by Keta Kendric
When I stepped too close to a tight hall leading into another portion of the place, Khane and Desiree called me at the same time.
“Mecca.”
“Not that way,” Khane said, softening his voice. His face was unreadable, but his body was tense. As a matter of fact, he and Desiree both seemed a little tense.
I cast a glance back at the area. Was there something down that hall they didn’t want me to see? The notion made me that much more curious. However, before I could question them, Khane was leading us down another hall cut through the rock. The wall surrounding our passage was jagged but oddly beautiful.
How many different tunnels and passages were under this house? And what could Arjen possibly have down here that he could give me as a gift. He stopped me and spun me before we cleared the hall so that my shoulders were pinned to his chest.
“I need to cover your eyes. I want you surprised at the gift I have for you.”
My brows rose, but I was itching to see this surprise, so I didn’t argue. Standing before Arjen, he pressed me deeper into his chest as he covered my eyes with his big hand and urged me to walk ahead.
I immediately knew when we had cleared the hall because the area felt open and was significantly colder as a rush of chills shook me. All movement stopped, and I held my breath at the unknown awaiting me. Arjen’s hand lifted from my eyes.
“Surprise!” he whispered in my ear, excitedly.
My gaze caught Khane and Desiree first as they stood glaring like they had a bad case of bloodlust.
The surprise was a person. A person I was certain was mine to do with as I pleased if I understood this gift correctly. Chained to a wall inside of a makeshift prison cell, he stood in all black clothing and made a convincing scarecrow.
Liam Vallin’s bulging eyes grew intense when he saw me. The smile on my face was no doubt shining with the sheen of the wicked thrills rolling through me.
“Judging by that look on your face, you thought you had killed me, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t, and I promised myself that if I ever survived death and came face to face with the person that tried to kill me, I would unleash every drop of chaos that resides inside me.”
“Father, I would like to introduce you to Quiet Chaos,” Arjen made the official introduction, giving his father the name I used when I turned into that other person. The evil grin that left me started low before it bounced off the walls.
“We are going to have so much fun, Mr. Vallin. I promise, by the time I’m done with you, you will be able to enter hell and write them a whole volume of encyclopedias on the levels of chaos that’s going to be involved in your slow death.”
Arjen hadn’t given me a birthday gift. He had given it to the part of me that I kept on a chain.
Epilogue
I stood in what I called the common area of Khane and Desiree’s secret dungeon. The faint smell of lingering death loomed at my back, stirring my sense of danger but not waking it fully. There was no doubt that the hell Khane and Arjen had unleashed in this room was still hanging around.
Desiree had invited me over for a girl’s weekend since Khane and Arjen had syndicate business to take care of. Arjen and I kept our word about not keeping secrets, so he told me that he and Khane received an order for a double hit. The syndicate wanted two high-level officials wiped out.
After Desiree had fallen asleep on the couch, it left me alone to satisfy my curiosity about their dungeon. She and Khane were a bit too jumpy the last time I was down here.
Liam Vallin had been transferred to a secret bunker under Arjen’s house that I recently found out about. He’d had to have the area remodeled to be converted into a prison for his father. The Vallin men with their secret houses and underground prisons had me shaking my head at them.
I crept along the expanse of the room, my eyes locking with the torture table before the space that led to a near-invisible hall called my attention. I edged closer to the opening of the hall and stopped, staring down the narrow and dark corridor.
Once I started moving, there was no stopping me. The creepy tight space of the hall sent a chill racing through me, but I had to see what was at the other end of it.
I slowed my steps when I noticed that there was an opening up ahead. A chilling wind swept over me, the breeze sending a low whisper into my ear. I crept closer to the opening and didn’t stop until I was standing at the bars that made up a prison cell.
All movement ceased and I just stood there staring. Standing on the other side of the cell, gripping one of the bars was none other than the conniving snake that had made his way onto my kill list.
“Raymond.” My voice was calm, but inside, I was all rage and chaos.
“Mecca,” he greeted, his expression hopeless. “Are you here to kill me?” he asked, knowing my mentality better than anyone.
“Yes. The shit you pulled could have gotten us all killed. What the fuck happened? How the fuck did you let shit get so bad that you left me with a fifteen-million dollar tab, got your own drug shipments seized, and exposed Desiree as the Bookkeeper?”
