Ryan (The Mallick Brothers #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  My voice had been low and savage, anger usually being a cool thing inside me, cold enough to freeze you over.

  And, if he knew my family, he damn sure knew my threat wasn't an empty one.

  My hand eased on his throat and he sucked in a breath before speaking. "You know I can't give him up."

  "Like fuck you can't," I snapped, impatient. I wasn't entirely sure that Dusty wouldn't start looking for me at some point. I didn't have all goddamn day to get the information out of him. "And you don't exactly have a choice, Bry."

  "The product is gone, right?" he asked finally as my hand released him and I took one small step back.

  "And you're out ten grand. How the fuck are you going to explain that to your boss? Is telling me who he is really the worst fucking thing you can do today?"

  "You don't understand," he said, shaking his head, sliding to the side and moving toward the kitchen where he reached above Dusty's stove and grabbed a glass then went to her freezer and pulled out vodka she kept there.

  So, her aversion to him touching her aside, they were close. He knew where the cups and the booze were and felt comfortable helping himself. Suddenly I wondered if maybe the two had been more than friends at some point. It would explain his thing for her and the fact that he had stuck by her even when everyone but her uncle seemed to give up on her.

  "Then help me to," I suggested, watching as he poured three fingers worth of vodka and took it in one gulp.

  If it was a three fingers of vodka in one throw kind of issue, then it was serious shit. I felt myself stiffening, wondering who the fuck she could have possibly been wrapped up with.

  "I don't work for Lex if that's what you're asking," he said, meaning the most vicious sonofabitch in all of Navesink Bank who was well overdue for a seriously long, drawn out, torturous death. Lex dug his hands into a little bit of everything in our town and took cuts from some of the smaller-time operations, keeping them under his thumb, not allowing anyone else to rise up in the ranks and take him out.

  "I know you're not working for Lyon since all he does is stockbroker drugs. Don't tell me this is as fucking lowdown as Third Street."

  He snorted at that, almost like he was insulted. "No."

  "Then who? Because that's all the dealers in this area."

  His head cocked to the side at that. "Exactly."

  I exhaled hard, looking up at the ceiling for a long second. He was dealing in Navesink Bank for someone who wasn't supposed to be operating in the town? That was the kind of clusterfuck I didn't want to be anywhere fucking near. Because not only did it mean you had a problem with Bry's boss and whoever the fuck stole from him, but it also meant that if Lex or Lyon or Third Street got wind of it, you were in their crosshairs as well.

  That was not a place anyone wanted to be.

  My family had always worked to stay out of everyone else's business in town. We were on friendly terms with The Henchmen, Hailstorm, the Grassis, and the freelancers like Breaker and Shooter. We actively avoided any contact with Lex Keith. And we had no reason to have any communication with Lyon or Third Street.

  It was a survival mechanism to be neutral even if you didn't agree with what other operations were doing. Pops had a good reputation all his life and, as we aged up, we all added to it. But his operation wasn't huge. We didn't have a lot of people outside of me and my brothers. We would never survive some underground war. We knew that so we didn't stick our noses in business that wasn't our own.

  There was an exception here or there.

  Namely, the shit that went down with Shane and Lea.

  But that was an exception because Lea was Shane's and whatever demons she had after her were Shane's problem as well. So he dealt with them and because family was family was family (no matter how harebrained the scheme at times) we helped.

  The same rule would apply if Dusty was mine, right?

  Only problem being, we hadn't agreed to that. We had barely talked much at all. A part of me was worried about pushing, about putting expectations on her that might stress her out. But to be honest, I saw it going somewhere. Even though it was new. Even though I didn't know everything about her, I was seeing it heading somewhere serious. Eventually. At her pace.

  So, for the time being, she wasn't technically mine.

  But I didn't see that being a problem either.

  I wasn't a shit starter. I never got involved in shit that wasn't good for my family. And I wouldn't be doing it now if it weren't for good reason.

  "Where?" I asked as he poured himself another shot.

  He sighed, shaking his head as he looked off out Dusty's picture window for a long second before his eyes found mine again. "Camden."

  "Oh for fuck's sake," I growled.

  Camden? Fucking Camden? The place rated the most dangerous goddamn city in America for years running? With a crime rate six times the national average? Great. Fucking fantastic. Just what I needed.

  I exhaled hard, holding onto hope. "Five-hundred pills isn't a huge stash." It was enormous for our town, but as a whole, that was a small chunk of the trade.

  "Not if you factor in that I'm one of fifty guys doing this shit."

  Fifty.

  If each guy had the same five hundred pill stash, that meant that there were twenty-five thousand pills and over half a million dollars in the operation. And that was only per goddamn shipment and distribution. I had no idea how often they got pills in, but even if it was just once a month at that rate, that was a big deal.

  Bry's boss, whoever the fuck he was, was not someone I had any business fucking with.

  I reached up, scraping a hand down my scratchy stubble on a sigh.

  "So you get me here," Bry said, nodding.

  "Get me a fucking glass," I growled, brain racing.

  Bry snorted and turned back to do that, pouring me a heavy shot and I threw it back.

