by Tia Siren
I moaned, the pain in my chest so physical it was like Sherry had driven a real knife between my ribs.
“Koby kept beating him but he wouldn’t talk. So stubborn. If only he’d been that tightlipped when it counted. It wasn’t until he was practically dead that he told Koby what he needed to know, but it was too late then. Koby says loyalty has a price. I don’t really know what that means, but I think Dalton paid up.”
I was horrified. I stared at Sherry, who had just told me the story of someone’s death like we were gossiping about love scandals or the latest shoe sale at the mall.
“What’s the matter, Alexa? You’re pale.”
I felt like I was going to pass out. I was so nauseated, and it wasn’t from a concussion this time. Dalton had suffered so badly. How had they covered it up as a mugging if he’d been hurt so badly?
“Please,” I said in a strained voice. “No more.”
“No?” Sherry asked. “Oh, I thought you wanted to know. Sorry.”
She shrugged and shivered again. “I’m going to get something warmer to wear. I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.” She got up and walked to the door.
She laughed like her joke was funny before she left, closing the door behind her. I heard the lock click back into place. The sound was unnaturally loud, echoing in the bare room. It felt like it echoed right down to my soul.
I was like this room, empty, bare, stripped of everything. I closed my eyes. Dalton…
I broke down and cried.
Chapter 25
Luke
I had no idea where to start looking for her. Los Angeles was fucking huge and she could be anywhere. The Samurai had so many places they used to stash things, to hide things, to do business they wanted to keep away from local law enforcement. The Mavericks wouldn’t be any different, and I knew nothing about them, which meant my hands were tied.
I couldn’t go to the police. I thought about it again and again, but I hadn’t gone to them about Sam because it would only have made it worse. I was worried that the same would happen with Alexa, and I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to her.
I wasn’t going to go to her family, either. For one, it would be unfair to put that much stress and trauma on them after they’d lost Dalton, and for another, they wouldn’t be able to help me, not without putting themselves in danger one way or another. I couldn’t risk more lives at this point. I didn’t want to risk anyone at all.
But I still had no idea where to go, and I was starting to lose my mind from the panic I felt.
Night was starting to fall. I had to find her. I couldn’t have her spending the night with strangers who meant her harm. The night felt darker than usual. I fluctuated between fear and anger. When I was angry, I embraced it. I knew how to handle anger. Anger was familiar to me. Fear wasn’t. I didn’t like fear. I didn’t do fear. Men like me didn’t get scared.
So when I was angry, I was angrier than I’d ever been. If I found the son of a bitch who had taken Alexa, he would pay. He would pay dearly. My blood pumped in my veins, my heart raced, and everything was crystal clear. I was hyperaware of my surroundings, and I could take on anyone and anything that came my way.
When fear set in, washing the anger away, I felt weak and pathetic. My heart palpitated and I felt dizzy. My throat was dry and I wished there was something I could do, someone I could turn to.
Fuck! I hated feeling so weak. What the hell was I going to do?
I searched the city, going to the places Dalton had told me about. There were warehouses and clubs and bars. She wasn’t in any of them. In fact, many of them were deserted, no bikers around at all.
The night crept on. The darkness was thick and heavy, and it felt endless.
When I got into my car after I’d visited the last place I knew of, I blew out a long breath and tipped my head back against the headrest. I was impossibly tired.
I jumped when my phone rang and scrambled for it. I hoped to God it was Alexa. She could tell me that her phone had died and she’d been with Ariel, that she hadn’t checked the time. I was willing to accept that she’d decided she didn’t need to let me know. Anything would have been better than Alexa being missing, that someone had taken her.
The number was unknown.
“Alexa?” I asked, pressing the phone against my ear.
A rasping voice laughed at me on the other end on the line. “Not quite,” he said. It was a gruff voice, one I didn’t recognize.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“No matter,” the voice said. “We have her. Turn yourself over to us or we’ll kill her.”
Fuck. “Why me?” I asked. “I’m of no use to you.”
That rasping laugh again. I was sure they were using a voice disguiser, whoever they were.
“Use, no, but you know too much. If you want her to live, you’ll do as we say.”
“How do I know who to turn myself over to if you don’t tell me who you are?”
Another laugh. Apparently I was funny as hell.
“Well, you’re not stupid, that’s for sure. But you don’t get to know that. Stand by and you’ll get a phone call with more information. We will kill her, Luke.”
They must have known me because they had my number, but my stomach turned when they used my name. A racket in the background could be heard.
“Koby, what the fuck?” a woman shouted just before the line went dead.
I stared at my phone. Koby? That had been about as clear as day. I doubted that had been the plan, but they had fucked up.
Koby Mason was behind this.
Until now, I’d thought the Mavericks were the guilty party, taking Alexa for leverage against the Samurai. I had been watching the wrong people all along, protecting Alexa against the Mavericks next door when Mason was really the problem. I’d been so wrong. I was sure the Samurai were responsible for Dalton’s death, but I hadn’t thought they would do something to Alexa.
