A body drops to the floor feet from us. Black mask. Bad guy.
My back is plastered to Rafe’s front, our hands still gripping the gun together as we sweep the area in front of us for more threats. Carefully, we move as one as Rafe guides us toward the back of the kitchen. Or what I think is the back. I can’t tell anymore.
Jax suddenly appears, and it’s like seeing the angel of death materialize from the haze of smoke. I swear I have never seen anything more beautiful in my life. His chest, arms, and face are covered in blood, his eyes like blue fire as he does a quick perusal of me. Where are his glasses? Can he even see properly without them?
“There are two more! I’ll handle them. Get her to the tunnel!” Jax shouts, maneuvering in front of us like a human shield.
With dual Glocks in each hand, Jax straight-arms both of them in front of him and fires. Someone’s agonized scream tells me that Jax hit his target. I must not be moving quickly enough because Rafe picks me up in a football hold and carries me to the corner of the room. A panel opens and he shoves me inside. Secret passage. I should have known they’d have one of these in the house.
Rafe tries to push me down the narrow corridor, but I’m resistant.
“We’re not leaving Jax!” I scream at him.
“He’ll be right behind us,” Rafe assures me and not so nicely nudges me forward, all while keeping his gun pointed behind us in case we’re followed.
After a minute, another panel opens, and we stumble into an airy garage bay where Keane is waiting with an SUV.
“Where’s Jax?”
“He’s coming.”
Rafe hands his gun to Keane and hefts me through the open back passenger door. He follows me inside the car.
Seconds later, Jax erupts into the room and dashes for the vehicle.
“Go, go, go!” he shouts, flinging himself into the driver’s side and over the console to the front passenger seat.
Keane gets behind the wheel, slamming the door closed, and spins the tires a few times when he presses down hard on the accelerator.
The garage bay opens, and no one speaks while Keane drives as if the hounds of hell are chasing us, which I guess in a way, they are. I turn in my seat to look out the back window and gasp. The entire house is ablaze. Thick columns of smoke twist around tornadoes of fire into the air. It’s a picturesque hell on earth. Part of me is giddy to watch it burn. No more pit and no more creepy room.
“Andie, are you hurt?” Rafe asks me, turning me catty-cornered in the seat to face him. He visually inspects me from head to toe as much as he can.
I slow blink at him. “No.”
He cups my face, his fingers probing my skull, and I wince when he comes to the huge goose egg on the back of my scalp.
“Liar,” he says softly.
His thumbs brush the apples of my cheeks and my eyelids flutter close as I breathe in a shuddering gulp of air.
Keane and Jax are having a conversation in the front of the car that I’m too out of it to pay attention to.
I meet Keane’s bloodshot hazel eyes in the rearview mirror. “You really upped the initiation tests. I hope I passed.”
That little comment earns me a small smile. “Yeah, princess. You passed.”
I stop myself from asking him what the fuck just happened because I know the guys will be just as clueless as I am right now. Where the hell were the guards?
“They were there for me,” I tell him.
Jax’s head twists around. He has his glasses on again. He wasn’t wearing them a few minutes ago. Where did he—? Never mind.
“Why do you say that?” Jax’s eyes bore into me, making me want to cower in the corner in the back seat with how dead and black they look.
I guess that’s what killing people does to your soul. Each life you take also takes something from you until, eventually, there is nothing left.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my elastic band that was holding back my long hair. I try to run my fingers through the loose strands, but they get caught in the matted tangles. I think I also just touched brain matter. My stomach lurches and I drop my hand to my lap, refusing to think about it, lest I have a complete freak out. Wherever we’re heading, the first thing I’m going to do is take a shower.
“One of the men said that he told him I’d be a spitfire.”
“Who?” Jax urgently prods. He’s holding a cell phone in his hand. The guy must be a magician.
I start to shake my head but then stop when it throbs like a motherfucker. I more than likely have a concussion. Great. My body is racking up injuries left and right.
“I don’t know. That’s all he said. He wasn’t going to shoot me. He had a taser. Do you think it was Declan again?”
If so, why is he so obsessed with kidnapping me? He’s going to a lot of trouble to get his hands on me, and it confounds the hell out of me as to why.
“How the fuck did they know where we were?” Jax asks.
“I want to know how they didn’t trip any of the cameras or alarms?” Keane directs at Jax.
That sets Jax off. He slings several inventive expletives back at Keane and starts typing furiously on his phone.
Rafe takes a chance and extends a comforting arm around me, pulling me to his side. I go willingly, too tired and in too much pain to argue. I gently rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
“This bullshit has to end, Keane,” he tells him, disgust and anger clear as day in his tone. “Where are we heading?”
“We need to get her somewhere safe and figure out our next move. If it is Levine, he just started a war. Jax, call Dom and let him know what happened. Tell him we’re coming back.”
I don’t hear anything more as my vision blurs, black spots dancing across my eyelids. Right before I let exhaustion drag me under, dread slithers into my bones. They’re taking me back to the lair of the devil.