Scorched: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (Byrne Brothers Book 3)

by Holly Hart

  “I said you shouldn’t tell the boss, not that it was nothing. Maybe it’s the gringo on the other side of that wall,” the older man says in a mocking tone. “You wanna let him through without checking, and explain that one to the boss?”

  “Fine,” the younger kid grumbles. “You coming?”

  “Course not,” the old man laughs. I can almost picture the expression on his face: smart, superior. “I’ve done my time already, kid. It’s your turn to do the boring shit.”

  My heartbeat returns to normal in anticipation of a fight. Slow and steady. I count each thump in my chest, holding onto it, and holding my breath. I’m silent; a ghost. In the darkness of this basement room, I’m a wraith. I can’t be seen.

  The younger kid stumbles into the room, a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. He’s got a rifle slung across his chest, but his finger’s nowhere near the trigger. The way he’s carrying it, he couldn’t bring it to bear even if he needed to.

  Amateur hour.

  “Anything?” The old man shouts out.

  The younger man casts his gaze around the room, squinting into the darkness. His eyes practically pass over me. I’m no more than a couple of feet away from him, but totally shielded by the darkness.

  “No, we’re –.”

  I spring out of the darkness, charging towards the kid until I’m so close I see a flash of recognition in his eyes. He knows he’s about to die. I’d say a prayer for the kid, but I don’t have time. Frankie’s the only person in this whole building I give two shits about. Anything that stands in the way of saving her life is just an obstacle, a speed bump, and deserves to be removed.

  “– Good,” I growl in a low whisper, finishing the gangster’s last words for him.

  I jam the knife into the kid’s neck. Hot blood wells around my fingers. It’s slick and sticky. I catch his body as the light starts to die in his eyes, and as his legs give way.

  I lower it to the ground without a sound.

  “Hey, Carlos? What you saying?” The old man’s voice sounds again. “Ghost got your tongue?”

  I take the AK-47 from the kid’s body, and his baseball cap to boot. I shove it down low, wearing it just like he did, until it’s obscuring most of my face.

  I turn around the corner. The other guard is failing at his job: lying lazily on a couch with a can of beer in his hand. He looks up at me, a grin dying on his face.

  “What took you so –?”

  “Long?” I growl, jamming the barrel of my newfound weapon in his face. “Had to borrow this off Carlos. Ye sure he won’t mind?”

  The man’s mouth opens and shuts a couple of times as he processes the shock of my sudden appearance.

  “Who the hell are you?” He finally asks, his fingers inching towards the dented and scratched pistol slung in the waistband of his low ride jeans.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I will ye,” I grunt, shaking the barrel of my AK-47. “Take it out. Slowly: two fingers only. Make a move I don’t like, even so much as look at me the wrong way, I’ll put a bullet in your skull. Understand?”

  The gangster nods, his face black with anger. I know what must be going through his mind right now. He knows it either I’m going to kill him, or his boss will for sleeping on the job. Well, he doesn’t need to worry about that. I have plans for the man they call adultero, and none of them involve letting him live.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, gringo,” the man in front of me says. “Tell you what: I’ll let you walk out of here, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “The gun,” I growl, my voice dead. “Slide it over to me.”

  The gangster does as I order, his eyes blazing with fury. The weapon scrapes across the basement’s gnobbled, chipped concrete floor.

  “Good. Now – hands behind your back.”

  I walk over to the glowering gangster as he shifts in place, obeying my order.

  “One last chance –,” he offers.

  Least, he tries to. I bring the rifle butt crashing down against his forehead. In a second, his body collapses, out like a light. I doubt he’ll be waking up from that one anytime soon.

  “One last chance my arse,” I grunt.

  I let out a deep breath, making a conscious effort to expel some of the adrenaline that’s flooding through me. I need my wits about me right now, not to be pulled along like a driverless coach behind a gang of terrified horses.

  I press the – now slightly bloody – rifle to my shoulder and locate a set of stairs. I hear a man pacing about somewhere, in a room at the top of them.

