The Salvation of Vengeance (Wanted Men #2) (10 page)

When he didn’t get a response, Vasily bumped foreheads with the biker and slowly walked from the room.

Vincente’s senses took their time coming back online, and when they did, he wished they hadn’t. What the fuck was he doing? Castigating this already-broken man because of his failure to protect his own sister?

The indignity of his actions settled over him as he looked around, seeing the wariness in his friends’ eyes at the fact that he’d uttered even those few words about that black year that had changed him forever.

“Caleb.” He reached out. “Fuck, brother. I’m sorry.”
Holy shit.
What had he done? Words couldn’t be taken back after they were spoken. No matter how much he apologized. He
knew
that. Vasily had been dead-on about this having been Nika’s choice. Vincente had embarrassingly made it about himself.

Caleb’s cold fingers gripped his wrist, his coffee-colored gaze tormented. “You’re right, V. Vasily . . .” He trailed off, looking toward the door. “I don’t know.” He settled his gaze back on Vincente. “But don’t you dare eat your fucking words now. Because you’re right. I fucked up . . . absolutely.”

Vincente shook his head at that too-familiar admission. “I was speaking from a place I had no right—”

“Doesn’t change anything,” Caleb insisted, his voice flat.

“Yes, it does,” Maksim said firmly. “Vasily was right, whether you know it yet or not. Your sister took this on herself, chose to deal with it alone. That’s on her, Paynne. She’ll probably tell you the same thing. You’ll see.”

The biker turned away, and Vincente had his first visual of what he himself lived with every day of his life. He saw firsthand what his friends were forced to look at every day.

Guilt and an incredible amount of sorrow left over from an innocent girl’s tragedy.

Something her big brother should have been there to prevent.

CHAPTER 7

Finding it impossible to interact anymore, Caleb removed himself from the company of Vincente and his boys. He shuffled out the door and down the hall. Didn’t know where he was going, but anywhere was better than where he’d been.

He felt numb, his mind so full of this catastrophe it felt empty. And his heart, his heart was bleeding, rivers of blood, an endless supply to fill the aching pit of despair around it.

What have I done?

He couldn’t find an answer. Couldn’t make his brain work enough to even attempt it.

His heart continued to beat, sluggishly, as if it were trying to decide whether it wanted to give that next thump.

For the first time in his life, Caleb wanted to die.

Correction. He wanted the oblivion of death. He wanted his mind wiped clean of the horror he’d just witnessed. A horror that had unfolded because of him. A tragedy he could have,
should
have, prevented but hadn’t because he hadn’t wanted to upset his . . . his . . .

An image of Nika as a young girl suddenly filled his mind, bringing him back to their childhood, to a day when she’d wanted to join him and his buddies in the tree house their father had helped them build in the big spruce in the corner of their backyard. Nika had been too afraid to climb the ladder by herself, so Caleb had traveled the rungs one by one, keeping her skinny little body between his arms, her bright hair poking his eyes and tickling his chin as he’d sheltered her so she wouldn’t fall backward onto the hard ground. The worshipful look she’d gifted him with once she’d sat her eight-year-old butt down on the plywood floor of the fort had made his twelve-year-old heart swell with pride. He’d felt like a knight in shining armor.

A sharp pain traveled up his legs as his knees hit the hardwood with a dull thud.

His sister. His beautiful, charming, effervescent baby sister, whom he’d watched change during the past year into a shadow of her former self, and he hadn’t done a damn thing about it.

His throat squeezed so tight, his breath choked off. He hadn’t wanted to make her any unhappier than she’d already appeared. He’d stood by, arms folded, refusing to push. Refusing to end her torment, so as not to make her unhappy.

The irony of that was incredible.

He barely felt the heavy hands jam under his armpits and haul him up to deposit him rather gently onto the cushions of the sofa. He glanced up in time to see Alek’s empathetic expression before the guy disappeared up the stairs.

“She’s gonna be okay.” Maksim had come in, too, his accented voice carrying over the clank of ice being dropped into a couple of glasses. “You’d be amazed how much the mind can handle and still manage to function normally.”

“She made me promise.” He cringed. The words embarrassed him because they sounded like a defense. But he repeated them because he needed the reminder of Nika’s insistence. Of the reason he’d given his word and allowed her abuser to continue his sick game. “So many fucking times, she made me promise to stay out of it. I thought maybe Nollan was fucking around on her and she was waiting to throw it in his face.” He barked out a disbelieving laugh that he’d been so dense. “I should have done something. Anything. Should have dug sooner. Found something. But I didn’t. I didn’t do fuck-all for her.” He squeezed his eyes shut and saw again his sister lying on the floor of that hotel room, bleeding.

