Brooklyn Sinners 3 -A Sinner Born (24 page)

Two days later, Billy was on the case, but coming up empty and Syren was itching to escape the sense of impending doom that wouldn’t leave him alone. Kane was due to be released that evening, so Syren put his pilot on standby.

“I’m going to head over to my place,” he told Kane as Gabe helped him put on his shirt. His lover’s left hand was in a sling and a bandage covered his wound. “I need to take a shower and get some more clothes.”

“So come meet me when you’re done,” Syren suggested. “We’ll take the cab from my place to the airport.”
“Okay.” Gabe nodded. “We can do that.”
Syren gave them his address and left. He got to his apartment and let himself in. Whistling, he stepped into the shower. He’d have to sell the condo for sure, but right now he’d let it sit. Once he and Kane got back to Connecticut he planned to come clean about Càtia. His stomach cramped at the thought of that conversation.
He dreaded it.
A knock that sounded on the door as he stepped out of the shower had Syren hurrying to answer it. Kane and Gabe had arrived already?
He swung the door open. “That was qui—Thiago?”
“Where have you been?” Thiago pushed past him and into the condo. “I’ve been calling you for days and days.” The younger Delatorre’s eyes were wild, his hair and clothes unkempt. “Here.” He handed Syren one of the coffee cups in his hand.
“Thanks. Uh, I’ve been busy.” Syren closed the door and frowned at him. “What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.” He sipped the coffee.
“We need to be running the business.” Thiago spun in a circle, his face tilted to the sky. “Why aren’t we running the business together? We can do great things, man. Great things.”
“Uh.” Okay. “We can’t run the business because the Feds and the DEA and everybody and their mother are onto us.” He clamped a hand on Thiago’s shoulder. “We have to give it up.”
“No way.” Thiago shook his head, a scarily unfocused look in his eyes. “I got a connect. He can get us something new, the best drugs ever, man. We’ll make money. So much money.” He laughed as though he’d cracked some kind of joke. “I’m telling you, this shit is good.”
“I’m not interested.” Syren swallowed more of the coffee as he moved past Thiago and headed to his bedroom to get dressed. “The Delatorre cartel died with your father, Thiago. Let’s leave it in the grave where it belongs.” He’d be damned if he’d let the Delatorres take any more from him. He’d tried ever since Ricardo croaked to distance himself from Thiago, but the hardheaded fool kept blowing up his phone. He couldn’t put Faro to bed, could he?
“My father’s dead, he got what he deserved,” Thiago said from his bedroom doorway, “but that doesn’t impact the business. I made sure it didn’t, so you and I could take over. Partners.”
His grin chilled Syren and for the first time since he’d known Thiago, Syren questioned his sanity. He finished the coffee and placed the empty coffee cup on his nightstand. “What do you mean you made sure?”
Thiago crept into the room, slowly, silently. “Will you run the business with me as partners? My father isn’t here to beat you, to hurt you.” He cupped Syren’s chin and smiled. “You can belong to me, not the man in the hospital.”
Syren froze. “What man?” He shifted and Thiago’s hand on his chin tightened.
“I knew he was special to you,” Thiago spoke softly as though imparting a secret. “You reached for him instead of me that day, when my father died, but it was grief, wasn’t it? You didn’t know how to react.”
Jesus Christ. Chills ghosted down Syren’s spine and blanketed his skin in goose bumps. He’d made a mistake. He’d underestimated Thiago. “Was it you then?” he asked in the same soft voice. “Was it you who shot him the other night?”
“You’re mine. My father couldn’t have you and this man, this marshal guy, he can’t either.” Thiago sounded so reasonable, so confident in his words.
Syren’s mind raced. He had no weapons within reach and his phone was in the living room on the couch. All he had to rely on was himself. “Did you hurt your father too?”
Thiago chuckled, the creepiest sound. “He never saw it coming. I put it in his drink when I went to visit him in that place. He needed to go.” Thiago leaned down and pressed his forehead to Syren’s. “I needed to have you to myself, but I turn around and you’re with someone else.” He sounded genuinely hurt at the thought of Syren being with someone other than him.
