Elle

I’d expected to be left alone after being tied up, but I wasn’t.

“Make sure someone’s here watching her,” the man who had been in the backseat with me said. “The boss will be pissed if we lose track of that dumb bitch.”

Then he left. I should have been relieved. He’d been the one toting the gun the whole time and now that he was gone, I should have been put at ease. But I wasn’t at ease. In fact, now that I was left alone with mister tall, dark, and scary, I found myself wishing someone else would walk through that door. I didn’t care if they were armed or just crazy like Shane. I couldn’t say why exactly, but the man lingering in the room with me gave me the creeps. There was something about him that made me shudder inside.

He grinned at me as soon as the door closed behind his friend. His eyes, a muddy brown, raked over me. That look made me feel dirty, slimy.

“My name’s John,” he told me, like we were going to get to know each other or something. “You got a name, pretty girl?”

My skin crawled at the tone of his voice and the way he leered at me from across the room. I was grateful for the distance between us, but I wasn’t supremely confident that distance would remain for any length of time. I decided quickly that keeping him talking might work more in my favor than staying silent. “Elle,” I bit out, not liking giving the man my name, but not knowing how to avoid it. “Why don’t you guys just let me go?”

He actually laughed at me. Like he thought that was the funniest damn thing I could have said to him. Maybe it was. I knew it was a pointless question, after all, but I wasn’t expecting to get him to obey me. I was just trying to keep some distance between us.

Which evidently was not going to work. He took a step towards me. “Let you go? Honey, I think you don’t really understand who you’re dealing with here.”

I lifted my chin defiantly. “I know who you are. You’re the Irish Hounds.”

He grinned widely at me. “That’s right. And if you know that, then you know we’re nothing to be fucked with.”

Feeling braver than I was, I said something that was probably the dumbest thing I’d ever said in my life. “Well, you’re partially right. I know you’re nothing.”

The grin disappeared instantly from his thin lips. He pulled them back in what was almost a snarl. “The fuck did you say?”

A cold chill of fear ran through me, but I didn’t take it back and I didn’t apologize. I wouldn’t let this guy terrorize me, because I was pretty sure that was what he was trying to do. That determination didn’t keep me from being terrified out of my mind, but that didn’t mean I would let it show. “You heard me. All you are is a bunch of nobodies who weren’t good enough for the Lucky Skulls. A bunch of assholes who couldn’t didn’t make the cut because they have real standards.”

“Bitch,” he said coldly, and stomped towards me.

My idea of keeping him talking to keep him away had clearly backfired. That was what I got for being mouthy, I realized, but I couldn’t seem to hold myself in check. I didn’t like the slimy feeling he gave me. Not that I liked anything around here, but that especially was bad. It made me scared for things other than my life.

It took him only a couple of strides before he was in front of me, leaning down and snarling in my face. He was so close that I could smell the mixture of tobacco and mint rolling around in his mouth and the stale scent of spit. Gross. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about us,” he told me in a snide, condescending tone. “People like you are oblivious to how things really work around here. You think you got it all figured out, but we’re the ones running the show. You know who buys our drugs? People like you. You know who buys our cars? People like you.” His eyes dropped, deliberately trailing over my body. That alone was enough to creep me out, but then his hand made the same trail. He caressed my shoulder and went down over my left breast.

“Get off of me!” I yelled at him, trying to struggle, but it was no use. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

He didn’t listen. His hand went down my waist and was just landing on my thigh as he said, “And you know who comes around to fuck us? That’s right, girlie: people like you.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you!” I yelled at him, fear and panic rolling around inside of me, causing my heart to drum in my chest to a hammering beat.

He grinned widely. “Oh, you say that, but when I start spreading those long legs of yours, you’ll be begging for it.”

True fear washed through me. He was going to rape me. It was one thing to die—a terrible thing that I definitely didn’t want happening to me anytime soon—but this? This was terrible in its own ways. Worse because I couldn’t do anything about it, and there would still be no guarantee that after everything I wouldn’t still die.

Oh God, please don’t let him touch me!

I opened my mouth to scream right as a deep voice yelled from the door, “Get the fuck off of her!”

John jerked back from me instantly, his hand wrenching away from me as though I had burned him. I wished I had, but of course, no such luck. At first, my heart dared to hope that it was Ciaran having come to my rescue, but almost instantly I shoved that hope aside. The voice was all wrong, and would John have jerked back like that if the order had come from Ciaran? Maybe, but probably not. He probably would have gone farther just to irk Ciaran.

My eyes dared to leave John, who had moved several feet away from me to search out the owner of the voice. With sad realization, I saw it was Shane not Ciaran. Although I was grateful to have the grimy hands of that awful, sleazy man off of me, I found no real comfort in Shane. I hadn’t forgotten that he’d had me kidnapped. And I hadn’t forgotten that he was hoping to use me as bait to lure in Ciaran.

“Boss, I—” John began to explain, his voice sounding panicked and his eyes wide to echo the sentiment.

