Chapter 14

MINA

"I am going to break his scrawny little neck." A female voice came from the kitchen. Not one I recognised.

"You're going to need to get in line," Gianni replied easily. "Your dear brother, Kurt, got himself onto a whole lot of shit lists. Especially mine."

"Fuck that," she said. "If I catch up to him first, he's fucking toast."

"I want him alive." That was Reuben's soft tone.

"So we can kill him slowly and painfully," Gianni added. He sounded very much like he was looking forward to it.

"You might as well go in." Damon spoke behind me, making me startle violently. He gave me a glance before walking past and into the kitchen. Not laughing at me, nor apologetic. He didn't seem to care one way or another if I stayed out in the corridor or joined the conversation.

I was torn between wanting to keep my presence a secret and needing to see Daisy Lasalle for myself.

With the full knowledge my cousin Ric might also be present, I stepped into the kitchen.

Several people sat at the table, including Reuben. Gianni leaned against the island, a coffee mug in his hand with the logo of the Dusk Bay Demons ice hockey team on the side. From what I understood, Reuben's brother Caleb owned the team. Not because he cared about hockey, it was another front for the family.

Everyone turned to look at me as I entered the room. Ric looked at me with surprise, but it was Daisy who caught and held my eyes. She looked enough like her brother to give me chills, but she had the empathy he completely lacked.

She rose from her seat and came to put her arms around me. "If I had a clue what he was doing, I would have put a stop to it. You have to believe I never would have let you go through what he put you through. When I catch up to him, I'm going to kick his sorry ass."

I froze when she touched me, but gradually managed to relax enough to quickly hug her back before I pulled away again.

"I believe you." She wouldn't be here if Reuben didn't think she was sincere. Unless this was some kind of test. Presumably she passed or he wouldn't have allowed her anywhere near me.

"This is a surprise." Ric also stood, but made no move to step towards me. "You grew up, cousin."

"So did you." I wasn't close to him or his brother, but I'd seen him often enough to notice the difference. Only a couple of years older than me, he was barely more than a teenager himself the last time we met.

"Reuben tells me you don't want the rest of the family to know you're here," Ric said. Judging by the expression on his face, he was told something along the lines of, 'tell anyone and you're dead.'

I glanced over to Reuben, who watched everything with his usual measured interest.

"That's right," I said softly. "I'll tell them everything when I'm ready." I couldn't put it off forever, but I could put it off for now.

"They won't hear it from us," Daisy said. "Right, Ric?"

He sat back down and gave her an affectionate smile. "Daze already told me she'd kick me so hard in the balls they'd retreat back up into my body and stay there. Since I'm attached to their current location, I'll keep my mouth shut."

Daisy grinned. "I didn't actually need to threaten him. He already knows what I would have done." She sat back down beside him.

I slipped into a chair beside Reuben and nodded my thanks to Terry who placed coffee in front of me. "I heard you talking about Kurt."

The mood of the kitchen dipped.

"I had no idea the extent of the shit he was up to," Ric said. "As you know, I've been tracking missing shipments for a while now, but haven't been able to pin down who was behind them. I came to the conclusion it was an inside job, but he was good at covering his tracks. Now we know where to look, it should be a lot easier. So far, I've uncovered at least a dozen redirected shipments of gems spanning the last two to three years. Some of those were believed to be intercepted by the cops."

"You think he was behind all of that?" Damon asked. He stood with his shoulder against the wall, legs crossed at his ankles.

Ric looked up at him. "Some of it. A couple of those shipments were stolen on the way to the police lock-up. Others, I suspect never made it into police hands. We were told what happened, but clearly that was a load of bullshit."

"You looked into it?" Reuben asked.

Ric's gaze swivelled to him. "On your orders or those of Caleb, we did. Kurt and anyone working with him was considered a trusted source at the time. This happens once or twice and you can blame outside sources, but after a while it became obvious someone working with us was working against us."

He let out a frustrated breath and shook his head. "If we'd figured it out sooner…" He shot me an apologetic look.

"Kurt was smart enough to spread out these redirections," Damon said. "At least, at the beginning."

"He got cocky," Daisy said. "He got away with it enough times to think he could keep doing that. He must have realised it wouldn't go unnoticed."

"It's likely he got desperate," Damon said. "He knew, or at least sensed, that Ric was onto him. It was only a matter of time before we figured it all out. And we did. He was probably as active as he dared to be, in preparation for fucking off and hiding."

"So he could be anywhere in the world," I said. "With enough money to hide for the rest of his life."

"He could hide for the rest of his life from honest people," Reuben said. "We have resources they don't have."

"Yeah," Gianni agreed. "And we don't care who we kill to get what we want."