“Hindsight, my brother. She’ll fuck you every time.” The big Russian paused as he splashed some liquid into the glasses. “She was trying to protect you. Like Vasily said, respect it because you’d have done the same for her. I find it fascinating the lengths she went. Sacrifice is not something I understand. Maybe you can talk to Gabriel about how he deals with the nightmares we all know he has about Eva being in that cabin with Stefano and Furio. His wife chose to go to her
death
for him and her father. Who does shit like that?” He chuckled and put the stopper into the bottle before picking up the drinks. “Huge respect for the ladies. Anyway, talk to Gabriel. See how he deals with it. If he does at all. Though, I don’t think any of us would be comfortable if someone else took shit on our behalf. None of us feel we’re worth it. True?”

Absolutely.
Never had truer words been spoken. But the bitter, acrid taste of guilt continued to trickle down the back of Caleb’s throat. “She was wrong. So fucking wrong to have done this for me.”

Maks pressed a glass into Caleb’s hand before dropping into a chair across from him. “I think not. What-ifs, should-haves, if-onlys, maybes—they’re all a waste of time, my man,” he continued in that same believe-me-I-know tone. “The only thing you can do now is let her know you’re here for her. Support her. Tell her you’re grateful. Help her recover from this. And she will.”

Caleb lifted his scorching eyelids to watch the intimidating SOB swallow half his drink. Then Maks’s eerie silver eyes met his own, and the knowledge and pain in that stare blew him away.

“And a word of advice. Don’t take offense to V’s club-you-over-the-head approach. Guy was never the same after his little sister was ruined and murdered.”

Caleb hadn’t known Vincente had lost a sister.

Maksim filled him in on the details of Sophia’s abduction, forced drug addiction, and ultimate death by overdose, and how Vincente had rarely ever mentioned it, choosing to keep it bottled up inside. “That never-ending pain he’s lived with for over a decade obviously came out during that speech of his. Mark my words, Paynne. He’s going to try to be there for your little sis . . . the way he wasn’t able to be there for his own.”

Vincente followed Tegan into the med room. The sound of a ball game coming from somewhere seemed obscene, but it remained just a drone in the background.

He’d wanted to talk to Caleb but decided at the last minute to give him some space. That’s what he’d want if he were in the biker’s situation. A whole lotta space. But then, that was him. In the end, he’d left Maksim on watch.

“Ah, she wakes.”

He came to attention at Tegan’s softly spoken comment. Nika was lying on her side in the double bed they’d placed her in after stitching her up. He noted the vibrant sparkle that was normally in her eyes was missing, clouded with drugs. Didn’t like that.

“Where is it? The memory stick?”

Her voice was husky and coarse, the musical quality gone. Another thing not to like.

Maybe if this kept up, he’d be off the hook and his attraction to her would die.

Or not
, he thought in the next heartbeat as she continued to hold his gaze. Warmth spread through him, traveling from his chest outward. Unable to stop himself, he lifted his hand and brushed a strand of her bright hair from the corner of her perfectly shaped lips. There were a few locks lying on the silver tray off to the side. Yuri or Tegan must have shaved a spot on her scalp in order to stitch her wound. Hated that, but at least there was no need for her to be self-conscious because it was in a place no one would be able to see.

Clearing his throat, he dropped his arm and went into his pocket for the requested item. The image of her bruised body as he’d seen it earlier crowded his mind. She’d taken this beating on top of all the marks she’d already had. He had to squeeze his eyes shut to block the knowledge out and withdraw the reason for it all. The footage of Caleb would easily implicate the biker—his image captured perfectly, almost as if the security camera had been trained on him specifically.

Maks was going to look into what that was about.

Vincente held out the jump drive, but Nika didn’t even look at it. She continued to hold his gaze, an oddly perplexed expression settling on her face. She reminded him of an accident victim trying to understand what was happening around her. No doubt she was having a hard time getting her thought process to work around the meds in her system.

“I’m not a bad person, you know,” she murmured, surprising him. “I didn’t deserve what he did to me.”

“Jesus Christ, I know that, babe,” he assured her in a whisper, which was all he could get out around her words and that darkening lump on her cheek.

“He showed up outside my office last September. It wasn’t even raining that day,” she mused, her expression far-off. “I hadn’t seen him in over a year. Barely knew who he was, just that he used to hang out at the clubhouse with Caleb. He was wearing this horrible plaid shirt.” She grimaced slightly. “Asked if I’d go for coffee with him. Said he wanted to talk to me about my brother.”

