The Love We Hate

CHAPTER 1

The muffled sounds of a man in pain rented the air like a bad soundtrack from a horror movie. Danielle ground her teeth together and looked away. A shudder ran through her body. Like cold dead fingers tracing her spine. Totally by reflex, she wrapped her arms around herself and held on tight.

The air in the room seemed to grow heavy enough to make breathing difficult. Her eyes landed on the only window in the room. It was dark outside, but Danielle didn’t need light to know that all she would see was a dilapidated tall red brick wall of the warehouse next door.

Both the warehouse next door and the one they were in belonged to her family. They were, however, old and abandoned. Or at least they had been until Danielle brought her wounded brother here to hide.

It still amazed her how in one reckless act her family went from the feared monsters of the criminal underworld to rabbits in open season.

Before they even made it back from the forest, word had already spread that Clement Marvick and two of his sons were dead. She suspected the source of the news had been the man that helped her get Chip out of the forest. Hence why she had ditched him and taken her brother where no one would look. At least for a few hours.

It wasn’t like she really blamed the guy. As the saying went: cut down the tree and the monkeys will scatter, Danielle had witnessed the scattering firsthand.

Those that hadn’t left out of fear for their uncertain futures had turned on them. That was the reason Danielle had to bring them here. In a rat infested building. Somewhere she hoped no one would think to check. Especially not Lorenzo and his men, if they wanted to make sure every single one of them was dead.

She blinked and adjusted her sight to look at her reflection. Damn, Danielle thought. She looked worse than something the cat had dragged in. And it wasn’t only the dirty clothes she still had on. Her face and every exposed piece of skin looked like she had spent a good hour rolling around with a pig or two in mud.

The groan of pain yet again piercing the air around her reminded her that she at least looked better than her brother. And felt better too by the sound of it.

Danielle turned to look at her brother, Chip, who was being patched up by someone with as much medical experience as a window washer. Her hand came up and scraped through her hair in frustration. Her long brown hair tangled between her fingers, reminding her yet again of what a mess she was.

She focused on her brother and cringed a little. It wasn’t like she could have walked Chip into the nearest available emergency room for professional care. Her father had held many people in various professions in the palm of his hand like tiny baby birds he could kill with the slightest squeeze whenever he liked. Any one of those would have done his bidding. That also meant anyone of those would have gladly killed Chip and Danielle if they even smelled a smidgen of weakness. And the truth was Chip wasn’t only weak, but he was at death’s door already.

As much as Danielle had always wished and dreamt that her entire crime family could just crumble and die so she could be free to live her life away from all the crime and guns, she was hard-pressed to admit, that her safety depended on the crime empire still standing. If Marvick fell, Danielle was dead meat. And not the bullet in the head kind, no. The crimes her father and brothers had collected over the years and the hundreds of people they had manipulated and hurt would ensure whoever got their hands on her made it as gruesome as possible.

Something clattered on the floor suddenly and Danielle raised the Glock she had never set down. It took her a second to realize it was a pair of scissors that had dropped. Her eyes darted over to her brother. He had fewer open wounds now; she realized. A cocktail of emotions hit her. She was grateful he was alive and would probably survive the gunshots he had received. But she was also scared and questioned herself if saving Chip had really been the right thing to do.

Chip had given her a task. She hadn’t carried it out. When he finally recovered enough from his injuries to think coherently, Danielle knew she would have questions to answer. If the universe had been feeling generous, it would have allowed Innocent to live instead of Chip, but that wasn’t what happened.

Her chest constricted a little at the memory of the family she had lost. They couldn’t even organize a decent burial because, one, they were in hiding, and two, she had no idea what Lorenzo had done with the dead bodies. It was highly possible the man would make everything disappear like they had never existed. That’s what her father would have done had the tables been reversed. After all, there was still such a thing a the law and no one wanted it to come knocking at their door.

Just then, the man working on Chip cleared his throat and stood up. Effectively cutting through Danielle’s thoughts. He removed the surgical gloves and grabbed a mutton cloth that looked questionably clean and wiped his sweaty hands.

“How is he?” she asked around the lump in her throat.

The man looked up and gave her what she assumed he thought was a reassuring smile. JC was old. Not grey hair, teeth falling old, but old enough to be her father. The man had been with their family for decades. Daniel had known him all her life. Of the many goons and dangerous men her father had kept around, JC had always been like a gentle bear. She couldn’t remember a time when she had actually seen JC take part in the evil acts. It actually begged the question of why Clement Marvick had kept him around. Anyhow, Danielle guessed that was why she had been willing to place Chip’s life in his hands.

“If he doesn’t develop any complications or an infection, he will be just fine. As far as I can tell, nothing major was hit.”

Danielle’s eyes traveled over her brother. Three gunshot wounds, but nothing fatal. Chip was one lucky son of a dog.

JC cleared his throat again before continuing, “We can’t stay here, Miss Marvick.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. The warehouse worked well for a hole to hide in for a few hours as they patched up some wounds and plotted their next move. It wasn’t a place where she could even shut her eyes and take a nap for half an hour.

“I know,” she answered in a bitter tone, even though it wasn’t his fault. Danielle took a deep, calming breath and thought for a second. “I am still trying to figure out which of our properties we can go to as soon as we can move Chip.”

JC was already shaking his head no before she could even finish. “You can’t go to anything under the Marvick name. Might as well stand in the middle of the street in the central town and shout ‘shoot me!’”

A frown immediately formed on her forehead, not appreciating the visual. “What do you suggest?”

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow, as though the answer was obvious. And maybe it was, she thought. “Someplace new. Not connected to my father or brothers?”

A single nod was her answer.

Danielle took a second to think. “But we need money for that. Everything is back home, and I was too s**t scared to go there before coming here to hide.”

The situation had been so dangerous and urgent. Danielle had been thinking on her toes. She had knocked unconscious the goon that had helped her get her brother out of the forest, refusing to take any chances. She had also ditched the SUV, then stolen a random car to bring her brother here, before dumping that one as well and setting it on fire to destroy the evidence.

A smile tugged at JC’s lips. “That wasn’t you being s**t scared, that was you being wise. Like you have always been. Anyhow… Don’t worry. As soon as I heard things had gone south in the forest, I picked a few things and left the house.”

JC reached down for the backpack he had arrived with when she called. It seemed it held more than the first aid kit he had been using to fix Chip. Danielle never knew she would be so glad to see her purse and a healthy wad of cash.

Relief flowed through her for a moment. It was a ray of light in a pitch-black room. Danielle nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. So where are we going?”