RYDER (Slater Brothers 4) (31 page)

“Yes,” Ryder swallowed. “I am, this one is not active. I broke it, but I just wanted to show it to you so you know what it looked like.”

“Why’re you wearin’ a wire?” I asked when he lowered his t-shirt.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you
everything
.”

An emotion I couldn’t explain surged through me when I realised that he was, in fact, finally going to tell me the reason for our life together ending.

“Sit down,” he prompted once more.

I looked at my bed and moved over to the end of it where I climbed up and sat down, letting my legs hang over the edge. Ryder grabbed the chair in front of my vanity desk and placed it in front of me. He sat down and leaned his elbows onto his knees leaving only a little bit of space between his knees knocking against mine.

I had to tense my entire body when his scent surrounded me and the familiarity of it caused my insides to flutter and come to life. The urge to reach out and touch him consumed me so I shoved my hands under my thighs to keep from doing so.

I focused on him when he began speaking.

“About a year and half ago I fell into a rut where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t want to talk to you about it because I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t have the skills to do anything.”

I frowned, but didn’t interrupt.

“Kane had his landlord and property developer thing going on, Dominic had his personal trainer thing, and Alec was always helping out at the animal shelter nearby. I wasn’t qualified for anything.” He scrubbed his face with both of his hands. “All I’ve ever known is drugs and weapons, and I felt like a failure because I wasn’t made for working in your world. I
still
have no qualifications for anything… I didn’t even finish high-school, Branna.”

“I know that about you,” I said, “and if you think I give a damn whether you’re educated or not then you don’t know me at all.”

“I
know
you don’t care, and to you it doesn’t matter, but to
me,
it matters. I want to be the one taking care of you even though you’re more than capable of doing it yourself. I just didn’t feel like a man, and I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just trying to explain where my head was at.”

I nodded. “I get that, but I still don’t know how everythin’ else comes into play. I mean, the FBI, Ryder?”

“
That
is actually the easy part,” he grunted. “It’s unbelievable that it happened, but it wasn’t like their heat wasn’t warranted.”

My head hurt. “Explain.”

“I still haven’t figured out the best way to explain it, but here goes nothing,” he said and blew out a deep breath. “Pretty soon after I started to feel like shit, I wanted to do my part around the house to feel like I wasn’t completely pathetic so I went down to B&Q to get some materials so I could paint the rooms, patch up any dents or holes in the walls… shit like that. I was leaving the store when two men in black tailored suits approached me at my car. At first I thought it was funny, they looked like the
Men in Black
, so they
had
to have the wrong person, but when they told me who they were and what they wanted from me, I honestly nearly fainted.”

Fear gripped me.

“What did they want from you?”

“They told me a construction site up on the mountain side that was levelling out land discovered a mass grave site.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Trent?” I questioned. “Marco’s men from that night in Darkness when he took Damien and hurt Bronagh?”

Five years ago, Marco Miles, Ryder’s old boss, attacked my little sister and tried to use her life, and Damien’s, as a bargaining chip to keep Ryder and his three other brothers under this thumb. It blew up in his face, and he paid for it with his life, his nephew’s life, and a few of his thugs’ lives.

Ryder nodded once. “They can’t identify the bodies, but mine and Dominic’s finger prints were on one of the plastic bags we used to wrap them up inside. We didn’t clean them as well as we thought.”

My heart was beating so fast I could hear it.

“There hasn’t been a single mention of it in the news though, how could—”

“They’re the Feds, Bran, they aren’t your regular cops. These are the people that hunt you down and find out everything about you know matter where you are on the planet. They have a small team here and only that team and the commissioner of your police knows about this operation. If they want something kept under wraps, you won’t know about it unless they
want
you to.”

What operation?

“I can’t believe this,” I breathed and lifted my hand from under my leg so I could place it on my chest.

