23. Game

Chapter Twenty-Three

GAME

" I 'm getting really sick and fuckin' tired of doctors and hospitals," Layne griped as she sat in a chair next to Gage's gurney in the emergency room. She removed the ice pack from her forehead.

After she had raised all hell refusing medical treatment, they were now just waiting on Gage's discharge papers after being stuck there for several hours. Unfortunately, coming to the ER wasn't ideal, but the NYPD was a bit too quick to arrive on the scene shortly after Joey did. It seemed the new brass was making a stink about response times.

"Baby, I wish you would have let the doctors check you out." Gage sat on the edge of the makeshift bed, looking about as worse for wear as she did.

She looked down at the cold pack that was doing little to alleviate her headache. "It's just a bump. I'm not the one who got roofied."

Joey pulled the small bag out of her hand and gently applied it to the side of her face where the flashlight had struck her. "But you were its intended victim," he countered.

As the stinging cold pressed to the tender spot on her face, she gave a light hiss of pain as she winced, trying to pull her face away. Joey's hand held onto the side of her head, preventing her from evading his efforts to alleviate the swelling.

"Since Gage doesn't remember shit, what do you remember?" Joey wanted to be pissed at his brother for getting behind the wheel and risking their girl's life, but there had been no way of knowing that the Rohypnol was in his system until he was already on the road. It wasn't until the doctors got Gage's blood work back that it was confirmed he had been inadvertently drugged when he consumed Layne's beverage.

Both sets of brown eyes were staring at her, begging her to recall even the slightest detail. She frowned, unsure that she had anything rattling around in her brain that was of any use. "I told you, I don't know what I saw. When we left Cassidy's, I had a pretty heavy buzz. The next thing I knew, all I felt was the car getting slammed into, followed by a bright ass fuckin' light in my face."

Gage held up a piece of paper that they all had read multiple times. "This note left behind in your lap doesn't even make sense. Are you sure it wasn't Liam?"

"I know my brother's voice, it wasn't his. Though I'm sure he had something to do with this." She leaned forward and took the piece of paper from Gage. Her eyes scanned over the words again.

Family First. Fucktoys Second.

Time to honor your commitments to this family.

430 at 830 on 227 for 611.

Frustration overcame her. None of this made sense. It looked like some cheat code for a game console. She was on the verge of crumpling up the note and tossing it in the trash when her phone began to ring in her pocket.

The familiar name on the screen popped up, prompting her to immediately answer. "Hey, what do you have for me?"

Cowboy, the technological genius, didn't sound like his typical giddy self on the other end of the line. "Hi there. Using the password you gave me for that contact of yours, I was able to coordinate a meeting for you."

Oh good, this was perfect timing to meet with a Russian who quite possibly was off his rocker. "Mmhmm. You don't sound like this is a good thing."

A slight pause before Brandon responded, "There's not much that creeps me out, but doing some digging on this guy… Well, just be careful is all I'm saying. Does Joey know that you're meeting him?"

"No, and I expect it to stay that way for now." Her eyes glanced over at the man who had altered the course of her life forever. She wanted to tell Joey everything, especially given her shitty choices lately that had landed her in hot water with both of her guys. There's no way they would understand why she was doing this though.

When her nerdy friend didn't respond, she prompted him, "You got it?"

"Yeah, yeah. I just," he sighed. "He'd want to know." He also didn't want to be on the receiving end of Joey's anger when he found out that he had helped Layne with this.

"There's a lot of things we all want, but that's not how life works. Anything else?"

Brandon was able to confirm that one of the men in the Chinese restaurant was indeed Nicholas Orellano, but all the scans of the second man in the ballcap were coming up with nothing at all: shit angles and no matches in public or private databases.

"Keep looking. Text me what I need to know and I will take it from here." She ended the call with a tap of the screen and tucked her phone away.

Joey and Gage were both staring at her, expecting a recap of her conversation.

