“Night, Pops.”
“Night, son.”
I ended the call and threw my phone on the floor as my hands ruffled my hair out of nervousness. What the hell were Dutch MC members doing in the country? They weren’t selling or transporting since the Netherlands had cracked down on drugs coming in and leaving the country. Certain areas of the country, it was easier to sneak in cigarettes than marijuana or anything harder due to the new laws against drug tourism.
Someone knocked on my door and Zero came in before he closed it behind him. “Bro, what’s goin’ on? Don’t tell me you’re okay.”
I stood and grabbed a cigarette from the bureau and lit it. “I’m not. I fucked up big time tonight during the concert. Sierra was supposed to meet us here in Nice . . . yesterday, and she never showed. I talked to Pop and all he could tell me was that some Dutch MC members had been spotted in his area. That doesn’t give me much to go on.”
My best friend sat on the ottoman. “Sierra is gonna be fine, brother. I don’t know if she’s in any kind of trouble but then again, neither do you. She’s a fighter . . . and a keeper, bro. If she didn’t want anything to do with you, believe me she would have told you to your face. She didn’t strike me as a coward.”
“Yeah.” I dragged from my cigarette. “That’s what I keep telling myself.”
“Come on, join the party. She’ll get back in contact with you. In the meantime, let’s just enjoy our last couple of gigs for a while.”
Zero stood next to me, and slapped me on the back in a comforting manner before we both began to walk out. “Pop said something weird tonight. Something about some women being trouble. I assumed he meant Sorsha but he didn’t exactly sound enamored of Sierra either.”
He laughed out loud. “Sometimes your old man treats you like a bitch. No one is good enough for Adrien.” We reached the door and Zero paused. “By the way, if you’re that worried about Sierra, track her phone. I brought my Macbook Air if you wanna log in to your Cloud account and check her location.”
“Fuck.” We joined the party after I closed my door behind us. “That’s too much like a fucking stalker. According to the text Sierra sent Angie, I’m starting to scare her.”
Zero shook his head before his ice blue eyes met mine. “Listen, bro, it’s an expensive piece of equipment. Just look at it like you’re making sure it hasn’t been stolen by a bunch of les jeunes. Once they get a hold of it, they disable the location finder and sell it on the black market. Better to be safe than sorry, all’s I’m sayin’.”
And that was why I loved my best friend more than I loved my own brother.
He knew exactly what I was worried about—and it wasn’t that fucking iPhone—but he made me feel secure and justified in my actions.
Zero trusted women about as much as I did but on some occasions, our minds worked so deeply in tandem, I would have sworn we were twins in another life.
I followed him through the party to the dining room where there were few guests mulling about. He pulled out his Macbook Air, quickly typed in the password and pulled up iCloud.
“You can never be too careful, right?” He patted me on the back and walked away while I typed in my username and password.
I still felt on edge but at least there was something I could do about the situation. There was a renewal of hope and that feeling sustained me more than I would have ever thought.
“Wherever you are, chérie, you’re gonna be just fine,” I whispered.
I knew Sierra couldn’t hear me but just saying it out loud gave me more solace than all the conversation in the world could have done.
AFTER RIDING BEHIND Dieter for what felt like hours, we finally pulled over to a gas station that had a greasy spoon café attached to it.
I got off the motorcycle and would have fell on my ass if it weren’t for Dieter’s quick hands. My ass and back hurt while my limbs felt like Jello.
I glanced at Sorsha and she seemed to be in her element though no one would have taken the lightly tanned blonde with her hair flowing around her shoulders as soon as she took off the helmet with a pair of skinny jeans and a cut-off tank top that ended above her belly button as the fashion-conscious celebutante she was famous for being.
In fact, she looked completely normal and blended in with the background. She had a tattoo that started at the base of her neck and went down her spine but I only caught the briefest of glimpses as she moved her hair out of the way before replacing it quickly.
“Interesting ink,” I said as we all walked toward the greasy spoon.
“It’s French. ‘Vivre ton vie au maximum ou mourir avec regret’. It’s a slogan I take rather seriously.”
“And here I thought you weren’t fluent in French.”
Sorsha laughed out loud as she shook her head. “Is that what Adrien told you? My mother would have died of utter humiliation if my brother and I hadn’t learned her native tongue fluently. It wasn’t exactly a choice you know.”
I kept my mouth shut as we entered the greasy spoon and took seats at an empty table.
Sorsha began to study the menu as I picked mine up and decided what I wanted to eat. It had been over a day since I’d eaten and everything sounded good to me. I finally chose the fattening dish, Poutine, a typically Québécois dish of fries, cheese curds and gravy and added bacon to my order. I wasn’t all that concerned about calories at the moment.
Not only did I feel out of sorts but I genuinely missed Diablo, and my cray-cray abductor had only told me some half-baked story about my mom, Damien and me involving incest. I didn’t know if the bitch was certifiable or just had ingested too many drugs over the years. She made absolutely no sense.
After we ordered, I leaned on the table with my elbows. “Do you plan to finish your story or whatever it is we were discussing back at the warehouse?”
“In due time,” she said before turning back to her companion.
