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“Sorry, Sheriff. No time for a lecture. I gotta get Leo settled and see if I can find his mom. Talk soon.” That was the plan, to get Leo settled at the clubhouse and then go find Robert Carter. While I knew it was Ryan who took here, there had to be a connection. As I drove us there, I couldn’t stop thinking ugly thoughts, and they fueled my anger and my desire for action. Robert had made the threat by mentioning Leo, so he’d better hope like hell that he wasn’t behind Ellie’s kidnapping.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Rocky stepped in front of me at the clubhouse door.
“Where the fuck do you think? To get Ellie.” I frowned at my club brother, wondering what the fuck this was about.
“Alone? That’s not how we do shit, brother. You know that.” He held my gaze to make sure I got the message. You’re not doing shit by yourself.
“Yeah, I know, but I need to go. Now.”
“You’re not going rogue, I’m going with you. Slate will let us know as soon as he pinpoints Carter’s location or gets any intel on Ryan’s truck.” He clapped me on my back and smiled. “Let’s go fuck somebody up.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Just like the old days.” Only this time the stakes were higher. This wasn’t fighting just for the sake of macho bullshit. “Don’t let me kill him until we know where Ellie is.”
Rocky grinned. “That’s why I’m coming with you, brother. Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ellie
I blinked rapidly when I woke up, anticipating brightness, but my heart stopped because there was no light. Everything was black. Totally black. Was I blind? Where was I? I shook my head to get rid of the fog before I looked around, but everything was still black, and that’s when I felt it. There was something over my head, and just beyond the cloth were small dots of light. I tried to raise my hand to remove whatever was blocking my vision but couldn’t. My arms wouldn’t move because something was binding my wrists. To a chair.
“What the hell?” I shouted to no one in particular because I didn’t remember where I was or how I got there.
Glimpses of what happened started resurfacing. The doctor’s office, the restaurant…
Footsteps, quiet and efficient, moved towards me and I slammed my eyes shut and braced myself for what was about to happen. The cloth over my head was yanked off and I stayed in place, head down, eyes closed and my body as small as I could make it. “Ellie.”
The voice was familiar, and for just a fraction of a second there was relief. And then fear as I remembered.
“Ellie, you’re awake,” the voice said again, this time laced with annoyance.
I looked up and my heart plummeted into my stomach where acid churned, and I had to fight the urge to puke. “Ryan?” It was the same familiar face, but the expression was unfamiliar. Anger. No, not anger. It was fury.
Ryan my friend… Ryan my attacker. I shook my head, but the throbbing in my skull intensified in a white-hot flash, and I stopped. In barely a whisper, I managed to get out three words. “You hit me.”
His expression flashed contrite before he schooled it into a blank expression. “I told you about my father, right?”
I frowned at the complete non-sequitur. “Y-yeah, some… Hard to please businessman. Very successful.”
Ryan nodded, and when he spoke about his father there was none of the usual admiration in his voice. His eyes were flat, almost blank. Bordering on sad. “He’s not just successful and hard to please. He’s ruthless and a thrill seeker, which is a terrifying combination, because it means he gets sloppy sometimes,” he said around a bitter laugh. “It’s not enough to make billions. Billions, Ellie. Enough money that my grandchildren won’t have to work. It’s not enough, so he amuses himself by dabbling in the world of crime.”
That didn’t surprise me. But at the same time, I had to wonder why the hell we were talking about his father at all.
“Aren’t most billionaires crooks anyway?” I asked, my eyes darting around for an escape while I tested the strength of the bonds at my wrist.
“Not like this.” He shook his head, a grave expression on his face. “Your sister didn’t tell you.” It wasn’t a question, just a realization, and I froze. He continued, “Stacy was too damn smart for her own good. She thought it was a good idea to pick up where Monica left off.”
My head hurt like a son of bitch, but I was starting to figure it out based on what Diesel had already shared. “You had something to do with my mom’s death.”
Ryan shook his head. “I was a kid back then, my dad cleaned up his own mess.”
I paused, “But your surname is Murphy, not Carter.”
“When I joined the company as an intern my father didn’t want everyone to think it was nepotism. He wanted me to learn his business from the ground up, so I used my mom’s maiden name.”
“My sister—”
“Clearly, he didn’t clean up his mess as well as he thought, and your sister started snooping.” A look of regret flashed across his face, but I didn’t believe that shit for one second. “She’d started following my dad and he was getting paranoid. Technology changed a lot since he dealt with Monica and he couldn’t risk even a hint of scandal, so he told me to deal with her.”
