“That’s so awful,” Breezy said. “I don’t understand people. My own father and brother kidnapped my son, Zane, and beat me up when I tried to stop them. They threatened to kill him if I didn’t kill Czar and some others. That was my father, Soleil. Thank God I found Steele again.” She gestured around the room with a faint smile. “They’re all a little screwed up, but they have a code they live by. They take care of family, and they’re good at it. I’m so thankful Savage and Absinthe were with you.”
Soleil’s hands shook so badly she had to put the coffee cup onto the table. “Savage beat this one man horribly. It was terrible to see. I’d never seen anything like it. Not even on television. He was brutal.”
Ice winced, not wanting Soleil to relive the experience. He wanted her to shut the door on it and never talk about it. Never think about it.
Anya rubbed her shoulders. “Honey, what was going on? Why did he do that?”
Ice realized, again, they were allowing Soleil to sort through the images to get past her shock, past the blood, and see what had actually taken place.
Soleil glanced at Ice, who gave her a faint, encouraging nod. “Everything happened so fast. Like seconds. The man was angry at the one Absinthe was questioning and he had a gun. He tried to shoot Savage.”
Ice knew Savage hadn’t taken that gun on purpose. They had no choice but to kill the men. They knew that. Knowing Soleil was with him, he had to give them an excuse to do so. He’d deliberately gone up against an armed man with his bare hands in order to give Ice an explanation for his woman. He also knew if he tried to thank Savage, the man would just look at him with his flat, cold eyes, shrug his shoulders and act like he had no idea what Ice was talking about.
“He had a gun?” Breezy echoed, wanting to make that clear, to keep the image uppermost in Soleil’s mind.
Soleil nodded, a frown on her face. “Yes, and he tried to shoot Savage. I was so scared for all of them. Everyone. And if they were hurt it would be my fault. He shot off several rounds, I think. I’m actually not certain because they were struggling. Savage kept hitting him, especially when he turned the gun toward me.”
“Oh no, Soleil,” Blythe said. “You must have been so frightened.”
“I could barely see or think. I was frozen to the ground and couldn’t move. I actually thought about it, that I should move, but I couldn’t. Savage kept punching him until the man turned the gun back on him. It was awful.”
“Czar,” Ice said very softly, making certain that he drifted completely across the room, away from Soleil and the women. “There’s some connection between Winston’s con men and the pedophile ring we’ve been hunting.”
Czar frowned and turned to look at Soleil. “You’re certain.”
“Absolutely. The men there were members of the pedophile ring, yet they were hunting Soleil. Absinthe questioned one of them, and he stated they were looking for her. They even told us who gave her up and what club he was in.”
Czar stared out the window for a few minutes, his fingers drumming on the bar top where he stood at the very end of the curved bar. “This isn’t good, Ice. Even if the ring we’re after stumbled across Winston’s search for her and put her together with us, that means she has both rings hunting her.”
Ice nodded. “Exactly. Whatever the reason, she’s in more danger than I first realized.”
Czar turned to face the room, watching the way his wife gently touched Soleil’s hand to comfort her. “Women are magic, Ice.”
Ice wasn’t going to argue with that. “I have to agree. I don’t want her to leave me over this. I don’t honestly know what I’d do.”
“She isn’t going to leave you,” Czar said. “But it might be uncomfortable for a while.” He turned his head to look back at Ice. “If you want advice, I would say spend a little time on your relationship. You married her, Ice. You can’t just take. You have to let her know who you are. You have to give her that. Eventually, it isn’t all about sex. There are going to be times you might not be able to have sex. Or the spark wears off for a while and it fades to a slow burn. You have to have something else. Give her something else.”
Ice stopped himself from shaking his head. Czar was right. He knew it, but the idea left his insides tied up in knots. He couldn’t look at the reasons too closely, so he turned the subject back to what he was most comfortable with. He was a hunter, and he was at his best when he was hunting.
“We need to find the connection between the two rings, and I need to pay Fred from the Venomous club a little visit.”
“The run is coming up,” Czar reminded. “Their club will be one of the clubs there. You want to take care of Fred before the run or during? We’ll have to put that on top of the list just due to time constraints.”
“During. We won’t chance cops singling us out, putting us in the same space as his fuckin’ dead body.”
“Sounds good.”
Ice nodded. The door opened, and Savage and Absinthe walked in. Savage glanced at his brother first and gave a small nod, letting him know he was fine. Both men immediately came to their president to report.
“Were you seen on your way back?” Czar asked.
“We were riding together on an old logging road not far from here, and a man in an SUV was out cutting wood. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and we kept going and he pretended not to see us,” Absinthe answered for both. “Even if he’s asked, we were close to home and just out riding the roads like we normally do.”
“That’s good,” Steele said. He’d joined them. The other members were pushing closer as well.
“Let’s take this into the other room,” Czar said. He signaled to Fatei, one of their most trusted prospects, to watch the door, ensuring Soleil suddenly didn’t take it into her mind to make a break for it, and then went into their meeting room.