Christ. Syren shook his head to clear it. “What did you poison him with?”
Thiago shrugged. “Just something I had one of my friends make for me.” His teeth flashed. “Nice, huh? We can have the recipe for it, for the right price.”
His vision swam and Syren shook his head again. “No. Thiago, this isn’t happening.” He held the other man’s gaze, willing him to pay attention to his words, but for some reason Thiago wavered. “I’m moving on with my life, something different, with someone different. This, what you want, it’s not going to happen.”
“Make it happen,” Thiago snarled. “Choose. That guy or me, those are your choices. Make it now.”
Syren mentally rolled his eyes.
Why me, damn it?
“What do you think I’m going to say, Thiago?” He wrenched himself away. “Please, forget about this and do something productive with your—” The floor shifted under his feet. “What—” The room swam. Something stung him in his neck, below his right ear. His knees buckled.
Son of a bitch. Thiago drugged him.
“Thiago. Thiago what—” His tongue felt swollen, too big for his mouth.
“Wrong choice,” Thiago spat in his ear. “You went so willingly to my father, you took his punishment with no complaints.” He tangled his fingers in Syren’s hair. “I almost think you liked it.”
Syren’s legs gave out and he fell, half on, half off the bed. Thiago dropped to the floor with him. Thoughts, panicked thoughts, flitted through his mind, but Syren couldn’t hold on to them. The room swayed in front of his eyes, colors changing, dancing. He couldn’t lift his head, move his arms or legs.
Rough hands parted his thighs, dragging him backward. Syren hung on to the mattress with his fingertips, wanting to run away, but unable to. Wanting to hide, but there was nowhere to go but inside himself. He didn’t want it, didn’t want the pain, but it came and he left.

The throbbing in his head roused Syren from a dead sleep. He moved his legs restlessly against the mattress and a jolt of pain yanked a groan from his parched throat. His entire body hurt. Clouds fogged his head. His mouth felt as if he’d been chewing on cotton.

If he didn’t know better he’d think he was hungover. Had they talked, he wondered. Had he finally told Kane about Càtia? He tried reaching for that memory, but it wasn’t there. In fact the last thing he remembered was being with Càtia in Costa Rica. Syren lifted his face off the pillow and tried opening his eyes, but quickly shut them. The bright sunlight hurt and the room tilted dangerously. He did see enough to know he wasn’t in Kane’s home, he was back at his condo in LA.

When did he get there? Where was Kane?
Despite his limbs feeling as uncooperative as the rest of his body, Syren anchored his fingers in the sheets and turned over onto his back. He ran his tongue over his dry, cracked lips and tried opening his eyes again. The sunlight still stung, but at least he managed to keep them open. Fear took over, his heart attempting to beat out his chest.

A door slammed and Syren jerked upright, hissing at the pain. So encompassing, stealing his breath.
“You’re up.” Thiago Delatorre strode into his bedroom as if he owned it, as if he lived there, a sparkle in his eye, his dimples showing. He held up the coffee in his hand.”I brought you some breakfast.” His gaze traveled over Syren’s body and he wrinkled his nose. “You might want to clean up first.”
“What’s—” Syren’s voice cracked, broke. Had he had sex with Thiago? He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t hurt Kane. “What’s going on?”
Thiago sipped the coffee he’d said was Syren’s. “Hmm.” He nodded in approval. “What happened is we came to an agreement last night, cemented our new role as partners of the new Delatorre cartel.”
Syren didn’t react.
Think
, he berated himself.
Think.
“Why do I hurt like this?” he asked calmly. A new picture formed in his mind. One he didn’t look at too closely; the implications were there.
Thiago shrugged off his question. “You were tight. Guess I had it wrong, you weren’t giving it up to my father after all.”
Syren clenched his teeth to stifle the roar he wanted to let out. Instead he moved gingerly, rolling to the side of the bed and swinging first one then the other foot off the side. He sat there, palms flat on his thighs and waited for the tightness in his chest to ease. He had no time for a panic attack. No time to embrace the pain.
