I tried, but as I clicked on the bid button, the page refreshed and the clock timed out.
“Fuck.” I picked up a glass of whiskey and threw it at the wall instead.
“I’ll get Paul back in, he won’t be far. He might be able to trace the IP address for that site.” Cill raced out of the room, scrambling for his mobile phone as he did to make the call to Paul.
I couldn’t even focus on breathing, I was so consumed with finding this fucker and ending him. He’d picked the wrong guy to fuck over this time. I’d spend every day until the day I died finding her, and him. I’d never give up.
I heard a commotion coming from the corridor outside, then Dennis appeared at the door, looking flustered.
“I tried to stop them, boss, but they were kinda insistent. I wasn’t sure you’d want me manhandling your girl’s family.”
Travis pushed past Dennis and stormed into my office, his face awash with fury and his fists balled tight, ready for a fight. His father followed behind, looking just as vicious, but more successful at keeping his emotions in check.
“I don’t have time for your bullshit today,” I snapped, but Travis was having none of it.
“What the hell did she ever see in you?” He sneered at me like I was a piece of shit on his shoes.
I already felt shitty enough, I didn’t need his derision. “I’m asking myself that same question right now, Travis.” I could tell from the grind of his jaw he wasn’t impressed with my answer.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Where is she?” He slammed both of his palms down on my desk and leant forward in a show of dominance, trying but failing to intimidate me.
“I don’t know, mate, but I’m trying to find out and you coming charging in here isn’t helping.”
“You don’t know where she is?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Did she finally come to her senses and dump your sorry ass?”
“No, she fell into the wrong hands and if I don’t do something right this minute, none of us are seeing her ever again. I’m not joking, Travis. Your timing is really fucking shitty. Let me do my job and find her.”
I stood up from my chair, ready to drag them out of my office with my own hands, but I stopped when Ryley’s dad put his hand on my chest to halt me in my tracks.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but what the hell do you mean my daughter has fallen into the wrong hands? What exactly is going on?”
I debated fobbing them off with some bullshit, but I figured they deserved to know the truth as much as I did. So I showed them the website, told them the story about Ed and what he’d done. I left the part about my own revenge out of it. I felt that muddying the waters wouldn’t help at this stage. That was an issue for another time. Right now, it was all about Ryley.
“I fucking hate you.” Travis went to hit me, but his Dad held him back. “If she hadn’t met you, none of this would’ve happened.”
“That might be the case,” her dad growled, speaking to Travis, but giving me the death stare. “But it doesn’t change the fact that she did, and now here we are, in this fucked up situation, and we need to work together to find her. The fighting can wait until after. Am I clear?”
Travis nodded and ran his hands over his face. The turmoil that I was feeling was written all over him too.
“How the fuck are we supposed to find her from this dodgy website?”
“That’s where we come in.” Cill lead a flustered-looking Paul back into the room. I offered my seat and he proceeded to click away on my laptop, then grimaced and shook his head.
“I’ll get to the IP address eventually, but it could take hours, days maybe. How long have we got?” He looked up at me, then thought better of it and glanced across at Cill.
“We have no time. We need something now.” I wanted to grab this Paul and pound an answer out of his face, but I knew that wouldn’t help anyone.
My mobile started to buzz on my desk and I saw Luca’s number appear. I wanted to ignore it, but something told me to answer. It was always worth telling him when shit was going down in this city. He had an uncanny way of being able to dive into shit and come up smelling of roses. As far as I could tell anyway.
“Marquez, this isn’t really a good time. Can I call you back?”
Luca and I had been through some of the worst times of our lives together. I trusted him, and in turn he’d always been a loyal friend.
“Just tell me what’s up, Caine. Who needs to disappear? You know time isn’t on our side when we need to track someone down.”
I rubbed my temples in frustration. Dealing with Steve was the least of my problems.
“I need more than one person to disappear, but I can’t find the other one and he’s got my girl.”
