14 Months 11: March

"How do you know this stuff?" Darius asked genuinely curious why David would know that much about Sophie.

"It was a pretty raunchy song, it's only natural we asked about it after she helped our girls choose songs," he shrugged.

"Yeah I wasn't even sitting with you guys, and I knew that much about how she knew so many songs on that list," Connor agreed.

"So, Teasdale picked her as one of the girls from the game?" Connor asked.

"Yeah but you know Sophie, she just chatted about music and how she learned to play the ukulele or something like that," he chuckled. "Teasdale said she hoped Sophie would join her again for another chat sometime in the future," Darius added, proud of the fact that Sophie had befriended the biggest bitchiest old biddy in the CWA.

"I didn't see any of the council there tonight. Who do you think the judge and jury were tonight? Teasdale and her cronies?" Connor asked.

"Maybe but we were in the Lord's home territory, I wouldn't be surprised if they were there mingling in the crowd without us noticing. They've been out of the limelight until this year. Not sure anyone would recognise them if they didn't want to be spotted," David suggested. "Maeve wasn't mingling so she could hardly make any judgements."

The men continued to discuss the night as the three women slept leaning against them until they needed to buckle in again for the landing. As the aircraft taxied to where the car waited for them, the men's phones began to buzz and ding with a myriad of notifications as if only just coming within range of a tower. Darius looked up at the flight attendant who was moving toward the door.

"Something wrong with the wifi on this jet?" he asked.

"There is no wifi on this charter sorry, Mr Blackstone," she smiled. "I imagine you have picked up the local signals once we landed."

"Fuck," he added his voice to those of his brothers as they saw the texts checking on their safety and mentioning an incident involving the decoy party, but there were no details. Darius looked out of the window seeking out Jack waiting for them with the car trying not to panic that his brothers had been injured or worse. He considered how hard the night had been for Zander and how badly his Angel would take the news if anything had happened to him.

"Let's not worry the girl's," Connor spoke softly. "We'll get them home first then we'll get answers. There's nothing we can do from here, and I am sure Jack and the others are all over whatever happened." The expression on his face belied his calm words, however.

"Asher and Jayce hadn't boarded when the call came through, they are still down there and were heading to the hospital when I got this," David held up his phone. "Con's right, let's get the girl's home where it's safe and make a plan from there."

Darius nodded but said nothing as he watched Sophie, still mostly asleep for the landing. He dreaded telling her that something had happened to Zander and the others. The last two weeks had been fantastic between the three of them, and he understood why they were both upset tonight.

As soon as the doors opened, the men guided their women out of the plane, followed by Bear and Tina. Then hurried towards the waiting stretch limousine where Jack was nowhere to be seen.

"Bear, you drive," Jack snapped still juggling his laptop and several burner phones as he worked to get information on what had happened exactly. Nick's phone was still connected, and he could hear paramedics working to free the men and women from the wreckage.

"Sit tight everyone," Bear said, snagging the keys. I'll get us home so we can sort this out," he made sure everyone was settled before hurrying around the car to the driver's side.

"What's going on?" Sophie asked.

"It's..." Darius paused as Jack interrupted his reply.

"The truth, D. we all need that if we are going to get through this," he said gravely showing how dangerous the situation was.

"There's been an accident with the decoys, we don't have any details yet, but by the look on Jack's face it's not good news," Darius admitted.

"Zander?" she questioned her eyes becoming glassy.

"We don't know anything yet, but Jack is working on it, and Jayce and Ash are still down there. They will let us know what's happening as soon as possible," Darius tried to reassure her as the car raced through the streets.

"It's my fault. They were after me, weren't they?" Sophie said with tears forming in her eyes.

"Us," Stella corrected. "The three of us had decoys in that car."

"Has anyone checked on Victoria or Chloe?" Layla asked quietly. "We aren't the only ones at risk here. Well, at least I think they are in the same boat as us."

"Dave can give Rob a call when we get home," Connor reassured her. "Jayce is probably the best one to check on Bart and Victoria. I'll shoot him a text."

Sophie shook her head and let her tears fall. She'd been totally selfish, concentrating on Zander and making this all about her when the other girls were worried about everyone else caught up in this ridiculous situation. She closed her eyes as Darius's arms wrapped around her and let the pain of her last conversation with Zander run through her as she worried what had happened to him. It had to be bad for Jack to be as anxious as he was.