“This is as real as it gets, Branna.” Ryder said, trepidation in his tone. “We were all arrested one time in the States… we did nothing wrong, but the cops arrested us one day just so they could get our finger prints and DNA on record. They knew who we ran with and I guess they didn’t want to take any chances with us. When the cops here ran the prints, they found us through the system, and the FBI was flagged and immediately flew over here. Marco was well known to them, but they could never pin shit on him because his crew was so good at what they did. They wanted to know where he disappeared to, and they also knew we had something to do with it because a source told them Marco came to Ireland after us and that he never left.”

I clasped my hands together, just so I had something to hold.

“Are they goin’ to arrest you both for murder?” I asked, and then held my breath as I awaited his reply.

“If I didn’t do what they wanted, then yes, they would have arrested us, but I did what they wanted so no, they won’t. That was the deal they offered me, and I took it.”

“They can do that?” I questioned with disbelief. “They will completely let you get away with
murder
if you help them?”

Ryder nodded. “They have our prints on the plastic, but that’s their only evidence and while it’s a crucial piece, there is so much more they
can’t
get us on, but I didn’t want to test them and actually make them dig for something else to convict us with. I did what they wanted and they let us off the hook.”

“But
how
?” I pressed. “Does there not have to be a trial before a judge—”

“Not with these people, Branna. The Feds can be just as corrupt as gangsters. They can make everything disappear if they get what they want, and all they wanted was information on Brandon Daley’s dealings. I never confirmed it, but they know Marco is dead, and that actually made them happy. Everyone hated him.”

“Are you’re sure what you did was the right thing?” I asked, worried sick this would blow up in his face.

“What choice did I have, Bran?”

My shoulders sagged. “None, I guess.”

“I
know
it was risky, and that I can’t trust them, but if I refused their deal, then they’d have arrested me and Dominic. They don’t care about a couple of dead untraceable bodies because they know who they are without me having to say it. No one misses evil gangsters, Branna,
especially
the law.”

“I understand that, scarcely, but what
exactly
were the terms of the deal?” I asked as a pounding took up residence in my temples. “What did they expect of you?”

“They wanted me to wear a wire, and get a job running shit for Brandon. He is squeaky clean, and is more private than Marco ever was, which made him a mystery to the Feds. They wanted to know who his contacts were, where he got his product from… they basically wanted to know everything about him.”

“The FBI has been keeping tabs on Brandon?” I questioned with raised brows.

“Of course, everyone with power like him is on the Feds’ radar.”

That shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.

“So the deal was for you to be a mole, pass on information and that’s it?”

“Almost,” Ryder said on a grunt. “Marco, the son of a bitch, had me listed as owner on a lot of fucked up properties where shit went down in the city. He had contacts everywhere, and filing the fake paperwork to make me look like a legit owner of somewhere wouldn’t have been hard for him. Now, since I’ve been living here the last five years the Feds
know
I physically had no interaction with any of the properties, but because they were in my name, I was responsible for what was found during the busts.”

Oh, my God.

“The Feds threw out the cases as part of the deal, but they refused to pick up the bill for ‘damages’. They said they would clear me of any wrong doing if I paid it instead. I didn’t have a choice, they could have deported me and tried me in the States for that. And when my sentence there was up, I could be brought back here to be tried and imprisoned for murder. I had to pay them a
lot
of fucking money to make
that
bullshit go away, but I didn’t have enough so Dominic and Alec gave up their shares from what they earned over the years and helped me. Kane did too, but because he has his business, he wasn’t broke like the rest of us. I told you that I got mixed up in a bad investment deal when you asked where the money went because I didn’t want to tell you the truth, and to be honest, if I hadn’t ruined everything and you never noticed the change in me, I would have n
ever
told you.”

“You’d
keep
this from me?” I asked, shocked.

He’d really keep this from me?

Ryder nodded and without hesitation said, “I’d do anything to keep you safe from harm or worry.
Anything
.”