The anger. That was a different story.
With every move he made to stand, his stomach rolled. Cold sweat blanketed his skin. He did though, as Thiago stood off to the side, an approving look in his eyes. Much like his father, the Delatorres had a habit of always taking what didn’t belong to them. Naked, Syren steadied himself by leaning into the bathroom doorframe, his knees bent, fingers scraping and marking the paint.
Inside the bathroom he dropped to his knees and threw up on the floor before ever making it close to the toilet bowl. Nearby Thiago tsked. Syren emptied his stomach, heaving violently, arms wrapped tight around his middle.
The similarities to his former life weren’t lost on him. The many times Marcos had been there, on his knees, emptying his guts after someone else staked their claim and professed to own him. Own his body. He upchucked until all he had were dry heaves. Misery tapped at his shoulder, an old and familiar friend.
Not today. Not ever.
Syren struggled to his feet and staggered to the sink where he stripped away the black plastic hiding the mirror. The time had come to deal with Marcos, to recognize the part of himself that would forever and always remain Marcos Inácio del Melo. His Faro parts and his Syren parts. He had to own them all.
For the first time in a long, long time, Syren met his own eyes in the mirror.
They were Marco’s eyes. They were Faro’s eyes and yes, also Syren’s. He was all three of those people, he carried all their pain, all their darkness, but he’d be damned if he’d allow it to own him. Control him.
His eyes were red-rimmed, his pupils dilated. Drugs would have that effect. The left side of his face appeared to be swollen and a dark bruise the size of a silver dollar decorated his neck on the right. That might be the cause of the pain in his neck.
He turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower, quickly washing away anything from Thiago that remained on his skin.
There were still some things he couldn’t wash away.
Syren blinked up into the shower spray. He’d have to get tested. His brain cycled through jumbled thoughts at a million miles a minute. He needed to keep thinking things out, else he’d drop to his knees and let the pain consume him.
He would. Just not right then.
When he reentered the bedroom, Thiago had stripped away the sheets on the bed and sat on the bare mattress, legs crossed.
“You took too long in the shower,” Thiago groused. “I had to drink the coffee before it got cold.”
Syren ignored him and went to his drawer, hiding the knife between his clothes. He stepped into a pair of lounge pants and pulled on a t-shirt.
“Panties, huh?” Thiago winked. “Never would have guessed. By the way, your phone’s been beeping all night. Very annoying.” He flung the phone down on the bed and Syren snatched it up.
He had three voice messages, all from Kane. Syren pressed play on the first one with a trembling finger.
“Hey, Gabe and I are leaving the hospital now. We’re gonna grab a cab and head over to your condo. Be ready.”
A sob caught in his throat. Kane had been in the hospital. What happened and why hadn’t Syren been there? His mind remained a blank.
He pressed play on message two.
“We’re downstairs. Where are you? Don’t make me come up there and get you.” His lover laughed and hung up.
Syren swore he heard his teeth chattering. The tightness in his chest returned with a vengeance, burning his lungs. He hovered a finger over the third message, hesitant, because a part of him knew, he knew it’d break him.
He pressed the button.
“I’m at your door, Syren.” He made out the sounds of knuckles rapping against something. “It’s open, Gabe, push it.” Then Kane’s voice rose higher. “What’s taking so long in—”
Something shattered and Syren jumped. Kane had dropped the phone. He’d seen them, Syren and Thiago. “He was here.” The agonized words fell from him in a whisper. “He was here.”
“Damn right he was,” Thiago said at his shoulder. “We gave him an eyeful.” He cackled. “He and that guy couldn’t leave fast enough.” He doubled over with his mirth, slapping Syren on the back.
Syren got to his feet and flew at him, sinking the blade he held into Thiago’s throat. The other man dropped, slowly, to the floor, beautiful surprise in his eyes as he took Syren down with him. “Here.” Syren pulled out the blade then struck again. Blood flowed. Not too much, but enough. “A token for your troubles.”
