“I’m right there with you, Bear. No one touches our women.”
I nodded. “Good.”
I grabbed the helmet and jumped on my bike. Rebel was right there beside me as we rode toward the old warehouse we used to make use of before we had the land we were on now. No one went that way anymore,and it was hidden by the lake and overgrown trees. The perfect spot. We pulled up to see Kirby dragging on a smoke outside. The kid had grown up in the club; just a pipsqueak when he was brought in by his father, and now he was bulking up with some tattoos of his own.
He stomped on his smoke and headed over to us.
“He still out?” Rebel asked with a smirk.
“Nah, gagged the fucker though,” Kirby said. “He’s a mouthy piece of shit.”
I grabbed my gun from the waistband of my jeans and headed inside. Matteo was tied to a chair, a piece of cloth wrapped around his mouth. His eyes were wide when he saw me stride in. He knew what would happen if he came here to hunt down Orla or Sheridan; this was on him. He could see it was just me and the two men behind me, and he knew. Instantly, he knew. No VP or President, and he was done for. This was unsanctioned, which meant he’d disappear today.
“Hey there, Matteo,” I said, pulling his gag down. He didn’t speak, his eyes belied the fear in him though. “Thought you’d see the sights of Ireland, did you?”
“My family will seek vengeance for me.”
“Yourbrothertold us you were coming.”
He knew it. He’d come here without the aid of his family, and his own brother had given him up.
“He is no brother to me,” Matteo sneered before he spat on the ground. I looked down at where he sullied the ground and back up at him.
“Why’d you come here?” I asked him, cracking my knuckles in preparation for what was to come. “You got away with your life back in Milan, why did you come here and threaten my woman?”
“Your woman who mars her beauty with ink,” Matteo sneered. “She is beneath me.”
My fist found its way to the side of his face faster than I knew what was happening. The crunch of bone was loud, my knuckles burning from the impact. Blood spurt out of his nose as he yelped in pain, unable to shield himself, unable to move.
“I see you like trash,” Matteo continued.
I levelled my gun at him and shot his leg. The echo of the shot was deafening, the wailing that followed was even worse.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” he screamed, his accent getting thicker and thicker the more pain he was in. He was trying to budge from the ropes he was tied with, but Rebel knew how to tie knots, I’d taught him myself all those years ago. He’d never get free.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say about her,” I said. “Even if it is true.”
Rebel and Kirby snickered behind me as they hung back, giving me the space I needed.
“I won’t touch your whore,” Matteo uttered.
Another fist to his face, this time on the other side. “You really aren’t getting it, are you?”
He grunted, frustration taking over as he tried to wiggle free. The bullet wound in his leg was haemorrhaging blood as I looked down at it. Damn it. I must have nicked a vein. He would bleed out too fast if I kept it up at this pace.
I wanted him to hurt.
Not just for thinking he could take the girls and lock them up, but for what he did to Orla…for what he said to her to make her hate herself. I wanted to fucking rip him from limb to limb for that.
I swept my leg out and knocked the foot of the chair out. He dangled close to the ground, unable to stop himself from falling if I were to…
Swoop.
Another leg down and his face planted into the hard cement ground. A sickly crunch sounded, surrounded by gurgling. Rebel kicked him over onto his back, while Kirby handed me the jerry can filled with petrol and his lighter.
I looked down at the bloodied face that was once Matteo Barone, a feared mafia king in Milan. Now he was a puddle of piss, shit and blood and soon, he would be nothing but ash.
“You made a mistake thinking you could come here and intimidate the Ghost Rebels,” I said to him, pouring the petrol over him. He hissed out in pain, but he was losing consciousness and fast. “Now, no one will ever know what truly happened to Matteo Barone, the king who never was.”