Gently, she eased the ice pack in Joey's hand away from her face. "Cowboy confirmed that Orellano was with Liam at the restaurant, but he said whoever else was with him is like trying to track down a damn ghost. He hasn't found anything so far."

"Our work is cut out for us then. We find Orellano and go from there." Joey was determined to make it as simple as that.

Seeing that Layne didn't readily agree, he rested a hand on her knee. "Layney, it's a step in the right direction," he tried to reassure her.

She frowned as she stared down at the note in her hand again. "It's always one step forward, two steps back, Joey. I feel like we keep showing up late to the party. We get a lead and Liam is already three steps ahead of us."

Gage wrinkled his forehead in deep thought. "You need to stop trying to think like your brother, and start thinking like Liam."

Layne lifted her eyes to look at Gage, overcome with confusion at his statement. Initially, she wondered if his brain was still half-drugged at the sense he wasn't making. "What?"

Lifting his brow, Joey also looked at Gage. "Yeah. What?"

Easing himself off the gurney, Gage came over to Layne, squatting in front of her chair. "If you stop approaching this like Liam is your family and start considering him like the violently unhinged asshole he is, the less predictable you'll be to him. I guaran-damn-tee you that he's been banking on the small part of you that remembers a time when he wasn't this warped."

It was hard for Gage to imagine that Liam wasn't ever this big of a psychopath, but Layne needed to see that any memories of Liam resembling a human being should remain in the past.

She sat there, letting his words sink in. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how much she was at fault for letting this situation get out of her control. If Liam wanted to go to war with his sister, he was going to be shit out of luck. Layne was going to bring the war to him as the judge, jury, and executioner of O'Reilly Enterprises.

Joey had driven them all back to O'Reilly Manor after escaping the slow as fuck discharge process, none of them wanted one another out of sight after everything that had transpired.

It had been late morning by the time they rolled in and crashed into bed together. Everybody got the hours of sleep that were much needed after being awake for nearly a day straight. Evening was rolling around and that's when Gage turned over in bed, and his hand reached out to stroke over Layne's body. His fingers danced along a hard and abnormally large bicep rather than the slender one he had been expecting.

Lifting his head from his pillow he opened his eyes to find Joey staring at him.

"Good morning, sunshine." Joey snorted.

Grumbling, Gage withdrew his hand quickly before stretching out his body. He felt like absolute garbage, despite all the fluids the hospital had given him trying to flush his system from the commonly used date rape drug. The car accident didn't do him any favors either.

"Where's Layne?" Gage groaned out his question past the unforgiving headache pulsing at his temples.

Tossing the sheets aside, Joey slid out of bed. "Probably downstairs the way you were snoring like a broken chainsaw." He rubbed a hand over his face to try and erase the last remnants of sleep from his eyes.

Moments later, both guys came down to the first floor each wearing just a pair of sweats. They followed the scent of freshly brewed caffeine coming from the kitchen despite the late time of day. Both of them came to a sudden halt as they saw Layne there, fully dressed and finishing off her cup of coffee. She looked ready to attack whatever was on her agenda. As far as they both knew, nothing should have been on her calendar for tonight.

She gently set her empty coffee mug into the sink before buzzing around the center island to snatch her phone off the charger on the counter.

"Layne? What are you doing?" Joey watched her with confusion splashed across his face.

When she didn't acknowledge either of them, Gage reached out and latched his hand onto her forearm to force her to take a moment and talk with them. "Baby, you look like you're ready to go somewhere."

Sighing like she had too much to do and not enough time, she stopped and looked at her two guys. "Yeah, I have a last-minute meeting I need to go to."

Joey's jaw immediately clenched as he suppressed his grumbling. "When were you going to tell us?"

She gently coaxed her arm from Gage's hand. "I know how this looks."

Gage lifted a brow at her. "Really? Because it looks like you were ready to bail without saying a damn thing."