  "Alright," I said, wincing at the burn. "Ten grand. I'll make good on that," I decided, seeing it as the only way out of the shit situation.

  Bry was shaking his head before I was even done. "He has contacts all around to keep an eye on things. If people start bitching that they can't find 30s around here all a sudden, on a mother fucking party night, then there is going to be some questions. They'd be the kind that come with a lot of bleeding on my part." He paused, looking down at his feet. "Like to say I'm strong enough to keep my mouth shut, but he's a sick fuck and I can't make that promise and Dusty..."

  Dusty could pay for his fucking connections.

  "Alright, who the fuck knows about you?" I asked, hoping that if he was stupid enough to get connected with some dealer in Camden that he was at least smart enough to keep his less than legal activities to himself.

  "Aside from literally every-fucking-one I deal to?" he asked, making a good point.

  Addicts were a desperate sort. If they saw that Bry always had a large supply of drugs on him and followed him even casually, they would find that our apartment building was a constant stop of his.

  And Dusty, well she couldn't have been an easier target, could she?

  "You love Dusty, don't you?" I asked, making him jerk guiltily.

  "She's been my best friend since we were kids," he hedged.

  "How the fuck could you leave her so unprotected?" I asked, anger out of my voice, just a deep kind of sadness there instead. When you loved someone, you watched out for them. Even if you were involved with dark shit, like me and my family, you made sure that never touched your women or kids.

  Bry shook his head again, looking down at his empty glass. "She's so fucking stubborn, man," he said and I almost wanted to smile. I did get a peek of that over the dishes, but it was hard to imagine her being so stubborn that you couldn't force a security system or a guard or a nasty looking dog on her if you needed it for her safety. "I never wanted her involved in the first place. She was never meant to touch this shit."

  Well, that was the damn truth. And I had to give him at least a little bit of begrudging respect f
or knowing that.

  "Then why is she?"

  "I see that it's easy to judge from the outside, man. But you weren't here to watch her crumble. You didn't see the panic attacks and the way she started shutting herself off. You didn't have to stand by and watch every person in her life but me and her uncle give up on her. Her own mother said she was a goddamn overreacter and refuses to come here. Says if Dusty wants to see her, she has to come out to lunch somewhere. Don't like calling women bitches, but she's a bitch," he added, looking up at me. "She had to quit her job. She had to move out of her old apartment. She only had so much cash. I knew she was almost through it all and I stupidly talked about needing a safe place to keep my supply. It fucking spiraled from there. I mean, I could have just gotten a locker somewhere, y'know? But she was so desperate and she wouldn't take 'handouts'."

  So he didn't actually need to pay her... whatever the hell he paid her to hold the stuff. He was just, in his twisted sort of way, being a good guy.

  "Alright," I said, deciding to check my accusations, agreeing that I hadn't been there; I didn't know what they had gone through as friends; I had no idea how it felt to sit by and watch someone you love lose their life because of some invisible monster inside of them. I imagined I would have done whatever I needed to help her too. And Bry didn't have the advantages I did. He did what he could. It was useless to rag on him about it. "Let's try to narrow this the fuck down before it all blows up in our faces."

  He nodded at that, agreeing. "What did they look like?"

  "Two guys. Both were average height, maybe five-ten. Wide, but not fat. Stocky. Dark hair, dark eyes. Thirties, but early or mid. Not trained fighters. It was pure street. Goes without saying they're the kind of scum who would put their hands on women."

  "Unfortunately, that little part doesn't really cut it down much, does it?" he asked, proving again he was decent. What the hell had happened in his life to lead him into drug dealing? "Scars? Tattoos? Accents?"

  I squinted a little, trying to think back, trying to work through the red my vision had been clouded in at the moment. "The one who hurt her, he had a scar through his eyebrow, completely cut it into two parts. The other one, I didn't get that close a look at him. But the one with the eyebrow scar, his face is resembling mincemeat right about now."

  His eyes went to mine and held for a minute, searching for something. He must have found it too because his lips went into a firm line, his eyes went more guarded, and he gave me a small nod.

  Accepting, maybe, that Dusty was mine.

  "I can work with that," he said, nodding.

  "You don't have much time," I warned. If they had that big a stash, they would be trying to move it, get the cash. But if he could recover the bulk of the pills, things wouldn't go to shit.

  "I won't need it," he said with a sort of fierceness I admired in someone, regardless of their profession.

  "Good," I said with a nod. "If you need any motivation," I added, reaching for my phone and opening the text Eli had sent not only to me but my entire goddamn family in his attempt to show that we all had to be in on her situation, I guess, and holding out the picture of Dusty.

  Bry's face fell as he reached for the phone, holding it and looking down at her for a long goddamn time before handing it back and letting his gaze meet mine. What did I find there? Fucking rage. And the kind of determination that said he would find the fucks who did it, no matter what it took. Not to save his own skin, but as payback.

  "Just so we're clear, I want to know who they are," I added, slipping my phone away.

  "Yeah," Bry said, pulling out his own cell and typing, asking for my number then having me add it under the contact named "Eddie's Pizza".

  "Be smart," I added as he tucked his phone away. "Don't give your boss any reason to look closer because you're being a fucking lunatic."

