Page 28 of Endure the Pain

They left and Dr. Ben asked me to lift my shirt. I did and he looked over my pink scars. I had two. The smallest one was above my hip where I'd gotten shot. The biggest was a line that ran from my sternum to the top of my belly button. It was ugly.

“These look good,” he said and gestured for me to put my shirt down. “I read over your records from the hospital. Are you still on the antibiotics?”

“I took the last dose last night.”

“Besides the oxycodone, are you taking any other medications?” he asked.

“My birth control. I take the pill every morning.”

He nodded and pulled a pen light from his duffel bag. He shone it in my eyes. “Well, you’re definitely high. Your pulse is accelerated, which is expected. And like you said, if you were going to have an adverse effect, it would’ve shown by now. I’m not too worried. Take it easy and maybe have one of those gorgeous men watch over you for the rest of the afternoon.”

I thanked him and he let himself out. Jamie returned soon after. He told me that Louie had left and that he needed time to think things over.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my nose in his chest. “Any way I can talk you into taking a shower with me?”

His body shook around me, laughing. “You don’t need to talk me into getting naked with you, baby.” His strong arms lifted me up by my ass and carried me into the bathroom.

CHAPTER 9

For the next two weeks, most of my time was spent forming a plan with Rourke to get back at the Aryans. I’d invited Vincent to come stay at Quinn Manor again because we needed his hacking magic. I had him gather as much information as he could on every member in the Aryans, similar to what I'd had him do when I'd been looking into Samuel, but on a bigger scale. There were thirty-seven members of the Aryans in the New England area. We came to find out that the majority of the gang’s members lived in Connecticut and their main hangout-slash-headquarters was a dive bar called the Whiskey Bandit here in New Haven.

The leader of the Aryans and owner of the Whiskey Bandit was named Buck Werner. He was a disgusting individual with a hefty rap sheet to prove it. He’d had multiple arrests for hate crimes and assault, been accused of eight sexual assaults, and been a suspect in four murders. He’d been married five times. Two of his wives had died from drug overdoses. One had a restraining order against him and lived on the other side of the U.S. The fourth had killed herself—supposedly. His current wife was nineteen, twenty-five years his junior. According to her medical records, she was an ex-junkie who happened to be three months pregnant.

The info on the other thirty-six members wasn’t much better than their esteemed leader. A lot of sexual assaults, murder, and hate crimes. Some might have said I had no room to judge. The members of my family weren’t law abiding citizens either. I could take pride in the fact that my father wasn’t a racist or a rapist. A small blessing from everything I’d learned about the Aryans was that at least eighteen members were behind bars, hopefully being someone’s bitch or being passed around the prison yard like a PlayStation controller.

Along with learning all there was to know about each member, Vincent found everything he could about the gang as a whole. They made most of their money from dealing heroin and weed, but recently, they'd started selling guns.Our guns.Bastards.

After all the research, a plan was formed. The Aryans had killed three of our own and stolen our guns. We’d have to seek payment for the guns they'd stolen another time. For right now, we were out for blood. Rourke and I agreed that revenge for our fallen took priority.

The plan was to infiltrate the Whiskey Bandit and try to get one of the gang’s valuable members alone. Like Buck’s right-hand man, Dustin Peters, or Buck’s pet assassin, Alex Roth. I’d drunk myself into a stupor in order to read through the horrors in Alex’s file. There wasn’t any proof, but it was obvious Buck liked to send Alex after his enemies, which included witnesses who would have been key to putting Buck in jail. By the many crime scene photos Vincent had found, I could tell Alex liked to take his time, preferred to use knives, and I’d have bet all my money he had every characteristic of a serial killer.

Neither Alex nor Dustin would let down their guard around anyone, unless it was someone offering a piece of ass. Which meant I was going into the lion’s den to bat my eyes and offer to spread my legs to get one of them alone. Rourke argued that it’d be safer to do a drive-by or kill them while they slept in their homes. A drive-by felt messy and both Aryans had families. Alex lived with his sister and Dustin was living with his second baby mama. I didn’t want to risk innocents.

Rourke procured what I liked to call a kidnapper van, while Vincent hacked into the Whiskey Bandit’s security cameras. Asher volunteered to get us tech equipment that he and Vincent insisted we’d need. Dean was in charge of weapons. And I was tasked with finding wing-women. One didn’t just walk into a bar alone and not look suspicious. Nope. I needed to enter with a group of girls. I had Dean and Asher take me to an area of town where the…ladies of the night liked to conduct business. I found four that were young enough to pass as college students. I offered them each a thousand dollars to pretend to be my group of friends, taking the night off from studies to celebrate my birthday. I explained to them that after they ordered a drink or two at the bar, they were to leave. The four of them agreed eagerly and I told them to meet me down the street from the Whiskey Bandit.

All that was left for me to do was to find the perfect disguise and I’d really outdone myself this time.

Push up bras were, in my opinion, a secret weapon. When both Dean and Asher’s eyes dropped to the amount of cleavage I had on display as I stepped out of my bedroom, I knew I was right.

“I think I need therapy,” Rourke said, scrunching his nose in utter disgust. “I know you’re my cousin, but you don’t look like my cousin, which made me forget that you’re my cousin and I just checked you out right now. I’m going to be sick.” Rourke put a hand to his stomach and gagged as he turned away from me.

I laughed. “Your rambling totally sounded like me just now.” I glanced down at my outfit that consisted of Daisy Duke jean shorts, ankle boots the color of sand, and a white tank, with a red push-up bra peeking through. I completed the outfit with a new black leather jacket. Long strands of iron-straight tawny colored hair fell from where they were tucked behind my ear. My new wig’s length was longer than my real hair and was going to take some getting used to. What was really a trip were the blue colored contacts I had on. “I guess if my disguise is good enough to fool you, then it will be good enough to fool the Aryans.”

Dean and Asher both nodded and had yet to look away from me.

I put my hands on my hips. “Close your mouths, boys. You’ll catch flies.”

“You don’t look like you,” Dean said.

“Yeah,” Asher agreed.

“I was going to wear this for Jamie later, but based on all your creepy reactions, I’m worried he’d like it too much,” I grumbled as I flipped my fake hair over my shoulder.

“Jameson has been in love with you since we were kids. Everyone could see it but you,” Rourke said. “The guys teased the hell out of him when he first joined the ranks. They’d tell him he was pussy whipped without actually getting the pussy with how he’d drop everything whenever you’d call on him. I remember when you were sixteen or seventeen, he overheard one of Samuel’s enforcers saying some lewd shit about you. Jameson beat the guy with a tire iron in front of Stefan, my da, and Samuel. And no matter how much Samuel yelled at Stefan to intervene, he wouldn’t. Da said Stefan took one look at Jameson, then said,I’m sure he has his reasons.The guy survived but barely and after that, no one would risk talking about you or even looking at you for too long in his presence. Well, except for Louie.”

“Louie?” I repeated. Speaking of, he was back to avoiding me, but I was going to give him his space.

“Uh…did you tell Stefan the plan?” Rourke successfully deflected.