He dropped his head, and a hard swallow sounded.
“I lost control. I couldn’t fight what I now know was an addiction worse than any drug could ever produce. I owed the Carrera’s twenty million. Played in their Cyclone games, which had a million-dollar buy-in. I lost the million and went ten million in the hole, and made matters worse by going even further in the hole.”
I closed my eyes and meditated for a moment. Was Raymond standing there telling me that he’d almost gotten us all killed because of a fucking gambling debt?
“The Carrera’s are the Cardenas Cartel’s mortal enemy. Why would you do something so fucking stupid?”
“I had no control, and I had done it twice before and came out a few million dollars richer. The games, the strength of the notion that you will win, it makes you believe you can overcome. My first idea to straighten out the debt was to sabotage the shipment. I brokered a deal with law enforcement. They took half of the drugs, and I kept the other half. I used some of the money to pay the Carrera’s five of the twenty million I owed them and fucked up by gambling the rest. I was digging a deeper grave.”
He dropped his sad eyes when he couldn’t maintain the cold frozen stare I cast on him.
“Desiree’s idea that I form an alliance with the Vallins popped into my head, and without telling her what I was up to, I negotiated the deal. The Vallins needed to get votes and wouldn’t release any money right away. I went to the FA with the same deal because I knew that they didn’t have anything that would stop them from giving me money.”
He shook his head in shame as he bit into his lip and could barely lift his gaze to meet mine. I had seen his behavior before in people with hardcore gambling addictions. They would rob Peter to pay Paul and borrow money from anyone willing to lend it to them. However, Raymond’s addiction was played out on a grander scale where millions of dollars and lives were what he was using to cover his bets.
“Like the addict I was, I tried to use the money to see if I could make a come up. I kept making it worse and realized if I didn’t take myself out of the equation, I would get you all killed, along with taking down the whole organization. The Black Saints were going to fade away because I wasn’t strong enough to fight my addiction.”
“How many fucking times did Desiree and I try to help you? How many fucking times did that girl send help to you that you turned away? Are you telling me, we all could have died because you weren’t strong enough to fight your addiction? You used a junkie’s mentality instead of using Desiree like you were supposed to. If you had let us know what was happening, we wouldn’t have let shit get that bad.”
The anger roaring through my body had my face hot and my body trembling.
“I knew that if I didn’t disappear, that I’d keep digging a deeper hole. So, I left the organization in the hands of the only two that I believed could fix things.”
I pointed a stiff finger at him. �
�You left us to clean up your fucking mess. Desiree was taken by the FA and almost died. I almost died. Members of the Black Saints died!”
His hands flew into the air after I snatched HB from my back and aimed it at his head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for things to get so bad. I know that you and Desiree did everything you could to help me, but I was still allowing myself to be a slave to an addiction I kept feeding.”
“Desiree probably blames herself for planting ideas in your head and forgave you, but I’m not that fucking forgiving. You need to pay for the chaos you caused.”
His eyes flooded with sorrow, but didn’t drop away from mine. “I know. Just like I know that I will never get out of here.”
“Get out of here!” I yelled. I pointed a finger around the place. “Here is the only thing keeping you alive. Do you have any fucking idea how many people want you dead?”
He swallowed, before lifting his gaze to meet mine. “I deserve it. I deserve whatever you do to me.”
This was not the Raymond I knew. This was not the uncaring uncle that had taught me about the streets. He had lost his will to fight and probably ached for death.
I took in his new home, a shit bucket, and a cot were all he had. They hadn’t even bothered to give him so much as a book. This was Raymond’s own personal hell, a quiet one that left him with only his thoughts to keep him company. The notion caused me to smile before I shoved HB back down my pants.
“Why didn’t you do it?” he asked. The question confirmed what I thought. He was suffering in this tomb he had ended up in. I took a step closer so I could see into his eyes.
“I didn’t do it because I knew it was what you wanted. I didn’t do it because a cold hard truth about you and me was revealed that’s still hard for me to accept.”
“What truth?” he questioned.
“That I’m your daughter, Raymond.”
He released something between a gasp and grunt, but his eyes had never dropped away from the strength of the seriousness I knew mine held.