I didn’t know whether to be annoyed over that or appreciative.

“My brothers, bar Damien because we never want him involved in nightmares like this, helped me with my job. I had to look like a shiny diamond to Brandon so he’d learn to trust me. I had to run every shipment successfully, and turn him a sizeable profit. I didn’t want to be at this for years, so I needed to fully invest myself back in the life to make it end faster. I had to be become close to him. But by bringing myself into his world, I pulled away from you. I didn’t want to, I didn’t even notice it at the beginning because I was so stressed out. I now know I was bringing my anger and resentment for the situation I was in back home to you, and you didn’t deserve it.”

I exhaled an unsteady breath. “How were your brothers involved?”

“As you know, Dominic got a job fighting for Brandon. With his money being gone, and being a personal trainer not making enough income, it was the perfect cover to Bronagh. He’d fight under Brandon, get paid, but also keep his ear to the ground to help me with any information he could find. That’s why there’d be days here and there where I was out with him all the time. He was helping me. Kane and Alec too. Kane came with me on a few jobs to watch my back because I don’t trust anyone in Brandon’s crew—except Gavin, but he’s only a small ranked solider, and he wouldn’t have any information that I wouldn’t already know.”

Aideen’s little brother was caught up in Brandon Daley’s world
still
, and I hated it. The stubborn little bastard wouldn’t bow out no matter how much Aideen and his brothers tried to force him to. Keela was working on having her uncle just kick him out of the gang, but he was proving to be just as difficult.

“Alec can charm a snake, and I was dealing with a
lot
of snakes, especially when I was trying to close deals on weapons. Once or twice I’d be dealing with a hard-ass woman, or a stuck up man, and that’s when I needed Alec. I’d bring him along with me, and without making it obvious, he would do his thing—flirt, and effortlessly make people like him. He didn’t even touch anyone; he just smiled and struck up conversations with them. Typical Alec style. It made closing those kinds of deals with greedy people a lot easier.”

I lifted my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes. I lowered my arms, and shook my head, not being able to comprehend the depth of what I was hearing.

“This is a
lot
to take in.”

“I know it is, but you need to know
everything
so you understand how tied my hands were.”

I couldn’t begin to imagine what he felt like, or went through, but… I understood that he had to do what he was
made
to do in order to remain prison free. I got that. It was so hard to believe it was real life, but I got it. My mind pieced together all the fall-outs, fights and the general break down of our relationship and concluded it was inevitable.

Ryder wasn’t a God; there was only so much he could control. His experience with his past life made his task a familiar one, but this time the stakes were a lot higher, and by trying to protect me from it, he unwillingly subjected me to another kind of horror.

My mind understood all of that, but my heart didn’t. I couldn’t just erase the pain I felt, or get over what I saw. The most superficial and idiotic thing I could have said left my mouth when I thought about the night I was kidnapped.

“You really weren’t cheatin’ on me with that Lucy woman?” I whispered.

“No, I swear it.” Ryder said without hesitation. “She was only my contact to the Feds. I’d meet her every night at a different location, get wired up, and find out what shit they wanted me to do.”

Oh
.

“I just thought… when I saw you lean into her car, and she laughed... I just thought the worst.”

“She laughed and giggled like that every night in case I was followed by Brandon’s men to make it
look
like I was meeting up with her for a hook up, but I swear, it’s only ever been you, Branna. I have never touched another women since the night we met.”

My hands were trembling.

“What was I supposed to think? I saw what I saw and came to a conclusion most people would come to as well,” I said as my lower lip wobbled. “You pulled away from me, you left the house every night and showered before you would come near me. When I saw you with ‘er, I started to piece all of that together and it just made everythin’ worse inside me head.”

Ryder frowned. “I felt dirty every time I walked through the front door of our home knowing the shit I came from. I didn’t want to taint you with it. You’re pure to me, and I didn’t want any of what I’ve been doing to affect you.”