Stepbrother Bear - Complete (12 page)

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Well, it happened again. Me and my
brother. It would probably help if I stopped calling him that. Just stop thinking
of him in that way. Because whether we both survived this night or not, I don’t
think I could ever really go back to him just being that.

And yet, I
didn’t know him. I watched him from the floor as he got dressed, and I realized
I had no idea what he was going to do next. Or understood what he cared about.

Or if he felt
anything for me.

“You’re not
going to tell me it was a mistake again,” I said coyly as I slipped back into
the dress. “Because that’s a lot of mistakes we’ve made then.”

He stared at
me. Unflinching. “You know I can’t control myself around you. But doesn’t mean
it’s for the best.”

We were both
on our feet now. Putting on our shoes.

He finished
before me and walked towards the door.

“Aiden,” I
said. “Stop.”

He turned.
“What?”

“How are we
going to get out of here?”

“Do you want
to leave? We could probably use their help.”

“I was
thinking though…” I said. “If we show up with this army behind us, they’re just
going to kill them. And we can’t let that happen.”

“Well, it’s
better than just turning ourselves over and having them be killed anyway.”

He put his
hand to the door handle.

“Wait,” I
said walking towards him. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

I stopped
when I was close to him. The pressure in the air between us, almost made me eat
my own words.

“Come on,” he
urged me. “What’s your idea?”

“We ask them
to meet us somewhere. A trade off. You for the wedding party.”

“You want me
to give myself up? What guarantee –”

“But we bring
the bikers with us. And once the trade is done, they come out and rescue you.”

Aiden lowered
his head. He pressed it against the door.

“What?” I
asked him. “Don’t you like it?”

“No,” he
said. “It’s great. It’s perfect.”

He turned
back to me. I could see the pain in his eyes.

“What is it?”
I asked. “What’s wrong?”

Aiden
hesitated. Then a decision was made.

“Nothing,” he
said.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

As we stepped back out into the car
park together, Aiden and I holding hands, the Brown Bear Bikers were making
their way outside the rec room entrance and moving out to their bikes. Bruno
walked ahead of the pack and approached Aiden and I, his face dark and serious.

“I hope you
had fun,” he remarked. “Because we’re ready to go to work now.”

Aiden let go
of my hand. “We have a plan for you.”

“I’m
listening.”

“Instead of
meeting them at their home base, we want to organize and exchange with the
general for our family that are being held hostage. I’ll make sure the General
delivers them personally. When she lets them go and I give myself up to her,
then you guys can take her out. What do you say?”

Bruno’s eyes
shifted sideways. “Where would this trade off take place?”

Aiden glanced
at me a moment. “I was thinking we could do it an old research facility in the
city. That’s where they conducted most of their experiments.”

“Security
there is impenetrable,” Bruno said. “We would have taken that place by now if
we could.”

“I have a
contact there in the building,” Aiden said. “I can fix it for you.”

“But where
will the time for that be?”

“We’ll have to
take the building first. After that we’ll call the General and ask her to meet
there.”

Bruno
scratched his moustache.

“What do you
say?” Aiden asked.

Bruno’s hand
fell to his side. He looked back at his men waiting patiently.

“Okay,” Bruno
said. “But you ride next to me. The whole way.”

“No problem.”

Bruno then
turned to address the rest of the bikers to inform them of our plan.

Aiden grabbed
my hand again. “You’re riding with me.”

“Of course I
am,” I muttered.

We stood
together at the edge of line of bikes while Bruno made his way back over.
“Don’t even think about touching my bike.”

Aiden stepped
away from the nearest one. “Sorry.”

Bruno
signaled to one of his men. “Bring us another bike over here. And a couple of
helmets.”

Aiden and I
waited patiently as the bike was brought over. Then we took our helmets and put
them on.

We climbed on
the bike.

Bruno looked
back at us. “Are you ready? Cause you’re leading the way.”

“One more
thing,” Aiden said. “If I truly am one of you, and we’re going to do this, then
I need a piece.”

