Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (32 page)

Ricardo’s shoulders sagged, crestfallen, sadness creeping in his eyes.

I pushed hard at Chad’s back, and when he spun around, watching me with anxious eyes, I demanded, “What the fuck is this?”

Chad scrubbed his hands down his face, and with a throaty noise, moved to the couch and sat his ass down on the handle. “Ricardo was my fraternal brother, Jhay. And you…you were
everything
. I couldn’t save your parents any more than I could pull a trigger and kill either of you. I couldn’t…I couldn’t run with both of you. So like I told you, I threw you in on the ‘freedom for legacy’ deal with my father: you get exempted from the assassination and he would take you in, ensure you receive your family’s inheritance, then send you back to the US when you’re old enough…” He expelled a loud breath, no doubt mentally beating himself for being stupid enough to believe Rafail would’ve kept his end of the bargain. “For Ricardo… I’d had to find another way to save him.”

I got it. He couldn’t run with me, because Liz was already taking my place…I was a little unripe girl, not half as important as her. I couldn’t have brought him pleasure on his joyride to the States. So he chose to run with
her
, his uncle’s mistress, and left me behind with his monster of a father.

“How?” My voice was so empty, a whisper into an airless world.

“Kill-Ring,” he said with a simple shrug. “Not the one with the powder poison like you tried to use on me. The one with—”

“The microscopic needle,” I finished. “You swapped the poison with a heavy sedative and injected him with it by stealth before you shot him so the others would think he’s dead.”

A nod from Chad confirmed my calculations. “Verdin, he was the man I made lock you in your room, because he didn’t know of my plans; he was the report man, the one who my father sent along to bear witness that I did the job. The second man, Havil, he knew because I’d paid him off—he was an in-training recruit who wanted to run with me. And that was his opportunity.

“My father wanted the bodies removed from the house, dumped, and burned. So when we got to the location to dump the bodies, while Havil was pouring the gasoline, I told Verdin to just go ahead and check in with my father to let him know the job was complete. Once he did, I shot him in the head, before decapitating him. Then I pulled two of Ricardo’s wisdom teeth, tossed them next to Verdin’s body, and lit them all on fire.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. “This means Verdin’s headless body was passed off as Ricardo when they ran dental DNA for identification.”

Another nod of confirmation. “I disposed Verdin’s head far out into the ocean. Don’t think it has ever been found.”

“And Havil?”

“He was with us for a while, eager to please me.”

“It was never just you and Liz at your aunt’s place, was it?”

He shook his head. “She had a pool house that she begrudgingly allowed Ricardo and Havil to hide out in.” His lips twisted ruefully. “But your brother had morphed into a paranoid fuck since that night, and he believed Havil was a liability. You know, he knew our secret, easy for him to turn on us and run back to my father if we ever pissed him off. So your brother lost it one night and slit the guy’s throat from ear to ear while he was sleeping.”

A loud gasp echoed in the room and we all shifted our gazes to a gaping Clementine.

“Shit,” Chad swore.

Ricardo winced, and Clementine widened judgmental eyes at him. “You
killed
someone? You never told me that part!”

“Clem—” Ricardo pleaded, reaching out to her, but she backed away from him like he was some hideous creature.

“
Don’t
touch me!” she yelled. “I can’t believe…I can’t believe I’m going to be having a baby for a…for a
murderer
.” She drew in a few rapid breaths. “Chad I managed to come to terms with. Your sister, I’ve hardly even accepted it yet. But now you, too?
Why
, Rick?”

Clementine tumbled back into one of the sofa chairs, as though her feet could no longer hold her up. She dropped her head in her hands and began sobbing, while Ricardo watched her helplessly.

“You,” I directed at Ricardo. He eyed me charily, like he was afraid of me or something. “Have you ever tried to find me? Ever sought to find out if your little sister was dead or alive?”

His gaze shot to Chad, seeking his rescue.

“Jhay—” Chad jumped in, but I was having none of it.