Exhaling a short breath, she knew that this was going to be a hard pill to swallow for all of them but better now than never. "Hear me out."

"Hear you out?" Joey grumpily replied. "We've been over this, Layne. Where you go, we go. End of story. Fuck, we can't even keep you safe when all three of us are together." Each word he spoke bearing more of his aggravation.

Layne stepped up to Joey and placed a hand on his bare sides, hoping her touch would assist in getting him to listen to her. "I know, but this is different. I have a shot at hitting Liam where it hurts and getting one step ahead of him. This is one meeting I can't risk anyone knowing about, so I need you both to stay here."

Gage's hand slid up her arm onto her shoulder. "You can't seriously expect us to?—"

She cut Gage off, "I can and I do. I love you both more than life itself, but I can't be the leader I need to be with my head tied up in my emotions. You're the one who told me to stop treating Liam like my brother, and that's why I'm doing this. Liam expects me to be with one of you at all times. For all I know, he's got people watching who comes and goes from here. He's not going to give a fuck if one of you leaves to go to Mickey D's for a late-night snack. But more than one person leaving this house?" She shook her head imagining what lengths her brother was possibly going to in order to bring her down.

He hated to admit it but he was starting to see her logic, and looking over at Joey's face, his brother also saw the point she was making.

Joey grabbed her face with both his hands. "I'm not budging on this, Layney." He was being a stubborn asshole, as usual.

As she went to look at Gage for support, Joey turned her face back at him. "Don't look at him, you're answering to me right now."

Her intoxicating green eyes were as calm as the sea before a storm. "You and I both know that I'm doing this with or without your permission. I promise you that I will take every precaution I can, but I need to take this chance. You wanted me to light my fire and let it burn, and I'm standing here telling you that I need a bit of oxygen to do that."

Staring silently into her eyes, Joey's conflict was clear.

Layne spoke in a whisper, "Please. I'm going to be late."

"Fuck," he cursed under his breath before pulling her face to his. Joey's lips locked onto hers as he hungrily kissed her.

When he pulled back, his hands were still tightly gripping her face. He forced his words out. "You fuckin' watch your ass. If the wind so much as blows the wrong damn way, you get the hell out of dodge. Do you fucking understand me, Layne?"

After she nodded, he dropped his hands from her face and wrapped his arms around her. Squeezing her tightly against him, Joey kissed the top of her head several times.

No sooner did Joey release her than Gage pulled her to him by the back of her neck. He pressed his forehead to hers. "Do you know what I'm going to tell you, Lucky Charm?"

She gave a slight smile. "To be careful?"

Gage grinned. "No, baby. I want you to go be a badass bitch, but when you get back here, your ass is ours." Using his mouth, he sealed that promise with a scorching kiss.

She let herself get lost in the way their lips wrangled with one another before easing away from him. Layne looked at both of them, knowing she had to do this for all of their futures if they were going to finally make progress.

Exchanging a round of ‘I love you's', she strode out of the kitchen. Her hand plucked Joey's motorcycle keys off the hook outside of the door that led into the garage.

Once inside the garage, she secured her designated helmet onto her head as she straddled the sports bike. Turning the key, she felt the purr of the motor between her thighs as the bike came to life.

Layne took one final look at her phone to confirm the details of her meeting. After she secured her phone in her jacket pocket, she pulled down the visor over her eyes.

Daniil Parshikov may be one unpredictable and possibly crazy Russian, but today he was going to meet one bloodthirsty and pissed-off Irish Car Bomb. With any luck, they would both come out of this meeting as allies. If not, then she was prepared to burn this city to the ground to get what she wanted.

Both guys were left standing in the kitchen looking at one another.

"So," Gage broke the silence, "are we just going to…?" He looked at Joey questioningly.

Joey stood there with a hand on his hip and the other on the edge of the counter, his jaw set in a hard line. He looked over at the time displayed above the stove. "I'm giving her a ten-minute head start."