“You mean Ryley?” Luca’s voice sounded strange, strained even.
“Yes, Ryley. Who else would I be talking about?”
I heard Luca growl on the end of the phone, and then he started to bark out some orders to the men that must’ve been around him.
“Your Ryley is with my Chloe. I just spoke to Chloe half an hour ago. She said they were going for coffee. Fuck.”
The knot in my stomach twisted as I waited to hear what Luca would say next. Everyone knew Chloe was untouchable, but I hoped and prayed Ed had gotten that message.
“What’s your plan?” I asked him, expecting a string of threats to fly down the phone at me.
“I’m gonna go and get them,” he said, way more calmly than I’d expected.
“That easy, huh?”
“Yeah, it is when you’re fitted with a shit ton of trackers. We both had them put in months ago, so we always know where to find each other. Right now she’s at an address across town and her monitor shows she’s still alive, so I’m heading over there now. Whoever has them both is going to wish he’d never been born.”
Genius. Pure fucking genius.
“I need to come with you. Luca, you have to send me that address. Please. This is my shit to clean up. I need this,” I begged, and thankfully, Luca relented.
Two minutes later, we were heading across town with Cill in the seat beside me. Dennis was fussing about in the back seat, checking his guns and ammo. And Travis and his dad were tailing my ass in their Range Rover behind. We were the fucking cavalry, ready to do battle and go to war at any cost.
“I didn’t realise you’d make me quite so much money on this auction, bitch. I should’ve gone into this trafficking gig a long time ago. Think I’ve been doing the wrong hustles. Don’t you?”
Ed sat smiling at me like he’d just won the fucking lottery. Maybe he thought he had, but not for long. Things were about to take a turn for the worse for him. I wasn’t being sold to anyone. I’d rather die than let him lead me out of here to God knows where.
“You won’t see a penny of that money.”
“Won’t I?” He gave me a fake, confused look, trying to toy with my heightened emotions.
“No. You need the merchandise to sell, and I’m not for sale.”
He laughed and pulled his gun out again, pointing it at my face before dropping it and his arm to the side.
“I like your fire, but save it for your new owner.”
He went to stand, pushing himself up off the sofa. I didn’t stop to think about the consequences, I just acted purely on instinct. Using the lapse in his concentration as he moved, I made a grab for a marble ashtray from the coffee table. I whacked him on the side of the head as hard as I could, throwing my whole body weight behind the blow.
Ed grunted and fell to the floor, but my hit wasn’t enough to knock him out. He rolled onto his back and then lurched forward, making a grab for me and pulling me down onto the floor with him. The ashtray fell from my hand, and angrily, he kicked it away.
“You sneaky little bitch. Don’t think I won’t send you off to your new home with a few new bruises.”
He raised his hand up and smacked me hard across the face, making my head jolt to the side and my jaw radiate wit
h pain.
He moved to straddle me as I lay on my back on the floor, then put his hand around my neck and squeezed hard.
“One more move like that and I’ll cut you. I’ll leave a permanent mark, something to remind you of me when you’re gone.”
He leaned forward, grinning down at me. His rancid breath made me recoil with disgust, but the way he’d moved his body gave me an edge, and I was going to take full advantage of it. I took a deep breath, and with every ounce of strength I had in me, I lifted my knee up and kicked him in his balls as hard as I could.
He howled like an injured animal and rolled onto his back, grabbing between his legs. Suddenly, a flurry of action erupted around me. As if appearing from nowhere, Chloe hurtled herself across the room, screaming like a banshee and holding some kind of metal rod in her hand. She jumped onto Ed and stabbed the rod straight through his right eye, causing him to convulse and jerk all over the place. It was like a scene from a horror movie, only this wasn’t a movie, it was our grim, fucked up reality.
I didn’t even have chance to gather my next breath before Chloe was snatching Ed’s gun, and firing one single shot into his head. Then silence. Ed stopped jerking. All you could hear was our breath panting, our hearts thumping loudly in our ears and out of our chests.
