Chapter 65

* Elena *

I was wide awake now, all tiredness gone, but it almost felt as if I’d never left the set. Our host seemed like such an enigma. His words did not in any way match what you’d expect to come out of the mouth of someone his age. He seemed way too reserved and a whole lot of something else for one who was obviously so young.

His stance, the way he studied us without even trying to hide the fact that he was taking our measure, and that cultured tone he used were so unexpected. I almost felt like I was under a microscope, and yet, I didn’t sense any real danger, even though, on some level, I got the sense that he would swing into action in the blink of an eye if Ryder or I made the wrong move, whatever that may be.

The others that I had met so far of Lyon’s squad seemed to go out of their way to make me feel comfortable with their presence, this one didn’t seem to care too much whether I was comfortable or not, and I guess I couldn’t blame him, we’d just shown up at his home late at night and who knows what nonsense was going to follow us here.

And the house, if you can call it that, was gorgeous. Massive and immaculately decorated with the kind of art your mom told you not to touch on those museum trips you took when you were a messy little kid. “You must be tired. I’ll show you to your rooms.” He addressed me when he said this, and I nodded, a bit intimidated, even though he said it with a facsimile of a smile.

As we followed along behind him while I tried not to gawk, out of nowhere, a little ball of fire came barreling down the hallway, screaming for her daddy, and skidded to a halt right in front of us. “Oh!” She said with a cheeky smile and his face.

“Gabriella, my daughter.” His what? He looked twenty, if that. The little girl stood in front of both Ryder and me, looking up at us as if studying us the way her dad had. Then she took one of our hands in each of hers and led us down the hallway calling out to her mom with her father trailing behind us. It was the first time I’d seen a genuine smile on his face.

A very young, very beautiful, and very Italian woman no older than our host came skidding out of a room. “You little…. Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you’d arrived. This one got away from me.” She looked beautifully frazzled as she pushed her wild mane of dark locks back off her face and smiled down at her daughter with her hands on her hips.

“Say goodnight to your new friends. You’ll see them again in the morning.” The little one seemed ready to argue until her father appeared and lifted her into his arms. The way she laid her head on his shoulder so trustingly made my heart ache. I wish I could have that, that I could share it with Ryder one day.

He seemed to sense my mood and squeezed my hand, which he’d taken in his without my notice. Our hostess took over and led us the rest of the way, and though she was a bit less reserved than her husband, it was hard to miss the maturity in these two.

The rooms, as she called them, were a whole wing on the other side of the nineteenth-century mansion that made my place in L.A. look like a room overlooking Skid Row. She didn’t stick around any longer than was necessary to show us where everything was and let’s just say we could’ve lived there for a month and never had to leave.

Every amenity known to man was right there at our fingertips, and the view from the back window of the bedroom suite, I’m pretty sure, was of Central Park. If the guest wing had that kind of ambiance, I can only imagine what the rest of the house was like.

As you may have gathered, I’ve been letting my mind drift to these mundane things in order to avoid the elephant in the room. But as soon as she was gone, and get this, her name is Gianna, almost the same as my last name. I like her already. Anyway, I digress again.

As soon as Gianna left us, I turned to Ryder, and all the nervousness I’d been trying to hide came pouring out. “What’s going on? Did something happen? I know we said it would make sense to stay somewhere out of the spotlight while you visit, but what’s this about being safe? And why do we need so many guards for a weekend hideaway?”

I could tell he didn’t want to come clean, but I gave him a look that reminded him of our promise to always be honest with each other. I’d already come to the realization that there was something more going on with him and Lyon’s team, and I got the sense that he wouldn’t tell me no matter what I tried, so to save myself from stress, I’d made up my mind to let it go.

I’d seen and heard enough from Lyon and his camp to know that, unlike Ryder’s former friends and colleagues, they would in no way condone him doing anything that would hurt me. Lyon’s daughter had almost single-handedly gotten us back together; after all, she and her friends. So I felt safe on that score.

But the last hour or so has shown me that there was something else at play here, something that had happened in the last day or so. “I can always go online and see for myself.” If there was anything to know, I’m sure it would be found there.

“No, no baby, don’t do that. I’ll show you. Come here.” He took me over to the bed and pulled me down beside him before taking out his phone. “Before I show you this, a lot has happened in the last few days since you left L.A.”

“I know you told me about Scott and the contract and all that, but what else is going on? Are we in some kind of danger?”

“Not exactly, no.” What does that even mean? I almost let him off the hook when it became obvious that he was having a hard time opening up to me about whatever it was that was going on.

I actually started to panic a little, thinking that someone was hurt, but then he started talking. “That’s it? That’s why you’re so anxious and nervous. Because of Rachel?”

