The Ryan brothers’ apartment is freaking huge. It must cover the entire top floor of the building. I look around me, with my mouth hanging open as I follow Liam and Mikey along the hallway. Their older brothers went into the nightclub that makes up the ground floor and basement of this building. Or part of it, at least. From what I could see when we drove in, half of it is used as a parking lot for the building. It is packed with top end, high spec cars, and I wonder if they all belong to the brothers or someone else lives in this block.
“You want something to eat? Or maybe a drink?” Liam asks as I walk behind him, my sneakers making a satisfying soft squeaking sound on the solid wooden floor.
“A cold drink would be good,” I say as I hoist my backpack further onto my shoulder.
“This way,” he cocks his head, and we turn left and into the biggest kitchen I have ever seen in my life.
“What do you fancy?” Mikey asks as he opens the massive refrigerator and sticks his head inside. “Soda? Juice? Water?” He pulls his head back out and looks at me with a grin on his face and, for a moment, I almost forget that I am basically their prisoner. I could be here on a date the way they’re both so at ease and casual about the whole thing. My mind wanders for a few seconds. A date with one of these hot brothers? Or both of them?
“What’s it to be?” Mikey asks again.
“Uh?” I blink at him. “Oh, water. Please.”
He hands me a bottle before tossing one to Liam and grabs himself a can of soda. I take a long drink and the cool liquid feels like heaven against my raw throat. When I look up, they are both sitting at the kitchen island watching me. I shift uncomfortably under their gaze. I know that I asked to come here, and I know they seem like good guys, but I can’t help wonder what the hell I have let myself in for here. I mean, what the hell do I do now?
Sensing my unease, Liam smiles at me. “We won’t bite, Jessie.”
“Not unless you want us to,” Mikey flashes an eyebrow at me and laughs and the sound makes me shiver in a not unpleasant way.
“I was just wondering what happens now?” I say with a shrug, trying to appear tough and confident while my heart hammers against my ribcage.
“It’s up to you. We have plenty to do here. A games room, gym, a huge TV in the den. We also have a library and a rooftop pool,” Mikey says before taking a long swig of his soda.
I don’t answer as I stand there staring at them. What the hell is this place?
“Or we could just show you where you’ll be staying?” Liam offers.
“Yeah, that would be great,” I reply, wondering if maybe they’ll chain me up in a room with no windows.
“You’re in the room next to ours,” Mikey says as he jumps off the stool.
“You guys share a room?”
“Shared a womb, we can share a room,” Liam laughs.
“Oh?” I blink at them. I don’t know why that surprises me.
“Hey. We share a room, not a bed,” Mikey adds.
“Well, unless we have good reason to,” Liam says and they both laugh out loud.
“I don’t understand,” I say, aware that I’m frowning at them now.
Liam rounds the island and bends his head close to my ear. “Sometimes, we share everything, Jessie,” he says with a low growl that turns my insides to jelly.
“Come on,” Mikey adds as he saunters past us and out of the kitchen with his can of soda in his hand.
I thank the twins for showing me how to use the electric window blinds and the TV and close the door behind them before taking another look around. If this is the guest bedroom, then I can’t even imagine what the brothers’ rooms must be like. A king-size bed dominates the space in the center and vast floor to ceiling windows make the room bright and airy. There is a huge TV on the wall and a small bookcase complete with full shelves of books. I kick off my sneakers and realize the floor is warm to the touch. Damn, they must have underfloor heating. This place is fancy!
Throwing my backpack onto the bed, I can’t help but smile. I could get used to living in a place like this. Shaking my head, I catch myself before I get too comfortable with that thought. There is no getting used to a place like this for me. No getting used to anywhere. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, and I can’t imagine a time when it will ever be any different.
Sitting on the bed, I open my backpack, take out my laptop and open it up. The relief washes over me as it fires to life when I turn it on, and the document I was working on is still there on the screen. It’s a list of the bank details of some of Nikolai’s contacts. Both his enemies and the people he considered his friends. He was an incredibly suspicious man, and it didn’t take me long to convince him that one of the best ways to monitor his associates was to monitor their money. Everything always leads back to the money in the end.