  Thump, scrape; thump, scrape; thump, scrape.

  I bare my teeth in an ugly grin. I know that it’s adultero. The fact he still can’t walk straight because I shot him fills me with satisfaction.

  But more importantly, now I know where Frankie is. And I’m going to get her back.

  I take the stairs one at a time, bringing my boots down as close to the side of the staircase as possible, so it doesn’t creak.

  “Maybe I should kill you now, huh?” I hear. “Spread your brains out like modern art on that wall.”

  The words drift down the stairs, flung by the vehemence with which they were spoken. Their speaker sounds demented, enough to make me shiver. Just the thought of Frankie having to come face-to-face with this monster fills me with disgust. He punctuates his angered sentences with the racking back of his pistol slide.

  Coward.

  I take a step up, and then another; I’m almost half way up.

  Someone else in the room replies. The voice is quiet and soft. It’s Frankie – it must be. But she’s not begging for her life. I can’t tell what she is saying, but I know she’s not pleading with adultero. The thought fills me with pride. I knew that she would be better than that. I knew that she would be stronger. She’s proving me right, yet again.

  “He doesn’t care about you, bitch –.”

  I hear a slap echo around the room. I creep up the staircase, quiet as a mouse. Not that adultero is paying attention to anything except Frankie.

  “Maybe ye should try hitting someone yer own size, pig?”

  The ugly, limping Mexican gangster spins in one place, bringing his pistol up so it’s pointed at me. I breathe out a sigh of relief. At least this way he can’t hit Frankie.

  “Ye okay, doll?” I ask, filling my voice with tenderness.

  Frankie looks exhausted. She’s still standing on the pressure plate I saw in adultero’s picture. Her face is wan, pale and drawn. I know how much stress she’s under. In truth, I can’t possibly imagine what she’s experiencing right now. I don’t want to. The stress of knowing that one wrong move will end your life – it’s unthinkable.

  “I’m fine –.”

  “Did I tell you you could speak?” Adultero snaps, wheeling around to silence Frankie, his face red with rage.

  “I said, I’m fine.” Frankie repeats family, staring directly at my eyes. She doesn’t even bother looking at the gangster with the gun. I don’t understand how he can be so insecure. “Kill him, Ridley! Before he hurts anyone else.”

  “You came for your bitch, then?” The Templar growls, turning his attention back to me. “Decided she was worth dying for?”

  I shrug, even though my blood is boiling inside me. I want to put a bullet in the gangster’s skull just to repay that insult. Frankie’s no bitch, she’s the best girl I’ve ever known. A better person than this freak will ever know. Especially after what I’m about to do to him.

  I shrug. “Nah. I just wanted the clean sweep. My brother’s picking up the rest of yer women now. It’s over, Ricardo. Your bosses back home will never let you survive after this kind of failure.”

  The Templar’s face blanches.

  “That’s right. I know your name. I know who you report to. You’re not the only one who has friends in high places…”

  “So what,” he spits. “Don’t forget, gringo, I still have your girlfriend.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I growl. Frankie’s
face falls. She’s not my girlfriend; she’s so much more to me than that. I’m going to make her so much more.

  “So maybe I kill her?” Adultero – Ricardo shrugs. “If she’s not your girlfriend, I’m betting you won’t mind nothing?”

  “Step away from her,” I spit. “And I swear I’ll think about letting you go. But don’t –.” I leave the threat hanging in the air between us.

  “The bitch means something to you, gringo,” Ricardo laughs, his voice ratcheting up and down a singsong scale. He sounds crazy. A shiver runs the whole length of my spine. “And that means that she’s my ticket out of here.”

  “The bitch,” I say, “has more to like in her little finger than you have in your whole body. And if ye call her that one more time, I’ll put a bullet in yer chest, just like that. Try me.”

  “Don’t you see this, you fool?” Ricardo says, spinning and pointing at the pressure plate Frankie’s standing on with his pistol arm. “It’s a Type –.”

