Wrath (25 page)

Aidan

“How the fuck did your smartass brother land himself in this situation?”  Thrash asked as he leaned against the brick wall of the dilapidated building.

“Fuck if I know.  I’m guessing he got a little mouthy with Pat and maybe told him some shit he shouldn’t have.  Fucking idiot never knows when to shut his mouth.”  Strike was pissed.

“And
this
is where they are keeping him?”  I asked, surveying the property.

“Yeah, man.”

“Shit, are you sure?”  Thrash asked.

All of our bikes were parked in a small group on the side of a series of buildings.  We were in an abandoned part of town, just outside Penn Hills. 

It wasn’t a wealthy suburb by any stretch of the imagination, but it was so much more than Braddock that you wouldn’t expect the Irish mob to be holed up there.  I guess that was what made it so desirable.

They’d chosen a place that was invisible even though it was in plain view.  It just looked like an abandoned set of townhomes, broken down from the inside out.  Another vestige of the steel industry’s collapse, when everyone rushed elsewhere to find new employment.  Some towns, whole communities got left to rot, and this was one of them.

“Jesus fucking Christ, this always ends up with us trudging into some fucking shitty situation.”  Thrash didn’t even mutter it.  “You sure about this, Rage?  We’ve only got half the force we had last time –”

“My dad is sending extra men.  We’re not to get in the middle of it.  If things go south, we’re to run.”

“What are we doing here?”  I asked. 

Strike gave me a look.  “We’re just the backup.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.  I could handle being reinforcements.  What I did not want was to go blazing into another situation that we knew nothing about.  It was becoming an all too familiar pattern. 

There was a thrill and then there was just plain stupid, and I didn’t like the latter as much.

“So we just, what?  Wait here?  Let them know your pops is coming?”

“They can’t see us, not unless they look.  We just wait, man.  We just wait.”

And that was exactly what we did.  We waited for more than hour before several cars pulled up.  One of them was a luxury model. 

A stream of men poured out, some of them young, fit, and muscular.  They looked like Strike or Hawk, clearly Irish, clearly family.

There was no sneak attack.  They made no apologies.  They just walked in right through the front door.

A rogue group was holding Hawk, and this was how the Mob handled it?  No rescue mission, no nothing?

Strike came over then.  “Alright, they’ve started.  Now comes our part.”

“Wait.  Our part?  I thought we were reinforcements.”

“More like a specialized force,” Strike said, his phone against his ear.   “We’ve got to get up around the warehouse.  There’s a small garden shed back there.  That’s where they think Hawk is being kept.”

“Shit, we’re the rescue team?  What the fuck man!  Why didn’t you tell me?”  Rage’s face watered red.  He clearly got the feeling he was being dicked around, and he did not like it.  Neither did I. 

This shit would’ve been important to know.  I could’ve planned for this.

Strike spit and glared at us.  “Well, I didn’t fucking know, either.  Donal just told me where to show up.  Didn’t exactly say why.”

I couldn’t claim to understand any of it, but we had no other choice.  His brother’s life was in danger and we’d agreed – service for service.  This shit was what we
did
.  Protection detail.  Escort.  Muscle.

But hell, Strike was going to have to start communicating with us or he was going to lose a lot of back.  The man was on edge, but smart leaders didn’t waste men with stupid shit like this. 

“So what’s the plan?”  I looked around.  Even with Strike’s men bolstering our numbers, we were a small force, maybe eight all in total.

“We’ll split into two groups.  Rage, you take the left.  I’ll go on up through the right with mine.  That way if we spot anyone waiting to ambush us we can scout out first and report.”

I liked the idea of smaller groups.  It made it easier to communicate.  It also kept me with a group of men I knew I could trust.

I nodded as I thought about the possibilities of the route.

“Da wants us to go now,” Strike said, putting his phone away. 

We didn’t wait for a second signal.  Instead, we immediately broke off into wings and fanned out our separate ways. 

Rage led us along a path that ran the length of a broken wall.  We slunk along past it and I tried my best not to consider all of the horrible possibilities that came to mind when thinking about how this could play out. 

Nothing about this situation felt right.

For fuck’s sake, I knew a lot about combat, but rescue ops had never been my specialty. 

We were sneaking into enemy territory and freeing a man that, for all we knew, was already dead.

But what we going to do?  Leave him? 

You leave your allies behind and your enemies smile
.

I clung tightly to the wall and the shadows, until we were behind cover.

