“But maybe if we call the police,” Wendy started.
I shook my head. “Tell no one. As soon as I figure something out and rescue Mayra, I’ll let you know.”
“Where are you going?” Wendy demanded.
I moved to my truck and pulled open the door. “To get Mayra.”
“But how?” Wendy wondered.
I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was about to do, but I knew staying here wasn’t going to get Mayra back. “Go home. Wait for my call.” I climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked up the truck.
“I’m so sorry,” Carnie called. “I didn’t know that he was going to take her. I had no idea she was in trouble.”
It wasn’t Carnie’s fault, but right now, she was the only person besides myself that I could be pissed at. “Take your sister home, Carnie.”
I slammed the truck into reverse and turned it around. I glanced in my rearview mirror to see Wendy holding her sister and crying.
I didn’t have time to worry about Carnie and Wendy. They were safe now, and nothing was going to happen to them.
The truck fishtailed as I pressed down the accelerator, and I reached to put my seat belt on. Nothing was going to stop me.
“I’m coming, Mayra,” I whispered to the empty truck.
I was fucking coming.
*
Chapter Twenty-One
Mayra
“Wake up.”
My eyes fluttered open. “Huh?”
“We’re here. Get up,” Bobby growled.
I wiped my eyes and sat up in my seat. I glanced at the time and sighed.
Five hours ago, I had been kidnapped by Apollo and Bobby.
Four hours ago, I had boarded a private plane and was strapped into a lush, leather seat.
“We’ve landed.” Apollo walked out from the back of the plane buttoning his jacked. “Leo is waiting for us.”
I hadn’t been terrified by Apollo before. Now that I had spent hours with him and he hadn’t killed me, I knew I had been lucky. Any fear I should have had was now transferred over to Leo. I fumbled with my seat belt. “Uh, isn’t it a little early?” I mumbled.
“Money doesn’t sleep,” Apollo explained.
“And neither does Leo Banachi, apparently,” I mumbled.
“You are correct,” he laughed.
I managed to get my seat belt unbuckled and stood. I had tried to come up with a plan to escape, but I couldn’t figure anything out. Besides, there weren’t a lot of places to go when we were thirty thousand feet in the air. “Uh, am I able to talk to Boink?” I asked.
Apollo shook his head. “You’re not to talk to anyone before you talk to Leo.”
Oh great. “I just want to let him know that I’m okay.” At least for now.
“Mr. Banachi talked to Wrecker. He let him know that you haven’t been harmed.”
Yet.
Bobby grabbed me by the arm and led me off the plane. We got into an SUV that was just like the one we had driven to the small airport, and I buckled myself in. “Uh, are we in Chicago?” I needed to ask as many questions as I could to figure out what I was going to do.
“Yes. We’ll be to the compound in twenty minutes.”
Great, I had an estimated time of arrival for when I was going to meet my possible death. “Maybe I can try to get a loan,” I pondered out loud.
“The time for you to figure things out is gone, Mayra. Like I told you back in Pines Peak, the ball is in Mr. Banachi’s court now.”
“And Mr. Banachi is done playing the game,” I whispered.
Apollo nodded. “The game changed, so now new rules must be figured out.”
That didn’t sound like I was going to die. I mean, if I died, they really weren’t going to get the money that was owed to them.
“Boink, Wendy, and Carnie are okay, right?” I was worried about what was going to happen to me, but I really didn’t want anything to have happened to them.
“Your friends are safe, and from my understanding, Mr. Wynn will be landing shortly.”
“Landing?” I asked.
Apollo nodded. “Seems your knight in shining armor is following behind us. I can only assume Wrecker is requesting him to be there while your situation is discussed.”
I was a situation. I dropped my chin to my chest and sighed. “I didn’t want anyone to get involved in this.”
The time for regret was over.
The only thing I could do now was do everything possible to smooth things over with the Banachi’s, then stay as far away as possible from Boink so I didn’t mess up his life anymore.
*
Boink
“What the hell are we doing?”
Clash pulled into the drive-thru line of a fast food place. “I’m hungry.”
He was hungry? Now was not the fucking time to eat. “You can eat after I get Mayra back from the Banachi’s.”
Clash shook his head and crept forward in line. “The meeting with Leo isn’t ‘til this afternoon. We got plenty of time to get a breakfast burrito.”
My stomach turned at the thought of food. “Talk for yourself, brother.” Food was the furthest thing from my mind right now.
We finally got to the front of the line, and he ordered four breakfast burritos and two large orange juices.
“I told you I wasn’t fucking hungry.”
“When’s the last time you fucking ate?” he asked me.
I couldn’t even remember. I knew it had been with Mayra so it had to at least be fifteen hours ago.
He pulled up to the window to pay and handed the cashier a twenty. “The fact that you can’t even remember when you ate means you need to eat. You’re gonna be fucking useless if you starve yourself.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the orange juices from him. “I’m not gonna pass out from hunger, dumbass.”
He grabbed the bag of food and thrust it at me. “Yeah, well. Now I know for sure you won’t as long as you eat this.”