“There’s a tie-in between the ring we’re looking to take down and these con artists that target wealthy women,” Czar announced to everyone when they were seated around the table.
“What in the hell would pedophiles and men looking to murder wealthy women have in common?” Keys asked.
“I can start looking,” Code said. “Get the computer to search any commonality between the names we have. Soleil gave me a few names, and we have a good number in the pedophile ring. I’ve started a database. The search might turn up a connection somewhere.”
“How’s Soleil holding up?” Master asked.
“She’s shaken up,” Ice conceded. He didn’t want the others to think she wasn’t a good old lady. She was. He had known she had no experience with violence. They’d grown up in it. Brutality was a way of life for them. “She’s never witnessed anything like that before.”
“You killed them right in front of her,” Steele reminded. “Each of you put a bullet in one of their heads. If the cops come around, and a good investigator might uncover that they were searching for her, will she be able to stand?”
Ice honestly didn’t know. He wanted to believe that she would, but how could he know? If she told the cops the truth, he and Savage and Absinthe would be going to prison for a very long time. Inwardly he cursed. He needed to do what Czar said. He should have already been giving himself to her in the way he’d insisted she give herself to him.
“I don’t know.” He was honest. He had to be. It wasn’t just his life, it was the lives of the two men he called brothers.
There was a long silence while most looked down at the table. There was a pretty big threat hanging over their heads, and normally the club removed all threats. Ice’s stomach began to churn. No one was removing Soleil. If the suggestion even came up, he was walking out, grabbing his woman and taking off.
“Hopefully the women will do their jobs,” Czar said. “Ice, you get a handle on this—and fast. We can’t expect her to know our ways just because you’ve been fucking her brains out for the last month. You inst
ruct her. Teach her. Her loyalty has to be to you and the club. You get me?” There was a ruthless note in Czar’s voice. One all of them recognized immediately.
Ice nodded. “Absolutely. Consider it done.” He’d been the one to make the mistake, not Soleil. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He had to make certain that she didn’t.
“Have Lana and Alena help you. Soleil seems to trust them, and they like her. Alena is already hoping for a niece. That’s another thing,” Czar continued. “You were big on telling Steele to keep Breezy knocked up; get it done if that’s what it’s going to take. Soleil is married to you, that makes her one of us. No one wants anything to happen to her, but I can’t have a sword hanging over the heads of any of you.”
Ice stood up slowly. “Nothing is going to happen to her.” He put his hands on the table and leaned toward his president, ignoring the restraining hand of his twin. “I hope you understand me. All of you. Nothing is going to happen to my wife.”
Savage stood up as well, immediately drawing the attention of all of them. He rarely spoke. “Soleil is innocent in all this. She actually did very well. It all happened in the space of less than five minutes and she didn’t throw up. She didn’t run. She didn’t start screaming. She just needs a little time to adjust. I’m the one with the sword hanging over my head and I’m willing to risk it.”
“I am as well,” Absinthe agreed.
The knots in Ice’s stomach began to relax.
Czar put both hands on the table and shoved his chair backward until he could stand. “Well, I’m not. Clean this mess up with your wife, Ice. No one is going to take down three of my brothers because she was brought in before she knew what she was getting into.”
The knots were back in full force. Ice turned on his heel and left the meeting room.
FOURTEEN
Ice stood for a long time staring out the window of the pool room. He’d brought Soleil home and they’d had a quiet lunch together. She’d said she wanted to swim. He knew he was going to have to talk to her. Break the silence between them. He’d put it there, not her. This was one of those defining moments when he was going to make it work or everything was going to fall apart. He turned back to look at his woman.
Soleil cut through the water like she was born there. Whatever she chose to do, she did very well. She’d told him that she had lots of time to practice the things she was interested in. Swimming appealed to her, and every hotel she stayed or lived in had a pool. It was significant to him that she wore a bra and underwear instead of swimming naked. She didn’t have a suit because he hadn’t thought to buy her one. They still didn’t have her things because they hadn’t gone near her place in San Francisco.
“Come on out of there, princess, before you turn into a prune,” he called.
She glanced up at him, did another lap and then swam to the stairs. He handed her a towel and watched her dry off.
“I’m sorry about this morning, Soleil,” he said quietly, meaning it. “I’ve never told you about myself. I should have given you so much more. Something for you to hang on to so you’d trust me to do whatever was necessary to protect you at all times from anything, including being an accessory to any kind of violent or criminal act that takes place anywhere near you.”
She stopped in the act of drying her leg, looking up at him. “They were after me. They clearly said so, Ice. I put all of you in a terrible position. Savage could have been killed. All of you could have been killed. I’ve shot a gun. I’m very good at it, but after watching what unfolded so fast, I realized I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. I was horrified when I saw all of you kill them. It was so terrible. And it happened so fast. So unbelievably fast.” She shook her head and her hands trembled again. “I need to get dressed.”
