Max (Ryan family Book 2)

by Ana Balen

  I didn’t say anything. I took my best friend from high school by her words and let myself cry. I didn’t wail. I didn’t hit anything. I cried silent tears, each one burning my cheek and soaking Melanie’s shirt. My body bucked violently twice. And the whole time, Melanie held me and spoke soft words to me, taking my pain away. The messed-up thing about it was that I wanted Max to do it.

  We were sitting in Melanie’s car again, ready to hit the road so I could get the hardest part of the day over with. I just had one more thing left to do before I faced what was waiting for me. I picked up my phone, dialed, and listened to the ringing in my ear. She picked up on the second ring.

  “Skylar, honey,” my aunt said in a soft tone. “Where are you?”

  “I’m okay,” I whispered. “I had a lot to do, but I wanted to check in with you before I get on with it.”

  “We’re packing up. Tomorrow we’re hitting the road, but we want to see you before we do.” Her voice was gentle. I knew she was probably out of her mind with worry and was confused.

  “We can do that,” I mumbled.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she carried on with a gentle tone.

  “For what?”

  “Kiki explained some things.”

  With the state of my life, I didn’t know what exactly Kiki explained.

  “What things?” I asked.

  There were multiple choices of her answer. I just hope it was the most benign one. I didn’t want to know what my uncle would do if he knew the full extent of Nico’s actions.

  “Why you left the church.” She stopped, then continued. “How he was with you.”

  “Oh,” I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “I only wish you came to us. We would help you,” she stated. “We would never let one of our daughters lead the life you did, forced to take beatings, her spirit all but crushed. If only we knew. I don’t know how I missed this.”

  I was stuck in “one of our daughters.” I knew they loved me. They took me in when my parents died, took care of me, kissed every boo-boo, and were always there for all of my recitals and school plays. But I didn’t know they thought of me as their daughter. That meant…

  “Skylar, sweetheart?” My aunt called when I stayed silent.

  “I’m here.”

  You’re not okay,” she surmised.

  “I am,” I tried to assure her. I didn’t want my aunt to worry over me more than she already did.

  “Do you need me to come to you?” She pressed.

  “No,” I exclaimed. “I promise I’m okay. I just have a lot on my plate right now.”

  “You need me, you phoned,” she demanded.

  With no intention of doing so, no matter how good it felt to know they considered me theirs, I lied.

  “I will.”

  “Good, good,” she whispered. “We’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes, tomorrow,” I said.

  “I love you.” She whispered, and my eyes closed with the feeling that stole over me when I heard those words.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered back.

  By the time we got to the warehouse, I was a nervous wreck. I bit my nails so hard, the skin around them started to bleed. Something I hadn’t done since I was ten years old. I question if what we were doing was the right way to go about it, or I should just listen to what Melanie suggested, call 9-1-1, and hide in my hotel room until all is done.

  “We’re here,” Melanie announced unnecessarily.

  We agreed we would park a half a mile away from it so as not to be seen by bad guys if there really were any that used my warehouse as their personal storage. I exited the car without saying a word and started walking, not giving myself any chance to turn and run. We got to it, hid behind some bushes, and waited.

  “I don’t think anyone’s here,” I whispered after crouching for a while.

  How long we were huddled together listening to the tiniest sounds and jumping to the movement of every leaf, I had no idea. But my limbs were screaming in agony, my feet felt numb and my back hurt like hell, so I guessed we were at it for a while.

  “Maybe we should go over and look inside,” I started to get up, but a hand came to my neck and forced me down.

  I screeched.

  “Shut the fuck up,” a voice growled at my right.

  “M-M-Max,” I stuttered. The fear and relief were battling inside me so hard that my heartbeat triple timed, and my legs went out, and I ended up with my ass on the ground.

  “Shut it and stay down,” he commanded.

  I didn’t shut it. And I didn’t stay down. What I did was stupid. I got up, put my hands on my hips, and demanded to know.

  “What are you doing here? And how did you find us?”

  “What I’m doing here is saving your ass. Again,” he reached to the waistband of my jeans, his fingers touching my skin, my breath leaving me for a totally different reason, and he pulled me down. “You weren’t hard to spot, Bean. What with you two moving the branches every two seconds and pushing your faces almost all the way through.”

  “Excuse me, we did no such thing,” I gasped.

  “She was quiet and compliant the whole time she was with me, and now she thinks it’s the right time to give me sass,” he muttered to himself.

  “I’m not giving you anything, I snapped. “I’m just pointing out that we didn’t do what you said we did.”

