Twisted

by HELEN HARDT

  Twisted

  Steel Brothers Saga: Book Eight

  HELEN HARDT

  Contents

  Copyright

  Warning

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Continue the Steel Brothers Saga with Book Nine

  Don’t Miss Misadventures!

  Chapter One

  Message from Helen Hardt

  Also By Helen Hardt

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  This book is an original publication of Helen Hardt.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2017 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Photographs: Shutterstock

  * * *

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Warning

  This book contains adult language and scenes, including flashbacks of child physical and sexual abuse, which may cause trigger reactions. This story is meant only for adults as defined by the laws of the country where you made your purchase. Store your books and e-books carefully where they cannot be accessed by younger readers.

  For Dean

  Prologue

  RYAN

  I’d saddled up my horse, Sergio, and gotten ready to go for a run, when I realized Sergio, as fast as he was, wouldn’t be able to give me the speed I was craving.

  I patted him down. “Another time, boy,” I said.

  Then I wandered back up to the detached garage at the guesthouse where I kept my pride and joy—my Porsche 911 Turbo. Sleek navy blue—custom paint job—and posh leather seats, the convertible sat under its chamois cover. His name was Jake.

  I removed the cover and stared at it in all its glory.

  Neither of my brothers were into cars. They were more comfortable in their pickups than in the luxury sedans they both owned. Me? I loved them, though I didn’t take Jake out as often as I would have liked to.

  Right now? I needed speed. I needed the wind blowing through my hair as I sped a hundred twenty miles an hour down deserted country roads.

  My life was in shambles.

  The woman I—

  The woman I what?

  Loved?

  Fuck. I shoved my fingers through my hair.

  I fucking loved her.

  Ruby. Ruby who’d kept a secret from me. She’d taken my punishment for that. A woman who had only recently opened her body and mind to sex had let me take what I needed from her.

  Damn.

  My life was a mess.

  I couldn’t have a relationship, and I had no idea if she felt the same way anyway.

  So for now, I’d get Jake out onto the open road and scream through the next couple hours at top speeds.

  My phone buzzed.

  Shit. It was Joe.

  “Yeah?” I said into the phone.

  “Hey, Ry. Tal and I just wanted to…”

  “What, Joe? What the fuck do you want?”

  “To make sure you’re all right.”

  “All right? Of course I’m not all right. My life has been shattered, and I just spent the last hour listening to my biological mother spin all kinds of tales.”

  “You went to see Wendy?”

  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

  “No. Of course not. But we should have been there with you.”

  “Ruby went with me.”

  “Good. Then you weren’t alone.”

  “Alone? I got news for you, Joe. I’m fucking alone. I have no idea who I am anymore. I have no idea who my brothers are anymore. It doesn’t get much more alone than that.” I ended the call, furious.

  I got into the Porsche, put the top down, and backed out of the garage. “Let’s go, Jake,” I said. “Show me what you can do.”

  I drove through the private roads and off our property and then headed into the deserted country roads. Route 78 was straight and narrow with the ups and downs of the foothills.

  Perfect.

  The first one hundred miles an hour came easy. Jake’s engine roared with power, promising me more speed, more thrill. The sound of his tires screaming along the road began to disappear as I eased him toward one forty. The rubber clawed at the road.

  I resisted the urge to close my eyes and drift away with Jake.

  Closing one’s eyes at a hundred forty miles an hour was never a good idea.

  I edged toward one fifty, and Jake drove as smooth as a gazelle running across the savanna. One fifty-five. One sixty.

  Oh, yeah.

  Lift. I felt the oxygen tunneling under the engine. Much more speed and I’d get into the air like a fucking plane.

  Of course not, but I felt it. Truly felt it.

  Jake’s engine had now drowned out all road noise, what little there’d been.

  My blood thumped in my ears in time with my heartbeat.

  One sixty-five.

  One seventy.

  Vibrations. Vibrations against my thigh.

  Just the engine. Just me flying through the goddamned air.

  No.

  It was my phone.

