Collared By Four Ruthless Men

Chapter 5

Della made the best eggs I had ever eaten in my life and I was not even a little bit ashamed about how fast I finished them.

She was a small woman, older, with silver hair she kept pinned up and hands that moved around that kitchen like they owned it. Which they did, basically. I had figured that out on day two. The compound ran on Zane's word but the kitchen ran on Della's and nobody argued with either of them.

The four men were in a meeting. Church, Rook had called it when he passed me in the hallway that morning. He said it casually like I would know what that meant. I figured it out from context. A closed door meeting. All four of them plus a few others, the older members I had seen around but not spoken to.

Which left me in the kitchen with Della and no one watching me too closely for the first time since I got here.

She did not talk much at first. Just moved around the kitchen doing what she did, occasionally sliding something in my direction. Toast. Then eggs. Then a small bowl of fruit that I did not expect. I ate and watched her and waited to see what kind of person she was going to turn out to be.

"You sleep okay?" she asked without turning around.

"Better than I expected."

She made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Beds in this place cost more than my first car. You should sleep well."

I turned my fork over in my hand. "How long have you been here? With the club."

"Twenty years, near enough." She turned around and leaned against the counter and looked at me properly for the first time. Her eyes were sharp and a little amused. "Before you ask, no I am not going to help you find a way out. Not because I don't have sympathy. I do. But because I know what is outside that gate right now and I would not send anyone out into it."

I nodded slowly. At least she was straight with me.

"What are they like," I said. "The four of them. When it is not like this."

She was quiet for a moment, considering whether to answer. Then she pulled out the chair across from me and sat down, which I took as a good sign.

"Loud," she said. "When things are normal. This place is loud and full and half the time I am threatening to leave and nobody believes me." She almost smiled. "Zane has been running something heavy for months. It makes the whole compound feel like a held breath. You can usually tell how bad things are by how quiet he gets."

"He seems like he was born quiet."

"He was born serious," she corrected. "There is a difference. When he was younger he laughed more." She shrugged one shoulder. "Things took that from him. The way things do."

I thought about that. I did not want to feel sympathy for the man who was keeping me here so I moved on.

"And the others?"

Della tilted her head. Something shifted in her expression, something knowing and a little careful. "What about them."

"I am just trying to understand the situation I am in."

"Mm." She did not look like she entirely believed that. "Rook is the one who holds them all together without anyone noticing that is what he is doing. Dax is smarter than he wants people to think and more loyal than he lets on. Colt." She paused. "Colt is the one you do not fully understand until you need him. And then you understand everything."

I thought about dark eyes watching me from the kitchen doorway. That unreadable face. The way he had just turned and walked away without a word and how that had stayed with me longer than anything Dax had actually said.

"And Zane?" I asked.

"Zane carries all of it," she said simply. "Always has."

The house was quiet around us. Somewhere down the hall I could hear the low murmur of the meeting still going. Della got up and started clearing the counter and I sat with my empty plate and the strange feeling of having just been given something without knowing exactly what it was.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"You can ask."

"Is this normal? Someone being kept here like this. Does this happen a lot?"

She stopped moving. Set down what was in her hands and turned around slowly.

"No," she said. "It does not."

I waited.

"I have been here twenty years." She looked at me steadily. "I have seen a lot of things come through this compound. A lot of problems, a lot of people, a lot of situations that needed handling." She paused on that last word and I wondered if she knew what it meant to me now. "I have never seen all four of them quiet at the same time."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean when you walk into a room something happens that I have not seen before." She picked up her cloth and turned back to the counter. "Make of that what you will."

I sat with that for a long moment. I did not know what to make of it. I was not sure I wanted to.

The sound of a door opening down the hall broke the quiet. Footsteps spread out through the house, the meeting breaking up. I heard Rook's voice, then Dax. Then boots that were heavier than the rest and I knew without looking that Colt had come back into the building.

Then a voice. Zane. Close to the hallway outside the kitchen, not inside, talking low and fast to someone.

I kept my eyes on the table and listened.

A new name. One I had not heard before. Something about a sighting, a location, someone asking questions in town.

Then Zane said, "Get me a description."

A pause.

"Yeah," he said. His voice was different now. Tighter. "Find out who she talked to."

My head came up.

Della was watching me from across the kitchen with an expression I could not fully read.

The footsteps moved away. The hallway went quiet again.

She was. The word sat in my stomach like a stone. Someone was asking questions in town and Zane wanted to know who she had talked to. A woman. Looking for something. Or someone.

I thought about Petra. My only real friend, the only person who would notice I had not shown up for our usual calls. The only person who would start asking around if she got worried enough.

My chest went tight.

I looked at Della. She looked back at me and said nothing and that silence told me everything I needed to know.

Whatever was coming, it was already moving.