by Leah Wilde
“Hold tight,” Titus said as he knelt down in front of me and cut my ankles loose.
I considered kicking him while he was down, but the urgency in his eyes and tone told me that he really was concerned about my safety, so I refrained. Instead, I knew I needed to play along to keep from getting hurt.
“Come on,” he said once I was free, urging me to get up and run out the door in front of him.
I did as I was told. I got up and started toward the door, but as I ran past my brother, I saw a look in his eye that didn’t seem quite right.
He brought his hand down behind me, and I felt something against the back of my head. I tried to cry out to tell him to stop, but I felt my body falling to the floor as everything went black.
Chapter 27
Rogue
“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked Brodie when we pulled up to the old warehouse. There wasn’t a single light on, and there were no signs of people hanging around anywhere. The place looked deserted.
It was pretty well lit from the streetlights and the light posts in the parking lot surrounding the building. Plus, there were lights from nearby buildings that were keeping it where we could see.
“I mean, would you want anyone to see you if you weren’t supposed to be here?” Brodie asked as he unbuckled and opened the door.
We didn’t ride our motorcycles out to the warehouse. We didn’t want anyone to hear us coming up. With the businesses that were still in operation along this section of the river, there was still enough noise to drown out our cars as we pulled up. We parked in a darkened section of the parking lot, beyond the lights, so I was confident no one could see us, if there was even anyone there.
Everyone got out of the cars quietly with handguns and assault rifles drawn. We drove two matte black SUVs with everyone in them to the warehouse. We had a total of fifteen men with us between the guys who had been at HQ when the explosion went off and the men Mason had gathered at Brodie’s.
“Alright, guys, this is it,” I whispered to the men as we gathered behind the cars. “Once we leave the shadows by the cars here, we’re targets. So keep your eyes open for anything, anyone. You see someone move, take a shot.”
“But what about Violet?” Brodie reminded me.
“Don’t worry about her. Titus won’t throw her out into the open like that. He isn’t trying to make her a target. We won’t find Titus until we get inside, and then we’ll find Violet with him,” I explained to everyone.
I looked around at the men standing with me. We all wore jeans and black t-shirts with our vests on over them. We were going to try to keep from being spotted but we weren’t going to hide. When we went in to take him down, Titus and all of his men would know exactly who it was shooting at them.
I glanced over at the building, sitting in dark, vacant silence. The sound of the river and all of the work that was going on along it filled the night. The warehouse was a blemish, a dead spot in the middle of so much activity. It really didn’t seem like anyone was waiting for us in there.
The whole thing smelled like another of his setups. We were going to be ambushed.
“Before we go,” I said, turning back to everyone. “I need a couple of you to stay out here and train your scopes on the building just in case this turns out to be an ambush. It’s just quiet enough that someone will be waiting for us.”
“Got it,” Mason said, and he pointed at two of the guys who climbed up on top of the SUVs and pointed their rifles at the warehouse.
“Alright, guys, let’s go. Stay tight, stay together, and stay low. We don’t want to be seen until we are right on top of them,” I told them as we walked away from the cars.
We proceeded carefully, trying to avoid the light as much as we could. We had the cover of noise as other nearby warehouses loaded and unloaded freight containers, but that meant Titus and his men enjoyed the same cover. We kept our eyes peeled for moving silhouettes in the night.
With so many open windows, it was like the warehouse was left wide open with no real walls on the outside. Most of the glass from the old metal window frames was missing or broken. In some places, we could see straight through the building. The bay doors for loading and unloading were all wide open along the front of the building.
I nodded forward and pointed into one of the bay doors. We climbed up onto the loading dock. In the darkness, we moved as stealthily as we could have. Again, any sounds we made were drowned out by the sounds of industry around us.
We entered the ground floor and encountered Titus’s first men at the stairs leading up to the second floor.
“Thanks for holding my spot,” I told one of the guys as I grabbed his head and snapped his neck, letting him drop to the ground at my feet.
Mason did the same to the other man guarding the stairwell.
“I like this,” he said. “No gunshots. Just snap their necks.” He laughed, taking too much pleasure in what we were doing.
“Well, I hope you get to have more fun when we get upstairs,” I told him.
As we went up the stairs, the noise we made became clear, but we were far enough inside that we surely sounded like his men coming up the stairs.
Things were very different on the second floor. It was wide open with an office in the back. There was a small yellow light glowing behind the frosted windows.
“I bet that’s where they’re keeping her,” I told my men. “Let’s go. Mind any gunfire. Make sure you don’t shoot off towards the office. Brodie, Reese, with me. Mason, you take the guys with you. Kill them all. Save Titus for me if you see him.”