After tonight, they would be responsible for another death. If I had to choose, it would be me rather than Alexa, but I didn’t want to die. I was caught in a catch twenty-two that scared the shit out of me. There was nothing I could do about it, no one I could turn to.
I couldn’t breathe. I kept sucking in air but it felt like my body did nothing with what I gave it. My lungs were cramping up and a sharp pain shot into my chest every time I inhaled. My heart thundered in my chest as if I’d just run a mile, but I’d sat in my car for the past hour.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the headrest. I focused on breathing, on slowing down my heart rate and going through the basic functions that my body usually performed automatically. It was as if I’d forgotten how to do any of it without thinking about it.
Something flashed in my mind’s eye, a memory so quick that it was almost gone again before I could grasp it.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, Dalton had asked me to pick him up from a place outside LA. I remembered grumbling, being upset that I had to drive so far to pick him up when I’d been comfortable watching television in my boxers.
The place had been a dilapidated house on a piece of land that was neglected and abandoned. It was up north on a road just off the main road that had been barely used at the time. I didn’t know if it all still existed—it had to have been years since I’d picked Dalton up from there—but it was another property that belonged to the Samurai.
It was the one place I hadn’t looked yet.
The place had been a hideout of sorts for members of the gang when they’d gotten in enough trouble that they shouldn’t show their faces in public. They’d also used the house as a place to store illegal weapons, weapons that weren’t licensed or had been taken from the owner they’d been licensed to. I hadn’t paid much attention to the politics around the place. I had been pissed off with Dalton for choosing a life that necessitated me hauling him around all the time, and I’d been barely listening.
I would have given anything to hear his voice again now, even if he
was nagging about a life I didn’t believe he should have chosen. To hear him speak again, to know he was safe, was a luxury none of us had had in a while, and it was a damn fucking tragedy. I’d lost my best friend.
Sometimes the reality hit me so hard, I felt like I couldn’t breathe all over again. I gasped for air, the pain in my chest intensifying again.
I slapped myself in the face. I had to pull myself together. I couldn’t afford to lose my shit now. I had to get Alexa back or she would walk the same road, and I’d had enough of losing people for one lifetime.
When I could breathe again, I pulled onto the road and made my way through the city. With the farmhouse so far outside the city, it was going to take me some time to get there. When’d gone to pick up Dalton so many years ago, I’d been pissed off about how much gas I’d had to use to drive out there.
Now I didn’t care. Alexa was worth a thousand tanks of gas. If I’d known what would happen, I would have quit my grumbling then, too.
I remembered the road. It was so clear in my mind, as if I’d driven it yesterday. I weaved through LA, heading northwest. I would eventually leave town.
As I drove, my thoughts were a muddled mess of memories of Dalton and memories of Alexa.
It was about eight years ago that my parents had decided to go away on a family holiday together to convince the world that we were a family. It had been the worst time of my life, and Dalton and I had spent most of the time on the phone talking shit about girls. It was a year after we’d hit legal drinking age, and all I’d wanted was to be home with my bro and have a couple drinks instead of sitting in the fucking Caribbean with my parents.
Dalton had known all about my family issues, about how my parents were barely there for me, and if it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have made it through the vacation.
When we’d gotten back, it had been Alexa’s eighteenth birthday, and Dalton had begged me to come because he couldn’t handle being around a bunch of girls and he hadn’t been allowed to skip out.
It was there that I’d seen Alexa as something other than Dalton’s little sister. She’d come out wearing a red dress that flared round the waist and had red cap sleeves, and I remembered it like it was yesterday. Her dark hair had hung over her shoulders and she’d run up to me, hugging me, telling me that they’d missed me that summer.
And I’d realized how much I’d missed them, too. It was then that I’d decided they were my family, that they would be my only family from then on. The saying was that blood was thicker than water, but no one listened to the full saying: the blood of the covenant was thicker than the water of the womb. The relationships you chose to be loyal to were stronger than the ones you were born into.
And Dalton and Alexa and Mr. and Mrs. Starr were my family.
I found the road I had to follow with ease and took it. I would get there no matter what. I might have lost Dalton, but I was going to be sure not to lose Alexa, too.
Dalton had asked me to look after her. I’d promised him I would, and when I made a promise to my brother, I kept it.
Chapter 26
Alexa
I was relieved when Sherry left. I hadn’t wanted to cry in front of her, but I couldn’t hold back anymore. The moment the door closed, I burst out in tears and sat on the floor, sobbing silently. They had beaten Dalton to death. They had punished him repeatedly and then made him pay with his life. And Sherry had been there. She had witnessed it and talked about it like it was something amusing.
How did you get like that? How did you get to a point in your life where you could talk about death and violence like it was no big deal?
Maybe she’d been lying just to upset me. Maybe none of it was true. But somehow, I believed her.
I was still crying when the door opened again. This time I didn’t try to dry my tears. Dalton was dead. He’d died the worst death imaginable, a death at someone else’s bare hands, and I was running out of strength to deal with it all.
It wasn’t Sherry who walked through the door. The man who did was much older, but he moved with agility and had an air of authority about him. I didn’t know who he was, but I was willing to take a bet.