“I’m talking to my
brother
, Chadrick!” I screamed with a shitload of asperity. “You know, the biggest, tallest, healthiest man in the room. The one smelling like motherfucking sunshine and daisies, walking around so damn easily without having to look over his shoulder.” Eyes still glowering at Ricardo, I asked again, “Have you ever done anything
at all
to find me?”

“I’m not supposed to be alive, sis,” he said, timorous. “I’ve been hiding out behind God’s back since Chad saved me that night. The places I can go and the things I can do are limited. If Rafail finds out—”

“That’s all your problem is? Do you have
any
idea what my life has been like?” There was too much anger boiling within me, and I needed something to take it out on before I exploded, so I spun and chucked Chad off the sofa handle, knocking him sideward into the sofa. “Why the fuck didn’t you kill me? Why did you let me live?! You say I was ‘everything’, when in fact I was nothing. You chose this piece of shit and your precious Liz over me. You ran with them and left me behind. You.Left.Me.
Behind
. I was nothing to you. Nothing, you soulless liar!”

I was flat-out bawling now. Because all this was unfair. So unfair that my brother was living this rich and free fucking life, and I’d been doled twelve years of cruelty, pain, and suffocation.

To my brother: “You call
this
imprisonment? This is what you call ‘behind God’s back’, you ungrateful shit?” I kicked over the coffee table in front of me. “I’m the only family you have left, and, even though Chad risked his life to save yours, his
non
-blood brother, you couldn’t lift even a fucking finger to try and save mine? No, you decided to kick back in big ole America and fuck your pretty wife’s tiny pussy, have babies and start a new family with a nice, lavish life. Because Jhay Byrd’s a lost cause, right?”

Face a mask of distress and compunction, Ricardo just stared over my head, avoiding my eyes.

Nothing. He had absolutely nothing to say to me. Nothing at all! No apologies, no trying to calm me down, no nothing, because he really didn’t give a shit. What a selfish fuck!

Using the back of my hand to wipe the snot and tears from my nose, I sniffed. “Well, there sure as shit aren’t gonna be any more new Byrds.”

Moving fast, I bent and picked up a pointy shard of the broken whiskey glass and charged toward a wide-eyed Clementine, the shard in my hand poised to puncture her precious baby bump.

Mere inches from her, I was attacked, my body diverting sideward through the air as I was tackled to the ground. I landed with a teeth-shattering thud on the wooden floors, pain shooting through my spine.

A raging Chad was on top of me, roaring, “Have you lost your fucking mind?!!”

I tried to throw him off me, but I would’ve had more luck charming my way out of a beer attack. “Get off me, you stupid sonuvabitch!”

“Jhay, calm do—”

Reinforcing my grip on the shard of glass, I drove my hand up and aimed for the bulging blue vein in his neck, but Chad caught on to the move just in the nick of time and shifted. Not fast enough, though, because the shard got jammed into his shoulder instead, and blood began squirting.

Like a big, tough badass, he merely grunted at the pain, and I took advantage of his disposition and shoved him off me. Giving up the fight, he rolled easily onto his back, his hand reaching up to his shoulder to pull out the piece of glass.

I jumped to my feet and kicked his hand away, then stomped my heel down on the glass so it sank deeper into his flesh. This time he shouted from the pain.

Ah, that was more like it. Keeping my heel pressed on the broken glass, I leaned down and stuck my hand into his front pocket where I knew his car keys were.

Once I had them, I lifted my heel from the glass, but just as quickly stomped it back down again, and hissed, “Go fuck yourself, Blood” before beating feet out of the house.

I
drove around like an indecisive nutcase for hours, aimless, pointless, mindless.

As the sun hunkered down behind the small hills and lush, tall trees of the green yet affluent town, I braked up outside
Alpine Inn,
spinning the LFA to a dusty, hazardous stabilization in an unpaved dirt lot.