But Shane, who looked thoroughly pissed, didn’t let him get a word out. “Shut up. You fucking asshole, what did you think you were doing?” he snarled angrily, looking me over with calculating eyes. I didn’t like his eyes going over my body after what had just happened with John, but I didn’t get the same feeling as though he were raking over me, devouring me, sliming me up with his dirty thoughts. His was analytical and assessing. He wanted to make sure that I was all right, but not because he was concerned for my safety; I knew that much.

John opened his mouth to explain himself, though I couldn’t imagine what he possibly had in his own defense. Before he could get anything out, however, Shane jumped all over him again.

“I told you to tie her up and fucking watch her!” he roared angrily at the other man. “Was that order too Goddamned difficult for a block head like you? Too many brain cells required to process that particular request? Or are you just too much of a fucking animal to keep your dirty paws off of a pretty girl?”

John, who was looking more and more scared as Shane spoke, swallowed heavily. I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down nervously. His gaze jerked around the room as though searching for something to defend against his own actions. Briefly, that gaze landed on me and I knew he was sending daggers my way.

“Don’t look at her, you moron!” barked Shane. “Look at me! The one giving the damn orders!”

Instantly, John’s gaze jerked back to his leader. “I, uh, was just—”

“I know what you were just,” growled Shane. He took a step closer to John. “Now I want to know what the hell you were thinking.”

John swallowed again, then finally seemed to sag. For a moment, he sounded like a little kid, whining to his parents when they caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. It was both pathetic and disgusting and made my lip curl back in response to him. “C’mon, boss! Look at her. I was just having a little fun. We’re gonna have to fucking kill her anyway—”

Something that felt like a cold stone dropped down into my gut. We’re going to have to kill her anyway. I didn’t know why this surprised me or unnerved me so badly, but I hadn’t really thought about it. But, of course, he was right. They would have to kill me. Even if Ciaran came for me and. They couldn’t exactly let me walk away, could they? I’d seen too much. I’d seen where they lived, how they had killed people. I could identify Shane for certain, as well as the asshole John over here. I could pick out several others, too, though I didn’t have names for them. If they let me go, I could hand them over to the police on a silver platter complete with a bow wrapped up around them neatly.

Which meant there was no way I was going to walk out of here alive. Not unless Ciaran somehow pulled off a miracle. First by coming for me and second by getting the both of us out of here alive. And seeing as how I wasn’t supremely confident he would do the first of those things, I wasn’t feeling overly great about my chances for survival. The knowledge left me sick inside and I was so distracted by the knowledge of my own impending demise that I only barely registered their continuing conversation.

“Damnit, I know that!” Shane yelled, still clearly pissed. “And when the time comes I’ll take care of it. But that doesn’t mean you get to get dirty with her first!”

“Why the hell not?” The image of that little whiny kid appeared again and it would have been comical under normal circumstances.

I heard Shane’s heavy footfalls as he stomped across the room. At first, I thought he was headed towards me, but then I saw him cross right in front of me until he was only centimeters from John’s face. They were almost nose to nose, and in that moment, John seemed tiny. And scared.

I took some satisfaction from that, but I was too shaken by my own upcoming death to take much pleasure in it.

“We may be hell bound,” Shane said in a low voice, and his words surprised me. “But even we have lines. Lines that no one in my crew will cross. I don’t care if you don’t personally share these lines. You will abide by them so long as I’m here. And if you don’t like it, I’ll be happy to put you out of my misery.”

The threat in Shane’s voice was unmistakable, and by the way that John was suddenly shaking, I could see he heard it, too. “Yes, boss,” he answered in a small voice.

“Good. Now get the hell out of here.”

The man didn’t have to be told twice.

“And send in Bryce. At least I know he’s not a fucking animal.”

John winced, but didn’t argue. He disappeared out the door in a matter of minutes. Silence filled the room at his departure and lingered there for a long time. I was hoping Shane would follow him out, but I wasn’t having a lot of luck lately and shouldn’t have been surprised when he lingered.

Turning to face me, his expression was unreadable. After a moment, he said almost formally, “I apologize for Jonathan’s behavior. You have my word it won’t happen again.”

I frowned. “Why do you care what happens before you kill me?” I nearly choked on the word kill, but I did my best to get it out and remain firm and strong. For all the good it really did me. I hadn’t missed how easily he’d agreed with John, despite his anger.

Shane shrugged his shoulders. “Killing you is necessity. I hadn’t planned on getting you involved at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not all that broken up about having to do it, but I wouldn’t have deliberately sought out to kill you. You can thank my dear brother Ciaran for that.”

“But you saved me from John.”

He raised a single eyebrow. “And?”

I hesitated. “Well, isn’t that more of a...” I trailed off, not quite sure what word I was looking for.

He laughed at me until he finally answered my question. “Oh, I see. Because I saved you from that animal’s lust, you think this makes me the good guy, right? This makes me someone who has a conscience and a soul and therefore a good heart, right?”