*****

Zander woke with a guttural roar as white-hot pain lanced through him. Minutes later hands were on him and moving him carefully to a board which was then slid from the opening created by the firemen with their jaws of life machine who stood back now letting the paramedics work. His memory came back slowly as he checked his pockets for his phone. He needed to know the others were okay. He needed to know Darius had gotten Sophie home safely. He needed to know that all of his brothers were accounted for. He could see Nick arguing with paramedics as they tried to force him into the back of an ambulance.

"Nick," Zander croaked out his head throbbing as his body sung in pain. Nick's head swung toward him, and he limped in Zanders direction. His voice was all but gone by the time he drew enough breath past the pain assaulting him and croaked out his need. "Sophie?" she asked, gripping Nick's arm and looking into his face.

"Landed safely, Jack has them now," Nick reassured him. "Let me do this. You let these guys fix you, you're a mess and will give that Angel of yours nightmares if you try to call her now. I got this man."

"Kai? Roo?" Zander asked, remembering who else was in the car with them, "The other girls?"

"Banged up as bad as you but they were good little soldiers and went with the nice paramedics. Now be a good boy and take your medicine like a grown-up," Nick said teasingly, but his voice caught as he watched Zanders broken body placed onto a gurney and lifted to the back of the ambulance. "I've got this brother," Nick called after him and finally let the paramedics take him to an ambulance as well. "Did you catch all that?" he groaned into his phone as he lay down on the gurney. Now that everyone had been successfully extracted from the car, he was in the best and fastest transport to follow them to the hospital.

"Yeah, I'm on it," Jack said. "Ash and Jack are liaising with the Lords and have men on the ground at the hospital to protect you all. Does he look as bad as he sounds?" Jack asked quietly trying not to alert Darius and Sophie.

"Worse," Nick admitted. "The dude trying to fix me is about to rip the phone from my hand. Give me a minute." The phone was muffled as Nick slid it into his pocket again. He didn't want to admit to anyone how bad Kai and Zander looked when they had been loaded into the ambulances.

Zander gave in to the pain as he knew Nick would get the information to the people who could do something with it. Right now, he was no good for anyone. His whole body sung with pain and he clung to it like a lifeline as the sea of darkness threatened to overwhelm him again. Sophie was safe, and Darius would ensure she stayed that way, he reassured himself as he tried without success to answer the paramedic's questions. He fought hard to clear his head, but it was too hard and letting go of the struggle he finally allowed himself to fall into the blackness of the void beneath his pain.

"Stop!" Nick yelled, making the paramedics freeze in their tracks as they opened the doors to the ambulance to move him into the emergency department. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the tall figures of Asher and Jayce at the entrance to the emergency rooms move towards him. Digging his phone from his pocket, he threw it to Asher. Jack knows everything that happened out there. Do what you gotta do," he said and collapsed back onto the gurney letting the paramedics rush him into the hospital. Asher watched him go and looked at the phone realising it was still connected to Jack and lifted it to his ear.

"Jack?" Asher said cautiously.

"Yeah, how does Nick look?" Jack asked.

"Better than the others they pulled out of that wreck. Paramedics are saying it was a miracle anyone survived. I have to admit two of the girl's looked like corpses when they came in," Asher said.

"We need to protect the girl who was the decoy for Layla she knows who did this. She was telling Zander about the trap when they were taken out. They plan to kill her if she survives and we need her alive," Jack filled them in on Zander's brief words to Nick. "Are the Lords there yet?" Jack asked.

"No, they were heading out to the crash site first then meeting us here. I can get Jayce to call them, we are going to need a small army to secure this place," Asher was deadly serious as he spoke. The concern and emotion of seeing his brothers so severely injured sobering any thought of his usual light-hearted banter.

"Con also suggested, Jayce call Bart and check on him and Victoria. They are part of whatever this messed up manoeuvre by the council is," Jack commanded. He was taking control rather than taking orders right now, and Jayce could just deal with it until he got himself together enough to wrestle control of their brotherhood back from him. "Dave will call Rob and fill him in," Jack said and finally ended the call knowing he had done all he could for his brothers for the moment and now he had to worry about the living that were here with him.

"You heard all of that?" Jack asked, turning to look at the men and women in the car with him. When they nodded slowly, he added. "Then you know as much as I do for now. We should stay in house seven tonight. Stick together until we get a plan of action together."

