Love is a Game

Chapter 2 Baran

CHAPTER 2

BARAN

Baran put away the hammer and walked to the sink to wash the blood off his hands. That was the second man this month who had tried to abduct him. The only reason he’d let him live was because he knew the mercenary hadn’t come to kill him.

Angel looked down at the unconscious man who lay sprawled on the autopsy table. Damon had never told them how he’d gotten the contraption into the basement, but he hadn’t stopped there. The bright lights above the bleeding man, the metal furnishings lining the walls… everything screamed torture chamber from a horror movie. For some reason, Damon always said he felt totally at ease here.

Angel took a step back to protect his Italian loafers from stepping in a puddle of blood. He hated any kind of dirt.

“Who would have thought someone would go through this much trouble to have you for his son-in-law?”

Baran’s lips tightened. Who would’ve thought indeed?

“I wonder if he will raise the bounty on your head,” Angel pondered out loud. There was a glint in his eyes that showed he was enjoying this a little too much.

“He hasn’t yet,” Damon said to his twin from across the room. His back rested against a wooden storage cabinet that had seen better days.

Baran could only imagine where their top enforcer got his info from. The guy was a spy master of old. His network of snitches and informants ranged from junkies to chamber maids, from soccer moms to people on Capitol Hill, and many in between.

“Well, it can’t be long before he does,” Angel said. “Failing not once, but twice at a kidnapping can’t be good for his street cred. He’s not going to give up. But that’s what you get when you knock up the daughter of a man called Black Cobra.”

“I did not knock her up,” Baran growled for the nth time. He hadn’t even f****d her. The girl had just turned eighteen, she was barely legal. She wasn’t even his type; he preferred older, more mature women.

“That’s not the word on the street,” Damon said.

There was no judgment in his voice, and Baran knew his tactical mind was only relaying what people said. Still, it grated on his nerves that some pesky little teenager who had a crush on him had managed to turn his life upside down.

Damon gave him a grave look. “I don’t think you should go to Istanbul anytime soon.” As usual, he was thinking two steps ahead.

Baran cursed as he sent Yuri a text to come pick up the unconscious merc. He had so many things on his mind that he hadn’t even thought about the repercussions on his planned trip. Once a year his entire family gathered in Istanbul. The annual Kaplan family weekend was a time-honored tradition, and unless you were incarcerated, or comatose, you couldn’t get out of the event. Not that he wanted to—he was looking forward to it. He’d been living in San Francisco for a few years and he missed his homeland. Now, one infatuated girl might ruin that visit as well.

“Women are nothing but trouble,” he muttered.

“Sweet, sweet trouble,” Angel said with a grin.

Ah, yeah, he knew exactly what the guy was thinking. The twins had been searching for a hacker who had made a deal with them and then had run off. They hadn’t taken it well. You didn’t f**k over a Bratva guy and live to tell about it. Although, he supposed they didn’t want to kill Onyx. No, they wanted to make her their pet as payment for her misdeeds.

She might be better off dead.

“What’s the latest word on your fugitive?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’ve ordered a set of custom-made black leather cuffs just in her size.” Angel’s eyes sparkled, filled with glee at the prospect of caging the woman who had wronged him and his brother.

There was a darkness to him you wouldn’t guess from his deceptive angelic features, Baran thought. He knew what it felt like.

He took a bottle of raki from the mini fridge they had stashed in the corner. “So you’re that sure you’re gonna capture Onyx, huh?”

“You tell me,” Angel said with a challenge in his voice. “You’re the gambler who supposedly never loses. How much did you bet on us finding her?”

Baran poured two glasses and gave one to Angel. “You know me all too well,” he admitted. “I didn’t place a bet whether you are going to find her or not, since I think that’s almost a given. The pool is about when it’s going to happen. And I have to say, it's taking you guys much longer than most expected. I, of course, already anticipated that so I chose a date the furthest in the future. So far, it looks like I'm going to win.”

Damon gave him an acid look. “Fucker.”

He shrugged. “Onyx is on the run from the authorities and from you guys. Never underestimate a desperate woman. That’s when they are at their most dangerous.”

“You would know,” Angel said pointedly.

Baran ignored the quip. “Especially if she’s one of the top hackers in the world, and on the FBI’s most wanted list. Still, that’s no excuse for you to take this long to track her down. She’s been eluding you for months now. Pick up the pace, guys, will you? It’s becoming embarrassing.” They were his blood brothers, so he could take their s**t, as well as dish it out.

“The net is closing in on her,” Damon retorted. “She was in Hong Kong a week ago. Busted up some power plant. She’s quite the little environmental activist.” He sounded proud.

To Baran, Onyx sounded like everything he needed in a woman right now: elusive, and far away from him. Anything was better than being the object of a little girl’s fantasy and being hunted down for a shotgun wedding. Sadly, he couldn’t outright kill the cobra guy; the man was his big brother’s best friend. All he could do was wait until the inevitable moment when the girl would come clean. She couldn’t fake a pregnancy forever, now could she. Once that happened, his life would return to normal. He’d once again be Baran Kaplan who only had one mission in life: avenge his sister.

Speaking of which…he looked at his watch. He had an appointment in fifteen.

“Got somewhere to be?” Damon asked.

Baran pointed up at the ceiling, toward their nightclub which would be booming in a few hours. Damon’s eyes narrowed and Baran guessed his friend had an inkling where his appointment was. As long as he didn’t know who he was talking to and why.

“He’s a junkie,” Damon said, dashing his hope. “You can’t trust a word he says.”

How the hell had he found out? “Don’t butt in, kardeş,” he warned.

“You calling me ‘brother’ is exactly the reason I’m sticking my nose in your business,” Damon replied.

