“What’s happening?” Tegan demanded.
“She’s still out. Is that normal? Been about six minutes.” Please say it’s normal.
“How hard was she hit? Or was she hit? Did she fall? I need something here.”
“From what it looked like, she fell back . . .” If she’d simply fallen, would the wound have been so bad? “She was pushed, and the back of her head connected with a wooden dresser.”
“Okay. What else?”
“She’s roughed up. There’s blood on her face, but I don’t think it’s hers. I can’t find a source for it, unless she bit her tongue or something.” Yeah. When that dead man nailed her in the face with his fist. The thought had him growling like an animal.
“What? What happened?” Tegan asked at the sound of his rage.
“Nothing. Just . . . reacting.”
“Okay. Vinnie, don’t freak out, but she’s been unconscious a bit long. With a knock to the head, you should only go down for three or four minutes. Now, that doesn’t necessarily—”
Vincente dropped the phone on the seat next to him.
He wouldn’t freak out. He wouldn’t freak out.
Breathing through it, he gently pulled the too-still, too-beautiful body in his arms closer and then thundered to her brother, “Put that fucking pedal down, Paynne! Get us home now!”
After pounding through the door Vito held open, Vincente stormed into the well-lit foyer of the house with Caleb on his ass and made for the double doors that led to the basement. Hopefully no one was—
Around.
Great. His teeth snapped together when he saw Maks, Alek, Quan, Alesio, Gabriel, and Eva, pacing around the door he needed to use to get Nika to Tegan’s med room. Fuckin’ peanut gallery. Except for Eva, of course. The poor little thing looked as if she was about to lose it. He could see it in her eyes.
Vasily stalked out of the living room, his private physician, Yuri Davidenko, hot on his heels. Vincente relaxed that much more at the sight of the brilliant doc, not caring why he was suddenly there when he hadn’t been when Vincente and Caleb had left. Two docs were better than one.
His steps didn’t falter as he aimed for the already open doors, hoping to push through those gathered. But Eva stopped him with a hand on his arm. Lucky. The only one he wouldn’t double tap on the nose for getting the hell in his way.
“Vincente?”
He looked at a darkly glowering Gabriel. “Later.”
“Is she okay?”
Clearly she hadn’t noticed her friend’s blood-matted hair. Also clear, Tegan hadn’t yammered the details around. Vincente still didn’t look at Eva. He couldn’t.
“She’s unconscious,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “Please, Eva, let me get her downstairs.”
“Yes, of course.” Her voice shook as if she were riding an old-school wooden roller coaster.
Vincente’s arms tightened around Nika, and then he was moving again. Down the wide staircase and through the living area with its massive sectional and mirror-backed bar area. He went left rather than right, which would have taken him down a corridor and past the theater room and two spare bedrooms and eventually onto Maksim’s suite. This way lead to the gym, Maks’s office, and their makeshift infirmary. It wasn’t Yuri’s mini-hospital where surgery could be performed, but it did the trick. He laid her on the metal table and got out of the way so Tegan—who’d pulled over a tray of instruments—and Yuri could get to her. He moved to the end of the table and clamped a hand around Nika’s slim ankle, for some reason needing the connection as he watched the Russian lift that gloriously bright head so he could see her wound.
“Fuuuck,” Yuri cursed, even though his expression remained impassive. “Did she slip away immediately or was she lucid for a time after the hit?” His words were clipped and professional, his English perfect despite his thick accent.
“She was spacey but okay for at least three minutes before she went out.”
The relieved sigh that reached his ears was a godsend, as were the words. “That’s good. Very good.”
Vincente moved up the table, keeping his palm on Nika’s skin the whole way. Her foot, calf, knee, thigh. He pulled her dress down to a descent level and took her hand as Tegan flashed a penlight into her eyes, which were dull and murky beneath her lids. He looked down as he uncurled Nika’s fist so he could hold her hand and saw the USB stick. She’d been holding it so tightly, even unconscious, that it had left an indentation in her palm. He took it and stepped back when Tegan gave him an elbow to the ribs.