  Answering the phone at a hundred seventy miles an hour?

  Not a good idea. But what the fuck did I care?

  I put the phone to my ear, a smile on my face. “Hello?”

  “Ryan,” a male voice said. “This is your father.”

  Chapter One

  Ruby

  What next for Ryan and me? Could we even have a future now?

  If only I hadn’t fallen in love with him.

  Clearly he wasn’t in love with me, and right now he had way more to
deal with than anyone should have. Bothering him about our “relationship” was not something I’d do.

  What could I do?

  More research on the future lawmakers. Another visit to my uncle, maybe. Another visit to Larry Wade. At least the two of them seemed less crazy than Wendy. Still crazy, though.

  It all seemed so futile now. No matter how hard I worked, I never seemed to get anywhere. Questions didn’t turn up answers. Only more questions.

  What would make me feel better?

  Being with Ryan, but that wasn’t in the cards.

  Then it hit me. I’d call Shayna. Just check up on her to see how she was doing. Maybe she’d heard something about Juliet and Lisa.

  I searched my contacts and pulled up her number. It rang a few times, and then a female voice answered.

  “Hello, Shayna? It’s Ruby Lee, from Jamaica.”

  “Ruby? I don’t know any Ruby.”

  “This is Shayna Thomas, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We met in Jamaica. Remember? When your…friends and you went off on those Jet Skis?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please don’t call me again.”

  The line went dead.

  What?

  I called the number again. This time I got no answer. It went straight to voice mail. “Listen, Shayna,” I said. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I assure you there’s nothing to fear from me. I’m a friend. I want to help. I want to—” The line went dead.

  I called again. No voice mail. She had blocked me.

  Why?

  What was she afraid of?

  My nerves prickled as I eyed my glass of water on the counter above me. I wasn’t thirsty. I wasn’t hungry.

  I wasn’t…anything.

  And then my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognize.

  Shayna! Perhaps she’d been afraid someone was listening in, and she’d tried a different phone.

  “Shayna?” I said into the phone.

  “No,” an eerily familiar male voice said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Who is this, please?”

  “Ruby,” the voice said, “this is your father.”

  The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the floor.

  Ruby, this is your father.

  It was him. Once he said my name, I’d have recognized his voice anywhere. Its sleaze was etched in my brain.

  Show Daddy how much you love him.

  Still, my cop instincts kicked in. Background noise? Where was he?

  Nothing. All I heard was the deep rasp laced with evil.

  Theodore Mathias. Depravity personified. Inhumanity personified. I swallowed, inhaled deeply, picked up my phone. It was already set to record all my conversations. Good thing.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Where is who?”

  “Shayna Thomas. You got to her, didn’t you? You’re telling her not to talk to me. You’re involved in all of this somehow.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “Trafficking. Human trafficking. I know all about it. You’re involved in the disappearance of those two girls from the resort in Jamaica. You got to Shayna. That’s why she’s refusing to talk to me.”

  “You always did have a vivid imagination.” He chuckled.

  “And you always were an insane piece of shit.”

  I waited, listening to his inhalations over the phone, for him to respond to my comment.

  He didn’t.

  A few seconds later, “You think you’re worth that badge you wear?” he snarled. “Prove it.”

  My body went numb. He had always kept one step ahead of the authorities. Never left a trail. My father wasn’t just evil. He was brilliant. A noxious combination. Only recently had he begun contacting me—once when he came to town with his girlfriend, and now…after his partners had been taken out. Something was definitely up.

  “We’ve got Larry Wade. And Tom Simpson is dead.”

  “They were amateurs.”

  “Oh? And you’re a professional criminal?”

  He laughed—that sleazy, corrupt laugh. “Of the three of us, I’m the only one who’s eluded you and that boyfriend of yours.”

  Boyfriend. Of course he knew about Ryan Steel. The Steels had been trying to find him for months now. I wasn’t in the least surprised he knew about my relationship—if I could call it that—with Ryan. My father watched me, just as I watched him. It was a sick little game he liked to play. I’d only seen him once since I ran away from his home seventeen years ago—just recently, in the company of Jade’s mother, Brooke Bailey—but he left little clues letting me know he was observing. I’d been compiling a profile on him for years. Now that I had a witness who would testify against him—Talon Steel—I was more determined than ever.