Bruno
blinked. “Ha, ha. Fucking alright.” He turned to his men. “Will someone hand me
their spare gun for our new recruit here?”

A gun was
handed to Bruno.

Aiden got off
our bike and walked a few short paces to Bruno.

“Thanks,” he
said.

He started
back towards me a moment, and his eyes met mine.

I smiled
warmly at him, but Aiden didn’t smile back.

His eyes were
as cold as a ghost.

It hit me
before it happened.

“No,” I
mouthed. “No…”

Aiden turned
again and blasted Bruno in the face with the gun he’d been given.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

So fast. Too fast. And no
explanation.

As the
president’s body fell over the side of his bike, blood spilling out everywhere,
Aiden was already on our bike cranking the engine. He bolstered the bike out of
its standing position. Faster than I could even blink.

Approaching
the entrance, with engines and mouths and guns roaring behind us, my hands
slipped. I was falling backward. Being dragged down by the fingers of a
thousand hands.

I hit the
ground in a painful descent and rolled over, three or four times, agony
shooting everywhere. Passed me, the bikes rolled on by, one after the other. I
watched from my place on the ground as Aiden’s bike broke through the gates at
the front and sailed off down the road. He never turned back for me.

Not the bike
he was riding.

Not even his
eyes.

I tried to
get up, the tears racing down my cheeks.

Blood was
flowing into my dress.

I looked back
at the biker’s building and saw a group of them were still huddled around their
fallen leader. One of them had turned. Spotted me.

He started to
advance.

“Fucking
hell,” I squealed.

I pulled
myself up properly and did my best to scamper away.

The man
behind me didn’t. He just kept walking boldly.

The last time
I looked back I saw he had drawn his pistol from his pocket.

I tripped
over and my head landed into the side of the building. I closed my eyes.

I wanted it
to be quick.

Then nothing.
Not a sound.

My eyes
opened slowly. I looked behind me.

The man was
less than two meters from me.

Lying down in
a puddle of his own blood.

Everyone else
was dead behind him.

“What the
fuck?” I whispered.

I
straightened up and then jumped to my feet.

Around the
corner of the building like lightening a man wearing a suit and black gloves,
grabbed hold of me and shoved me up against the wall.

“Stop it!” I
shouted. “Let go of me!”

I felt his
hands coming down on me. Strangling my throat.

“I’m not
letting go,” he seethed.

My focus
adjusted. Things became clearer.

“Ryan…?”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

Ryan grinned at me. He showed me his
teeth – white, sparkling and jagged. An ominous purple fog swirled in his eyes.

“Don’t,” I
stammered. “Don’t – Don’t –”

He put a
finger to his lips to silence me.

I stopped
fighting him.

His grip
loosened a little. “I have your family. Your friends. I have them all. You want
to see them again?”

“Yes,” I said
hurriedly. “Are they okay? What have you done with them?”

“When Aiden
comes back for you, you are to lead him to this location…” Ryan reached into
his pocket and pulled out a red card. He put it in my hand.

But I
couldn’t look at it just yet.

“You get him
to come to this location, and hand himself over,” Ryan said. “This is your last
chance to save them.”

“Hold on a
second,” I muttered. “Why are you doing this? I thought you were in love with
–”

Ryan let go
of my throat.

He then
slammed his fist into the wall beside me. “Be there. You have one hour.”

Ryan then
stepped away from me and shifted into his great black bird. He flew up into the
dark sky and disappeared before my eyes.

I looked down
at the card he’d given me.

It was a
wedding invitation.

“Son of a
bitch,” I whispered.

So they were
still there. Perhaps they never even left.

I peeled
myself away from the wall and walked out towards the broken gates.

I looked down
the direction of the road Aiden and the men chasing him had gone, but there was
nothing in sight. Only darkness.

I gripped the
invitation tightly, before letting it slip through my fingers and fly out into
the wind.

Everything
out here was so still. Everything was dead.

