Horror swam through me faster than I knew what to do with. “Who did it?”
Brogan hesitated but after a few moments he replied, “Rabid Wolves insignia was found at the scene, draped over a dead cop who had been escorting him. Look we’re doing everything to find him, but just keep everyone at the clubhouse, locked down. Safety in numbers, yeah?”
FUCK.
TEN
Orla
My head was aching even though my eyes were closed, and I felt my body hurt in a way it shouldn’t. I tried to call out, but my mouth felt like it was dry, and no sound issued from it.
The sound of footsteps had my body tensing, despite the pain it elicited through my muscles. I kept my eyes closed, listening for whatever I could hear.
Had it been a dream? Was I still in Italy?
No, there’s no way I would have felt what I felt had it been a dream. The sounds of footsteps came closer, before they scuttled away. A door opened and closed and then silence.
I wouldn’t hear footsteps if I was home with Bear. The carpets made sure of that. There’d been so many times he had snuck up behind me and taken me hard and fast, shocking me to the core.
I throbbed at the memory.
Trying to think back to remember anything that could have brought me somewhere other than in his arms, I came up empty. My head was hurting, throbbing with pain, a migraine lingering behind my eyes somehow, ringing in my ears from the pain.
The door opened again, and closed behind whoever it was coming closer to where I was. I was laying, that was all I knew. My hands were tied, judging by the rough pain when I tried to move my wrists, and they were tight.
“You can stop pretending,” I heard the chilling voice of someone I didn’t expect to hear. “I know you’re awake, Orla.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes, the blinding light from a window almost sending them closed again. He stepped in the path of the window and shielded me from the pain, as I looked up at my best friend’s tormentor.
Neal.
“Good,” he said. “Now that you’re finally awake, we can get down to brass tacks, shall we?”
“If you close the goddamn blinds, maybe.”
He made a movement and suddenly the light left, only a small crack bleeding in to give enough illumination that I could see Neal standing there, and another man leaving the room, closing it behind him.
“They let you out,” I said, a deflated sigh escaping.
“In one way or another, I suppose that is true,” he replied, dragging a chair over to face me. I looked down at the bed I was on, it was just a cot, similar to what you would see in a prison, which I found a little funny considering who I was talking to. “What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing,” I replied, looking him cold in the eyes. He scared me before, but I knew he was a weak little man who relied on others to help him get his way. He had no pull in this city anymore, and I knew it. “How’d you escape?”
“I never told you I escaped,” he said, surprised.
“You didn’t have to,” I countered. “The way you responded told me all I needed to know.”
He sighed. “Ah, there’s the intellectual wit I remember. It’s a shame you bury it in your desire to feel as many cocks between your legs as possible.”I winced at the insinuation. I’d gone through a very rough period where I needed to be satiated at every moment I felt alive. A badinfluence friend, as Neal had put it to Sheridan. We’d had to sneak around for months just to hang out.
I’d never once seen the bruises she’d covered up in that time and felt like a horrible friend. How had I missed that she needed me?
“Why am I here?”
“It wasn’t my intention to grab you,” he admitted, crossing one leg over his knee and sitting back in the chair. If ever a chair was to fail, now would be the chance to do it. “But when I noticed the punk biker bitch grabbing my girls and Sheridan, I knew I had to act fast. There’s only one person Sheridan would save aside from my daughters, and that’s you.”
Fear shot through me. She’d tried to save me back in Italy and it had ended with her in another room and Wolf being tortured. I’d heard the sounds of grunts, electricity and slapping from where I cowered in my room.
Fuck, I hadn’t even gone to visit Wolf since I’d been back, I’d been too wrapped up in Bear.
