11. Nitro

ELEVEN

NITRO

The guys didn't get anything from the man we got from Emily's place. He stayed quiet the whole time they were beating him, playing mind games with, but he stayed quiet. Not one word about who sent him, not one word about the Gatekeepers. Ares was already on a short fuse, and it wasn't going to take him long to lose it. Nyx said Ares did well not to kill him straight away.

But the more than man was staying quiet, the more Ares was getting on edge. So, my brother did the only thing he could think of, and killed him. Another fucker gone without saying a word to us.

Now we're back to nothing, seems like the only place we are at right now.

"So, you think someone is what, stalking her?" I ask Nyx, who has been on the computer since he got back from the apartment.

"What else could it be, we've seen it before. We get rid of people who have been stalking women, and hurting them." Ares is the first to answer my question, smoking his cigarette while Esha eats her dinner. "All her ex-boyfriends don't seem to be from around here, she worked in a strip club, maybe she took things too far with one of them, and they've become a stalker."

I lean back in my chair, looking at the paper where Emily had written everything down. She's not written anything down about anyone at the strip club.

Is it crazy my blood boils at the thought that someone has seen her body and I haven't. I want to rip out their eyes so they can't picture what her body looks like, or remember how it was when she was stripping. When all I want is for her to strip for me, so I can be the last man to see it happening.

"So why don't you talk to everyone at the strip club?" Esha asks, pulling me out of my thoughts, and the four of us all turn to face her with a smile. She's become one of us, and now thinks of ways to help us, and I like it. "I don't think anyone will talk freely to the four of you." She leans her head on Ares' shoulder looking at the notepad he's reading.

"Time...time to become-" Tic stops making Ares and I laugh.

"Time to become regulars at a strip club," Ares finishes Tic's sentence for him, and I start laughing when Esha sits up straight and stares at Ares. "Don't worry Princess, I'll be fucking you every night until I die. Just need the women to trust us and talk about creeps that are there."

"So, you're going to watch a sexy woman strip, get you all excited then come back to spend the night with me, I don't think so." Esha slaps his arm, and Ares turns his head slightly to look over at her.

"You going to strip for me, before I fuck you?'

"You two want to talk about that after," Nyx says with a laugh. I was enjoying the conversation between them. "Nitro, you want to go to the strip club with Ares?"

Taking a deep drag of my cigarette, I look over at him. "No, I'll like to stay with Emily-"

"I bet you would, shame you can't. You're coming to the strip club with me." Ares looks up at me, then back to the notepad his reading.

I know what he's doing, I know my brothers don't trust me around her, and at the moment neither do I, but she's comfortable around me.

"I think she will talk more freely with me, she seems more relaxed," I tell them.

Nyx looks over at me, while Tic continues to watch cartoons and Ares walks away to the table of notepads. "True, you need to find out from her if there was anyone." I give him a nod, and we all turn to Ares who is skipping through one of the pads, and Esha looks at the one he left on the table.

"Ares?" I ask, but he's ignoring us, and I look over at Esha who seems to have lost the colour in her face. "Esha?"

"Ares, I know this address," she whispers to him, but Ares isn't listening to anything at the moment, he looks through the pad, his eyes focused are on one thing, but no one knows what. "Ares is this-"

"Your family was more fucked up than we thought." He slams the pad on the table, and the three of us turn to him. "I've read five more of these, and it's like each one goes more into detail. But the address was mentioned in the first one." He turns the pad around for Nyx and , to have a look, but we don't know what the address means, so we look up at Esha.

"It's my family in India," she whispers, and again we have no idea what that means.

"Her family started all this, they were sending children from India and-" he turns to Esha who is reading the pad, but Ares takes it off her. "-they were selling them, and doing, well we know what they do."

The four of us all sit in silence, not sure what to say while Esha's sitting with us.

"Do we have any idea on the other families?" I ask, we can't do anything until we have another name, otherwise Ares is reading all this and reliving the nightmare we lived.

"From the way everything is written, they're all in the UK. I know that. I'm writing everything down as I pick up on things, and hope I can get something." Ares looks over at Nyx. "From all the locations I've given you, do we have a pattern?"

"Most of them are in London, and a few around on the motorway heading in or out of London. No other city yet." Nyx turns the laptop around for us to see.

Esha kisses Ares, and tells him she's going to bed, but he grabs her arm to stop her walking away. "This situation isn't you, this was way before you. You understand that right?" He looks up, and she looks at all of us.

"It's because of my family, the four of you..." She stops and I can see her biting her inner cheek.