  For a while, I’d lived in fear that he’d come for me, but he hadn’t. Once I’d become a cop, it hadn’t taken me long to figure out why he scrutinized me but didn’t come after me.

  He might be a psychopath, but he was also a father. In some bizarre way, he wanted to see me succeed.

  Yet for me to truly succeed, I had to take him down. He and I both knew this. It was part of the fucked-up little game we played. I had to remain calm. Keep my cool.

  “I suppose you’ll be tracing this call…and recording it,” he said.

  “I will. It’s procedure. But you and I both know it will come to nothing.”

  My father was way too smart to put himself in any danger of being caught.

  “Indeed it will,” he agreed. “Come to nothing, that is.”

  “So why are you calling me? You obviously know I was trying to get in touch with Shayna Thomas.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play that game with me. You know damned well who I’m talking about.”

  “Think what you want, Ruby, but that’s not why I called.”

  “Why, then?”

  “I want you to call off the Steels.” The line went dead.

  That wouldn’t happen. As much as I’d have loved to protect Ryan and his family from the horror that was my father, they would never stop until they’d brought him to justice. And neither would I. But the Steels had something I, as a cop, didn’t. Unlimited funds. If I couldn’t find him with my resources, they could with theirs.

  Besides, my father knew I’d never ask Ryan and his brothers to stop their manhunt. This was just another little ploy in his game.

  We were getting closer. Two of his cohorts were gone, and my uncle Rodney Cates had started talking. Wendy Madigan was also talking, and though the bitch was batshit crazy, she told the truth every once in a while. Now that Ryan knew he was her son and not the son of Daphne Steel, Wendy had fewer reasons to keep quiet.

  My father, of course, knew all of this. I worked on the assumption that he knew everything that happened before I did. He had eyes and ears everywhere. He wouldn’t have survived this long without them. Such watchers cost money, and my father had that in abundance. Human trafficking paid exceedingly well.

  Acid crept up my throat.

  Human trafficking.

  I’d had a working theory for several years that my father was involved in the sex slave trade, but I’d only recently found out I was correct.

  In the back of my mind, I’d been wishing I were wrong. As despicable as my father was, I’d hoped he’d stop short of selling people. But what could anyone expect of a man who kidnapped and raped a ten-year-old boy, murdered another, raped his own niece, and attempted to rape his own daughter? And those were just the crimes I could prove.

  Human trafficking would be nothing to him.

  I’d recently returned from Jamaica, where the older two Steel brothers, Talon and Jonah, had been married. I was the guest of and honor attendant for Melanie Carmichael Steel, Jonah’s wife. She and I had only recently met but had become close quite quickly because of our ties to the Steel mystery. Having left home at fifteen, I’d gotten used to flying
under the radar. I’d never really had a real friend before. Melanie was a friend.

  She was also a psychotherapist. She’d said she’d be willing to talk to me anytime I wanted to. I was comfortable with Melanie, and I trusted her. And God only knew I had a lot of baggage I needed to unload, not the least of which was figuring out what was going on with Ryan Steel.

  I’d betrayed him. I’d been the one who gave his sister a strand of his hair so a DNA test could be run to determine whether Wendy Madigan was his mother. Results were in, and Ryan was only a half sibling to Jonah, Talon, and Marjorie, the three of whom were full siblings, children of Bradford and Daphne Steel. Ryan was Brad’s son, but his mother was not Daphne, contrary to what he’d always thought.

  I’d owned up to my part in it when he confronted me. I owed him that much. I’d even let him take me to bed in the rage he was in. Then I’d gone with him to see his mother—his biological mother. We’d parted after that, and he’d promised me he wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  I sighed, worried.

  What if Ryan Steel’s definition of “stupid” didn’t match my own?

  Chapter Two