Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

ARIES

“Brother, you read this file, and it’s gonna piss you off further than you already are.” Vulture captures my attention the minute he tosses a file on the table we’re all surrounding.

He sent the text first thing this morning that he finished getting what he could for an initial report. Viper called church, and here we all are. I hadn’t seen Rory since leaving her in Mace’s clinic. I knew he’d moved her and that Cordy spent some time with her. Mace’s parents hadn’t been able to see her because she’d gone back to sleep. They did, however, look over the report Mace put together along with the blood sample he’d taken.

“Wanna elaborate, brother?” I ask, not bothering to touch the folder. I stare at it, unsure if I actually want to know just what’s inside, and I find it might be best if my brother tells me.

“You sure you want me to state what’s in that folder?” he asks calmly.

“Nothing to hide from my brothers, and whatever you found, we all gotta know,” I tell him, doing my best not to think too hard about the whole situation. I had a hard enough time sleeping knowing she was here. So damn close. The sight of her beaten as she’d been was stuck in my head. I couldn’t get it out. Then there’s the fact I actually called her my property. What the fuck was I thinking? She ain’t mine. I don’t want anything to do with her.

“Alright.” Vulture sighs and leans back in his chair. “Rory Tyler is a singer in her stepbrother’s nightclubs. She travels to each one he’s got her scheduled for. Never is she not without bodyguards or near her stepbrother, Roger.”

The very mention of Roger pisses me off. I never liked the dickwad. He was always sniffing around Rory. There were a few times he tried to get between the two of us. At the time, Rory never believed him and seemed to hate him. So, why work at his nightclubs?

“So, she worked as a singer for her brother. What’s the big deal?” Dutch asks.

“Big deal is the nightclubs were used as a cover for money laundering. Roger Greer is one shady bastard.” Vulture’s gaze comes to mine. “Go back to when Rory was nineteen and started working for Roger.” He pauses, shakes his head, and grimaces. “There is a record of her going to the hospital for a miscarriage.”

The fuck?

Rory had been pregnant? There’s no fuckin’ way. She would have told me if she were. It couldn’t be mine. She ended things while I’d been at basic. I got the letter a week before she turned nineteen.

“The records also showed that she’d been beaten then too,” Vulture continues, eyes on me. “She’d been fourteen weeks along. It was a boy. A couple months later, there’s another record of her being admitted for a drug overdose. Roger is the one who took her in both times. From the number of files I’ve pulled together, he’s constantly mentioned. Not once in the files is he ever questioned. The past two years, there haven’t been any times where she’s gone to the hospital, but from what I’ve been able to find, it seems she’s her stepbrother’s partner.”

“She’s having sex with her stepbrother?” Wolf sneers.

“Yeah.”

I didn’t need to know this shit. “What’s important about this?”

“Getting to that.” Vulture grunts. “I was able to hack into Roger’s systems. One of his security staff likes to document every little thing. Including the fact that Rory is constantly defying Roger. Tells him she’ll never be his and he can go to hell. Says she’s not a willing participant in anything. I believe the guy is keeping a long list of things to be able to cover his ass if need be. But he wrote a lot about Rory. There’s also mention that once a year, Roger takes her and disappears for an entire week, taking selected guards with him. Those guards don’t mind talking and have mentioned Roger forces Rory to submit to a lot of shit I won’t even mention, ‘cause it just ain’t right.”

“I saw the scars,” Mace speaks up.

“What scars?” I demand.

“From whatever it is he forces her to do. She’s got fine scars on her wrists, on her sides, tops of her breasts, and on her inner thighs,” Mace answers.

“How did you see her thighs?”

A part of me wants to flip the fuck out and jump to the table to beat Mace for even seeing her skin between her thighs.

“Remember, I had to cut her clothes to examine her, brother. Totally professional.” Mace cocks a brow, eyes on me. “Trust me, I wouldn’t go there with a woman who belongs to a brother.”

“She doesn’t belong to me.”

“Right,” Vulture states, continuing to give us the details. By the time he finishes, I’m done. Even pissed I couldn’t handle hearing any more of it.

I want to say that she’s allowed this to become her life. Allowed Roger to do those things to her. I can’t bring myself to give a shit. But a part of me also wants to kill the fucker. Cordelia’s statement yesterday when I asked her about what happened has me wanting to question all of this further.

“So, this Roger bastard will probably be coming looking for her,” Wolf states what we’re all thinking.

If Roger is stupid enough to come here, he’ll smarten up real quick when he finds his ass handed to him. Our club isn’t going to put up with bullshit from him or anyone else. If he comes here looking for Rory, he’ll learn the error in showing his face. I always wanted to slam my fist into his face. The only reason I never did was ‘cause he’d tell their parents that Rory shouldn’t see me.

As much as I hated the rules back then, I’d gone by them ‘cause at the time I thought she was it for me.

“We’re gonna need to talk to Rory. There’s more to this that we don’t know,” Viper states, rapping his knuckles on the table, eyes coming to me. “You two have a past. She’s your ex. Your sister’s friend. Honestly, I don’t want the headache. If she were to stay, she’s your responsibility. Yours to deal with. You don’t want her here, say the word, we get her to someone else. Let them handle the bullshit we all know is swarming.”

Do I want her to stay? This shitstorm was going to cause problems for the club.

Before I can answer, there’s a knock on the door.

Viper motions to Black to open the door.

Black cracks the door open, his body blocking whoever is on the other side. “Yeah?”

“Sorry to bother you all,” Cordelia says, sounding nervous. My sister isn’t one for being nervous. Usually, she can be a total drama queen.

“What is it, Cordy?” I call out from where I’m sitting.

“Open the door, Black,” Viper orders.

Black does as told, hand staying on the handle. Cordelia steps just inside the room and doesn’t even glance around, eyes coming directly to me.

“Do you know where Rory is? She’s not in the room she was given, and I can’t find her anywhere else.”

I don’t bother answering Cordelia. Rage threatens to consume me. “You’ve got to be fuckin’ joking.”

“No,” Cordelia murmurs, shaking her head. “She’s gone, Aries. I should have known. Last night, when I talked to her, she had that look in her eyes. I’d told her that she needed to talk to you, and she said she’d think about it. I should’ve known.”

“Prospect was on the gate all last night,” Cyrus remarks.

“How the fuck did she manage to get out of the clubhouse?” Mace demands. “She’s in no condition to be anywhere but resting.”

I ignore Mace’s statement and twist to Vulture. “You didn’t see her leave on security footage?”

“That’s on me, brother,” Wolf states, grimacing. “I took over watching the cameras for Vulture since he was busy doing a deep dive. I’d gotten a call and looked from the cameras. But it was no more than a minute, two tops.”

Fuck me.

For him to look away, it had to be important.

“We’ll get back to that later.” Viper grunts, eyes coming to me. “Make your decision, brother. She gonna be your responsibility, or we leave it alone.”

“She’s mine,” I grind out, gritting my teeth.

Fuck.

“Rory is my goddamn property.”

When I got my hands on her, I am going have to teach her a fucking lesson. I told her yesterday, she’s mine to decide what to do with. I hate myself for not being able to say fuck her and wash my hands of her. It doesn’t help the shit Vulture was filling us in on. The bullshit she’d gone through floats around in my head, and I don’t know what to do with it. Something in all of this isn’t adding up.