“Outta here, Vinnie. Let us stitch her up.”
Her don’t-fuck-with-the-doctor voice had him inching for the door. Shit. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay. Be here when she woke in case she was afraid. He didn’t want to leave her, the way he had in Seattle. How could he have done that to her? He’d failed another innocent he should have protected. He’d disregarded what he’d plainly recognized as fear in her eyes the day she’d kissed him. And he’d come back to New York and left her alone to deal with it.
Hadn’t what happened to Sophia taught him anything about not being there?
“Vincente! Out!”
He turned at Tegan’s bark and almost ran Caleb over as he entered the corridor. “What is this?” he demanded, holding up the stick.
The biker shook his head, his eyes on his sister. “I don’t know, V.”
“Let’s find out then. Maks?”
Maksim opened his hand, and Vincente dropped it in his palm. Everyone but Vasily and Eva followed them behind the bar to command central—Maksim’s computer geek’s wet dream of a room. Screens lined the walls, keyboards the counter. Laptops, towers, dials, and buttons covered every other surface. Fucking starship Enterprise.
The techie flopped down into a huge black leather monstrosity fit for a king and popped the stick into a USB port. He pointed to the largest screen in the middle of a half-dozen others. “It’ll be here,” he murmured as he tapped away. “File’s only named by a number one.”
Vincente and Caleb, Gabriel and Quan, and Alek and Maks were all silent as they stared at the blue screen. Vasily slipped into the room just as an image popped up. Salvage yard. Chain-link fence. No one around but three Obsidian Devil vests and one lone wifebeater.
For nearly three minutes they watched the crystal-clear images, and in the end, wifebeater was dead. By Caleb Paynne’s hand.
Enough evidence to put the biker behind bars for a very long time.
Everything Nika had gone through—why she’d stayed with her abuser for so long—suddenly clicked into place.
“She went through this . . . for you,” Vincente said into the silence that followed.
“Holy fuck.” Gabriel’s voice was muffled by his hands as he scrubbed them over his face.
“Dude. I’m fuckin’ sorry.”
Vincente turned at the sincerest apology he’d ever heard Maksim utter.
The frayed thread to his control snapped and the overpowering rage he’d been trying to suppress found the outlet it had been seeking.
“Sorry? You’re sorry for him?” he yelled at his friend. “What the fuck for? He wasn’t constantly beaten and who knows what else. It’s not him in there possibly fighting for his life, for who knows how many times now.”
He turned on Caleb, all the vile hatred for bastards like Kevin Nollan spewing out with his words. “In all the times you went to that fucking prison she was living in, you gonna tell me you never saw anything to clue you in to what was going down there? Not one thing that didn’t fit? A weapon, or maybe a gag he probably shoved down her throat so she couldn’t call for help? But, hey, who would she have called for?” He left the answer to that one flapping in the breeze. “Why did you not force your baby sister to tell you the reason she stayed with an animal like that? Why did you allow her to hold you off?” he roared. “Be
cause you didn’t want to deal with it? For her? You wouldn’t deal for her?”
“Vincente!” Vasily’s voice was sharp, his tone filled with disapproval. He came over and clasped his shoulder, squeezing in warning. “That’s enou—”
Vincente shook off the mitt as the horrors the helpless women in this world went through at the hands of the men in their lives, not to mention strangers, pummeled him. Horrors made a thousand times worse because guys like Paynne, or people like Nika’s neighbors, chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on right under their self-absorbed noses. How could not one person have noticed a sixteen-year-old girl getting pushed into a car while walking home from school on a bright, sunny day? He barely blinked at the change in his thoughts. Or had they, and decided it wasn’t their business to get involved? Had they heard Nika’s cries of distress and simply turned up the volume on their TVs to drown them out?
First Sophia. And now Nika . . .
His eyes burned, his voice becoming eerily quiet. “She suffered through his abuse so that you wouldn’t have to live in a cage. Do you get that?”