The set of buildings in front of the old warehouse were in better shape than this set and I knew that entering them was going to be a logistical nightmare.  Everything in this place was structurally unsound, so each and every step could lead to the floor giving away. 

That wasn’t our only worry, just as we rounded the corner I saw a man standing there.  He wasn’t just keeping watch.  He was clearly guarding something. 

“I’ll take care of it,” I whispered. 

I approached the man from behind, my footsteps as light as I could make them.  I grabbed him and put him in a chokehold, his cries muffled as I brought him down.

When he was out, I tied his hands and feet with the zip ties we’d brought.

“Shit, you learn that in the service?”  Rage asked as Thrash came up on us and double checked my ties.

“No.”  I answered before scouting further into the building.  We were clear on the first floor, so I slowly moved up the stairwell, making sure to test each stair before I put my full weight on it.

The other two followed me up, Thrash in the middle and Rage at the rear, providing cover.

I was feeling edgy.  Just because we hadn’t seen anyone yet didn’t mean they weren’t there.

“Clear?”  Rage asked as soon as I checked the landing.  I nodded and we walked through the second floor.  Nothing.

We came upon a big ass hole in the brick wall.  Planks had been set down on the floor to stabilize the walkway.

“This is some jacked-up shit.”  Thrash wasn’t loud, and the statement wasn’t meant for me, but I heard it none the less.  And he was right.

The last time I’d seen this kind of thing was in the broken down remains of homes in Afghanistan.  Poverty and desperation forced them to improvise there.

This was just some messed up shit.

“After you, former military leader.”  Rage said as he gestured to the gaping hole. 

I made a mental note to explain military hierarchy to the others later.  I had been a vehicle specialist, not a ‘military leader.’ They meant it as praise.  I was well trained, and I had always been good at adjusting in a crisis, but the mislabel bugged me.

I’d heard of men who pretended to be Navy Seals and Special Forces.  They always said later, “People just assumed…” It didn’t matter.  A lie was still a lie, and it could go to a man’s head if he didn’t shut the shit down. 

I’d do it later.

I went through the hole first, stabilizing my weight over the boards.  Just because there was floor underneath them, didn’t mean it was all going to stay standing.  I got across, even with my prosthetic.

The other two followed in suit. 

When we crossed over I could hear it.  The faint muffled noise of conversation.  There were more men here, and they weren’t ours. 

I led them through a small room and we clung to the walls as we listened.

“Fuck, when Donal finds out –”

“Donal ain’t going to find out because he’s going to be dead.  Alan will be in charge, you got it?”  The second voice sounded truly exasperated with the first.

So that was what this was.  A fucking coup.

Shit
.

We sprung on them, their two men to our three.  We had the upper hand.  They didn’t see us coming.  It was over in a matter of moments.  I hit the one with the butt of my gun, and Rage took down the other.

We were left with the bleeding, yet still conscious form of Hawk, who was tied in his chair.

As soon as I ripped off the duct-tape over his mouth, he snarled at me, “You dumbfucks!  This is a trap!  They are going to kill my dad.”

I might have taken offense to his mouth, but he looked panicked.  I glanced at Thrash, who shrugged.  If I wanted to punch him, I could. 

I decided to pass.  Hawk had watched my back before. 

As soon as he was free, we wound our way back down through the home and outside where Strike and his team met us.

“Has he gone in there yet?”  Hawk asked Strike, rubbing his wrists.  Spend that long tied up, it did shit to your circulation.  Gave you phantom pains.

“Yeah, he’s in there.  He has a lot of guys, man.  Don’t –”

Gunshots rang out from the main warehouse and we took off to cover.  Once in a large patch of brush, we looked at Hawk for an explanation.

“Fuck.” 

More gunfire. 

“We need to get the fuck out of here before they turn that shit on us.”  Rage said it, but we were all thinking it. 

Thrash had to hold Hawk back.  He was fighting to rush out, snarling, “That’s our fucking da!”  Thrash had to throw him to the ground to calm him – not once, but twice.

“Get
down
, man.”

Hawk wasn’t listening, but when he saw his brother, he started screaming thrashing.

Strike was crouched near us, his face ashen.

Shit was going down that we couldn’t control.  It was time to retreat.  

Hawk shook his head.  “You don’t even know.  You don’t even know.”  He was clearly in shock, the wounds on his face broken and oozing again.  He was going to have to get stitched right the fuck back up.  There was no such thing as a break.