***

* Ryder *

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show her the edited recording of Janie and all the things she’d said to the cameras. We’d edited out most of it because, of course, if we left it as it was, it would’ve opened up the conversation about the trafficking, and that was something I wasn’t ready to tell her about. Not until it was absolutely necessary.

Not because I feel like I have anything to hide, but because it would hurt her. Knowing her, she won’t sleep until we find every last one of those girls and might even try to help. I have no doubt that she’d go to bat against Mary and the others if she learned about this now because if there’s one thing I know about Elena, she hates injustice of any kind.

It’s one of the reasons I always felt in the past that I didn’t deserve her. She’s just so damn real and so nice, with a genuine heart for people that I have never seen in anyone else, including myself. It was her heart that I was trying to spare and, in doing so, had chosen to share with her the lesser of two evils.

I see now why Lyon and his guys were adamant about keeping certain things away from their women and children. It was odd feeling this deeply for another human being, to the point that you want to spare them all the ugliness the world has to offer.

I never felt this way before, not even when we were together the first time. Maybe I was too young and na?ve, or maybe I took what we had for granted. But now, all these years later, I’m glad I get to do it over again with her and get it right this time.

I’m glad I get to feel as if I’m finally coming into my own, and it’s with her by my side. I would’ve hated myself if I had given Janie a better part of me than I had the woman of my heart. I see that now. How awful would it have been for Elena if, after all, that she had done for me, all that she had endured, I shared a better version of myself with someone else?

That was one of the eye-opening conversations I’d had with Lyon that made me hate myself. But my one saving grace is that I never gave Janie shit. I’d come to learn about some of the lies she’d told in the last five years, things that I knew nothing about. And I knew I had to go back through my own social media accounts, things that had been deleted on my end but had been assured I could get back to see what all they had used my name to do to her. From the little I’d seen so far, it was bad, so if they’d deleted the rest from my phone, it must’ve been brutal.

I’ve had nothing but time to think alone in bed at night since she left, and with my mind becoming clearer day by day due to the exercises and shit Lyon had forced on me, not just physical but mental as well, more and more things have been coming back to me.

One thing scares me more than anything else, and that’s the fact that I don’t think I deserve a second chance. That’s how fucking amazing she is, that even I, the man who now knows what he’d almost lost, didn’t think he was worthy of her respect and love.

When I told Lyon that in all humility, his answer had been that since she still loved me, I should be the best man I could be for her, not just for a day or two, but for a lifetime. He warned me that if I didn’t think I could do it, I should walk away now because if I hurt her again, he’d let the nieces have my ass. I’m not ashamed to say that although I don’t need one, that was more than enough incentive for me to get my shit together.

***

* Lyon *

“Who are you?”

“Lyon. Don’t be afraid; no one is going to hurt you here.”

“Where is here? Why did you bring me here?” My head still hurt like hell, and the light in this room was not helping.

“You shouldn’t worry about the where or the who. You should be more worried about the why.” Dafuq am I doing here? Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t discriminate. Whether you’re a man or a woman, if you do some dark shit that gets on my wrong side, I’ll take you out.

I don’t feel for this one even a little bit because she’s a horrible twit who had not only fucked over others to get her way, but she knew about what was going on even when her ex didn’t, and to keep her place in his life and this fucked up town, she’d said and done nothing. I have no use for people like her, and I have only one way of dealing with them.

We had all the information we needed from her stash, but the guys had rightfully claimed that she might have more than what was in there. If she did, that would make her a monster because what we’d found was plenty.

I’m not sure what my boys were playing at because they know I never let my prey see the inside of a courthouse, but they were acting kinda antsy with this one. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were stalling or some shit. I’ve got shit to do.

“Do you remember this?” I held up the notebook she’d hidden in the back of the bunny. She shook her head no to that and all the other pieces of evidence I held up for her to see until I held up the bunny.

“What about this? You don’t remember this either?” Lie to me again. I’ll two to the chest and one to the head you. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh since she was only a kid when this whole thing started. But there were plenty of opportunities for her to do something over the years that she knew about this shit.

The evidence she kept told its own story, and she had to have known what she was sitting on. Even if she’s been afraid to go to the authorities, I don’t think that that was her reason for staying mute on the subject. From what I’d gathered so far, no one liked her. Char seems to think she’s Jezebel reincarnated; my guys don’t want to deal with her, and my kid is on some shit where this girl is concerned.

If I’d seen her on the street, all I would’ve seen was a starving blonde who looked hungry for more than food; it’s in her eyes. But these fucks seem to think that she has some kind of power or some shit. I don’t know anything about that hocus pocus bullshit, but I know what a bullet can do to flesh, so I don’t really give a fuck.