The place was a cozy, wooden square of a box, off-white, with neon lights, advertising
Coors,
blinking through low, glass windows. Six Harley motorcycles lined off the front of the building, staking claim, like a snapshot straight out of
Sons of Anarchy
.

Stretching across the console, I opened the glove compartment. It was empty. But I knew a gun was in there somewhere. I felt around with my fingers until they discovered a tiny latch on the upside. I used my fingernail to prize it open and, bingo: a black and chrome semi-auto handgun fell into my palm.

The handgun, however, was bigger than I expected and my tight outfit provided no flaps or holes to hide it, so I settled for the Browning in my boot that I’d stolen from the giant dumb-dumb who’d shot at us earlier, then unfolded out of the flashy sports car.

I pushed through the doors of the rustic old matchbox and was instantly harassed with the pungency of greasy fries and juicy burgers. Due to the neon flashing signs out on the windows, I’d gotten the impression that the place was a bar, but it was more of a buy-yourself-a-heartburn joint. Quirky and a bit antiquated, it had a whole retaining-the-past thing going on with its paint-stripped red ceilings with vintage beer posters pasted on them. Long, worn-out benches, creepy deer heads, real ancient beer signs, stickers everywhere, and a shit-ton of bric-a-brac. With all that, the place should have felt clustered and stuffy, but instead it was the opposite, easy on the mind.

There weren’t many customers inside, possibly because it was sundown. A cohort of bikers claimed a whole bench to themselves, even though it could easily seat about fifteen. A klatch of tatted, voluptuous chicks sat at the opposite bench, stuffing their faces with oily, salty French fries. And an old couple was up by the order counter.

The bikers all swung their heads to me when I entered, and I wasn’t sure if it was my get-up—skinny black jeans, black tank top, black biker jacket and black crush-your-intestines combat boots—or the grim look on my face, but they all exchanged glances with each other, and, as if coming to a unified agreement that I was not to be fucked with, went back to their boisterous conversation.

I strode up to the bar side of the order counter and waited behind the old couple, tapping my boot against the linoleum-tiled floor. When the senior couple moved off, I stepped up and ordered a Coors.

The cashier, a corpulent, round woman, African-American, protruded her lips in a moue as she studied me. “You ridin’ with ‘em boys?” she asked in a brawling twang, jutting her chin in the direction of the bikers.

“Why?” I returned, my voice a dull, empty thing.

“‘Cause you looks like a lesbian biker chick.” She gave me that “mhmm-hmm” purse of the lips. “You a lesbian biker chick?”

This world. Why can’t people ever learn to mind their own goddamn business?

“Are you a gospel singer?” I asked her.

Baffled, she answered, “No. Why?”

“Because you’re fat, and you’re black.”

The woman’s lips twitched at the corners, fighting back a smile, which was counter-productive of what I’d been aiming for. I was expecting a whole lot of lipping about me being a skinny white bitch, racist and prejudiced, a couple of neck rolls and finger snaps. But instead, the damn woman found it funny. “I deserved that. But no. No fat, black singer here. Last time I tried singin’ at a karaoke, I let out a pants-ripping fart tryna hold a Whitney Houston note.”

I blinked at her. “Can I get my beer now, please?”

Folding her lips, she eyed me up and down then nodded as if approving me, before she finally turned and wrung up my order, then passed me my change and the beer.

Popping the cover with the bottle opener attached to the counter, I took a sip, then went to plop down on the last bar stool at the end next to the front door, raising my eyes up to the flat-screen television that was airing a basketball game.

No plans. I had no fucking plans of where to go from here. I’d stabbed the man I loved and run off. The villain who’d promised me my freedom was hunting me down to kill me. I’d ruined an already tattered relationship with the only family I had left by maliciously trying to kill his unborn.

I sipped my beer. Oh, my life was fucking joyous.

Someone big and imposing sat down on the stool next to me, but I kept my eyes on the television and pretended not to notice, while keeping my senses on high alert, drawing my shoulders up in defense, tensing, preparing for an attack.