Emma

We were waiting, trapped on the edge of knowing if they were okay or dead without any relief until the word came in. 

I hated this.  I
hated
it.  It was like nothing I had ever experienced before, and nothing I wanted to ever experience again. 

And it was going to keep on happening.

Was this always how it was going to be?   All of us, the lovers, the “claimed” women of the club sitting around together, scared out of our minds that one of the men we cared about, or fucked, or both, was not going to come back?

I looked around the room.  It wasn’t just us.  Some of the older men of the club were waiting, too.  They murmured amongst themselves, but even they had the sense to keep it down.  I knew if they didn’t, I was going to go over there and beat someone over the head with my glass.  My nerves had been stripped and seared.

That was when the phone rang with word. 

They were just a few miles from the clubhouse.  They were all alive.

But they didn’t say how many were hurt.

I could only imagine a bloodbath.  It was going to be worse than the last time.  It had to be.

No way I could have a man like Aidan and it not go down that way.  He might be fine today, but tomorrow, the next day, something was going to get him.

I grabbed my hair and nearly screamed.

My mother’s words echoed in my mind. 
Don’t get tangled up with a dangerous man
.  This was what she had meant.  Don’t fall under their influence.  Don’t just go along with it.

Well if anyone was dangerous, it was Aidan. 

I’d known that going in, but only now was I starting to really get it.  This wasn’t one time.  This wasn’t even the first time. 

They came in, all of them walking, except Hawk.  The younger brother was hobbling, seeking out a seat with the help of his brother. 

I sighed in relief.

At least they were all safe, and they’d accomplished what they set out to do.  They had returned with Hawk.

This detail was very important to me: it meant they didn’t have to go back out.

Somehow, Hawk looked even worse than he had last I’d seen him.  The stitches had broken open and the edges of the flesh looked as though they were getting infected. 

What had they done to him?

“You.  Sit.  Now.”  I pointed Hawk to a lower seat, as I opened my kit and started going through it.  I couldn’t fix the stitches, but I could sterilize the wound.  I could make sure he was ready when Desiree got here.

Desiree had refused to be locked in.  She’d said she would come when she was needed, but that she wasn’t going to shut herself in with the rest of us.

It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one with issues.

“You don’t take it easy on me, do you, Emma?”  Hawk asked, his trademark grin a little droopy from the swelling in his cheek and chin.

“Shut up and hold still.  This is going to sting.”  I splashed alcohol onto thick knit gauze and started soaking the cuts, cleaning the stitches as best I could.  Many of them had ripped. 

He hissed like a snake from the pain, but made no other complaint.  His fingers dug into the handles of the wooden captain’s chair he was sitting in.  The guy was tough, I’d give him that.

“Shit.  You really are going to be one ugly son of a bitch,” Rage said then glanced over at Strike.  “You two need any help?”

“None that you can give.  Best you stay out of it from here on,” Hawk said.  “We don’t want you coming under fire for this.  Especially if someone from our line doesn’t end up on top.  We’ll need you later.  Fucking traitors.” 

I furrowed my brow.  I didn’t quite understand the entire story, but it was clear that these two boys were in danger of losing their rank in the Mob.

I caught a bit of Strike’s hurried conversations.  His hushed voice was still audible enough to hear that he was trying to arrange some sort of safe house for his family.

“You hurt anywhere else?”  I asked my patient.

“Yeah, think I got a couple of broken ribs,” Hawk replied. 

I pulled up his shirt to inspect.  There was bruising in the back that led me to think his pain was due to more than just a couple breaks.  There was also an ugly patch around the kidney that might indicate a puncture.

Jesus, we needed a doctor.

“You need to get to a hospital.  I think you may have serious internal bleeding.” 

“Sure.  Sure.  I’ll do that as soon as that sexy little paramedic gets here.  Dying man’s wish.”  He had a classic smirk, the kind that was somewhere between devilish bad boy and totally obnoxious.

“Oh shut up.  You are not dying.  At least, not as long as you get to the damn hospital.” 

When I spotted Desiree, though, I waved her over.  Those no-nonsense eyes took in Hawk’s leer and she snorted, unimpressed. 

“Seriously, you brought me over here for this douchebag?”  Desiree shook her head and sat beside me.  “What’s wrong with him?”

“Needs his stitches redone.  We think he may have broken ribs and potential blunt trauma to the left kidney.”

She nodded and looked down her nose at him.  “You know you’re going to have to go to the hospital, right?”