She closed her eyes as she shook her head. “We sat in Starbucks, and he told me about some footage he had that could put Caleb in prison for the rest of his life. Then he got up and left. Said he’d contact me the next day to let me know how the situation would play out.” Her voice went a smidge deeper, as if she was attempting to imitate Nollan. “ ‘You’re gonna make me one very happy man, Niki,’ is what he whispered in my ear before he walked away.”

Vincente’s vow to obliterate Nollan to the point where even memories of him no longer existed—after the fucker bled rivers for his sins—was cemented as he watched his redhead struggle through her story.

Nika met his eyes and said solemnly, “Don’t ever call me Niki, okay?”

“Never.” A vow he would keep until the end.

“He said that same thing to me on our wedding night. ‘You’re gonna make me one very happy man, Niki.’ I thought he meant it sexually. But thank God he couldn’t do that. Not with me anyway. Tonight he could have, though.” She shuddered so hard her teeth chattered, and Vincente watched as goose bumps littered the flawless skin of her arm that was peeking out from under the white sheet covering her. What did she mean “he couldn’t do that”?

“Until tonight . . . ?” he questioned hesitantly, dread snaking down his spine.

“He got excited when I fought so hard tonight. He got an erection. That’s never happened before. That was the one way God, or whoever was watching, helped me. I never had to suffer through sex with him.”

Vincente blinked a few times, pretty sure his eyes were trying to tear up, whether in relief on her behalf or remorse over this tragedy, he wasn’t sure.

“He made me buy two tickets to Las Vegas a week after we first met for coffee,” she continued. “The guy who married us was high as a kite. I don’t know how he read the correct words since he looked at my boobs more than the papers in his hands. But he did it, and when we got back to Seattle I was Mrs. Kevin Nollan. He liked to call me ‘slave’ because he knew I hated it.”

She shivered again, and Vincente had to deliberately relax his hold on the memory stick before he crushed it to dust. For the second time since meeting this woman, he forgot how to breathe.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
But this time, it wasn’t because of the way she looked. No. This suffocation was due to the negative emotions roiling through him. They were malevolent and evil and darkness and pain.

Kevin Nollan would soon pay.

“I’m not a bad person, Vincente,” she murmured again. “I don’t go to church, but I’ve always tried my best to be good, to help where I can—unless the guy sitting on the sidewalk holding up a cup has shoes that cost more than mine. Eva and I used to volunteer all the time growing up. She made stuff fun, no matter what we were doing. Did you know my brother has his master’s in special education? He’s such a good man. He went to Seattle University, and Eva and I used to tag along with him when he did his co-op at the Alliance. They helped us choose our cause.”

Hearing an echo of loneliness in her voice, Vincente stepped closer to the bed and offered her what little comfort he could by running his fingers down her arm. “You don’t have to tell me this stuff, Red. I know Caleb’s a good guy.”
Despite what he’d implied half an hour ago
, he thought with a cringe. “And without you saying a word, I already knew what kind of person you were.” He touched a lock of her hair. “You light up the room when you’re in it, babe. What could possibly be bad about that?”

She nodded but didn’t look convinced.

Another tremble moved through her, and he looked around for a blanket, halting when she said, “Will you lay with me? I can’t get warm.” Before he could respond, she continued. “Do you ever feel like, even in a room full of people, you’re alone, Vincente? I feel like that all the time lately. It was so hard being the only one who knew what was happening. Sometimes, when he finished with me, I would sit on the side of the bathtub and wish there was someone I could tell, just so I didn’t feel so alone in it. But I wouldn’t do that to Eva. And Caleb couldn’t know.”

As he identified with what Nika was saying, Tegan came over from where she’d been standing with her arms wrapped around herself. She moved like a shadow she was so quiet. He glanced up at his friend of many years as she placed a fluffy blue blanket on the foot of the bed, tear tracks on her cheeks, her bright-blue eyes shimmering with moisture. She motioned that she’d lock the door on her way out, and then she was gone.

Sweat bloomed across the back of Vincente’s neck at the intimacy of what he was about to do. He shoved aside his unease and, without giving himself a chance to think about it—or pull a Bugs Bunny by fucking off so fast that all he left behind was the outline of his form in the door—he motioned for Nika to scoot over. She gingerly slid a little away, and he stretched out on his back next to her, holding his breath when she moved in to tuck into his side.