My heart had been pounding as we crept through the ground floor as it pumped adrenaline and anticipation through my veins. Now, finally closing in on my chance to face Titus and get Violet back, it almost stopped beating completely, as if it were scared to make too much noise or distract me from the task at hand.
Gunshots erupted behind me as my men and Titus’s started shooting at each other. I ducked to avoid any stray bullets as I hurried to the office where the light was still glowing.
Then, I saw the door open, and Titus came out with Violet. He had an arm under hers and around her chest.
“Violet,” I called out, but she was obviously unconscious, draped over his arm.
Titus held a gun to her head, a Glock 9mm, probably the same one he’d used to shoot Mike at the pawn shop and send my ass up the river five years ago. He sidestepped around to the corner of the office.
“Drop the guns, Rogue,” he said.
“Man, let’s ice this guy,” Reese said.
“Can you get a clear shot, Rogue?” Brodie said.
It was good to hear the guys on autopilot again and to hear the aggression returning to their voices. They were hungry for it, but I wondered if they were too hungry. If they didn’t proceed with some measure of caution here, they were going to cost me everything I was fighting for.
“Rogue, either they drop the guns or I drop the girl. Your call, boy,” Titus said.
“Guys,” I said, cautioning my men as I raised my hands.
“Rogue, you can’t be serious,” Reese insisted.
“Put the guns down, guys. We can’t risk losing her,” I said. I leaned down and put the gun in my hand on the floor.
Reese and Brodie followed suit. I could still feel the handgun I usually carried stuffed behind my belt in the back of my jeans. I usually only carried one gun, and Titus would have known that, so he wouldn’t have expected another gun behind my back.
“You’re as dumb as you look.” He chuckled as we stood up from putting our guns down.
“Maybe,” I sort of agreed as I started to approach him with my hands held out so he could sort of see them in the dim light. “But I don’t have a gun to my own sister’s head, Titus.”
“Please. You thought she meant something to me? You never stopped to think that it was too easy to get the photos of her? I mean, if my sister meant as much as I made you think she did, don’t you think I would have had
someone watching her? And if I had someone watching her, wouldn’t they have noticed a photographer following her around the city suddenly?”
Was he saying that even my idea of revenge was part of the setup? Was all of this planned the whole time? I knew Titus was cunning, but I never would have given him that much credit.
“Don’t get me wrong, Rogue. I knew someone was following her and taking pictures of her. I knew who he was, and I paid him to make sure he got the best pictures he could of her. Don’t think I didn’t notice how sexy my young sister was then. Everybody wanted a piece of her, so I knew it was only a matter of time before you came knocking,” Titus continued.
I was fuming, but in the dim light, I was pretty sure he couldn’t see the look on my face. I was content to let him keep talking, because that was what he was best at, but I couldn’t help how it made me feel to hear what he was saying about Violet.
“I pretended to be mad when I found out you had made contact. I pretended to confront her so that she would want you even more.” He chuckled as he continued. “I mean, how did you think I knew anyway? I didn’t wait for her to tell me. I heard you were getting out, and I put someone on her so I could see how long it would take for you to make contact. I made sure you knew where she worked from your cell, so I knew where you would go to find her. I set you up, brother.”
“We’re not brothers,” I growled.
“Oh, he speaks.” He laughed.
The gun under my belt begged me to grab it. Titus was waving his gun around as he talked, taking his attention off his unconscious sister. I knew it would only be a matter of time before Violet woke up and made the situation worse.
“I think we got everybody,” I heard Mason say as he joined Reese and Brodie behind me.
“Tell him to put his gun down,” Titus said, putting the barrel of his gun back to Violet’s head.
“Alright, take it easy, Titus.” I turned around and called out to Mason, “Good job, brother. Now put your gun down, and tell everyone else to do the same.”
I heard their guns hit the ground, knowing that at least Mason had more firepower on him. He wouldn’t be caught dead with only one gun on him. And even then, the gun wouldn’t be the only weapon he was carrying. Mason loved to fight, and he would take it any way he could get it, even provoking members into verbal altercations and fist fights.
“Looks like we have a good old-fashioned stand-off going on here, Rogue,” Titus said with another obnoxious laugh. “It’s a shame I’m going to win, though, don’t you think?” he continued.
“Yeah, I think it’s a shame you’re that delusional,” I agreed. “Look, we all know you want me, Titus, so let Violet go. Let someone drag her out of here so you and I can finish our business. Whoever’s left standing gets to go home tonight and soak in the hot tub with a few cold drinks. How does that sound to you?”
“Oh, that last part sounds great. That’s what’s going to happen anyway,” Titus said, “but it’s not going to be that easy, Rogue. See, I gave you my sister for a reason. Now that she brought you to me, I don’t really have any use for her, so what I’m thinking is I’m going to go ahead and take care of both of you tonight so that I don’t have to worry about you anymore.”