He grabbed Thiago’s hand closest to him and brought it up to hold the end of the cutter. His fingers weren’t cooperating so Syren formed them one by one until they curved around the handle. “Do you think you were the first to take me against my will?” he asked conversationally.
Thiago’s lips trembled. His throat worked, but only whimpers escaped.
“Men more powerful than you, including your father, wanted to own me.” Syren smiled at him, that Faro smile. It was his and he used it. “I’m telling you like I told them, you couldn’t if you tried.” He yanked out the knife and stabbed Thiago again, this time in the jugular. Blood spurted, messing up his clothes. “Lay there like the good little boy you are and die while I make some calls.”
He wanted to call Kane, but he had to put that on the back burner. He called Billy, quickly instructing him to call Syren’s contact at the FBI then hung up without leaving room for Billy and his usual chitchat. He sat on the floor next to a bleeding Thiago, legs stretched out as Thiago struggled for breath. Syren watched him dispassionately.
Taking a life wasn’t something he’d ever done. He’d prided himself on that. He’d never wanted to go that route but had been prepared for it when dealing with Delatorre. That was the normal way of things, being prepared. He’d done all he could, but still hadn’t seen Thiago coming. The situation he found himself faced with was personal and Thiago needed to be dealt with as such. He couldn’t stop to think about consequences.
He stopped being a victim at fifteen, no way was he reverting back to that time. The hollow in his gut reminded him he’d soon have to launch another fight to save his relationship.
His cell phone vibrated in his lap. He answered on the third ring. “I need a team to my condo. Now. People you trust. And a doctor.”
“What’s going on?” Dutch asked. The concern in his voice wasn’t an act. Dutch was a genuinely nice guy. All about duty and country. Syren didn’t get it, but he didn’t have to.
“Thiago Delatorre is bleeding out on my bedroom floor. I stabbed him.” He spoke the words calmly when his entire insides rioted.
“Jesus Christ! Why?”
“He drugged me with something last night.” Syren cleared his throat and spoke the words. He made them real. “He raped me.” His throat clogged and unbidden fat tears rolled down his cheeks. After all this time. He’d come so far.
Dutch went radio silent on him. “We’ll be there in thirty.”
Four men arrived less than twenty minutes later, Dutch included. They had to break the door down but Syren wasn’t budging from where he sat. Life had long drained from Thiago’s eyes, but they remained open. Syren stared into them, searching for answers to questions he hadn’t known he had until Thiago uttered that last, final sigh. Why didn’t matter, not anymore. How anyone felt they had the option, that taking someone against their will was the correct option scared him more than anything.
He sat in silence while Dutch and his men took away Thiago. He didn’t want to know what they had in store for him. Finally the doctor knelt beside him and Syren became dimly aware of the man asking questions, of him drawing blood, but he couldn’t focus. His body was cold all over and he hugged his knees to his chest, searching for warmth.
In the back of his mind he knew he was succumbing to the shock, but was helpless to stop it. He reacted like a victim when he’d promised, promised himself, he’d be no one’s victim ever again. His body and mind weren’t on the same wavelength and maybe that was a good thing. There’d be no action if he stayed with the thinking.
The doctor popped a pill in his mouth and put a glass to his lips. Syren drank and swallowed. Something pricked his upper arm and he glanced down as the doctor pulled a needle out of his flesh. He tipped his chin to the sky and waited for it to be over.
“Hey.” Someone touched his knee, briefly.
Syren jolted and stared into Dutch’s face.
“What do you need?”
“Noth—” Syren cleared his throat and blinked. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
Dutch’s expression called his words bullshit, but he jerked his chin in the direction of the doctor. “Do you need him to examine you more?” The emotion in his voice and on his face made Syren feel…weird. They weren’t friends, he and Dutch. They rarely ever spoke on the phone and saw each other even less and yet, the horror and obvious worry over Syren was real.
“I’m fine.” He shook his head slowly. “I just need some meds for the pain and a few hours rest.” He needed Kane more. “I—where’s my phone?”