“The thought never crossed your mind while you were fucking Silvia that she could have ended up pregnant by you?”
A veil of thick awareness washed over his face at the notion that I knew about Silvia.
“You were bringing me around my own family for years and never thought to tell me a thing. That’s some sick devious shit.”
His breathing had sped up, the idea that I could be his daughter fucking with him.
“You ever consider why Silvia, being as powerful as she was, would choose to give her only child to you when there were hundreds of people more qualified? She was as sick in the head as you. She gave you your own child without telling you.”
His face was pinched so tightly that his eyes had formed into slits. His hands gripped the bars in front of him as his mind struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“I’m your daughter, Raymond.”
The words had him staggering back until he sat hard on his cot, shaking his head.
“There is one thing I would like to know,” I told him.
He glanced up, struggling with the notion that he was my father.
“Why did you treat me like an outsider? Never showed me any kind of care or concern. Pushed me into the streets and allowed them to turn me into a fucking little monster.”
He scratched his head, staring with an expression like he was fighting to see me for the first time.
“If I had known—”
“Don’t you dare say that shit. If you had known I was yours. Answer the fucking question I asked you.”
He bit deep into his lip, his body tense, his head shaking as he fought the impact of the news. Once he gathered himself, he lifted his head and reconnected with my daring gaze.
“I needed a soldier, and I needed a strong mind if we were going to have a chance at keeping the Saints in the family. My boys didn’t have the guts, they were weak, so I looked to you girls. You were the toughest little thing I had ever seen. I knew with Silvia’s blood flowing through your veins, you could do whatever you wanted. You could handle whatever I threw at you. If I had shown you how I felt, you would have looked to me for what I knew you could do better on your own.”
“Desiree wasn’t tough physically, never had been, but she was mentally tough. The girl could get kidnapped and beaten today and be smiling and helping her brothers with their homework the next day. Then, she could sit there and quote me secrets she had picked up about the enemy that not only allowed me to get revenge, but to gain advantage over them.”
He swallowed hard, his throat working like his words had gotten stuck. He stared, unblinking as something that I believed was pride, filled his gaze.
“I know about your hearing Mecca. It was the first thing Silvia told me about. It was the first thing the doctors told me about after you were robbed and beaten. I never mentioned it because you never let it hinder you. If anything, you used it to make yourself stronger. I knew, even back then, that you and Desiree could run the Black Saints if anything happened to me.”
I stood glaring at him and allowing his words to sink in before I turned to walk away.
“It didn’t mean that I didn’t love you, Mecca. I always have, but I couldn’t show it.”
I continued to walk. I had no idea what Desiree had planned for Raymond, but if this was it, she may as well hand him a gun and let him decide when he was ready to go. He was damned if he ever showed his face in public again and damned to the only place that was keeping him alive.
When I eased back into the living room, Desiree was standing there waiting for me.
“I knew that you wouldn’t do it,” she said, knowing where I was coming from and what my intentions were.
“What if I had? How did you know that I wouldn’t?”
She walked up and drew me into a tight hug, just like she did the first time we ever met.
She whispered into my right ear, “Because it was my sister that went down there, not Quiet Chaos.”
***End of Quiet Chaos***
Acknowledgement
Thank you to my beta readers who dedicated their time to reading this book and providing great feedback. Sharon Barksdale, Susan Hall Comrie, Afrikka Brooks Ennis, Zanthia Shaw-Matthews, and Lashonda Royal. You ladies are amazing, and I can’t say thank you enough for your time, advice, and inspiring words.
Thank you to Author JanJan Untamed for allowing me to use your name in the same paragraph with the contents needed to dispose of a body. You are the absolute best and your books are an instant addiction.
Author’s Note
Readers, my sincere thank you for your time and for choosing to read this book. Please leave a review letting me and others know what you thought of the book. If you enjoyed this book or any of my other books, please pass them along to friends or anyone you think would enjoy them.
Other Titles
Available Now
The Twisted Minds Series:
Twisted Minds #1
Twisted Hearts #2
Twisted Secrets #3
Twisted Obsession #4
Twisted Revelation #5
The Chaos Series:
Beautiful Chaos #1
Roots of the Wicked
Coming Fall 2020
Lunchtime Chronicles Series - Novellas
Carolina Reaper
Mystery Meat
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