Page 1 of Riordan's Revenge
Chapter 1
Riordan
The furious thrum of wheels on the road beneath my captor’s car mirrored the beat of my heart. In the darkness of the back seat, I lay paralysed, conscious but unable to move, whatever drug I’d been dosed with in full effect.
The plush leather under my cheek told me the vehicle was high-end. The pace said I was being delivered somewhere with urgency.
Focusing, I willed my eyes to open. My fingers to twitch.Nothing.
Anger flashed inside me like lightning.
I’d joined the skeleton crew knowing what I was getting myself into, and now I was in the hands of a rival gang without the control of my body to fight back.
I’d expected to die from my career change, but not yet.
Trapped with my thoughts, I fought for logic. If they’d wanted me dead, I wouldn’t have been kidnapped to be locked up and used as collateral.
Except that didn’t make sense.
I wasn’t important enough in the chain of command of Arran’s crew. I was a new recruit, not trusted to do anything beyond security and grunt work. Realisation dawned, and I groaned inwardly. No, for fuck’s sake, I was wrong. This was about my sister. Genevieve was Arran’s girlfriend, so torturing her brother made perfect sense.
Through me, they could control her.
Which meant I was in for a world of pain.
The car slowed, my driver silent as we turned off a fast road, possibly a motorway, and entered a twisting country lane. I had no clue how long we’d been travelling, but it felt like hours, which either put us in the Midlands of England if we’d gone south, or north to the Highlands of Scotland. I couldn’t call it.
After a while, the car slowed and idled, and the driver rattled something and a clink outside followed. A remote gate, I guessed. We passed through, and the car swept around another road. At last, the smooth running sound changed to gravel. A car park.
This should’ve been my chance. As a prisoner, my opportunities for escape were in moments of transit when they took me from one place to another. I was almost certain that I wasn’t handcuffed, which meant they trusted in the drug.
My breathing quickened, and I tried to force my body to wake. It didn’t respond. I fucking yelled in silent frustration.
If I couldn’t will my limbs to move, I’d be caged. Tortured, perhaps. Maybe they’d kill me if they couldn’t get what they wanted from Arran.
We came to a halt, and the engine cut out, silence settling with ominous tension. I listened hard to clue myself in to where I was. Then a mutter from the driver flipped my world upside down again.
“Oh fuck de fuck. I’ve really done it this time.”
Christ.I exhaled in a rush of relief. I knew that voice.Cassie. What the absolute fuck?
She popped the door, and another voice came from outside. A woman’s, though I couldn’t make out anything in her greeting to Cassie except her accent. She was Scottish, too, which gave me a further clue to the direction we’d taken. Her tone was soft. Gentle. As if she knew Cassie. Abruptly, the vibe changed.
“Is that a body?” the other woman gasped.
Cassie’s voice held a strange tension. “I need help getting him into the house.”
“Sin’s on his way down,” her friend replied. “Oh, he’s here.”
Another set of footsteps crunched the gravel, and a male voice entered the chat, rumbling an affectionate greeting to Cassie before his attention came to me. “Is he dead?”
“No, just knocked out.”
“Who hurt him?”
I strained to listen. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember the moments before I’d been attacked. I’d been at work at the warehouse but after that I drew a blank. If I’d been rushed, I couldn’t recall the hit.
Cassie’s reply socked me in the gut.