Hawk smirked and leaned back, trying to show off.  “Well, I can’t drive myself, so I thought you’d do it for me.”  He winked at her and I stood up. 

My work with him was done.

I found Aidan leaned up against the door, his eyes dark and broody as he stared at me.

As I walked towards him, Strike said “Okay, I’m getting out of here.  I have shit to coordinate.  You going to take him in?”  he asked Desiree.

She rolled her eyes, but nodded. 

“Good.  When you are ready, bro, you come to our place, you got it?”  I assumed he was talking about whatever safe house he had gotten set up for them.

I tried not to be openly resentful, but truth was that the sooner they were gone the better.

I was starting to wonder which group I was more exasperated with: the Mob or the MC. 

Aidan reached for me and pulled me into him, his body hot to the touch.  I fought the urge to resist, to reel back from him and start screaming at him again.  Instead, forced myself to be still for a moment.  Silent.

He eyed me carefully, as if he sensed how near we were to another fight.  “You wanna talk?  You look pissed.” 

He pulled me back into one of the spare rooms of the club.  It was empty except for a pole and a couch.

Their own personal VIP room?  I winced.  I would do a lot for Aidan, but I wasn’t getting on that pole.

“I’m sick of this shit, Aidan.  It’s dangerous as hell, and I can’t stand knowing if every time you leave, if it will be the last time.”

“That could happen to me anywhere.  Driving the Chevelle, on my bike, walking down the fucking street.  What’s the club got to do with it?” 

He snarled at me.  We were both so tired of having this fight.

“Yeah, but when you put the club into the mix you know that the odds go up.”  I pressed it.  I didn’t know what I was going to accomplish.  He was in the club now.  It was a part of him, and hoping for anything else was childish.  But god I needed it to change.  I needed
something
to change.

I was angry and I was hurt, and fear was pumping through my veins.

So I pressed it.

“I hate this shit.  I don’t want you doing it anymore.”  It was true.  But I probably could have found a better way to put it.  My words set him off, making things worse instead of getting me what I needed.

His voice was cold when he replied.  “You don’t get to decide that for me, Emma.  This is my life.  I’ve signed up for it, and I’m a part of it, a part of something bigger than myself.  You only have a couple of choices, baby.” 

He pressed me against him, his body so uncomfortably close, smashed up against mine.  It wasn’t like how he had held me before.  It was angry, laced with bitterness.

His kiss, too, was ragged and nasty.  He bit me, leaving me angry and hurt and fighting back with my own teeth. 

For the first time, our chemistry went sour.  Vilely so.  Because we didn’t stop.  We kept at it, making a mockery of everything we had done before.

I fought him for a few moments before I finally gave up and pulled away from him.

“I’m not just going to stand around and wait for you to die,” I hissed.

“You can stay, or you can leave.  There is no two ways about it, darlin’.  You seem to be under this impression that I should be somewhere else.  That these men don’t matter.  Well let me tell you something.  These men are my family.  And you can accept that or not.  But I won’t keep talking about it.”

I pushed away from him.  He’d just given me an
ultimatum
.

I wouldn’t let him control me.  I wouldn’t let him tell me what to do.

I wouldn’t be my mother.

I took a deep breath and crossed my arms.  “Are you sure about this?”  I asked, waiting for an answer I did not want to hear. 

He didn’t even pause to think about it.  “Yeah.  I’m sure.”

His words stunned me, slowly draining all the hope from me. 

“Then I guess I don’t have a choice,” I said softly.  “Goodbye, Aidan.”

He spit at the floor.  “It’s Wrath, bitch.”

Reeling, I turned and ran out of that room and the club, not bothering to look back, or respond to Layla when she called my name.

The tears streaming down my face were too hot, too embarrassing to let anyone see.

It’s Wrath, bitch
...

Dear god, that had stung.  Torn a hole right through me.  And I knew I couldn’t let it go.  I couldn’t just come back later and pretend he hadn’t turned rabid on me. 

For the first time, he had treated me like a thing, and I felt like I needed to scrub him off me.

I threw myself into my car and took off, holding the tears back as best I could.  Finally, I spotted a parking lot next to the school and pulled over. 

It was there that I lost it, sobbing and crying until I was aching, my body heaving.  I cried until I could barely breathe and then I cried some more.

It was ugly and painful and it hurt like nothing else.  And I knew it was the wrong choice.  I knew I was going to regret walking away, but I couldn’t do anything else.

I wouldn’t do anything else.

I wouldn’t be a fool…