“Are you okay?” Chloe asked me, looking totally unfazed herself, like it was all in a day’s work for her.
I went to answer, to tell her I thought I was okay, but honestly, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“What the hell was that?” I managed to ask, nodding to the metal embedded firmly into Ed’s eye.
“Oh that? It’s some kind of metal flush rod I managed to wrangle free from the toilet cistern back there. Good job the building isn’t the only old thing around here, hey? The toilet was gross, all rusty and old, but thank God it was. I was able to pull that rod off easy enough.”
“Jesus, Chloe. You’d give Jason Bourne a run for his money.” She smiled then looked back at me with a sad expression on her pretty face.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Ryley? You look really pale.” I couldn’t believe Chloe had done all that she had. She was pregnant, and yet she was still worried about me.
I went to speak, but I was cut short by the sound of the front door bursting open and angry bellowing voices bouncing off the walls.
As we pulled up to the address Luca had given me, I saw him and his men pour out of their vehicles like a plague of rats ready to crawl all over this shit. I swerved into the nearest parking space I could find, leaving the car parked at a peculiar angle, but I couldn’t give a fuck. I didn’t want Luca going into that apartment without me. I wanted to be the first guy my angel saw. I had to get to her.
The adrenaline was coursing through my veins, burning up my body. I felt like a killing machine, programmed to lock and load. Find, kill, and destroy at all costs. Hell, this whole fucked up shit storm was of my own doing and I needed to put it right.
I didn’t stop to speak to Cill or Dennis. I didn’t even wait for Travis and his dad to find us. I was on automatic pilot. I darted forward, pushing my way past the tail end of Luca’s men and taking the stairs two at a time. My breath was heavy and laboured, but it wasn’t from exertion. I was close to hyperventilating, panic rising in my throat like bile. All I could think about was her. All I could focus on was tearing down whatever doors and walls stood in my way of protecting her. Why the fuck did everyone I loved have to be ripped away from me? Was I really that cursed? Destined to spend my life miserable and alone, forever seeking vengeance against those that’d wronged me and the ones I loved? This had to stop.
The sound of a gunshot ringing through the stairwell had us surging forward with shouts of ‘fuck’ and other cuss words. I felt that shot in my very soul, tearing through my chest, ripping out my heart. A flashback to the last time I’d been on the outside, hearing a gunshot go off for a loved one, made my head spin and I felt myself sway. My eyes glazed over as I fought the urge to scream out in terror. This couldn’t be happening, not now. Not when I’d just found her.
Thank God Luca knew exactly which door to approach. He wasted no time launching himself towards it to bust it down. It didn’t budge the first time, but I charged forward to join him, and with a few more of his men helping us, the locks burst open. We tumbled into that apartment, pumped up for revenge and ready to unleash hell.
Luca pushed through first and I followed him. I didn’t know what we’d find behind that door, but I couldn’t stop to think, I had to get inside, to her. Frantically, I scanned the room looking for my angel, and when I saw her standing in the middle of the room shaking like a leaf, my heart stopped beating and everything froze in time. She was alive. Thank God, she was alive. I felt weak at the sight of her. She had a mark on her face, which made me clench my jaw so tight I could’ve cracked my teeth. I was so angry. But seeing the look of relief and pure love in her eyes made me dissolve into a pool of warmth, all for her. This woman was my everything.
I saw Travis and his dad out of the corner of my eye, standing to the side of me. In a way, I felt jealous that they were there, ready to sweep her away from me. Manipulate her into spreading her affection between the three of us, when all I wanted was to carry her away and just love her. Bring her back from this in my own way.