Gabriel came forward. “V, I think you might be—”
Vincente wasn’t finished. “What did you do for her, Paynne? What did you do to save your sister from that monster? Have Vex look into some bank records, almost a year into the marriage? Yeah. That’s what you did.” His vision shook from the guilt and remorse and self-hatred that suddenly crashed over him. “I would have killed a hundred men for my baby sister!” he thundered. “If I’d found her in time, I would have killed them all!”
A shocked silence fell, and then his friends were cursing, the sympathetic sounds mingling with Vincente’s strangled breaths.
Oh . . . fuck.
“Knew that was coming,” Vasily murmured as he went to stand before Paynne. He grabbed the biker by the jaw with his big tattooed hand and put their faces together. “Despite what was just said, this was not your fault. Your sister was a clear victim here. But it was her choice not to bring you in on the situation. Probably the same you’d have made for her if the tables were turned. Do not disrespect what she did by making this about you. You understand me, kid?”
When he didn’t get a response, Vasily bumped foreheads with the biker and slowly walked from the room.
Vincente’s senses took their time coming back online, and when they did, he wished they hadn’t. What the fuck was he doing? Castigating this already-broken man because of his failure to protect his own sister?
The indignity of his actions settled over him as he looked around, seeing the wariness in his friends’ eyes at the fact that he’d uttered even those few words about that black year that had changed him forever.
“Caleb.” He reached out. “Fuck, brother. I’m sorry.” Holy shit. What had he done? Words couldn’t be taken back after they were spoken. No matter how much he apologized. He knew that. Vasily had been dead-on about this having been Nika’s choice. Vincente had embarrassingly made it about himself.
Caleb’s cold fingers gripped his wrist, his coffee-colored gaze tormented. “You’re right, V. Vasily . . .” He trailed off, looking toward the door. “I don’t know.” He settled his gaze back on Vincente. “But don’t you dare eat your fucking words now. Because you’re right. I fucked up . . . absolutely.”
Vincente shook his head at that too-familiar admission. “I was speaking from a place I had no right—”
“Doesn’t change anything,” Caleb insisted, his voice flat.
“Yes, it does,” Maksim said firmly. “Vasily was right, whether you know it yet or not. Your sister took this on herself, chose to deal with it alone. That’s on her, Paynne. She’ll probably tell you the same thing. You’ll see.”
The biker turned away, and Vincente had his first visual of what he himself lived with every day of his life. He saw firsthand what his friends were forced to look at every day.
Guilt and an incredible amount of sorrow left over from an innocent girl’s tragedy.
Something her big brother should have been there to prevent.
CHAPTER 7
Finding it impossible to interact anymore, Caleb removed himself from the company of Vincente and his boys. He shuffled out the door and down the hall. Didn’t know where he was going, but anywhere was better than where he’d been.
He felt numb, his mind so full of this catastrophe it felt empty. And his heart, his heart was bleeding, rivers of blood, an endless supply to fill the aching pit of despair around it.
What have I done?
He couldn’t find an answer. Couldn’t make his brain work enough to even attempt it.
His heart continued to beat, sluggishly, as if it were trying to decide whether it wanted to give that next thump.
For the first time in his life, Caleb wanted to die.
Correction. He wanted the oblivion of death. He wanted his mind wiped clean of the horror he’d just witnessed. A horror that had unfolded because of him. A tragedy he could have, should have, prevented but hadn’t because he hadn’t wanted to upset his . . . his . . .
An image of Nika as a young girl suddenly filled his mind, bringing him back to their childhood, to a day when she’d wanted to join him and his buddies in the tree house their father had helped them build in the big spruce in the corner of their backyard. Nika had been too afraid to climb the ladder by herself, so Caleb had traveled the rungs one by one, keeping her skinny little body between his arms, her bright hair poking his eyes and tickling his chin as he’d sheltered her so she wouldn’t fall backward onto the hard ground. The worshipful look she’d gifted him with once she’d sat her eight-year-old butt down on the plywood floor of the fort had made his twelve-year-old heart swell with pride. He’d felt like a knight in shining armor.