“You got some motherly qualities to you, Clash.”
He flipped me off and pulled back onto the highway. “We’re taking the long way back to the clubhouse.”
I grabbed a burrito and handed it to him. “Trouble in paradise?” I asked.
He glared at me. “You saddled me with Raven. You should know that I am far from paradise. You got the easy one.”
I pulled another burrito out of the bag and unwrapped it. “You notice I’ve been gone for almost four weeks and am now back because Mayra got kidnapped by the Banachi’s? That easy to you?”
“That part ain’t easy. I’m talking about the chick you got saddled with. I mean, come on. For the most part, she did what you said, and you wound up in bed together. Wanna hear how things are with Raven and I?”
Hooking up with Mayra was the only good thing that had come out of the past four weeks. Mayra also made some new friends, but in the end, those new friends helped her to get kidnapped. “Hey, I watched Raven for a bit too. I know how that chick is.”
Clash shook his head. “Brother, you don’t even know the half of it.” Clash finished his burrito and tossed the wrapper at me. “When she found out you and Mayra were gone, she freaked the fuck out.”
“On Wrecker?”
He shook his head. “On me, brother. She did go off on Wrecker, but that was about five minutes of yelling. I took the brunt of it for at least two weeks where she tried to escape the club every fucking minute of the day.”
“Damn.”
Clash took a sip of his orange juice. “Every fucking door has to be locked.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“Brother, I have to lock her in her room every night, and I sleep in Mayra’s old bed. When she’s working, I have to be sitting right next to her. You know she works eight to ten hours a day with barely getting up.”
I chuckled and grabbed another burrito for him.
“I’ve set an alarm every half an hour to make sure I’m awake. Wrecker caught me sleeping one time, and he punch
ed me in the junk to wake me up.” He shook his head. “Can’t let that shit happen ever again.”
“You ever wonder why the hell she is the way she is?”
Clash shrugged. “That’s another thing. She doesn’t talk to me. She yells at me to get out of her way or doesn’t even look at me.”
“So, maybe you got the raw end of the deal when it comes down to it.” At least Mayra understood what was going on and that I was just trying to keep her safe. It sounded like Raven wanted to do whatever she wanted and then when she would get hurt, she would blame Clash for letting her do it.
“Though, fair warning. Pretty sure she is going to rip you a new asshole when we walk into the clubhouse.”
I sighed and finished my food. Just what I fucking needed. I already felt like complete shit for not protecting Mayra, and now I was going to be berated by Raven.
“You also gotta deal with all of the other chicks.”
I glanced over at Clash. “They barely fucking knew her. She spent most of her time at the clubhouse in her room.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s like some unspoken code they have. You know the Girl Gang shit?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Hard not to know about it when they talk about it all of the time.”
“Alice got shirts made, and she told Wrecker they need a room in the clubhouse where they can have meetings.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “You gotta be fucking kidding me. Did Wrecker have smoke coming out of his ears when she asked?”
He nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wrecker that annoyed before.”
“So what room did he give her?”
Clash glanced at me with a huge smile. “He gave them the shitty one at the end of the east hall.”
I whistled low. “They aren’t going to be having meetings in there anytime soon. That room is a shit hole.”
“Pretty sure that was all part of Wrecker’s plan. He gave her what she wanted, but it’s gonna keep her out of his hair while she gets the room finished.”
As long as she didn’t bug all of the guys to help her. While it seemed like a good idea, it could turn pretty quickly on Wrecker.
“Damn,” Clash muttered. “Sure as shit wished that took longer.”
We pulled into the clubhouse, and Clash parked in front of the door. “We could always go around the block a few more times.”
Clash laughed and shook his head. “Wrecker would be onto us then. You already got him on your case, and I don’t need to deal with him and Raven.”
Before I even got out of the truck, Wrecker walked out the front door. “That is not a good sign,” Clash said quietly.
I stepped out of the truck and waited for Wrecker to either punch me or chew my ass.
“Flight good?”
I blinked and took a step back startled. “Uh, it was fine.” I didn’t really remember it. I had managed to get a red eye flight that had a forty-five-minute layover. I barely made it to my connecting flight.
“Leo called me this morning.”
It was only eight. Leo must be an early riser, or he was wanting to get this over with. “What did he say?”
“Mayra is safe except for a few bumps and bruises.”
I flexed my fists. “I’m gonna kill whoever laid a hand on her.”
Wrecker looked over at Clash. “You were right,” he chuckled.
I didn’t see what the fuck was so funny. “Right about what?” I demanded.
“You fell for her,” Wrecker replied simply.
“Don’t really see what that has to do with anything.”
Wrecker took a step closer to me. “What it has to do with it is you’ve got a hell lot more invested in this than just her being a job I gave you. All you see is getting her back and killing whoever gets in your way.”
“How else am I supposed to see it?” I said through clenched teeth.
“You see it as an opportunity to get your woman back, but also as a chance to make connections that otherwise weren’t available.”
“You’re not going to use Mayra as a bargaining chip.”