Dutch handed him his phone then moved away, giving him his privacy. He called Kane’s phone three times, but it went straight to voicemail. He called Gabe next and when he got no answer dialed Rafe. His friend answered on the fifth ring.
“What’s up, man?”
“I need Kane.” The words burst from him. “Where is he?” Rafe stayed silent until Syren pressed him. “Rafe, tell me where he is.”
“I don’t think he wants to see you, man.” Rafe sighed in his ear.”You fucked up, do you know that? He saw you and someone—”
“I know what he saw,” Syren interrupted. “And that wasn’t—it’s—I need to know where he is.”
“Shit.” Rafe paused. “Gabe will fucking kill me when he finds out I told you, so you better make it count, got me?”
“Yes. Please.”
“He’s here with us.” Rafe hung up.
Syren scrambled to his feet, wavering on unsteady legs. Someone grabbed his elbow, steadied him. He turned and met Dutch’s worried frown. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I need someone to take me to the airport.”
“Jesus, do you think that’s a good idea?” Dutch asked. “You’re in no condition, even I can see that.”
Syren shrugged his hand away. “First, my name is not Jesus. It’s Syren, use it. Second, I’m fine. I was raped, it’s not a fucking handicap. Not to me.”
Dutch stared at him. “Well, the shitty attitude is back. That’s as good a sign as any.”
The doctor appeared at Syren’s side. “Sir, we don’t know what you were drugged with. We don’t know the side effects or how long they’ll last.”
Syren walked over to his closet and picked out a dark suit. “I’ll keep hydrated. I’ll lie down on the plane, but I’m leaving.” After getting dressed, he called the pilot. Dutch would keep him up-to-date on what they did, he didn’t have to ask. As he walked out the door the doctor reminded him to get another HIV test after three months. Dutch promised to let him know what they found out about the drugs Thiago used.
All Syren had to do was salvage his relationship.
His energy carried him as far as the lobby then evaporated like smoke. His vision grayed, legs collapsed and Syren went down, the blue marble floor rushing up to meet his face.
Dutch kept him holed up in a private suite somewhere for two days. Syren didn’t bother asking where and how. On the third day he walked out despite Dutch’s protests. A quick plane ride later he was in North Carolina, outside Rafe and Gabe’s house.
He called Rafe’s phone and he buzzed him in secretly. Syren understood the awkward position he put Rafe in, but he’d take any help he could get. As he stood on the front porch, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he thought about what he’d say. What he’d do. He tried really hard to face the reality that he might not get the outcome he sought.
The door opened and Gabe appeared. “Really?” He crossed his arms, disgust on his face, in his snarl. “You fuck someone else and you’re here for what, forgiveness?”
Syren spread his arms. “This is between me and Kane, not you.”
Gabe grabbed him by the throat and pushed him back outside. “You made it my business,” he spoke through gritted teeth. Gabe slammed him into a pillar and Syren cried out when pain reverberated up and down his spine. “You made it my business when you refused to stay away from him, when you had us walk in on you getting fucked by someone other than my brother.”
“I didn’t cheat on your brother,” Syren croaked. “I didn’t have a choice in—”
“Fuck you.” Gabe’s fist landed on his jaw. Syren’s head jerked back then Gabe went away abruptly.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rafe’s voice rang out.
Syren opened his eyes, swallowing the blood that filled his mouth. Rafe had his husband by the front of his t-shirt, holding Gabe steady when he would have launched himself at Syren again. “Answer me, damn it.” Rafe shook Gabe.
“He hurt Kane! I warned him.” Gabe narrowed his eyes at Syren.
“So what, are you a fucking kid?” Rafe pushed his husband away. “Kane can fight his own battles. He doesn’t need you hurting anyone on his behalf.”
“Don’t lecture me,” Gabe lashed out. “You caused this when you told him where Kane was. I asked you not to and yet, you did.”
“What’s going on?”
Everyone turned to the front door. Kane stood there in jeans and a blue t-shirt, his arm in a black sling. His face hardened when he saw Syren.
“Kane, please.” Syren rushed to him. “I know what you saw, but please, let me explain.”