“Will that be tonight? Tomorrow? When exactly? You said you would let me go and seriously, if I wanted to see the asshole of France, I would have stayed back in Boston,” I replied smartly.
I was tired of her blasé attitude, pissing in toilets that weren’t fit for human use and places I was unfamiliar with. I missed the warmth of Diablo’s arms around me, stealing time to chat with Lizzy and Angie, and just our charmed tourist life in general. I had absolutely no desire in taking the backpackers’ budget version of France, and unfortunately, it’s exactly the kind of trip I felt like I was on since I’d been abducted from Diablo’s apartment.
“We’ll get around to it but for the time being, shut your fucking mouth.” Her eyes darkened into a storm gray. “Or do you want Dieter to give you another dose? Maybe we’ll make this one a hot dose and deliver your rotting corpse to Diablo. He could use you as a prop at one of his concerts.” She laughed out loud at her stupid joke that was far from funny in the least.
I looked around the greasy spoon and observed other people but they looked just as downtrodden as we did and besides, if I was going to escape, I would do it on my own. Right now, she had me at a disadvantage because I had no idea where we were or where we were going. I was willing to play along for now but my patience was seriously wearing thin.
“Wow. I had no idea you wanted to be the European version of Patty Hearst. Kidnapping, drugging . . . murder. Mmm, that should really put a dent in your Instagram and Twitter followers when they find out you’re as mad as a fucking hatter.”
Sorsha pouted but really, she looked like she was suffering from selfie duck-face syndrome. “Jealous, are we? I can pretty much do what I want and no one can trace any of this shit back to me.”
I snickered and decided not to tell the dumb bitch that phone had GPS tracking. I assumed she knew this already but perhaps she didn’t. It wasn’t for me to prevent her from making every rookie abductor mistake in the book. I was just along for the ride.
The whole situation bugged the crap out of me. My only thought was run away, run away, run a-fucking-way
yet I sat there and waited for my Poutine to arrive only to pick at it and wonder how long I would be stuck with psycho bitch and the two fucked up stooges she dragged along with her like bodyguards.
Finally, I shoved my food away and crossed my arms. “How long do you plan to hold me like this? You haven’t told me shit and if you don’t start talking, I’m going to take matters into my own hands, and you won’t like it one bit . . . let me assure you.”
“What are you going to do, tough girl? Where’s your knight in shining armor to save you?”
I leaned over the table and glared at the spoiled bitch with cold eyes. “I don’t need a man to save me, Sorsha. But I will give you an opportunity to redeem yourself. Either you start talking or I walk. I don’t know where the fuck I am but you can goddamn guarantee yourself that I will leave this restaurant and there won’t be fuck all you can do about it. You screwed up big time and I think we both know why and how.”
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish dying for oxygen but I didn’t bother to let her get in another word.
“We’re in a public place. All I have to do is scream for help. So tell me this big secret about Damien and me or I will fuck your whole world apart.”
Sorsha never spoke a word. She looked around and tried to find exit strategies but while she did that, I used the iPhone she had so conveniently forgotten about to dial one-one-two, and placed it under my thigh. The emergency operator who answered wouldn’t hear anything from me but he or she would be able to trace my call and get someone out there in time to aid me.
“If you say anything about what’s happened, not only will I ruin you, bitch, but you’ll destroy Diablo and the boys’ careers. This wasn’t my idea alone and Damien is involved too. You wanna know his fucked up life story? He should tell you, not me.” She stood, followed by Callum and Dieter. “I’m not as stupid as I look. You think I don’t know you called les flics? Let them rescue you but I promise you one thing—”
“What’s that?” I questioned, still feeling triumphant about my ingenuity even if she did know about what I’d done.
“One of your best friends will die. Don’t think I have the power to do it? Push me and see what happens. It might not be tomorrow or next week but within a year, one of them will be dead. Tell me . . . which one do you care about the least?”
I didn’t believe her—couldn’t stomach the thought that this deluded cunt had tricked herself into believing she had this much power. “If anything happens to Lizzy or Angelina . . .”
“Lizzy it is then. You mentioned her first so either you care about her the most or you really believe Angie and Damien have some sort of epic love affair happening and he can save her. Is that the case? Are you ‘shipping them hard and hoping they make it to the end? Married with two point five kids, a picket fence and a Golden Retriever?” Sorsha shook her head as she backed away from me. “It’s never gonna happen.”
Something in her tone caused my heart to skip a beat. I knew she was crazy but up until this point, I thought she had a bad case of borderline personality disorder with an added quirk of slight psychopathy at work. It was at that point I realized she was a Grade-A certified sociopath with the unfortunate added benefit of being bipolar as well.
“You can’t touch me or my friends,” I said to her as I began to hear the sirens in the distance.
“You sure about that?” she questioned with a cold look in her gray eyes. “You may have won this battle, Sierra, but I wanted you to win. The war, however, is mine to lose. You’re out of your fucking league and the problem is you don’t even know it.”
She turned around and walked calmly out of the diner with Dieter and Callum. She climbed on behind her companion and they took off shortly before several police cars pulled up to the diner.
