Bad Boy Romance Collection: The Volanis Brothers Trilogy

by Meg Jackson

  You wouldn’t even smile at her, Honey, you’d barely talk to her. You, of all fucking people, treated her like dirt. You came here totally fucked, and this club took care of you, and now you’re all high and mighty and can’t fucking return the favor?

  I tell you what, you old bitch; if anything happens to Gabriella, it’s on you. Her blood will be on your fucking hands. And I’d like to see how much you get to whore around when everyone knows you could have done something to save her, and you didn’t.”

  Reign had never spoken to her like that. Hell, no one had spoken to Honey like that since she left her husband. Tears filled her eyes, his words clattering in her head painfully.

  “Reign, it’s not like that, I was worried about you…”

  “My ass, Honey. You were worried about yourself, and losing your special little position in the club. I swear, Honey, if a single hair on her head…”

  “Please, you have to…”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. I don’t want to hear another word out of your lying mouth. You better just fucking go home, Honey. There won’t be anyone to serve tonight, ‘cause we’re all going out to find the girl that you let leave. You let her put herself in danger.

  And it coulda been you, ya know. All those years ago, someone coulda done the same to you. The difference is,” Reign said, and now his eyes glinted, like he knew he was about to say something that he couldn’t take back. “The difference is that no one would cry if you’d died, Honey. No one gave a shit about you. They just pitied you. They still pity you. Old, washed-up bitch. I love Gabriella. No one’s ever loved you, and no one ever will.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the bar, leaving her alone, Patsy Cline singing softly on the jukebox, the bar quiet and lonely and dim. She picked up a dishrag idly, needing something to do with her hands, and began to wipe at the bar. Her bar. It was her bar, after all, right? After everything Reign had said, wasn’t it still Honey’s bar? Or did it belong to the club, like everything else? Was there anything on this earth that Honey could truly call her own? No man, no woman, nothing…

  She felt the phantom pain in her womb throb, as it did at certain times, as though reminding her that the only thing she’d ever actually had for herself was gone. Outside, one final motorcycle kicked to life and took off. And then Honey was alone. Really, truly alone. For the first time in a long time, she felt that the earth was a cold and lonesome place, and that she’d always be alone on it. No one’s ever loved you, and no one ever will…

  31

  I could still feel it. It was gone, but I could still feel it when I wiggled my toes. It didn’t help to look down, to get the visual feedback that told me I didn’t have a pinky toe on my left foot anymore. I’d read about phantom limb syndrome before, but it was interesting to experience it for myself. I say “interesting” instead of “terrifying” or “awful” because everything else was so terrifying and awful that losing a toe was relegated to the diminutive role of “interesting”.

  The pain wasn’t even so bad compared to my thirst and hunger and the constant constriction of the binds that tied my feet and wrists together. The man who’d taken me – the tall, dark stranger – had taken care to dress the wound properly, while I was unconscious from the pain.

  I guessed that was mostly a way to occupy time. I got the distinct feeling that he didn’t plan on keeping me alive forever, so saving me from sepsis was not much of a priority. It probably also saved the floor from needing another washing.

  I’d watched, numb and dumb, as the man had mopped up Jeremy’s blood and dragged his body outside. I don’t know what he did with it, only that he wasn’t gone for very long before he returned.

  Speaking of things I didn’t know, here’s a nice list: how long I’d been there, when the last time I’d had water was, how the man had known about the money in the duffel bag, or what had happened to my Mustang, or any of the things in it, like the passport and the ID and the cell phone with Reign’s number.

  I was slowly starting to not know other things, too. My own name. The words to my favorite songs, which I’d been singing in my head to pass the few hours I was awake each day. The man, nameless and essentially faceless, seemed rather patient. He’d sit in silence, back to me, for hours at a time, only rising and facing me to give me another injection of the drug that knocked me out. I guess I sort of came to see him as a kind of savior as much as anything else: he bestowed onto me the only solace in the world I could have, which was sleep.

  Those few hours I was awake each day were blurry at best, shot through with a constant anxiety and ever-increasing claustrophobia from the way he’d confined me. He never changed the rag that he’d shoved into my throat, and my tongue was raw and scratched from rubbing against the rough material. My nostrils worked double time to make up for the air my mouth couldn’t suck in. The rag was soaked through at first with my own spit, but as I grew more and more dehydrated it dried out as well.

  I’d lost track of anything that wasn’t right in front of my eyes. My time with Reign seemed like a distant memory. My life with Jeremy, even more distant.

  There was just the darkness of sleep, the pain of waking, the fear, the silent and solitary man with his back to me, sitting patiently, endlessly patiently, waiting to kill me or set me free.

  And the longer I was there, the more I felt sure the latter would never happen.

  This is how I die, I remember thinking. This is how Gabriella dies. At least it’s exciting. At least it’s worth a story in the paper.

  And when I wasn’t thinking about my own mortality, I was putting my brain to even less use. If I’d never let Reign talk me into staying that extra day, if I’d decided to stay even longer, if I hadn’t pulled off in Ditcher’s Valley, if I hadn’t taken the money and run, if I hadn’t gotten the job at the hotel, if I hadn’t married Jeremy…

  32

  Reign stared at the desk, the items arranged in a neat row on the wood surface. His arms, laying on the table, created a perfect frame.