I wasn't convinced it would be that simple. I wished I could believe it would be. Kurt knew exactly what he needed to do to evade all of us. With enough money he could change his identity and his face and never be found.

Reuben placed a hand over one of mine. "We will find him. There's nowhere he can hide that's out of reach."

I turned my hand around and laced my fingers with his. My heart actually fluttered. It had never done that before, not for anyone. I liked that it did it now.

"You can't put everything and everyone on this forever," I said. "Sooner or later, we have to move on from him and what he did."

Gianni chuckled. "When Reuben is determined to see something through, he will. It would take an army of tanks to stop him."

"There's nothing wrong with being driven," Reuben said.

"I didn't say there was," Gianni said. "Just like there's nothing wrong with fixating on a certain goal. Especially one like this."

"Women like a man who knows what he wants, right Mina?" Daisy smiled at me.

"Yes, they do," I said. I couldn't seem to tear my gaze from Reuben. The more I got to know him, the more he fascinated me. He was a stone cold killer, but he could be so gentle. I'd always found him attractive, but he was so closed, like a heavy door on a bank vault.

Now I realised he wasn't shut off because he was unfeeling, but because he was guarded. He was driven, yes, but he was also committed and loyal. When anyone tried to fuck with him or someone he cared about, he fucked back.

The fact he'd go to such an extent to find Kurt suggested he cared for me more deeply than I suspected. This wasn't just revenge for screwing with the Brantley family. He wanted to give me my own revenge and closure.

"No one else knows Mina is here?" Ric asked.

"Just the twins, Caleb, and everyone in this room," Gianni said. "No one else."

"That's as far as it goes," Reuben growled. "No one else needs to know. Not until Mina decides they need to." His gaze was also locked on me.

"No one else will hear," Daisy assured us. "We'll keep this all about Kurt stealing from the Brantley family. I think Ric is just curious what your brother Zeke will say when he sees Mina."

"I was thinking more of Asher, but yes," Ric agreed. "He's going to find all of this very…interesting."

"I don't care if he doesn't approve," I said softly. "It's not up to him." Trust my cousin to hit the nail on the head though. Yes, I didn't want my brother to see me looking starved and broken, but I also didn't want him to judge any of the choices I voluntarily made. Including being with Reuben.

"Can I be here when he finds out?" Ric asked. "Ouch." He glanced at Daisy, who jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. "Don't say you don't want to see that too."

"Of course I do, but it's none of our business." She narrowed her eyes at him.

He responded by rolling his eyes playfully and making a face. It was clear that while she kept him in line, he wasn't intimidated by her. Not too much, anyway. What was her relationship with her other two boyfriends like? I didn't know Gunnar, but I'd met Hilton a couple of times. He seemed like the kind of man not to be crossed if people enjoyed living.

Like everyone else in this room, I supposed.

"Exactly," Reuben said. "Your business is finding Kurt and figuring out whatever else he was up to." He pressed his lips together. "I want to know if there are any other women hidden away."

The smile faded from Daisy's face. "You think there might be? If there are, I'm going to rip his fucking balls off."

"Did I mention that you need to get in line?" Gianni asked. "We don't know if there are others, but if he did this to Mina, he might just as easily have done it to someone else."

Reuben squeezed my hand. It wasn't until then I realised I was trembling. The idea of some other woman locked away, terrified, hungry, used and scarred, it got to me every time the subject came up.

So far, we hadn't found anyone, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. Even worse was the idea that Kurt ran, leaving them to die alone, not found until it was too late. That could so easily have happened to me. If they hadn't found me when they did, I'd be dead in that filthy cage. I might not have been discovered for years.

"I'm so sorry," Daisy whispered. "If there's ever anything I can do, please ask. I can't get my head around my own brother doing this to anyone. I knew he was an asshole, but I didn't know he was a monster." She sounded devastated. Furious.

"It's not your fault," I whispered back. "You're not responsible for what your brother did. He decided to be who he was. Not you or anyone else." Although my father gave him the opportunity. He was as guilty as Kurt, but Daisy wasn't.

"I know, I just feel like I should have seen it," she said. "Maybe there were signs and I missed them."

"We all missed the signs he was up to shady shit," Ric said. "Until we figured it out and got Mina out of there."

"We?" Gianni asked.

Ric shrugged. "I was the one who told you he was up to something. If I hadn't, my cousin wouldn't have been found. So yeah, we."

"Touché." Gianni smirked. "You're a DiMarco all right."

Ric grinned. "We're all known for our awesomeness, right Mina?"

I wasn't sure about that, but I managed a small smile in return. "Absolutely. We're amazing."

"You definitely are," Gianni said. "More than amazing."

I wished I felt that way about myself, but it felt good to spend a little time with family. A little piece of normal would go a long way towards helping me heal.