My ordeal might have been over for now but I had a seriously awful feeling that I would see Sorsha again.
The thought itself chilled me to my very bones even if I was “safe” for now.
I COULD FULLY and equivocally admit that if Sierra didn’t mean a damn thing to me then I was fucked in the head, and I needed to get on medication as soon as humanly possible.
The thought of her loss while I finished up our tour was the most painful and emotional time of my life since I’d lost my first love and the child we’d created together that never had a chance to take his or her first breath in this world.
I was good at hiding the pain; I didn’t trust Damien and wasn’t a fan of Angie either. I didn’t want anyone knowing how much Sierra’s sudden disappearance had affected me but those closest to me just did.
Zero didn’t have to be told. He could hear it in my rehearsal and live performances, and knew afterwards when I shut myself in my suite and drank until I passed out from exhaustion and drunkenness. It was how I managed to get through the last remaining concert.
When I awoke the day after our tour was finally finished, I put pencil to paper and wrote at least five different songs about loss. We had another day in Nice—a free day—and the following morning we would to leave and go back to Ile-de-France.
Pop and Maman were worried about me, and demanded I come home instead of going back to my apartment. At this point, I couldn’t even argue with them with them because there was nothing to go back to Paris for at the moment. What would I do in that empty apartment except revel in the lingering scent of Sierra’s perfume and wonder if she’d really just taken off and decided she’d had enough of me?
I couldn’t say for sure I was in love with her and I had never told her anything that would have led her to believe such a thing was possible. I did believe what we had was special and could turn into something more. That was all I could offer her at the moment but surely that was enough to pursue what we had?
We didn’t know each other well enough to fall head over heels in love but that was the point. I wanted to know more about her and I knew she felt the same about me. I wanted to take those walks out in the country and talk as we explored the woods behind the compound.
Hell, I hadn’t even fully explored every inch of her body yet. Not like how I wanted to, and that was definitely going to happen, whether she decided to leave after her vacation or not. That is, if I ever found out what really went down and whether she was already gone and Stateside.
Neither Lizzy nor Angie were any help so all I had was her phone, and it was as useless as her friends. The GPS had been conveniently been messed with by someone who was an expert. The signal kept jumping. One minute, it showed her in San Francisco and the next, it would show the signal coming from New Delhi. It was like that every time I tried to get a read on the fucking phone. According to the GPS, she’d been to London, Madrid, Los Angeles, Seattle, Auckland, Sydney, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Miami, Tokyo, Toronto, Honolulu, Cape Town and Berlin.
According to Zero, the only chance a real GPS signal could be picked up was if she made a call. If I happened to be checking at the moment a call went out on the phone, I would find out where she truly was but it never happened. Not during all the time I monitored the phone.
I’d never felt so entirely helpless in all my life but at the same time, a selfish part of me kept thinking her disappearance might be for the best. I wasn’t ready to share my life with someone, and if I was being completely honest, I never would. It wasn’t in my DNA to be that emotionally invested in someone else that it meant I would have to actually care what happened to them the way I ached to hear from her now. If she’d gone, I could move on. I was better by myself with the occasional female company that could satisfy me but wouldn’t tie me down.
It all came down to preservation of the self. If I cared about anyone—other than my family—as much as I loved myself then they would become my responsibility. It was an emotional investment I couldn’t make in good conscience. Not when I knew it would hurt me in the long run and cause a fracture through my heart I would never be able to recover from ever again.
Not everyone was built to love another human being outside of those wh
o were blood and family.
I was one of those people.
Like father, like son.
My father cared about my mother but he never loved her. Something happened with Damien’s real mother, and whatever she did to him, she tore his heart in two and caused him the ability to never truly ever feel that deeply for a woman again.
We all knew this was the one weakness my father could never get over even if he was a good provider and always made sure we were taken care of as a family and an MC. Perhaps he felt like my mother should have been happy with that after what she’d endured during her adolescent years.
It was enough for us kids to know our father cared and loved us but there was a layer of his heart he wouldn’t even let us penetrate. It wasn’t to protect us but to protect him. I was like my Pop—so unbelievably selfish and unable to want to love anyone that deeply. It might have been fulfilling while it lasted but what happened in the aftermath?
Sierra was no great love of my life—not yet at least—but if her being out of my life caused me this much pain now, what would it have been like if I’d risked my heart and soul? I was better off never knowing, not even if it could have been the one instance in my life that someone else tried to salvage what was left of me and aid me in healing parts of myself that would never ever be whole again.
It was best they weren’t. It allowed me to put my emotions down on paper and write lyrics to songs that touched people. There was nothing more satisfying or gratifying than a letter from a fan that expressed how much our music scorched their soul. That was the best feeling on earth; not even love could touch that, and it was worth the sacrifice to do what I was most passionate about.
That evening, the guys had a party except it was for band members and their significant others only. I declined to join and remained in my suite.
I swigged from the bottle of Grey Goose while listening to Papa Roach’s F.E.A.R. I could only trick myself for so long and as “Gravity” began to play, I set the bottle of vodka on the floor and lay on the bed.
Sympathy For Diablo (Breathless Eternity #1) Page 15