It gave me the perfect cover to delve into the financial histories of almost every member of the Russian mob. Almost. I still haven’t found what I was looking for, and I still have some work left to do. Nikolai was reluctant to give me the details of some of the top names, but he was getting close. I whispered in his ear every chance I got, reminding him how his enemies were trying to topple him. Feeding his paranoia and suspicion like a loving owner feeds a pet. But I was so focused on the rest of the Russian mob, that I didn’t even see the Irish one coming. And now I’m at a dead end. I’ll have to start back at the beginning of this list and follow each individual money trail until it leads me to the top. It will be a much longer process, but time is something I have plenty of.
A soft knock at the door makes me jump. “Come in,” I say, expecting one of the brothers. But it’s not one of them who pops their head inside the room. It’s a woman who looks to be in her late thirties, with dark curly hair.
“Jessie?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply, closing my laptop over and nervously rubbing my hands on my jeans.
She steps inside the room carrying a medical bag. “I’m Dr. Adams,” she says with a smile. “But you can call me Lisa.”
“Oh? Hey, Lisa,” I blink at her.
“Conor called me and asked me to check you over. Make sure you’re okay while you’re staying here?”
“Okay,” I say with a frown. This is either the highest level of consideration in hostage taking, or there is a hidden agenda here.
Lisa walks into the room and places her medical bag on the bed beside me.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Is that a trick question?” I reply. Does she know why I’m here, or that the Ryan brothers almost killed me earlier?
She tilts her head slightly and smiles at me. “No. I believe there was some sort of explosion? I know the Ryan brothers well, Miss Heaton.”
I roll my eyes, wondering just how well, and she chuckles softly. “I was also told you asked to come here?” She takes a blood pressure cuff from her bag and indicates that I should hold out my arm.
“I suppose so,” I say as I pull off my hooded sweatshirt until I’m sitting in only my tank top. I don’t add that I didn’t feel I had much choice at the time.
“Shane and his brothers will look after you. I know what they are, but they are good men,” she says as she places her stethoscope in her ears. “They just want to make sure you are fit and well and don’t need any medical treatment, especially after what happened today.”
“Huh!” I snort.
“Well, if you have some sort of internal bleeding and die in bed tonight, it would be a bit of an inconvenience for them to find somewhere to bury your body, wouldn’t it?” She flashes an eyebrow at me and I burst out laughing. Dr. Lisa has a dark sense of humor and I decide immediately that I like her.
“So, you know the brothers well, then?” I grin at her.
“I’m their physician,” she replies with a knowing smile. “Nothing more.”
Dr. Lisa gives me a thorough medical and confirms I don’t have any internal bleeding and am unlikely to die in my sleep tonight. I figure she’s about done when she pulls a huge needle from her bag.
“What the hell is that for?” I ask. “I hate needles.”
“I need to take some blood and run some tests.”
“What kind of tests?”
“To make sure you don’t have illnesses that the brothers need to be aware of.”
“Such as?”
“Blood-borne diseases you could infect them with should you ever cut yourself, for instance. STIs. And also, I’ll do a pregnancy test too.”
“Jesus!” I hiss as I hold out my arm. “What are they planning on doing with me?” I attempt a joke, but my insides are churning.
“It’s just a precaution, I assure you,” she replies.
I smile at her and nod. Never let anyone see how afraid you are, Jessie. A lesson from my father. A sudden surge of grief almost overwhelms me as thoughts of him and my mom and my little brothers force themselves into my consciousness. I haven’t thought about them for a long time, but seeing Liam and Mikey today flicked some kind of switch and now I can’t stop thinking about them. I do whatever I can to keep my memories of them at bay because it hurts too much not to. But, as painful as it is to think about the night they were taken from me – slaughtered in front of my eyes, it destroys me when I remember the happy times. When I recall how much I loved them. How much they loved me. When I remember what a team the five of us were.
I blink away a tear and focus on the sharp scratch of the needle piercing my skin. Pain grounds me. No matter what might happen here at the hands of the Ryan brothers, I know without a doubt that I have endured worse. I was sixteen years old when I learned that monsters were real, and unlike the princesses, maidens or the damsels in distress in the fairytales my mother read to me, there was no-one left to rescue me.