  A photo.

  A lock of hair.

  And a toe.

  Three days, three gifts.

  Poised in the center above the collected evidence of Gabriella’s kidnapping was the note, almost humorously cliché with its cut-from-magazine letters and words.

  Come alone.

  Amidst the directions for the drop-off and the demands, those were the words that stood out the most to Reign. Because, of course, he couldn’t go alone. He wouldn’t risk his neck like that, he wasn’t stupid.

  Except, maybe, he was stupid, because he wanted to go alone. The sane, safe, logical thing to do was bring some of his brothers, have them wait at a distance for the all-safe and storm the stronghold, kill the bastard who’d taken her, and ride off triumphantly into the sunset.

  But what if that didn’t happen? What if, instead of coming away the victor, he’d come away with Gabriella’s blood on his hands because he couldn’t follow simple damn directions?

  It had been three days since he’d sent the club out to scour the countryside for Gabriella, but they’d all returned empty-handed. The following day, the picture had shown up in an unmarked envelope slipped under Reign’s door.

  The picture…Reign winced as his eyes fell on the poorly-lit Polaroid. Gabriella’s beautiful face was bruised and beaten, bleeding from wounds that clearly needed treatment, her mouth forced open by a gag that seemed to cut into the sides of her lips.

  Her eyes were half-open, but nothing in them said that she was alive in her mind. She looked dead behind those eyes. Her black hair stuck to the sides of her face. When Reign first saw the picture, it took everything he had not to tear it into a million pieces and running screaming onto the road. It had hurt him as though it was his face that had been brutalized.

  And then the lock of her dark black hair. Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair: the lines from the poem had rung in his mind once more as he’d fingered each strand, tied together with a
light blue ribbon. He’d even held it to his nose and smelled it, hoping to inhale the slightest scent of her. But all he’d smelled was pain and violence and fear.

  And then the ghastly toe, a pinky toe, cut clean from the foot. He’d dropped it when he opened the oddly bulky envelope, which had come to his P.O. box, no return address. And then he’d been sick, not even making it to the bathroom.

  Now, laid out before him, the three little souvenirs taunted him, told him there would never be another woman like her, that he would never save her, that she would suffer and suffer and then be lost to him forever.

  Unless he did what the letter said.

  Reign wasn’t much for following orders. He hated anyone telling him what to do; this was no exception. But if it was the only way to get Gabriella back…

  He lowered his head, eyes shut tight, knowing that each second that went by was a second that he needed to make a decision. The letter said that it was to happen at 8:00 pm that night. It was just past 6. It wouldn’t take him long to get to the location described; he knew it all too well.

  Oh, was it irony, or a cruel joke? The place Gabriella’s captor demanded they meet was the very same oasis where they’d last enjoyed each other, where he’d told Gabriella his darkest secret, where she’d come to the sudden and surprising decision to leave.

  Fuck, Reign thought, his hands shaking on his lap.

  Reign was not used to feeling like this: indecisive, fearful. Usually, he was the one telling everyone what to do. Usually, he was the one making people quake in their boots. Usually, he knew how to twist the knife just right to get what he wanted.

  Now, he was on the other side of that equation, and he didn’t like it one damn bit.

  He wished, not for the first time, that Gabriella had kept driving. They’d both be safer than. She wouldn’t be bound and gagged and near death in a sadistic stranger’s clutches, and he wouldn’t have this hole in heart that threatened to swallow up everything else inside him, like a vortex. He wouldn’t be sitting in that chair, the silence of his apartment broken only by the constant rattling of the air conditioner.

  With a start, he jumped from the chair, letting it fall behind him in his rage. He strode to the air conditioner and, with a single mighty push, dislodged it from the window. It fell to the ground with a crash that would have been satisfying if anything could have satisfied him.

  She probably doesn’t have air conditioning, he thought, his anger taking control of his thoughts. So why should I get to have it?

  The heat seemed to burst into the room from the open window, and soon Reign was sweating in his jeans, still standing in front of the window and staring down at the now-demolished air conditioner. His mind had gone blank. There was nothing left of him, only anger and need and guilt and desperation.

  He’d do anything.

  And if that meant dying, alone, in the desert, then so be it.

  He’d get her back, he’d get her safe. He’d go alone. He’d bring the money. He’d do whatever that fuck wanted him to do. It was his only choice, and her only chance. He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the box of Raisin Bran from the top shelf of his pantry. Setting it down with a thunk on the counter, he fished inside, cursing the jagged edges of the cereal against his skin, until his fingers grasped the gun hidden inside.

  He kept it there for safe keeping, had another stashed under the bed and a third in a safe in his closet. But this one was his favorite, his lucky Smith and Wesson. Fully loaded and ready to go. He held it against his chest, fingers wrapping around the trigger lightly. He felt better holding his gun.

  He wasn’t going to fuck this up. Not like Miranda. He was going to be the hero for once in his sick little life, and nothing was going to stop him.

  Not even himself.