"Hey Princess, look at me." I wait for her to look over before I talk because I need her to listen to me. "Your family, not you. The four of us got a family which we might not have had, brothers who I'd die to protect. You remember one thing, you can't choose your family, you're stuck with them. But you, Princess, choose us to be your family, remember that."

She walks away, and I watch her walking up the stairs, and Ares continues talking.

"There is one thing I don't get, maybe when I read more I will find the answer. But they wanted to auction the kids, sell them. Not one of us were sold, yeah, we were auctioned but only for them to fuck up our life more, but never sold. So what happened?" Ares, puts the pads together again, and picks up the one he was reading. "We need to find out if children from India are still being brought to England to be sold?"

"You...you can ask...them," Tic says, smoking his joint, and he doesn't even need to say the name, I know who he means.

"I'll get in touch with them, meet them at the same warehouse," I say.

Never thought we would have to speak to them again, but I have to admit, I like their style. Raven the ice queen, the rumours I've heard are something I'd like to watch, and Hunter the cruel king fights like an animal. They hired us a while back, we had already heard of them, but it was then we looked more into what they do. If anyone's going to know about bringing people into the country it's them.

"Okay, Ares go check on Esha, then you and Tic go to the strip club and start showing your face, stick to the same girls. Nitro you go make a connection with Hunter for a meeting tonight, then go tell Wesley what's happening, and I'm going to pay someone a visit." Nyx stands up, and I look at him with a smile.

"You ever going to talk to her?" I ask.

"Fuck you," he walks away from us, and the three of us burst out laughing.

"Right, we better get to it." I get up, walking over to Ares taking the joint from him, and start the hunt. It's what we crave, becoming the predator, the only difference is we won't kill them so quickly when we catch them. I plan to make them suffer, the same way they made us for years.

It feels good to wear the mask again, it's been a few days now. It reminds me of why we do the things we do. Why we kill the people we do. They made us, now we get to destroy them.

I turn to my brothers when I hear the door open to the warehouse. It didn't take long for Hunter and Raven to agree to the meeting, one message asking them, and here they are. The door closes behind them, and it is that second a few of the lights come on above them, and one single one above us so there is some darkness around us.

I look at them both standing on the other side of the warehouse, and I have to admit she looks just as sexy as she did the first time, we saw her.

"Didn't think we would hear from you again," Hunter is the first to speak.

"We need information," I say. The less they speak the better for us, too many questions can lead to things we don't want to answer. "We need to know if there are any children being transported from India to England."

They both look between each other, and whisper something, I don't hear it but Ares does.

"All we want is a yes or no. Nothing else." His comment gets their attention, and I smile at the look on their face, surprised Ares heard them. "You can't hide anything from us." They don't hear it, but I do, the humour in his tone.

"We don't know, we only look into European containers. Give us a few days, and I can give you an answer to that," Raven answers, then takes a step closer but Hunter pulls her back. "How should we get in touch with you?"

No one gets in touch with us unless we want them too, the only reason they got in touch when they needed us was because we had heard stories about the both of them, so we kept tabs on them. Wanting to know what they do, and how they work. The only reason we met them was because we wanted to, not because they did.

"We will be in touch," I say, and the lights go off, giving us the chance to exit through the side door without being seen. The best thing about autumn is that it's dark all the time, and we can leave without anyone seeing us.

Walking through the back streets until we get far enough from the warehouse, we get in the car, and take our masks off.

"I...bet she would be...be...be a good fuck," Tic says ticking his head to the side a few times. "She seems cr...crazy."

"I bet she likes it rough too," Ares jokes, and I agree with them, I also have a feeling Hunter is just as fucked up in the head as she is.

Ares' phone rings, I look at my watch to see the time. There's only one person who would call him at this time and that's Esha, because she knows where we are, but she also wouldn't call us because she knows what we are doing.

"Hello...where is Esha?... I'm on my way, don't leave until I get there." Ares ends the call, and tells Nyx to drive to the hospital.

"What's happened?" I ask leaning forward to hear him better.

"She's having a migraine episode, she's in too much pain Jaya's taking her to the hospital." Ares looks down at his phone tapping away.

"I'll drop you and Tic off at the hospital, then take Nitro to-"

"I'm coming with you," I cut Nyx off, I'm not leaving until I know Esha is good. I'm not going anywhere. "Wesley doesn't start work until late. I'll be back before he has to start." I take my phone out to give him a call to let him know what's happening.

"You sure?" Nyx asks, and I give him a nod. My brothers will always come first, and right now Ares needs us with him, plus we know how he can be when it comes to Esha, I think the doctors will need us there to help them.