Her eyes shifted from side to side, and I guess the effects of whatever my little criminal in the making had those people feed her were wearing off. “I’ve never seen that before.” I looked at Cord, who walked over and took her hand.

“What’re you doing?”

The fingerprint machine beeped as he held it up. “It’s a match.” He dropped her hand and walked back to my side.

“We lifted your prints off of some of the stuff you had in here. So, you wanna tell me again? How long have you been collecting this information, and what else do you know?”

Now she looked nervous. “That’s all I know; I didn’t have anything to do with that stuff. I never helped them. I was only supposed to keep Ryder in check, nothing else.”

“What does that mean? Keep him in check?”

“Keep watch over him, tell them what he was doing, what he was thinking, stuff like that.”

“Why were you doing that? Wasn’t he your husband?”

“It’s the only way Mary would help me. Is if I agreed to do that.”

“Where else were they getting girls from? It wasn’t just his concerts, was it? Did you hide anything else, anywhere else?” Again, her eyes shifted around, and she squirmed in her seat. “There’s a safety deposit box.” She rattled off the information, even giving us where she hid the key, and my boys started moving around behind me to head out.

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s it. Can I go home now? I want to see Ryder.” I started to tell her that that wasn’t going to be possible, but my phone rang.

“What?”

“Daddy, are you done questioning her?”

“Just about.”

“Fine, turn on the TV.” Dafuq did she do now?

I motioned for Mancini to the honors, and the screen came alive behind me. I didn’t turn my head to look but kept my eyes on her. “Who was that?” I guess she was asking about the phone call that my kid had just hung up in my ear after dishing out orders.

“Bombshell revelations. Leaked court documents prove that Ryder Sumner got a quickie divorce more than two weeks ago. According to our sources, it wasn’t just about Janie Andrews cheating, but there was a hell of a lot more going on.”

“Reliable sources say that Andrews and her father, who has seen some hard times here lately, struck a deal with the devil, literally, to get her where she is now, right next to Ryder Sumner.” The screen switched to an interview with the reporter and the witch as they were calling her.

Janie’s eyes almost fell out of her head as she started yelling at the screen as the older woman laid it all out for the cameras. “She was obsessed with him, and they needed a way to keep him under their control.”

“Who are they?” She named all the players involved. The soundbites were brutal. They were all about her obsession and the lengths she’d gone to to get him going way back to when she was still just a kid. There were screenshots of a much younger Janie Andrews caught on camera at some events where Ryder was making an appearance. They did not paint her in a good light.

Dafuq did Mengele get all this? Some of it must’ve been before she was even born. Then again, Nia could hack the forbidden city, and computers didn’t even exist then. Bunch a fucking ingrates.

There was mention of the things she’d done to Elena Gianni to get her out of the way, even how she’d drugged her husband for the past five years. They went in on every detail of the dark shit she’d done, and I was sure that by the end of it, no one was going to like this girl.

She was babbling, no doubt from the after-effects of Mengele’s little drug. I’ve seen people under the influence of truth serum before; this ain’t it. No doubt the mad scientist had tweaked it somehow because this girl was a wreck. She tried getting out of the chair three times, but each time she fell back as if held by chains. There weren’t any.

“That’s a lie. I never signed any divorce papers.” As if on cue, a copy of said papers popped up on the screen. I’m guessing from the way she screamed in denial. “I didn’t sign that; that’s a lie; get me out of here; I wanna see Ryder.”

“As you can see, the divorce decree and the postnup were filed on the same day. Why would she, why would anyone, give up access to so many millions if there wasn’t something else at play here? It’s believed that as soon as Ryder found out the truth, he filed for divorce, and Janie Andrews signed away any chance at alimony for his silence.”

“Now, with all the other allegations that have come to light just today, it seems like there was some kind of dark plan hatched with the popstar’s manager, his spiritual advisor, and Mary Hudson, along with as yet unnamed players. Rumor has it that the reasons why they needed to keep Ryder under their control have something to do with the things Janie Andrews was screaming about on camera earlier.”

They flashed to her earlier meltdown, and she made a weird sound as she sat across from me with her eyes glued to the screen. I’m still not even sure why the heck I had to see this shit. I’m not as sadistic as my kid; I don’t need to watch my enemies squirm after delivering the kill shot. I’m gonna have to have a talk with her about playing with her damn food.

I picked up the phone when it was over, “it’s done.”

“Okay, Daddy, just let her go.” Damn, that’s fucking cold. I have no doubt that Mengele has this place surrounded by vultures, just waiting for this one to pick apart.

“Who was that?”

“That is fifty pounds of fuck around and find out.”