I could feel
the road underneath my feet, and there were no vibrations.

It was cold
and forgotten and smashed in like the clouds around my heart.

“Aiden,” I
whispered, as if the word was powerful enough to conjure him in front of my
eyes.

And in that
moment I knew that even if he wasn’t coming back, that it didn’t matter. How he
felt about me after tonight, wasn’t going to change a thing about me.

I knew right
here.

Right now.

I was going
to love him forever.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

I was waiting for it. I didn’t
realize that was the thing I was waiting for until it happened, but afterwards
… I knew there was nothing else coming.

You don’t
think that way. Not even when years go by. I wasn’t prepared. It was such a
surprise.

I must’ve
walked into that police station a hundred times. I knew every picture and
poster displayed in the foyer. I’d sat on every chair. I knew most of the
officers there by name, and there was hardly anyone I didn’t recognize. I
thought it would be a two way street, I’d been coming here so long. It had only
been a month since I’d last been here.

But the man
at the desk didn’t recognize me.

He didn’t
even recall my name.

I felt sick.
The last piece of hope being ripped from me.

He asked me
what I wanted to talk about, and I just couldn’t find the words for it. Not
anymore.

Three years
ago, everyone knew who I was. Not just the cops at this station, but random
people I’d just see in the street. My face was on the front of every newspaper
in the country, along with Aiden’s and group shots of the wedding party. People
were mad at us. At our tragedy. They never found him which implied his guilt.
The only reason I wasn’t a one hundred percent proof suspect was that I was
still around. Pleading for help.

Of course my
crazy stories didn’t help the public’s opinion. My lawyer stared at me
dead-eyed in our third meeting together at the station, and said: “Shut up
about the experiments. No one will believe you.” He was right. That first week
after the wedding – that was the hardest. I had senior sergeants and FBI agents
drilling into me, trying to get me to confess.

“We know it
wasn’t you, Bianca,” they’d say to me. “But we know you’re not telling us the
truth and that makes you guilty. Not just in our eyes, but in the eyes of a
jury. You have to tell us where Aiden is.”

But of course
I didn’t know. At first I thought he was holding off. Waiting until I was in a
shopping mall or something, and then he’d come out of nowhere. To tell me to
keep strong. That he’d find where our family was and rescue them.

I think it
would have been good to have him show up, just so I knew I wasn’t alone. I
hadn’t seen him since he shot the bear biker president in the head and took off
on his motorcycle. Leaving me in the hands of the other bikers. Leaving me for
dead.

After Ryan
had shown up and made me promise to get Aiden back to the wedding resort within
the hour to rescue the others, my heart knew nothing else. That was what we
were going to do. The only thing we could do. Aiden was going to lose the guys
on his tail, and double back for me.

That was what
should have happened anyway.

Instead I
just wound up walking in the middle of nowhere for two hours, until I reached a
town and was able to find a policeman to tell my story to.

They went to
the resort soon after.

No sign of
the wedding party. No sign of Ryan.

No sign of
Aiden.

No sign of
anyone.

I was far too
late.

In the midst
of the manhunt for Aiden, and my live interview going to air, I found my way
back there, to the wedding resort. It was all closed up. The business owners
were changing hands. I walked through the empty reception area on the grass and
through the chapel to the lake where Aiden had taken his piss there in the
water.

I was there
now, in the absolute freezing darkness, waiting for someone, anyone to come
out.

For our
adventure to begin again, and my hopes rekindled in the fire.

That was all
I wanted.

And of
course, instead, there was nothing. Just the empty sound of a windless night.

Three years
later and I’m in the police station, with the officer staring at me with a
blank face, I thought of that wedding resort again, and how it had felt to be
there.

Not on the
night of the wedding.

But on the
night I went back there in the darkness on my own.

In that
moment then, and this moment now, I had forgotten he existed. As though he was
just a dream I had once. A fleeting figment of my imagination.

I was waiting
for it.

That final
feeling of peace.

Perhaps none
of them had existed at all.