The Love We Hate

CHAPTER 10

“I am going to make sure Lorenzo and his gang of idiots all eat crow.”

Danielle sighed and rubbed her fingers against her throbbing temple. Things were certainly bad. Actually, that was the biggest understatement she could think of at the moment.

Things had begun going south when Chip had driven them out of the city to a secluded family farm she hadn’t even known existed before today.

Even though it had been too dark outside to make out much of what was around, Danielle could already piece together that this was not a farm that was flourishing with healthy livestock and green crops all around. The house alone was not falling apart, but it was clear no one had lived here for many years and when someone had bothered to make these walls a home, they hadn’t cared to make it warm and welcoming.

On the good side, they were not short of rooms even though three more men had come with them. It seemed her brother still had some loyal men on his side, despite the fall of the Marvick name.

The dusty farmhouse had five bedrooms, two of which were self-contained with tiny bathrooms with nothing more than a tiny shower stall and a toilet squeezed into them. There was a large living room that doubled for the dining room as well. The rest of the house comprised an old kitchen and a basement where an unconscious Trey had been thrown as soon as they got there.

Simply put, the house was enormous enough to accommodate everyone. It was definitely an improvement from the shitty hole they had been hiding in for weeks in the city. But Danielle couldn’t even bring herself to appreciate the extra space. Dread had tied her insides into painful knots and they only got tighter with every passing minute.

JC looked around as he placed the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. Every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust collected over the years. His face pinched as he obviously imagined the work needed to get it all clean.

At least the house had electricity, but there was barely any furniture in the house except for beds and a two-seater couch that looked about a hundred years old.

The only person who seemed unbothered by the state of the house was Chip. He was seated on the couch as comfortably as a king, relaxing on a piece of furniture that cost more than his servants made in a year. Nothing about his demeanor told of a man recovering from injury and hiding in an abandoned farmhouse, seated on an old, dirty couch. He looked very smug, like all was right with the world.

After shooting off orders for the other men to take turns guarding the place, he was back to talking about all the horrifying things he was going to do to their unconscious captive in the basement.

Danielle had heard enough to turn her stomach on the long drive already. She couldn’t take much more of it.

“Torturing him won’t bring them back,” she murmured quietly before she could think better of it.

Danielle braced herself when a heavy silence immediately fell around them. Fortunately, Chip didn’t get off the couch. But he didn’t stay quiet.

“You may not feel like our brothers and father need payback for their deaths…”

“I didn’t say that.”

Chip snarled. “Problem is, my dear sister… every time you open your mouth, it sounds like you are defending that piece of s**t downstairs.”

Danielle folded her arms over her chest and kept her face straight. “I’m not defending anyone. I am only concerned that we are not in any position to provoke Lorenzo and his men. In case you missed it, brother,” she spat the word ‘brother’ back at him with as much mockery as he had put in his own words. “The Marvick empire has crumbled. We are hiding like rats. We have no men and no loyalty in this town anymore. We should have just left him in that car park and walked away.”

“Never!” Chip bellowed and shot out of the couch so suddenly Danielle stepped back in instinct to protect herself.

Chip pointed an angry finger at her. “You ran out of that forest like a coward instead of ending things. That was enough of an insult to our name. It’s your fault that all our men scattered.”

Danielle gaped at him. Was her brother crazy? Was he really going to ditch all the blame on her head? “What would you have expected me to do? You and dad underestimated them and they almost killed you all. I saved your sorry ass!”

“And what? You expect me to give you a f*****g standing ovation? Do you think I don’t know you chickened out of a very simple task I had given you?”

Danielle took another step away. By simple task, Chip was referring to the mission he had given her to sneak into Lorenzo’s forest house and kill both Abigail and Talia. If Chip found out part of the reason she had backed out was that she ran into Trey and even left him alive when she should have killed him, she was certain her brother would peel her skin off like a dead cow before roasting her over an open flame.

“You are a disappointment,” Chip said in a calmer voice that hurt Danielle more than any shouting he could have done, even though it wasn’t the first time she was hearing the words.

Air left her lungs in a whoosh as though she had just been punched in the gut. Danielle knew she should have thicker skin by now. Hell, her skin should have been as thick as a hippo's by now. She had grown up in this atmosphere. She was well accustomed to Chip’s verbal and physical punches. He never held back. But, damn. It hurt.

After a tense moment, she cleared her throat and tried to hold his gaze. “I told you I couldn’t get past their security system, so I came back to help... I did my best.” The lie she had practiced in the mirror left her mouth with a bitter taste, but there was no other way around it.

Chip scoffed and turned away. He looked at one of his men. “Make sure that fool is tied up. I will make sure by the time I’m done with him, he will be begging me to kill him. But not before I get to see the look on Lorenzo’s face when he realizes I have one of his boys.”

Chip left the room and headed for the bedroom he had chosen. There was a limb in his step that reminded everyone that he was still not a hundred percent well. Danielle couldn’t even bring herself to feel anything resembling pity for him.

She exhaled and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, wishing she could just walk out the door and never look back. Would Chip hunt her down? She wondered. Danielle frowned. From the events of the night, she had no doubt he would. It still remained a mystery how he had found her at the club. Her phone had been off. He couldn’t have tracked her like he used to do in the past. It was disturbing to realize that she couldn’t have stolen even a few hours of freedom. Then how could she disappear and steal her whole life back?

A throat cleared, breaking the silence and disrupting her thoughts. Danielle’s eyes jerked in the direction and landed and then locked with JC’s.

“Are you okay?”

Danielle scoffed. She shook her head and took a deep breath before walking towards the kitchen where JC stood at the threshold watching her.

“Could I have handled that better?” she asked quietly, clearly not wanting to be overheard.

JC looked in the direction Chip had left. The other men were outside checking the parameter or having a smoke. He settled his understanding eyes on her again. “Don’t let him get to you. Chip is consumed by the need for revenge, but you know he cares about you.”

A skeptical brow arched over her eye that said, ‘Yeah, right.’

The old man had the decency to fight the smile that threatened to crawl over his face. “In his own way,” he amended.

Danielle rolled her eyes. She thought Chip’s version of care was as poisonous as a deadly snake’s venom. And she said as much. “If it wasn’t Marvick blood running in my veins, he would have already killed me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You know I’m right. Which scares me… what’s he going to do to that man in the basement?”

JC gave her a serious look. “For your sake, stay out of that.”

How could she? Danielle rubbed the back of her neck. Why couldn’t Trey have just ignored her? If he hadn’t followed her, he wouldn’t be tied in their basement waiting for his death sentence. Danielle didn’t want to feel guilty about it. She wasn’t even sure it was the guilt she felt or some other confusing feeling.

“How did Chip know where I was? How did he even know I had sneaked out?” She didn’t want to accuse the only person she thought she could actually trust, but she had to ask. JC wouldn’t have known where she went, but he would have known she had left the house. Had he told Chip?

JC’s brows furrowed in a frown. “I didn’t tell him. He received a text message. I couldn’t warn you because I didn’t know it was about you until we got to the club.”

Danielle regarded him quietly. JC had remained in the car at Chip’s instructions while her brother went crazy with a metal pipe in the parking lot. That little detail reminded Danielle that in their world, there really was no one she could count on to have her back.

She couldn’t count on JC. He was only a band-aid that came after every cut, but was never there to stop the knives from piercing her skin. And now it seemed she had to also worry about whoever had outed her to her brother. A random someone in the club who had seen her and knew who she was?

Her life was seriously messed up, she thought with a sad sigh. And Trey had landed himself right in the middle of it. He was a very dead man if she did nothing, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do anything. She had her own neck to protect.