  “Sixty-six, I know,” I say, finishing Ricardo’s monologue for him. “I was offered the same batch. And ye know what? I turned them down, because I don’t do guns, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t do explosives. And when yer in my city, ye do as the Byrnes do. Understand?” I growl.

  “Fuck off,” Ricardo says scornfully. “You don’t do this, you don’t do that, you don’t do shit.” He leans forward. “You don’t do profit. This doesn’t change anything. Your bit–,” he pauses before he says the word: evidence that at least something I’ve said has hit home.

  “– Your girl is still standing on a landmine. One wrong move and she blows up. Bits flying all over the room. You want that?”

  I look at the Templar. A strange flush has invaded his tanned face. It’s almost as though he’s excited by the prospect of Frankie’s death. The sight makes me almost nauseous.

  I raise my weapon and point it at the gangster’s head.

  “You touch her, you die,” I growl.

  “You come any closer, I’ll blow the –.”

  “– Landmine, I know,” I reply, wrinkling my face with disdain. “Ye know why I didn’t take the batch, ye idiot?”

  Ricardo fixes me with his full attention. “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a reason no one buys Chinese landmines. They’re defective. The mercury firing pins all corroded back in the nineties. They shove all the bad shit out the back door to anyone who will take it. Any old fool. And you, apparently…”

  I can tell Ricardo doesn’t know what to believe. His eyes flicker between Frankie and I, then down to the pressure plate beneath her feet.

  “So give me the girl,” I growl – not giving him a second to settle. I aim the barrel of my weapon squarely between the man’s eyes. “And we can forget this nastiness ever happened.”

  “You’ll kill me,” Ricardo says, his voice sounding plaintive for the first time. He sounds like a lost child. “Kill me soon as look at me. I don’t have any other choice.”

  He sprints for Frankie, and presses the barrel of his pistol up against her temple. She flinches, lips going white from the force with which she’s pressing them together.

  A surge of satisfaction rushes through me. I hide it, much as I want to crow. I dare not give adultero a second’s warning.

  “Wrong move, motherfucker,” I grunt.

  I pull the trigger once. The gun jerks in my hands, ejecting a flash of light and a single, heavy lead round. The weapon’s bark seems to silence the room.

  I let out a breath.

  A tiny red circle appears on adultero’s forehead, and he drops to the ground – dead.

  Frankie yelps as a splatter of blood paints her face red. I want to reassure her, but my eyes track adultero’s body as it falls.

  And as it falls right onto the pressure plate.

  “Frankie,” I yell, sticking my still-smoking pistol into the small of my back. It burns my skin, but I don’t care. “You’re safe.”

  Frankie just stands there, shivering, looking at the Claymore pointed at her. “I can’t –.”

  She’s in shock. It’s obvious.

  “You can,” I say, stepping towards her. “It’s fine – look,” I gesture at Ricardo’s bleeding, limp body. “He’s holding it down. You can step off it, now. You’re safe.”

  With that, Frankie collapses into my arms. I wrap my body around hers, pressing her against me with fierce possessiveness.

  I’ve got my girl back. Whatever happens, I’m never letting go.

  “You came,” she whispers.

  I pull back, looking at Frankie’s face. I wipe as much of the blood off it as I can, drinking in her sparkling blue eyes. Right now, they are misted with tears, but I don’t care. Frankie looks every bit as beautiful to me as she did the second I met her. Maybe even more so, now our relationship has been seasoned with struggle.

  “Of course I did, Goose. I was always going to. If love gives you mountains to climb, then ye’ve made me a mountain climber.”

  She shivers against me. “How –, how did you know about the landmines?”

  It takes me a second to process what she’s talking about. “What I said about the firing pins? Tha’ was a pile of bull, Goose. Made it up. Worked, though.”

  I shoot her a wink.

  25

  Frankie

  Two weeks later.

  “You sure? That you’re ready? Because we don’t have to do this, not today. We can come back.” Ridley says, his voice tinged with worry.

  I look up at my boyfriend. Boyfriend! Gosh, it’s hard to believe that all of this is real.