Baran nodded in acknowledgment. He’d take a bullet for the twins, as they would do for him, but some things a man was just meant to do alone.

“Going after Scorpio again?” Angel guessed, and without giving Baran a chance to reply he added, “Good. I hope you find that cocksucker and make him bleed. Just do it slowly so it will last longer. Start with his toes and teeth. Anyone taking out a little girl deserves to suffer before he dies. Making his death quick would have angels cry and demons laugh.”

No one had a more warped sense of justice than the twins had, besides Kristoff maybe. And Viking, the guy who had saved him all those years ago.

Damon scowled. “I’m not saying he should stop looking for that fucker. I’m saying he shouldn’t go at it alone. Especially not when he has a target on his back. This supposed informant could be a trap. The only thing a junkie wants is his next fix. He’ll sell his ass, mouth, and f*****g soul to chase that high.”

Yeah, Damon had never been the eloquent one of their little circle of Bloody Ones, as they were called.

Damon was wrong though. Baran couldn’t involve any of them in this. This was personal. Not even his family back in Istanbul knew who he was looking for. They had found the culprit who had betrayed them and put a bullet in his head. To them, their blood was avenged, and the case was closed. They thought Scorpion Man was a figment of Baran’s imagination. That he’d conjured up a persona which seemed to come straight out of a horror movie, to help him deal with what had happened.

“It might just be another dead end,” Baran said, trying to get Damon off his back.

“You don’t really believe that,” Damon said.

No, he didn’t. He got up and took the stairs toward the club. Seventeen years had passed since his sister was murdered, and not a day went by that he hadn’t thought of her. He only had one clue—a man he had seen for a short time. The man with large scorpions tattooed on his arms. Two beasts with raised tails that radiated dominance and aggression. He’d been a powerless kid then, but now he was a man. He was going to find Scorpion Man, rip out his spine, and use it as a hat. Maybe then, finally, he could stop dreaming about little Leyla crying out for him. Perhaps then he would stop hating himself for not being able to protect her.

***

The junkie waited for him at the bar and looked exactly as Damon had predicted; a fidgety man with thinning hair and rotten teeth. The guy was probably in his twenties but had that gaunt look in his eyes of an eighty-year-old who had seen it all, and not in a good way.

“Can I get you anything?” Brent, the bartender asked. He gave the junkie a suspicious look but knew better than to ask any questions.

“I could use a drink,” the junkie quipped. His tongue wet his lips as his left leg kept trembling. It was a nervous twitch which betrayed the fact he was close to putting a needle in his arm again. Track marks scarred the flesh of his forearms; places where he had impatiently scratched the skin until it began to peel.

“Give him a drink,” Baran said, after Brent silently asked him for permission with his eyes.

“I’m Rupert,” the junkie said.

Baran didn’t care if the guy was Rumpelstiltskin. “You said you have information.”

Nervous eyes darted across the closed nightclub, sizing up the expensive-looking, high-class inventory. Flux wouldn’t officially open for a few hours, but he could see the wheels turning in Rupert’s head. He was imagining the place coming to life in the late-night hours, filled with patrons in glamorous outfits, having arrived in expensive cars. The kind of people who didn’t have to sell their ass in some dark alley to chase a high. No, they had a dealer to supply them with infinite amounts of white powder or meth, or whatever else they needed to get them through the night.

“It’s a nice place.” Rupert downed his drink and put the glass back on the bar. He started scratching his elbow.

When he fell silent again, Baran took a deep breath. Every single cell in his body was urging him to slam the fucker’s face onto the bar, put a gun to his head, and demand answers. Except the guy already looked one step away from a heart attack and Baran couldn’t have him die just yet.

Instead, he asked the obvious question, to speed things along. “What do you want?”

“H. Delivered to me every month.”

Baran closed his eyes for a second and counted to ten. The guy actually thought Baran would become his new dealer. If Viking were there, this would be the moment he’d start to cut off Rupert’s fingers. Damon would have nodded, giving the guy the illusion of consent, before going to get his chainsaw. Angel would have laughed in his face, and then would have punched his teeth out of his mouth. And he didn’t even want to think of what Kristoff would do. No one in their right mind would ever want to know how their pakhan dealt with people who insulted him.

Obviously, dear old Rupert had no idea who he was dealing with. Thing was, Baran would gladly give him any kind of drugs he wanted. Except his Bratva didn’t do drugs. If he got this fucker any kind of smack, word would go around that the Bloody Ones were dealing in drugs and rumors like that took on a life of their own. They would get heat from the cartels, and other Bratvas who did deal. They could take the heat, as Kristoff’s Bratva was the biggest on the West Coast, but Baran couldn’t jeopardize them like that for his personal business.

He took out his wallet and pulled out ten one hundred dollar bills. Rupert’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

“Tell you what. You start talking and there’s more where this came from.” Money got people talking. To some, it was the only God they worshiped.

Rupert snatched the bills away so fast, Baran could see he was obviously an accolade at that altar.

“Saw him last week,” Rupert said. “He was at a fight. Big guy. Huge scorpions tattooed on his forearms. When he moved, it was like those scorpions fought each other. Never seen anythin’ like it.”

Baran had never seen anything like it either. In a way, he admired the man who had kidnapped him and his sister. There had been a strength to his gait and in the way he held himself. He could barely remember the man’s face—probably wouldn’t recognize him if they passed each other on the street—but he did remember that tattoo, and the way his men had both feared and respected him. Baran couldn’t wait until the day he found him and cut those scorpions off his skin.

“Tell me where I can find him.”

Rupert tapped his bony fingers on the bar, indicating he wanted more cash. After Baran complied, he grinned, showing off his rotting teeth one by one.

“I know where he will be Friday night.”