A sharp pain traveled up his legs as his knees hit the hardwood with a dull thud.
His sister. His beautiful, charming, effervescent baby sister, whom he’d watched change during the past year into a shadow of her former self, and he hadn’t done a damn thing about it.
His throat squeezed so tight, his breath choked off. He hadn’t wanted to make her any unhappier than she’d already appeared. He’d stood by, arms folded, refusing to push. Refusing to end her torment, so as not to make her unhappy.
The irony of that was incredible.
He barely felt the heavy hands jam under his armpits and haul him up to deposit him rather gently onto the cushions of the sofa. He glanced up in time to see Alek’s empathetic expression before the guy disappeared up the stairs.
“She’s gonna be okay.” Maksim had come in, too, his accented voice carrying over the clank of ice being dropped into a couple of glasses. “You’d be amazed how much the mind can handle and still manage to function normally.”
“She made me promise.” He cringed. The words embarrassed him because they sounded like a defense. But he repeated them because he needed the reminder of Nika’s insistence. Of the reason he’d given his word and allowed her abuser to continue his sick game. “So many fucking times, she made me promise to stay out of it. I thought maybe Nollan was fucking around on her and she was waiting to throw it in his face.” He barked out a disbelieving laugh that he’d been so dense. “I should have done something. Anything. Should have dug sooner. Found something. But I didn’t. I didn’t do fuck-all for her.” He squeezed his eyes shut and saw again his sister lying on the floor of that hotel room, bleeding.
“Hindsight, my brother. She’ll fuck you every time.” The big Russian paused as he splashed some liquid into the glasses. “She was trying to protect you. Like Vasily said, respect it because you’d have done the same for her. I find it fascinating the lengths she went. Sacrifice is not something I understand. Maybe you can talk to Gabriel about how he deals with the nightmares we all know he has about Eva being in that cabin with Stefano and Furio. His wife chose to go to her death for him and her father. Who does shit like that?
” He chuckled and put the stopper into the bottle before picking up the drinks. “Huge respect for the ladies. Anyway, talk to Gabriel. See how he deals with it. If he does at all. Though, I don’t think any of us would be comfortable if someone else took shit on our behalf. None of us feel we’re worth it. True?”
Absolutely. Never had truer words been spoken. But the bitter, acrid taste of guilt continued to trickle down the back of Caleb’s throat. “She was wrong. So fucking wrong to have done this for me.”
Maks pressed a glass into Caleb’s hand before dropping into a chair across from him. “I think not. What-ifs, should-haves, if-onlys, maybes—they’re all a waste of time, my man,” he continued in that same believe-me-I-know tone. “The only thing you can do now is let her know you’re here for her. Support her. Tell her you’re grateful. Help her recover from this. And she will.”
Caleb lifted his scorching eyelids to watch the intimidating SOB swallow half his drink. Then Maks’s eerie silver eyes met his own, and the knowledge and pain in that stare blew him away.
“And a word of advice. Don’t take offense to V’s club-you-over-the-head approach. Guy was never the same after his little sister was ruined and murdered.”
Caleb hadn’t known Vincente had lost a sister.
Maksim filled him in on the details of Sophia’s abduction, forced drug addiction, and ultimate death by overdose, and how Vincente had rarely ever mentioned it, choosing to keep it bottled up inside. “That never-ending pain he’s lived with for over a decade obviously came out during that speech of his. Mark my words, Paynne. He’s going to try to be there for your little sis . . . the way he wasn’t able to be there for his own.”
Vincente followed Tegan into the med room. The sound of a ball game coming from somewhere seemed obscene, but it remained just a drone in the background.
He’d wanted to talk to Caleb but decided at the last minute to give him some space. That’s what he’d want if he were in the biker’s situation. A whole lotta space. But then, that was him. In the end, he’d left Maksim on watch.
The Salvation of Vengeance (Wanted Men #2) Page 9