Nyx parks up at the hospital, and the four of us get out of the car and make our way to the emergency room, and Ares calls Jaya to let her know we are coming in.

When the four of us walk into a place we always get heads turning. Four six foot tattooed men walking into a place together, they automatically think trouble is here, and a hospital they will judge us, when they know we're here to see Esha.

Ares stops at the front desk, and the woman lifts her head and looks at each of us, before looking at Ares.

"And how can I help you?" She asks.

"Here to see Esha Suri-"

"And who are you to the patient?" She cuts Ares off, and I have to press my lips together not to snap at her. I hate when people cut us off.

"Her boyfriend." She narrows her brows together then picks the phone up. "I have someone saying he's Miss Suri's boyfriend." She puts the phone down and looks back at Ares.

He lets out a small chuckle, looking towards the three of us, before turning back to the woman behind the desk. "I am her boyfriend, and next time you think differently I will put in a very unpleasant complaint," he smiles at her then walks away from her, but she still looks at us.

I hate people who judge us, just because we're covered in tattoos, and we take up most of the room around us because we're so big, but they don't know our story, they have no idea what we've been through to be standing here today.

I follow Ares and see the doctor walking over to him, she glances over to us, and we already know it's another doctor judging us.

"Mr?" She looks up at the four of us.

"Mr. Black, can I see Esha-" Ares stops and walks around the doctor, I lean a little to the right to see where he's walking, then see Jaya walking over to us. "-how is she?" he asks her, because he knows Jaya isn't going to judge us.

"In pain, it's pitch black in there, but her eyes are still hurting." Jaya smiles at the rest of us, and Ares follows Jaya to the room.

"Not all four of you-" The doctor stops talking when the three of us follow Jaya to the room. We're not leaving until we know she's okay, and Ares is there with her.

We stand in the room, and I watch Ares with Esha. "Hey Princess," he kisses the top of her head, and he looks over at the three of us.

"You look rough Princess," Nyx jokes, which brings a smile to her lips.

"Have you four looked in the mirror?" she jokes.

The doctor walks in the room, the three of us move to the side so she can tell us what's happening.

"I've booked Esha in for a scan in the morning. I just want to see if anything is looking different." She looks down at her clip board, then back to Esha. "I also want to stop the medication you're on-"

"No, it's the only thing helping me," Esha cuts her off.

It might not be a bad thing cutting her meds, she takes so many of them they might be messing her up.

"I want to keep you in for a few days, I want to see which medication is not helping you, and see if we can give you something new, to help I would like to do nerve blockers on her." The doctor tells us all, and I look at Esha wiping the tears away from her cheeks.

"Is that needed, there must be something else," Ares asks, when he first found out about Esha's migraine, I think he read every book and article there was about it, so he knew everything if he ever had to talk to a doctor.

"I would like to, it will ease it for a while, but I do think one of the medications might not be working for her, and I won't know which one if she's taking them altogether." The doctor hands Ares a leaflet, but he hands it over to me, because he already knows everything about the treatment, but I don't so I read the leaflet. They will inject steroids into her nerves from the back of the neck to numb them over her head. No wonder Ares doesn't want it done.

"When will that be?" he asks.

"Tomorrow late afternoon, early evening, but I'd like to keep her here for a few days."

"I'm staying." He looks over to the three of us ignoring the doctor. "Jaya can come back in the morning, then I'll be home for work," I smile knowing what he means. I walk over to Esha when I hear Ares. "Can you bring a few of the notepads so I can read them here?"

"Yeah, I'll bring them with some dinner," Nyx answers.

I bend over a little and give Esha a kiss on the cheek. "You scared us." I wipe the tears away when she closes her eyes. "Get some sleep, and I'll see you tomorrow." I give her one last kiss on the cheek, and leave the room, while Tic and Nyx say bye to Esha too.

Once they both come out, we head back to the car park. "I'll drop you off at the apartment, then I'll come back to give Ares the pads." I hear Nyx as I get in the car.

"I've got the disposable phone with me, in case Hunter calls. When they do, I'll let you know. I have a client in the morning at ten." I let them know because the only way I'm surviving at the moment is work or fighting my demons away.

I'm not sure why the demons are around more now, but they are eating at every inch of my body. Reminding me they still own me, and no matter what they will live with me forever.

"I'll come and take over," I hear Nyx as I close my eyes.

I'm about to spend the evening with a woman who I can't get out of my head. Maybe it's the reason my demons are making more of an appearance at the moment. They know I want a release but I can't, I can't touch her and it's killing me. It's going to be a long night.