He knew she felt vulnerable without her clothes. He’d felt that way a long, long time ago, when he’d been vulnerable. Before Czar. Before they’d taken back control. He trailed after her as she took the stairs back up to their room. He liked being behind her when she walked, especially since her panties were see-through and showed her firm cheeks to perfection. It took restraint not to reach out to claim what was his. He wasn’t going to allow himself to get off track or diverted because he didn’t want to go where he knew he had to.
Ice waited until she had rinsed off in the shower and come out fully dressed. He gestured toward the comfortable chairs positioned in front of the fireplace. “It’s very understandable that you would be horrified by violence, Soleil. Especially that brutal, that fast.”
“None of you hesitated, not even for a second. I blinked and there were three dead men. Then you all were ready to leave, and I was still trying to breathe.”
“You grew up very sheltered. You didn’t think of it like that because you were alone so much, but no one would dare touch you. You didn’t have to worry about where your next meal was coming from, you just had everything there.”
Ice rubbed his thigh, back and forth, trying to stop the churning in his stomach. He rarely opened the door into his childhood. He felt it creaking open, his personal nightmare. Immediately, his temperature dropped, and his heart began to race. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and trickled down his chest. He took a breath. He just had to get it done. Get it over.
“My parents were murdered by a man who felt very threatened by their political views. His name was Sorbacov and he was a very powerful man in Russia. At the time, he backed a certain candidate for the presidency, and he got rid of any opponent to his choice. When he killed the parents of his political enemies, he took their children to one of four schools to train them to become assets for his country. That was really code for assets for him. He oversaw the schools and directed his agents—us—where he wanted them to go,to those he wanted them to kill.”
Ice kept his gaze fixed on her face. Her chair was angled toward him and her eyes had jumped to his. He saw trepidation there, but mostly compassion. Soleil was all about that emotion. She had gone very still.
Shit. He’d been such an idiot not sharing anything about his life with her. If he gave her anything, it was done so casually, as if the tidbit meant nothing. This meant something to her. He reached for her hand and immediately brought her palm to his thigh, his thumb sliding back and forth across her knuckles. He needed that connection to her.
“Alena was a baby, an infant really. Storm and I were toddlers. Unfortunately, we were striking, all three of us. Our unusual eyes and hair made us prime targets for the pedophiles running the school Sorbacov sent us to. He liked little boys. More, he liked to see little girls hurt. The school was the perfect playground for him, and with our looks, he wasn’t going to give us up.”
She was beginning to register what he was saying, the vile truth of his past. Her breath caught, and her expression was one of horror. He kept doggedly on.
“They ran the school as if we were being taught to be assets, but they didn’t expect us to live, so we weren’t taught much about society outside the walls of the schools. The first thing they did was take our clothes.”
He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes and tried not to let that little, terrified boy out. There were so many things to be terrified over, but losing her was the worst. He kept rubbing his thumb gently over her knuckles, needing the contact.
“I want to tell you about my past, Soleil, because I want to spend my life with you. If you want that as well, you have to know me. You have to know who I am and what shaped me into being this person.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to lose you, Soleil. It’s taking a big chance giving this to you. The things I had to do to survive and to make certain Storm and especially Alena did will turn your stomach. They also shaped me into a pretty fucked-up mess of a human being.”
Soleil moistened her lips and then nodded. “I married you, Ice, without knowing you, but I made a commitment to you when I knew exactly what I was doing. Did today shake me up? Yes. I had seve
ral things to think about. One, I put you in jeopardy. But two, how easily killing came to all three of you. I never thought of you like that. Savage, maybe, but Absinthe or you, not at all.”
He understood. He hid the killer. Taking a life was instinctive in him. A survival trait. “We were ‘pretty’ and favorites of the instructors. They would rape us, pass us around. Beat us. Throw us back into the dungeon, broken, bloody and traumatized. Little Alena. She was just a baby. We couldn’t stop them.” He shook his head and looked away from her, not wanting her to see the rage that sometimes consumed him. “Czar was only a kid as well, but older by a few years, and everyone looked to him to find us a way out.” He shook his head, trying not to allow the bile to rise.
He couldn’t look at her now. He could only stare into the flames dancing in the fireplace. “There was no way out. They began to teach us how to have control. They did that by arousing us while we were being beaten. We were supposed to force our bodies to cooperate no matter how much it hurt. Sometimes it was the opposite, we weren’t supposed to react when someone was arousing us. That training continued for years, day in and day out. Depending on who the instructors were and what type of sex they got off on, we were used and taught to be proficient at their games until those games were normal to us.”
Her hand went to her throat in that defensive way she had. When he glanced at her, her eyes were wide with shock.
“Ice.” She just murmured his name. Softly. Lovingly.
The sound of it wrapped him up in something safe. He wasn’t used to that feeling, and it nearly undid him. He needed distance from his past. He expected her to reject him for many reasons, one of the biggest that he’d been a victim of pedophiles for years. He knew there wasn’t a lot of sympathy for male children, regardless of the fact that they were helpless and the act was rape. He forced himself to continue, to get to the worst. There was a lot of the worst.
Vendetta Road Page 30