  “I told you,” I mutter, my voice croaky like a baby lion’s roar, “not to worry. I’m fine, and –. And I need to do this. You understand that, right?”

  Ridley nods. I can tell he’s biting his lip, but that’s what I love about the man: he’s willing to give me the rope to hang myself with. Maybe I’ll regret today’s visit, but if I do, and I end up clinging to Ridley’s body for solace, he won’t rub it in.

  “I do. Just checking, that’s all, gal.”

  I glance up at Ridley anxiously. “They are all right, though, aren’t they? You said that nobody got hurt –.”

  It’s probably the thousandth time that I’ve asked that same question. Every time, Ridley gives me the same answer, in the same tone. Yes, the girls are fine. And no, nobody got hurt.

  Except their Templar guards. But after everything that’s happened to me, I don’t much care about them. They can rot in hell for all I care. I won’t lose a second’s sleep over it.

  “You know the answer,” Ridley says, his voice gruff. “Everyone’s fine. Doctors just recommended they needed some time to recover, that’s all. They’ve been through a lot –.”

  “I know, Rid,” I say, my voice soft. “I’ve been there too.”

  Ridley’s face twitches. I punch his arm lightly, just to let him know I’m joking.

  “So, shall we do this?” I ask.

  “You’re the boss,” Ridley grins.

  “Damn right, and don’t you forget it.”

  The truth is, I am nervous. I pull it together and force myself across the threshold of the Mulberry House Center. It’s set in a beautiful old house on the outskirts of Boston. There’s grass and potted plants and flowerbeds full of, – well… At the moment those are still plowed, lying empty and ready for spring to really take hold.

  But still, the halfway house is gorgeous. I can’t believe that Ridley organized all of this. He could have just let those poor trafficked girls suffer – let them scatter to the winds; without help, without support, without anything at all. But he didn’t. Without telling me, he got them help. The moment he told me was the moment I knew what kind of man Ridley truly is. Heck, I think I knew before, but that just solidified it in my mind.

  “Who’s paying for all this?” I ask, clinging to Ridley’s arm.

  A wide grin breaks out on his face. “A donation,” he chuckles.

  “From you?”

 
“A little,” he says. “But –,” he pauses, building anticipation for a punchline. I can tell he can’t wait to spit the news out. “Mainly it was our good friends the Templars. Who knew that Ricardo was such a philanthropist, eh?”

  “How?”

  “Oh, I didn’t tell ye?” Ridley grins, tapping his chest. “You’ll never guess what the boys found when they raided that safe house. Stacks and stacks of cash. Shame we got this whole don’t sell drugs thing going on, too. Looks like we could make a pretty penny if we did…”

  “How much did you find?”

  “Enough,” Ridley replies. “To pay for this place, at least. And a little left over fer the girls to take home, when they leave. Wherever home is. It won’t pay for the things that have been done to them, but –.”

  “But it will give them a chance,” I say, finishing Ridley’s sentence. “A leg up, at least.”

  I come to a halt in the middle of the hallway, forcing Ridley to stop or leave me on my own. He turns to face me. “What is it, doll?”

  I lean in and kiss him. Just a peck, right on the lips. Our mouths brush together, and then I pull back. There’s something I need to say. I’ve got to let it out right this moment.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” I whisper. “For everything. For this: you didn’t have to –.”

  “Hell I didn’t,” Ridley growls, a flash of anger dancing on his eyes. “Those bastards were – still are, some of them – in my city. I failed those gals once, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it again.”

  It doesn’t take more than a second to realize that Ridley’s anger isn’t with me, but with the Templar’s temerity at hurting his people, in his city! If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Ridley Byrne, it’s that he takes his responsibility to Boston as seriously as his love for me.

  “Still,” I say, pecking Ridley on the lips again. I would do it every second of every day, if we didn’t need to eat and breathe. “You really didn’t have to.”

  “Let’s agree to disagree,” Rid grins. “So – we gonna do this?”

  I bite my lip. “Yes,” I say after a second’s thought. “I’m ready.”