Sherry followed the man into the room, and it was suddenly crowded. The basement wasn’t big enough for the three of us. Or maybe it just wasn’t big enough for me along with my two kidnappers who were the same people who had caused the death of my brother. Personal space was relative to who I was comfortable with.
“Oh, look, Koby, she’s crying,” Sherry said in a mocking tone.
“Shut up,” he sneered at her. She did shut up, but she had a smirk on her face. Him speaking to her like that was clearly not an isolated incident. I guessed we accepted the love we thought we deserved, right?
I looked at Koby again. He was terrifying. He could be the same age as my granddad, but nothing about him was warm and loving. His hair was graying and he had dark eyes, the eyes of someone who could cause a lot of harm, the eyes of someone who would hurt people and not blink. It wasn’t hard to spot eyes like that. You didn’t know them until you saw them, but when you saw them, you realized they were void of life.
He kneeled before me, but even when his face was at the same height as mine, I felt like he was looming over me. He had a terrible scar on his face, and it made him look perpetually mean. I didn’t know how Sherry could be with a man like this, someone who didn’t look capable of love.
“We called Luke,” he said, and my stomach twisted.
“What?” My voice was hoarse.
“We called your boyfriend. He better show his face or we’ll cut up your pretty face before we kill you.”
I whimpered. God, I didn’t want to die, but Luke? I couldn’t lose him. He couldn’t die because of me.
“What do you want with him?” I asked.
Koby laughed, and it was a malicious sneer. “You should have stayed out of this, sugar. You should have left well enough alone. The Samurai won’t let it slide until all the loose ends are tied up. Do you understand me?”
I knew what he meant. He was going to keep killing people until everyone let Dalton’s death go.
I was suddenly furious. How could they mess with people’s lives like that? Who were they to call the shots?
“You won’t get away with this,” I said.
Koby laughed, looking over his shoulder at Sherry. She was grinning at me, shaking her head.
“You stupid bitch,” Koby said. “I’ll get away with whatever the fuck I want. Don’t you know who I am?”
I spat on him. I knew I shouldn’t have done that, but I was suddenly so angry about everything they’d done to Dalton, to me, and about everything they wanted to do to Luke.
Koby wiped his face, looking at my spit on his hand. His face twisted into a snarl, and he pulled back his hand, hitting me with a backhand so hard that I was sprawled on the ground. Sherry let out a high-pitched laugh, but it was muffled due to the ringing in my ears. Koby stormed away, disappearing through the door. He slammed it behind him, and it was just me and Sherry in the room again.
She was staying. I wished to God she would leave, too, leave me alone in my misery.
Sherry sat on her crate again and took out a phone. She started scrolling on it, and I closed my eyes. I felt dizzy.
“Oh, look at this,” Sherry said. “You lost a lot of weight. You’re chubby here.”
I frowned and lifted my head, looking at Sherry. She was still scrolling on her phone. But it wasn’t her phone. It was mine.
“Stop that,” I said. She was going through everything on my phone. It made me feel exposed, oddly vulnerable. That was saying something considering I was tied up on the floor of a basement in the house where Dalton had been killed.
Sherry laughed again. “I wouldn’t have chosen that for a Halloween outfit, but I guess to each their own,” she said.
“I said stop it!” I cried out.
“Or what?” Sherry asked. “You’ll spit on me?” She shook her head, laughing,
and turned her attention back to my phone. I felt completely helpless. She sat a few feet away from me with the one thing I could use to get someone to come and help me. And she was laughing at me. I was so frustrated. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break something, hit someone, do something, anything. But I couldn’t because my hands were tied behind my back and I had what could have been a concussion, intensified by the hit I’d taken to the face after spitting on Koby.
“Oh, wow,” Sherry said. “This is interesting.” She turned my phone to me. She was in my downloads folder, where I’d saved a few images of leather straps and harnesses for BDSM outfits. “If I had realized you were into this shit, I would have gotten Koby to tie you up in a more compromising way. Your hands behind you back must be such a disappointment.”
There was nothing I could do.
“What about your messages?” Sherry asked. “Any dirty texts with your squeeze?”
It would be pointless to stop her from reading my messages, so I didn’t respond. I didn’t try to stop her or ask her to put away my phone. I sat with her snickering and sneering at my messages.
“You don’t seem to send Luke very interesting messages,” Sherry said after a while.
“Sherry!” Koby shouted from upstairs, and Sherry rolled her eyes.
“What?” she shouted back. It wasn’t very ladylike.
“Get the fuck up here!”
She groaned. “What did I do?” she called.
“Just get up here!”
She slammed my phone down on the crate.
“Ungrateful son of a bitch,” she muttered and stomped to the door. I watched her as she closed the door and locked it behind her. The phone was still on the crate. I didn’t know how much time I had.
I pushed myself up, getting to my feet. I ignored the spinning in my head, the nausea that came in a wave. I hurried over to the crate, fell to my knees next to it, and tried to grab it with my hands behind my back. I bent my arm, pulling my hands to the side, and looked at the screen over my shoulder. The angle was weird to work my phone this way, but I had to get a message to Luke.