Her face began to crack as she ran towards us and then she bounced up into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist, and burying her face into my neck as I buried mine into hers. We stayed like that for what felt like forever, just breathing each other in and letting the warmth of our bodies begin the healing process. My heart was bursting from my chest with the love I felt for her. Three men stood before her; me, her brother, and her beloved father, but when she’d needed comfort, she’d chosen me. She’d put me first. No one had ever put me first, not like this. If her family didn’t know it before, they did now. I was hers and she was mine. We needed each other to survive. She calmed me, and judging from the way her tense little body was starting to soften, I calmed her too. This wasn’t just a connection, this went far deeper than any bond. We were etched into each other’s souls, forever fused together, and it felt so right. She was my soul mate. She was made for me.
After a minute or so, she reluctantly dropped her legs down to the floor, but she kept her arms wrapped tightly around me, and I held her close to my chest. It was only then that I was able to take in the true extent of the nightmare my angel had endured before we came here.
Justin, the gutter rat, was lying in a pool of blood just behind the door in the living area, a single gunshot wound to his head. So, he really was a rat, getting pulled into Ed’s plan and fucking Ryley over yet again. If he wasn’t lying in a pool of blood now, he would’ve been after today. I’d have made sure of it. Ed lay a little further away from him, with some kind of metal rod sticking out of his socket, and a single gunshot wound in the middle of his forehead. He’d had the ending he deserved. I just felt pissed I hadn’t been the one to hand it to him.
Luca was holding Chloe, hugging her tight and whispering into her ear, but she appeared placid and almost detached from the carnage lying around her.
“How did you-” I didn’t get to finish my sentence.
“It was Chloe, she’s amazing. She saved us. I don’t know what I’d have done without her.”
Chloe glanced over to us both and casually shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve dealt with worse.” She wrinkled her nose as if it were nothing then looked across to me. “Look after her, she’s special.”
I pulled my angel further back into my chest and kissed the top of her head. “I know she is, and believe me, I’ll be doing nothing but taking care of her from now on.”
Ryley looked up at me, her eyes sparkling like diamonds that made my breath catch in the back of my throat. I was so goddamn lucky to find her. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight for a long time, not after today. We’d had enough bullshit thrown our way to last a lifetime.
“Take Ryley home,” Luca c
ommanded. “I’ll have my men clean this up. In a few hours there won’t be a single trace of DNA in this whole fucking building. It’ll be like those fuckers never existed. You have nothing to worry about my friend.”
I nodded back at him, grateful to escape this hell hole and get my girl out of there.
“I’ll stay and help,” Cill piped up. “Are you up for a little clean up, Dennis?”
Dennis grunted in the affirmative and Cill grinned. “He’ll do the heavy duty stuff and I’ll try and bring a bit of light relief to the proceedings.” Trust Cill to try and lighten the mood after a double kidnap and homicide.
Luca didn’t look impressed and steered Chloe towards the exit.
“You will ring me won’t you, Ryley? If you need to talk about anything, just call. Don’t sit at home stressing about any of this. None of this is your fault, okay?” Chloe rubbed Ryley’s arm as they walked past us and headed out the door.
“Chloe,” I called out, and she stopped and turned to face me. “Thank you. What you did today… I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you.”
“Anytime. I’m just glad I was here to help.” She threw a knowing look Ryley’s way, and then they left.
Harry, Ryley’s father, coughed to clear his throat. He was making a conscious effort not to look at either of the bodies, and his face was grey and haggard.
“Sweetheart, I think we need to go home. Talk about what’s happened today and find some peace together, as a family. We need you back at home with us, Ryley.”
Travis agreed and glanced at me as if he expected me to argue. I didn’t need to.
“Not now, Dad, please. I think I’ve had enough drama for one day. I’m exhausted. I just want to go home. Our home, mine and Jackson’s, and spend the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing except being thankful that we got out of here alive. We’ll come and see you tomorrow, I promise, but not now.” She peered up at me with a solemn look in her eyes. “I just want to go home.” She sighed.
And there it was again. She was putting me above them. I was the one she wanted to be with, to seek comfort from. Not her family, me. She was my family now. My life began and ended with her.
This Cruel Love (A Dark Hearts Stand-Alone Novel Book 2) Page 30