Ryder (Slater Brothers 4)

My eyes pooled with tears as she closed my bedroom door.

“If you don’t trust me, Bran, trust your sister. Listen to what I have to say. Please.”

I looked back at Ryder and before I broke down I said, “Start from the beginnin’, and don’t leave anythin’ out.”

I couldn’t even begin to form a clue as to what he said before Bronagh came in.

The FBI?

Wired up?

A mole?

Brandon Daley?

The only thing I could think of was, what the fuck?

Instead of speaking, Ryder removed his jacket and jumper then gripped the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it up to his chin. I raised my eyebrows at what I saw.

He… was wearing a wire.

I stared at the black cable that was stuck—with what looked like surgical tape—to his chest, then to the tiny black box that was taped at his lower abdomen. I flicked my eyes between the two then looked up to Ryder to find his eyes were drilled onto me watching him.

“You’re wearin’ a wire,” I murmured.

“Yes,” Ryder swallowed. “I am, this one is not active. I broke it, but I just wanted to show it to you so you know what it looked like.”

“Why’re you wearin’ a wire?” I asked when he lowered his t-shirt.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you everything.”

An emotion I couldn’t explain surged through me when I realised that he was, in fact, finally going to tell me the reason for our life together ending.

“Sit down,” he prompted once more.

I looked at my bed and moved over to the end of it where I climbed up and sat down, letting my legs hang over the edge. Ryder grabbed the chair in front of my vanity desk and placed it in front of me. He sat down and leaned his elbows onto his knees leaving only a little bit of space between his knees knocking against mine.

I had to tense my entire body when his scent surrounded me and the familiarity of it caused my insides to flutter and come to life. The urge to reach out and touch him consumed me so I shoved my hands under my thighs to keep from doing so.

I focused on him when he began speaking.

“About a year and half ago I fell into a rut where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t want to talk to you about it because I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t have the skills to do anything.”

I frowned, but didn’t interrupt.

“Kane had his landlord and property developer thing going on, Dominic had his personal trainer thing, and Alec was always helping out at the animal shelter nearby. I wasn’t qualified for anything.” He scrubbed his face with both of his hands. “All I’ve ever known is drugs and weapons, and I felt like a failure because I wasn’t made for working in your world. I still have no qualifications for anything… I didn’t even finish high-school, Branna.”

“I know that about you,” I said, “and if you think I give a damn whether you’re educated or not then you don’t know me at all.”

“I know you don’t care, and to you it doesn’t matter, but to me, it matters. I want to be the one taking care of you even though you’re more than capable of doing it yourself. I just didn’t feel like a man, and I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just trying to explain where my head was at.”

I nodded. “I get that, but I still don’t know how everythin’ else comes into play. I mean, the FBI, Ryder?”

“That is actually the easy part,” he grunted. “It’s unbelievable that it happened, but it wasn’t like their heat wasn’t warranted.”

My head hurt. “Explain.”

“I still haven’t figured out the best way to explain it, but here goes nothing,” he said and blew out a deep breath. “Pretty soon after I started to feel like shit, I wanted to do my part around the house to feel like I wasn’t completely pathetic so I went down to B&Q to get some materials so I could paint the rooms, patch up any dents or holes in the walls… shit like that. I was leaving the store when two men in black tailored suits approached me at my car. At first I thought it was funny, they looked like the Men in Black, so they had to have the wrong person, but when they told me who they were and what they wanted from me, I honestly nearly fainted.”

Fear gripped me.

“What did they want from you?”

“They told me a construction site up on the mountain side that was levelling out land discovered a mass grave site.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Trent?” I questioned. “Marco’s men from that night in Darkness when he took Damien and hurt Bronagh?”

Five years ago, Marco Miles, Ryder’s old boss, attacked my little sister and tried to use her life, and Damien’s, as a bargaining chip to keep Ryder and his three other brothers under this thumb. It blew up in his face, and he paid for it with his life, his nephew’s life, and a few of his thugs’ lives.

Ryder nodded once. “They can’t identify the bodies, but mine and Dominic’s finger prints were on one of the plastic bags we used to wrap them up inside. We didn’t clean them as well as we thought.”

My heart was beating so fast I could hear it.

“There hasn’t been a single mention of it in the news though, how could—”

“They’re the Feds, Bran, they aren’t your regular cops. These are the people that hunt you down and find out everything about you know matter where you are on the planet. They have a small team here and only that team and the commissioner of your police knows about this operation. If they want something kept under wraps, you won’t know about it unless they want you to.”

What operation?

“I can’t believe this,” I breathed and lifted my hand from under my leg so I could place it on my chest.