Wrecker put his hand on my shoulder. “Pull your head out of your ass. I’m not going to do anything that is going to hurt Mayra. I’ve been talking to Oakley.”
Oh shit. “Uh, Oakley?”
Wrecker eyed me up. “You got a problem with that?”
I had never told Wrecker about what Mayra had told me about Oakley being her half-brother. At the time, I didn’t think that it would ever be an issue. It had gone over thirty years without anyone speaking a word about it or knowing. There were very few people who knew about it, and most of them were dead. “Uh…”
“Fucking shit,” Clash laughed. “You got some dirt on Oakley or you just don’t want to bring him in on this?”
“It’s not dirt…it’s just something Mayra told me.”
Wrecker’s eyes hardened. “What the hell shit is your woman into that she has information about Oakley Mykel?”
“She did work at the club for a bit,” Clash pointed out.
“Church. Five minutes,” Wrecker grunted. He stormed back into the clubhouse and slammed the door shut behind him.
Clash chuckled and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Give me one,” I growled. I didn’t normally smoke. I did it when I drank or was pissed off.
I was pissed off.
Clash handed me one, and I stuck it in the corner of my mouth. “Light.”
He handed me his lighter, and I inhaled the intoxicating smoke.
“You got any other secrets you’re holding out on me?”
I shook my head. “Nah, this is it.” But it was a fucking big one.
Wrecker and the club weren’t going to believe me when I told them.
Neither was Oakley when he found out.
*
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mayra
“Hungry?”
I shook my head.
I didn’t want to drink.
I didn’t want to eat.
All I wanted was to find out what Leo was going to do with me.
I had been sequestered into a large bedroom with the advice from Apollo to get some rest.
Now someone who I had to assume was a maid had brought in a tray with three domed plates on it and a pitcher of water.
“You really must eat.”
I turned and saw another woman enter the room, but this one was not a maid.
Not at all.
She was tall, elegant, and exuded class. She wore a tailored black pantsuit, and her long wavy hair flowed down her back. “Well, I’m starving so I’ll eat with you.”
She sat down at the table where the tray was laid and grabbed a napkin. She draped it over her lap and lifted the lid of one of the domes. “Marianna makes the best chicken salad. I’m talking it is next to godly.” She grabbed a sandwich and laid it on her plate.
I stayed on the bed with one leg tucked under my butt and the other on the floor.
“You could at least sit by me.”
I didn’t know who this woman was.
She was much too young to be Leo’s mom or aunt, so she either had to be his wife or sister.
The maid stood next to the table and nodded at the woman. “Would there be anything else you need, Mrs. Greer.”
Ah, this was Apollo's wife.
Greer shook her head. “All good, Amelia.”
“Apollo mentioned you were quiet, but I didn’t think you would really have nothing to say.”
“I want to go home,” I stated quietly.
She had to know that I was here against my will. How could she just be sitting there thinking everything was okay? “You will.”
“When?”
She looked up from her sandwich and smiled. “Once the men talk and think they’ve solved all of the world’s problems.”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
She nodded. “Yes, but I’ll only tell you what I know if you come and
sit with me.”
She seemed harmless. Hell, she seemed like someone who could be part of the Girl Gang. Though, she was a bit more fancy than any of them would ever be, she would still fit in.
I stood up and slowly walked to the empty chair. I pulled it out and sat down.
She picked up a sandwich and set it on my plate. “Eat. Apollo told me you’ve been refusing food and water. You’ll be passed out on the floor by the time you’re back with your man.”
I knew there wasn’t any sense in arguing with her. She seemed like she was somewhat on my side, or at least could tell me what was going on. I took two bites of the sandwich that was as delicious as she promised. “You were right. That’s good.”
She nodded. “I know my food. If you’re here through dinner, I’ll make sure she makes her meatloaf.”
I set down my sandwich and folded my hands in my lap. “You’re being really nice to me, and while I appreciate this friendly kidnapping, it’s hard for me to relax not knowing if I’m going to die or not.”
Greer choked on her sandwich and waved her hand toward the pitcher of water. I poured her a glass and handed it to her.
“I don’t know what Apollo was talking about when he said you were quiet,” she wheezed. “You’re really rather funny.” She took another sip of water and looked at me. “I’ll get to whatever point it is you need to hear.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Your father borrowed a butt-load of money from Apollo’s cousin, Leo. Your father never paid any of it back, and when he died, that debt fell on your mother. I wasn’t with Apollo back then, so I couldn’t work my charm to convince those two that it wasn’t your mother’s obligation to pay the debt.”
“And it shouldn’t be mine either,” I hissed. “I didn’t even know about it until they showed up on my door after my mother died.”
Greer sat back in her chair. “My husband is a good man who sometimes does bad things. The same goes for Leo. I don’t hide my head in the sand and think on the nights where my husband doesn’t come home that he’s just catching up on paperwork. Sometimes, they get so used to doing bad things that they don’t see that they could do something good instead.”
Fallen Lords MC: Books 4-6 Page 29