The way he said it, mocking and callous, told me he’d guessed what I was thinking before I had even guessed it. And more to the point, he didn’t agree with it. Which wouldn’t have necessarily meant he wasn’t a good guy, but reluctantly so, like all of those bad boy novels that I loved reading so much.

Except that this wasn’t a novel and he wasn’t the male lead. And if that wasn’t enough to convince me he wasn’t the sort of man to trust or call hero, the cold look in his eyes was. He may not have wanted me touched, but he didn’t really care what happened to me. This had more to do with his own sense of principals, which maybe didn’t have a damn thing to do with morality in the end.

“You could be a decent man,” I told him, but my voice was barely a whisper and I knew I was grasping at straws. I sensed I was wrong. He couldn’t be a decent man. Maybe that was different years ago, but right here and now, it just wasn’t possible.

And I was willing to bet he knew it, too.

“Do you know about Ciaran and myself?” he asked conversationally, not directly responding to me. When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “We lived at the same orphanage for several years. Both dropped off by parents who were either dead or halfway to it. But orphanages get full. Budgeting is low. And we ran off. We ended up living on the streets, stealing to get by. That is until the Sullivans picked us up. Ma and Pa, we called them, just like they were our real family. Isn’t that sweet?”

I didn’t say anything. I knew a little about Ma, about how she wasn’t Ciaran’s birth mother, but had been the only mother that mattered to him. But I didn’t know about their lives, not really.

“But that’s the thing about picking up two children, two boys, the way they did,” he continued, almost telling the story more for himself than for me. As though he were reliving the experiences of growing up with the Sullivans. “You get two boys and it’s natural to favor one over the other, don’t you think? Normal for one boy to become the prize while the other is left as the burden. It’s inevitable.”

I bit my lip. I could guess where this story was going, half knew it from what Ciaran had told me. But I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to hear that somewhere inside of him there was the chance he was a good man. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like there was going to be any chance to get something I wanted tonight.

“And they picked Ciaran. Nothing I did was ever good enough for Pa. Nothing was ever right. But Ciaran? He could do no wrong. So when it came time to pass on the mantle for the Lucky Skulls, you can guess who he picked.” He spoke with raw emotion, telling me just how real his pain was. Whether I believed in how true it was that that was exactly how it happened was entirely another story. But I could guess on the validity of one thing at least: Ciaran had been the favorite.

“I’m sure your father still loved you,” I found myself saying, a desperate attempt to soothe him—and maybe save my own life.

He rounded on me, his eyes staring me down. “What the hell would you know? Nothing!”

I winced and fell silent.

“My father only ever saw Ciaran! So when he became leader of the Lucky Skulls, I vowed I would do better. I created the Irish Hounds to prove Ciaran was too weak to lead. That the Skulls had become soft.” He caught his breath, but his eyes still glittered with rage. “And I think I’ve done that. The Lucky Skulls are all but decimated. There’s nothing left of them but a few blowhards who are too stubborn to quit. The rest are dead or have come to me.”

I wanted to tell him that resisting someone like him was a better display of character than anything else. It showed loyalty and strength, where he displayed anger and fear. Of course, after my last little outburst leading to a man trying to put his hand between my legs, I figured it was for the best that I fell silent. Sure, I didn’t think Shane was going to do that, but I didn’t think he had any of those handy principles against hitting me. Or just killing me and getting it over with.

So instead of risking it, I fell silent and waited for whatever was going to happen.

For a while he was silent. He seemed to have run out of steam, and for a second I thought he was finally going to leave. But then he fixed me with a hard glare and said, “Ciaran is weak. And when he comes for you tonight, it’ll prove it.” That was when the door opened and another man—Bryce, if I had to guess—came in to join us. Shane glanced over his shoulder at the man and gave him a nod. “Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere. And keep John the fuck away from her.”

Bryce gave a quick nod, but stayed by the door like some silent guard. Shane turned to leave me and I couldn’t seem to help myself. Focusing my eyes on his back, I steeled myself and said, “Ciaran isn’t weak. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known.”

Shane paused halfway to the door. I saw a flicker of something that looked like worry cross Bryce’s face, but he remained silent. Tension lined Shane’s shoulders, but he seemed to force it away. Looking over his shoulder, he said to me, “You’re an idiot. A stupid, naïve little girl. You’ve got some warped, idealized view of Ciaran. Like he’s this hero, the bad boy out of one of your romance novels. Like he’s going to ride in here to save you on some white horse wearing shining armor and flying a knight’s flag. But he’s not. In the end, Ciaran is a coward and a weakling. He’ll come, but he’ll die, and I’m sorry to say no one’s going to save you.”

I wanted to tell him his own words contradicted him. Bravery was in the act of coming to rescue me. Bravery was trying to save me even if he was outnumbered and betrayed and wounded. That was what made a hero, and I believed it with all of my heart.

But I didn’t say any of that for two reasons: I knew Shane wouldn’t believe me and I wasn’t sure I’d convinced myself yet that Ciaran was really coming.

Of course, I was going to die anyway, so what was the hurt in hoping?