  He nodded, moving past me but not going to the door, going down the hall in her apartment instead, making my brows draw together as I heard some slamming in the bathroom.

  "You got a tub?" he asked oddly, his voice carrying.

  "Ah... yeah," I said, even more curious as there was another slam and then he walked out with a green and white paisley decorative box in his hands. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a small Christmas-wrapped package and slipped it inside the box too before handing the whole of it over to me. "What's this?" I asked, pulling off the lid and seeing a ton of little round balls filled with what looked like herbs and dried flowers.

  "Bath bombs," he supplied, shrugging. "She gets stressed out, she needs a bath. Sometimes five times a day on a bad day. She likes these things. And you're going to want to get her her computer over at your place if she's not coming back here."

  "Why?" I asked, putting the top back on the box, knowing that the little package he got her was more of her bomb things, pointing again to how well he knew her. Another little inexplicable surge of envy coursed through me and I actually had to remind myself that I would know her that well eventually.

  And better.

  At least I hoped.

  "She has appointments with her shrink for one," he said, nodding to the computer in the corner. "Video chats. Though, I imagine she will be cancelling until her face is somewhat better. And, on top of that, she needs to be able to write and order the shit she needs. Since, you know, she can't leave."

  "Right," I agreed, nodding slightly.

  "She's afraid to come back, isn't she?" he asked, motioning around.

  "I think so," I said, not entirely sure.

  "It's all tainted. This stuff, it's her stuff. It was all perfect and how she needed it. Now it's all fucked. When this shit blows over, I'll make it up to her and pay to redo every last goddamn decorative thing," he said with fierceness, wanting to make it right so badly.

  I bit my tongue to keep myself from saying that when it blew over, I was hoping she would be with me in a more permanent way. Because that shit was nuts.

  He moved to walk toward the door, had his hand on the knob, but then turned back to me. "Mallick," he said, head tilted to the side. "Loanshark."

  "Enforcer," I said, shrugging. Technically, my father was the actual loanshark.

  "She deserves better," he said, and I knew he meant better than both of us, since he wanted her too.

  "My dirt will never touch her," I said with so much conviction, it was practically a vow.

  "Better not. 'Cause like it or not, I'm a part of her life and if I get even an inkling that you aren't treating her right, you and me... we're going to have a problem."

  I nodded at that, respecting that stance more than he would know. "Understood," I said with a nod.

  He went to turn away, but then turned back again. "Don't push her," he added and, on that, was gone.

  I looked at the closed door for a long minute, hearing the elevator ding and knowing he was gone.

  Don't push her.

  I got that.

  Mostly, I understood that.

  But I didn't really agree with it either.

  I couldn't pretend to understand what Dusty was going through and what Bry had dealt with at her side over the years, but I did know that simply accepting the condition as it was didn't help. You didn't need to push, but you needed to encourage change.

  If he had stood beside her every day, bringing her whatever she needed and never trying to help her come back out of her shell, her apartment, her little personal prison, then he had, in a way, done more harm than good.

  I didn't want to push her.

  But I wanted to see her progress.

  Not for me. Not because I wanted to bring her with me everywhere I went or that I wouldn't be content with seeing her at my place when I came home.

  But for her. Because she deserved to have a life that didn't make her feel like she was constantly trapped, like she was surrounded by wolves that would consume her if she tried to step even a foot outside of her comfort zone.

  See, the funny thing about comfort zones was, sometimes it w
as a gun. Sometimes it was a keepsake. Sometimes it was an entire apartment. But sometimes, oh sometimes, it could be a person.

  And I was going to try like hell to prove to her that I could be that for her, that I would always be a safe place to land, that I could take her hand and lead her out and show her that those mother fucking wolves cowered down before me and they could never hurt her again.

  Maybe it was too soon for that.

  Maybe it was irrational to want to be that for someone you barely knew.

  Maybe she didn't even want me to be that for her.

  But regardless of all that, I was going to fucking try.

  TEN

  Dusty

  It took him forever to make his phone call which, well, was none of my business. So I finished up the dishes and put away the uncut veggies Ryan had left out and I went back into the bedroom to make the bed.

  Ryan's housekeeper ran a tight ship. Even with my slightly OCD need for things to be in the right order and clean, I found that after I fixed the things Ryan, Eli, and I had mussed up that morning, there was literally nothing left to do.

  So, at a loss, having none of my usual comforts to keep me busy, I found a notepad in the kitchen drawer that Ryan and Anita used to leave messages back and forth judging by the six pages of said messages asking Anita to buy lemons and protein powder or Anita telling Ryan that she used the card he gave her to buy cleaning supplies and groceries and that the receipt was in the drawer.

  After finding myself looking at his scribbly, slanted handwriting for far longer than I cared to admit, I took a pen and the notepad over to the couch and sat down to do a little writing.

  I hadn't really even heard him come in, finding that he moved around quietly when he wasn't in work shoes which I found interesting because literally every other man I had ever met in my life seemed to do everything with heavy footsteps- stomping to the bathroom in the middle of the night, slamming cabinets in the kitchen, yawning like they were being paid to really make it believable.