  33

  Silas listened to her moaning. It didn’t annoy him. He’d shut his brain off, pretty much, after doing away with the cop. As though remembering that he was out of milk, a little chime in his brain reminded him that the body was still buried under a very loose covering of dirt. It would need better hiding soon. Or not. It was hot as shit, the body was probably reeking to high heavens. Better to just burn the shack to the ground when he was finished. Nudge Jeremy’s lifeless corpse towards the flames and let it all go down. Ashes to ashes and all that.

  As for the girl, she might as well have been bound and gagged in another state for all the mind he paid her. Twice a day she’d wake up and moan for a while and, after an hour or two, he’d give her another sleepy shot and she’d go back to la-la land. If anything, he was doing her a favor by keeping her under.

  If she was awake, she’d just have to deal with the pain and the knowledge that her future was uncertain at best. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell her that hope was futile; he was at an impasse, philosophically, about whether she’d be better off knowing that she was going to die or whether that little bit of hope that she might live would sustain her.

  It didn’t matter to him, but it was an interesting thing to ponder.

  As the night began to creep over the landscape on the day that everything was going to come to fruition, Silas felt an unusual strain in his temperament. Almost as though he were nervous. It was good to be alert and aware of possible downfalls in a plan of action. It was not good – or comfortable – to be nervous.

  Especially not for Silas, who couldn’t even tell you the last time he felt anything close to worry. Why should he worry when he’d done far worse things, and done them with considerable less care? This job was so easy compared to many of his others…yet he felt a nagging unease. Perhaps it was merely the amount of money at stake; it was one of his biggest payouts to date, and being so close and yet so far (to borrow the cliché) wasn’t the worst reason to have a bit of rumble in one’s stomach.

  Sighing, he stood and turned towards the girl, whose eyes grew wide as she stared at him. The shadowy light in the little cabin ensured she could never confidently ID him, but that didn’t really matter, considering she’d be dead in a matter of hours. He walked towards her and then crouched down onto his haunches, watching sense flicker on and off in her big green eyes.

  She was a pretty one, he had to hand it to her. Reaching out, he brushed a strand of hair from where it stuck to her sweaty brow, the most contact he’d had with her. She cringed, eyes tearing, filling with fear and disgust. He thought when all this was done he’d look for a girl like her to spend a night or two with. It’d give him a sick sort of pleasure, which was the best sort of pleasure in Silas’ book.

  He reached into his shirt pocket, bringing out a needle with a half dosage of the knock-out juice he’d been pumping her with. No need for a full shot this time, since she’d be dead before opening her eyes again.

  34

  Honey watched out the window of the bar as Reign threw his leg over his bike, sitting straight and tall on the seat, then kicking the engine to life. She bit her lip, an empty, gnawing sensation in her gut. When had she last eaten? It seemed like days. She hadn’t had an appetite since Reign’s royal dressing down.

  In fact, this was the first time she’d caught sight of him since then. He’d gone full-on hermit on the club, accepting visitors to his apartment but not coming down to the bar since the search for Gabriella had turned up nothing. They’d kept searching, sans Reign, but no one had found hide nor hair of her or her captor.

  He looked bad. Drawn and pale, he looked like he hadn’t eaten in days, either. Or slept.

  Where is he going, Honey wondered, brow furrowing. As though, deep down, she didn’t kind of know. It could be that he was just tired of sitting around, needed some time on the road, wanted to do his own sweep of the area. But she’d seen his face when he got on the bike. It was the face of a man who’d made a decision, a decision that hadn’t been easy to make.

  He was going to get her. Somehow, someway, he’d found her, and was going to get her.

  Or he was leaving for good.

  Either way, he was going alone.
>
  And that, Honey knew, was a bad, bad, bad thing for him to do.

  She wanted to step outside, stand in front of him, block his path and knock some sense into his skull. But she couldn’t bear picturing what he’d say to her. Not after the verbal whipping he’d given her only a few days ago. She would never be able to look him in the eyes again…

  He sped past the window, not noticing her as she stared after him. Turning onto the main road, he went left, towards town. Honey moved quickly, pulling open the drawer under the cash register. It was still there. Of course it was still there. No one knew it was there except her and Endo, and neither had had to touch it in years. Now, as she picked up the gun and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans, Honey prayed that it would still fire. She didn’t have time to test it out.

  The bar door slammed shut behind her. The evening was growing dark, the moon and the sun sharing the sky, purplish light beginning to blend the distant mountains together in a haze. Honey strapped her helmet on and adjusted the gun once more.

  She’d show him that she wasn’t what he thought. She knew he’d said what he’d said out of anger, but she also knew just how true some of what he’d said was.

  But there was always time to change.

  She’d learned that a long time ago.

  35

  Reign pulled up to the still, small lake fifteen minutes early. The darkling sky reflected on its mirrored surface, the moon standing out whiter and brighter as the sun fell. He spit onto the dust, lit a cigarette with fingers that shook. He cursed his shaking fingers, willed them to be still.

  From under his jacket he pulled a worn, black billfold. Inside was all the money Gabriella’s captor had demanded. In the distance, he thought he could see a blowing tornado of dust coming his way, but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just his eyes playing tricks on him.