  “Bean, saw you from the other side of the building,” his lips twitched. “You’re not exactly stealthy as you think you are.”

  “Can you believe this guy?” I was outraged, and needed some backup.

  But Melanie’s face was white, her mouth open and her eyes trained on something in front of her. I followed her line of sight and watched in horror as three big cars with blackout windows parked in a line in front of my doors. Five men walked out of them. One pointed to the flickering light overhead, said something to a man wearing a suit to which he shook his head, and looked around. Max pushed my head down, and I couldn’t see what happened but could hear the steel screaming. They were opening the doors. I really needed to buy some W-D40 and take care of that. I meant to do it for a while, but something always got in the way, and it was so down on my list of things to do that it was pushed back on a regular basis. I guess the time to take care of it was here. The sound pierced my ears. I never wanted to hear it again.

  “Fuck,” Max muttered, let go of my head and reached to his back pocket.

  I took a chance and looked up. The moment I did, I knew I would have nightmares. For the rest of my life. There, right in front of me, walked Nico like he was king of the world. Trailing behind him, their wrists and ankles bound and linked to the one in front of them, were five girls. Behind the girls, two men carrying guns walked, and at the end of the line was Vinny. He was carrying a briefcase. Even from where I was, I could see he was furious. He didn’t want to be where he was, and he was repulsed by whatever they were doing. I couldn’t tell how I knew that. He was Nico’s right-handed man after all, but in all the time I knew him, I got the feeling he wasn’t happy with Nico. And if he could, he would leave.

  “We need to call the police,” Melanie said.

  No one moved as we watched Nico shake hands with the guy in a suit, after which the doors to the van that I hadn’t got a clue was even there, opened. One by one, the girls were pushed into the van. Vinny came forward and gave the briefcase to Nico. He then gave it to the suit guy. They shook hands and after a brief conversation, broke off.

  “We need to call the police,” Melanie repeated urgently.

  “Don’t need to, they’re here,” Max said soothingly.

  “Then why aren’t they rescuing those girls?” She was on the verge of hysteria.

  “The will,” Max typed something on his phone, a woosh of a text going could be heard. “And in about fifteen minutes, a raid is going down in here.”

  “How do you know all of this?” She questioned.

  He ignored her and touched my arm, “Bean?�
��

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn't. I kept staring at the spot where I last saw those girls, my insides shaking. It was even worse than I thought. I didn’t know what to expect when I got here, but what just happened, I wouldn’t expect ever. I couldn’t even understand what I just witnessed.

  “Bean?” Max tried to turn me to him.

  I didn’t budge. I still stared at the same spot. All of a sudden, I couldn’t see the stained concrete. All I saw was black. That was because Max picked me up, turned me, placed me on his knee, and held my face against his chest. All I could feel was cotton, soft cotton. And all I could smell was wood and oil. It took a second for all of that to penetrate my brain, but when it did, I looked up. Max looked down. Then I asked even though I didn’t know where that was, but I knew I wanted that.

  I opened my mouth and whispered, “I want to go home.”

  Chapter Eight

  Skylar

  I didn't know where home was. But Max did. After a few murmured words that included Melanie nodding her head and him squeezing her upper arm, he led me to his car. The sight of that car made me laugh under my breath.

  "What's funny, Bean?" he asked gently, his eye attentive almost as he was on the lookout for me to fall apart entirely.

  "This is the third time that I'm running away from a shitty situation in that car," I said matter of factly. "And all three times, you were behind the wheel."

  "It is my car, Bean."

  I didn't say anything to that. We fell silent after he helped me in the seat, helped me to buckle my seatbelt, and as he was shutting the door, he turned to Melanie.

  "You sure you're okay to drive?"

  "Yeah," she mumbled.

  I didn't hear anything else. He sat behind the wheel, started up the car, and off we went.

  As I said, I didn't know where home was, but he did. He drove us straight to his house. The sight of it made me sigh. Which, in turn, got me a questioning glance from the man sitting beside me, but he stayed quiet. He got out of the car, rounded the hood, and helped me out of it. Then, with a hand at the small of my back, he guided me to the three stairs, reached for the door and let us in. As we went inside, he turned on the lights and gently pushed me down on the couch. The whole time I stayed quiet. The whole time, I replayed the going on’s in front of the warehouse in my head. The only thing I could see were the faces of those girls. I thought I was scared before. I thought I knew what fear was, but seeing the terror on the faces of those girls, I knew I was wrong.

  I was lucky.

