Page 100 of Endure the Pain

He blames me. I know it was my fault. She’s gone because of me.I had felt myself shutting down again.

“You are a fucking asshole. How dare you blame her?” Brenna had raged.

“I’d shoot you now if she didn’t fucking love you,” Dean had growled.

Jamie had reached behind his back and pulled out his gun. He'd aimed it at Dean. “You all are rallying behind someone who's incapable of standing up for themselves, even to me. She’s going to Boston.”

Seeing Jamie aiming his weapon at Dean had seemed to give a spark of strength my darkness had needed to fight against my pain and stoked the flames of my rage. My body had moved without thought and I'd taken Brenna’s gun from her. I'd aimed it at Jamie. “How’s this for standing up for myself?” I'd asked and pulled the trigger.

Jamie had fallen backward to the ground, clutching his shoulder. Louie had knelt down next to him and helped him put pressure on his wound.

“Maura,” Stefan had said cautiously.

I had turned my gun on him. Both Will—my newest goon—and Josh had drawn their weapons. It had been good to see where Will’s loyalties truly lay.

I had scowled at Stefan. “You’re going to leave me the fuck alone, like you’ve been doing since I was released from the hospital. I won’t be going to Boston. The next person who tries to make me go, I’ll kill them.” I had looked back at Jamie and Louie. “You fucking come near me again, I’ll kill you both.”

I'd spun on my heels and walked back into the guest house. I'd held on until I'd been inside and out of view before I'd crumpled over in pain. Brenna had been there instantly to catch me before I'd hit the floor. Asher had showed up next, picked me up, and carried me back to my room.

“I’ll get her some pain medicine. Do you think we need to call Dr. Ben?” Brenna had asked as she'd rushed into my bathroom, where all my medicine was kept.

Asher had laid me on my bed. I'd lifted my shirt, revealing a bloody bandage. He'd peeled it back to get a look. “Yes. It looks like she popped a stitch.”

“Call Vincent and Finn, too,” I'd said.

“Are you worried your boyfriends will try and take you again?” Dean had asked as he'd joined us, carrying aglass of water. Brenna had also appeared from the bathroom. She'd spotted the water Dean had been holding and taken it from him, and then taken a seat on the bed next to me. She'd given me the water and the pills she had retrieved.

I'd quickly swallowed them. “No. At least not today. I want Vincent and Finn here because I’m leaving Quinn Manor and I’m going after the Aryans myself. And I’m going to need all of your help to do it.”

CHAPTER 33

We lay low for the next couple of days, glued to the TV as the news covered the explosions and the four men found hanging on the bridge. The first day, the news was stating that the explosions had been a terrorist attack. That evening, one reporter said he suspected that the hanging bodies on the bridge were related to the explosions and that everything was gang related. That reporter was out sick the next day and the news channels changed their tunes drastically. The four hanging Aryans weren't talked about again, as if it had never happened, and every news station was reporting that the explosions had been caused by an arsonist who'd turned himself over to the police that morning.

I wonder how many strings Stefan had to pull to make that happen?

Seven additional Aryans and five civilians were confirmed dead. Two of the civilians had been workers in the heroin house, one had been the bartender at the Whiskey Bandit, and the last two had been women. One of them had been a girlfriend to one of the Aryans and the otherhad been a known prostitute, both of whom had been inside the Whiskey Bandit at the time of the explosion.

I had known there'd been a possibility of innocents getting caught in the crossfire and I would undoubtedly carry that guilt forever, but I didn’t have the capability to feel it at the time. My darkness wouldn’t let me. So I buried it to feel another day.

Vincent had been monitoring the prisons to see if Sasha would come through and he did. The news briefly reported on it, stating that a bunch of prison riots had broken out that had resulted in afewdeaths. I had a feeling the downplay was also the work of Stefan.

After calculating all the deaths, there were only eight Aryans left to deal with. Within those eight were Buck Werner, the leader of the Aryans, and Alex Roth. My plan was to save those two for last. I wanted them scared. I wanted them to watch their comrades dying all around them. I wanted them to suffer.

As suspected, the Aryans went into hiding. Which is why we had placed GPS trackers on all of their vehicles and hacked their phones. Interestingly, Alex separated himself from Buck, and they both went in two different directions. Alex headed toward Cornwall, while Buck and the rest of the Aryans went to Hartford.

Alex seemed to be the wisest among the bunch, because he ditched his phone right away and found and destroyed the GPS tracker we had on his truck. He must have shared that knowledge, because an hour later Buck’s phone was also ditched and the trackers on his and the other Aryans' vehicles were also destroyed. They probably thought that they had outsmarted us, but they'd failed to check the women’s cars. The trackers on the cars belonging to Buck’s pregnant, nineteen-year-old wife and to Alex’s sister were still pinging strong, leading us straight to them.

I sent the guys out to confirm that the locations were legit. Buck and his Aryans were staying in an apartment above a bakery. According to Asher, the Aryans rotated guarding the front entrance by hanging out in the bakery. Dean and Finn found Alex holed up in an old house in a rural area with his sister.

With the confirmed locations, Brenna and I packed up our BFGs—sniper rifles—and left for Hartford. We were to meet Asher on the rooftop of a ten-story building down the street from the bakery. We parked in the back alley and entered the building through the back entrance. It was a long and fucking tiring trot up the stairs.

We set up our rifles while Asher kept watch on the bakery through his binoculars. It was overcast and the airsmelled like rain. The sun wasn’t due to set for a few more hours. So only the weather was threatening to make our jobs harder. That was, if we could get this done before nightfall.

“You’ll need to take them out when they change shifts. It should be soon. They haven’t switched since this morning,” Asher explained.

“Okay,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait until Dean and Finn get here?” he asked.