That was the thing that got me about Titus. I never could tell how much of what he said was genuine and how much was just talk. He talked all the time, and he was good at it. He knew how to get under anyone’s skin, even if they knew what they were in for by talking to him. I knew he was pushing me to do something stupid so that he would have an excuse to ice somebody, but I really wasn’t sure if he was going to pull the trigger on me or her first.
That was when she woke up.
Chapter 28
Violet
When I came to, it was dark around me. I could feel a strong arm wrapped firmly across my chest. It wasn’t a gentle embrace. The person was holding me like a piece of meat. I assumed it was my brother. There was something pressed against my head, something hard that told me not to freak out. I didn’t want to startle him if he was holding a gun to my head.
If he was carrying me and holding a gun to my head, it meant that the silhouettes standing in front of us were Rogue and his men. While I should have been excited at the prospect of being saved by Rogue, I was still terrified by my brother’s actions.
Up until that point, I had always had the unshakable conviction that my brother was out to protect me. I had firmly believed that he would not have done anything to harm me. But there we were. He had a gun pressed firmly against my head. I was waking up from where he had knocked me out, presumably by bringing that same gun down on the back of my head when he was trying to get me out of the office ahead of Rogue’s arrival.
He had used me as bait, and now he was using me as a shield because I must have meant more to the shadowy figure standing before us than I did to him. Titus was showing me his true colors. We were all just pawns in his little game. I wondered what other ways he’d used me over the years.
“Titus, what’s going on?” I asked groggily. My voice was wrecked. My throat was painfully dry, probably from all of the dust in the warehouse.
“Violet, so nice of you to join us,” he said, but his voice was strained more than usual. Normally, he would have had a threatening and vaguely condescending tone. He would have sounded like the cunning villain in a children’s movie. Every word out of his mouth was usually loaded with threatening suggestion.
When he spoke to me, he simply sounded like the same villain after being backed into a corner. That made him even more dangerous and unpredictable than normal.
“What are you doing, Titus?” I asked him. “Where are you carrying me?” I tried my best to sound clueless. I knew what his plan was, or what the rough plan must have been. He was trying to use me to buy some time or distance so he could make his escape. By waking up, I may have inadvertently sped him up. At least when I was passed out, he was having to deal with my weight holding him down.
“I’m carrying you as insurance, little sis. See, as long as I have this gun to your head, your little boyfriend here isn’t going to do anything.” His voice shook with fear and adrenaline. His guard was down, and I could hear every emotion running through him for the first time.
“Violet, are you okay?” Rogue asked me.
“She’s not talking to you,” snapped Titus. He pointed his gun at Rogue, taking it away from my head just long enough that I could try to pull his arm away from me.
“Let me go, you creep,” I shouted, my voice suddenly back. I saw the opportunity to get away and my body responded by immediately pumping a full dose of adrenaline through my veins.
“Whoa, if you’ve got that kind of energy, you can start walking with me,” Titus said. He tightened his grip on me and put the gun back to my temple.
“Titus, no. What are you going to do, shoot me? What is that going to do?” I asked him. “Let me go, Titus.”
“You are the only reason Rogue is here tonight, little sis,” he said to me. “See, he might have shown up eventually, but when he found out I had you, he hurried over here.” He turned his attention to Rogue again. “Which tells me that he’s gone soft. Over a girl!” He mocked the biker with laughter. “You fell right into my trap.”
“Your trap?” I asked.
“Yes, little sis, my trap. I used you as bait all this time. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist your sweet, pure body, so I set him up. I made it seem like you were the perfect target for him to set his sights on when it was time to exact his revenge after he got out. And sure enough, he went right to you. So, while he was violating your little body and making you like it, you were doing exactly what I had planned for you all along.”
My skin crawled while he hissed in my ear. I tried to pull away from him. Every time my brother opened his mouth, he became more and more disgusting to me. I couldn’t believe I had idolized him as a child. I couldn’t believe this was the creep I looked up to as the epitome of small town success.
&nb
sp; “What are you going to do?” I asked, no longer pretending to be scared or confused. Really, who was pretending? I was terrified. The brother I knew, the one who wouldn’t have hurt me for any reason, was gone. He had just been an act put on by the man who held a gun to my head in front of the one man who probably did care about me.
At least Rogue hadn’t really hidden who he was from me. His intentions may not have always been the purest, but I felt like his silences and untruths were there to protect me. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was there to take me from Titus. That was going to have to be good enough.
“Well, if your boyfriend here doesn’t back up and tell his men to drop way back, I’m going to shoot you. In the chaos that it causes when I blow your head off, I will escape. If Rogue pursues me or sends any men after me, I will kill him, too.” His voice was starting to collect itself and he was starting to sound like himself again.