  Lucky that Nico was the way he was with me. He could have been much worse, and I could have been lost beyond the reach.

  "Here, baby," Max pushed a glass into my hands, the liquid in it in ripples. It took me a moment to figure out it was because my hands were shaking. In fact, my whole body was trembling. "It's vodka. It will warm you from the inside and help with the shakes."

  I hated hard liquor and tried to give it back.

  "Drink it," he commanded. "It will help. I promise."

  I did as I told and gulped the shot. It burned on its way down.

  "Again," Max was pouring another shot. "Drink."

  This time I did it without any pushback. It burned again, but a few seconds later, I felt lighter. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed.

  "Damn, this burns," I turned my head and watched as Melanie made a face.

  I didn't even know she was here, let alone sitting right next to me. I lost all semblance of time while we sat in the living room, not saying anything, each of us trapped in our head. I jumped when a phone started to ring.

  "Yeah?" Max answered his phone, and instantly his face was like thunder. "You have got to be kidding me."

  I was on instant alert.

  "What?" I whispered.

  "What's the damage?" he ignored my what.

  "Max, what?" I yelled.

  He looked at me, shook his head once, then his attention was back on his phone, and whoever was speaking on the other end.

  "No fucking way," he snarled. "Not tonight, she's been through enough."

  Oh, dear God, what was going on.

  "Yeah, she was there," he said.

  "Fuck," he said. "Yeah, I know."

  After a brief moment, during which both Melanie and I looked at Max, pacing up and down his living room, then hanging his head in defeat.

  "Yeah, we can do it here. I need you to give me twenty minutes."

  Max listened some more.

  "But brother, be gentle," he said and ended the call.

  He stood there and looked at the floor.

  "Fucking hell," he repeated three times.

  It almost seemed that he was working up the courage to do something. I didn't get a chance to ask what for. That was because he was in front of, crouched, his palms warm against my face, doing the impossible of making it feel like everything was right in the world.

  "I need you to listen to me," he began, his eyes searching mine. Only when I nodded did he continue. "Two hours ago, the DEA raided your warehouse. Thanks to information provided by Denver S.W.A.T. and the findings of their undercover agent, they were able to find enough evidence to put Barone away for good."

  "Do I want to know what they found?" I whispered.

  "No, baby," he whispered back, his eyes still searching.

  "Undercover agent?"

  "We’ll get back to that," his face suddenly was guarded. As if he was keeping something from me. "What's important is that you know-"

  "Wait," I stopped him. "What about the girls?"

  "They're okay. All of them are currently in a hospital behind guarded doors, getting a full workup. As far as I know, not one of them was severely injured during the action, but that's all I know. "

  "Can I go visit them? "I asked.

  "Why would you want to do that?"

  "I need to apologize for what happened to them," I said.

  "Do not take on the actions of Nico Barone," he ordered. "You are not in the wrong here. If anything, you are his victim."

  It wasn't my intention to do that, but they were held hostage in my building, and I didn't even know it. Let alone try and find a way to rescue them. But Max was right. I didn't do this.

  I didn't go out in the middle of the night and snatched five women off the streets and ended up selling them. If that were how one would do it. I had no idea. But I knew deep down I needed to do something. They had to know they were not alone.

  "I won't, and I'm not. But I want to do something else too."

  "What do you want?" he asked, the anger still lingering, but there was something else on his face. Something that looked a lot like a surprise.

  "I need to see for myself that they're all right. I need to see if I can help them in any way."

  As I talked, his face changed, going gentle. Until finally, when the last word left my mouth, he was giving me such a look, I had to close my eyes so I could burn in it into my memory and be able to call it up day or night. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. While I was doing precisely that, he moved his hands until my forehead hit his mouth.

  "Yeah, Bean, I can take you to see them."

  "Bean, I have to tell you something," regret was dripping from every syllable he said.

  I couldn't figure out what he had to be sorry for. He has done everything he could to help me.

  He was there whenever I needed him. Nico and his men were behind bars, and I was safe.

  He did that.

  Max made it safe for me.

  I didn’t know how, but I’m sure he was the one doing it. Before I met him, nothing happened. I didn’t even know what kind of person Nico was. And after I met Max, it all blew up, and Nico went away. I was safe to live my life as I saw fit.

  "Although the raid was successful-" he stopped.

  "Just say it, Max," I urged him.

  Fear was starting to grip my insides. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  "Nico Barone was not arrested," I pushed
out the words.

  “I need to go,” I shot up to my feet, dislodging his face.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he exploded. “I will not let him fuck up your life even more than he has.”