"Yeah alright," Connor said and looked to Darius for his agreement. Darius only nodded, seemingly unable to put words to his feelings as Sophie cried softly into his chest.

The wail of a siren suddenly broke the night air, and Jack looked up from his laptop and the myriad of phones he had been continually working on to squint out of the rear window.

"Stop or go?" Bear asked doing neither until he had it confirmed.

"It's probably routine, the council wouldn't bother reporting anything yet," Connor said but frowned. Tonight had not gone well, and the thought of a car chase in the luxury car didn't bode well for any of them.

"Pull over," Jack nodded after looking at each of the men in turn for confirmation.

Bear pulled over slowly and reached into his pocket, pulling out his wallet, assuming this was a routine check. He fingered the small gun he carried but thought better of it as a single policeman walked up to the car his buddy lagging somewhat behind but approaching from the other side. New headlights shone behind them as a car approached and before Bear even realised what was happening the car pulled in front of them essentially boxing them in as a second car without lights pulled to the side. They were trapped, and he wondered how hard he would have to ram them to get out of the trap he had fallen into.

"Shit!" Jack swore and pulled a gun from the shoulder harness he wore as the front doors were opened and the hiss of silencers went off. Someone, he didn't know who got a shot off as he realised, he had been shot in the back and the gun fell from his grip. Then the gas from a canister thrown to the floor began to hiss out into a cloud, and the doors were immediately shut again on the shouts of his brothers and the women's screams.

Darius looked down at the dark stain growing larger on his shoulder. He reached out to grab Sophie and pull her close as he held his breath fighting against the pull of oblivion as he positioned her beneath him and lay over her much smaller form. This was wrong, so wrong! He'd failed to keep her safe. Zander would kill him if the bullet in his shoulder didn't.

"Sophie, talk to me," he murmured, and the stillness of her body beneath him was more painful than anything else he was enduring. His last thought as he succumbed to the darkness was that he needed to save her and keep her safe from whatever what happening.

*****

Sophie woke up with a pounding heart and queasy stomach; for a second, she was thrown back to the memory of waking up in Darius's house for the first time. Her stomach rolled, and she moved to sit up, trying to quell the rush of acid from her empty stomach as it tried to escape her body. She blinked and swallowed hard. The room she had woken up in was dark, but small slivers of light peeked through heavy curtains allowing her eyes to adjust to the dimness and take in her surroundings. She was in a bedroom, a luxurious, spacious bedroom. The events of the night before came rushing back to her. Zander! Darius! Oh, God, her friends! All of her friends! She twisted her body to sit on the edge of the bed, her stomach heaving again, the retching sound from her throat loud in the silent darkened room.

She could feel the softness of the bed beneath her and the sheets that clung to her skin. Her skin! Fuck! She was naked. Darius? Had they managed to escape the roadblock? Her mind was fuzzy as she tried to remember what happened, but she had nothing beyond Darius pulling her beneath his body trying to protect her from the shots raining into the car and the smoke that suddenly surrounded them.

Her hands wandered over her body, checking for an injury that she may not be feeling yet. She didn't feel any different. She wasn't injured as far as she could tell and she didn't have the delightful soreness that came with being fucked by Darius or Zander. Fuck, Zander, he was hurt last night. She didn't even know how badly or if he had survived the attack at all. She felt tears prickle at her eyes as her brain ached with a monstrous headache hampering her understanding of what had happened and where she was.

The bedroom door opened, catching her by surprise, and she gasped clutching the sheet back to her chest in an effort to cover herself. She had no idea where she was or who had brought her here, and she peered at the big dark shape in the doorway praying it was Darius or one of his brothers, but she knew as the big figure crossed the room he was unfamiliar to her. The curtains opened momentarily blinding Sophie, who sat blinking against the brightness of the light beyond the curtains.

When she could see again, she took in the tall, well-built man standing like a dark spectre just staring at her. He had dark hair that curled around his face and his lips tilted up in a semblance of a smile as if finding her here was amusing to him somehow. His dark eyes were locked on her and Sophie admitted that he was somehow stunning and utterly terrifying at the same time. She felt the need to flee as her breathing increased, and she pulled the sheet tighter around her nakedness.

Having nowhere else to go, she backed her way across the bed slowly to put as much distance between herself and the spectre as possible. Her head was still pounding, and her throat was as dry as a desert which made her noise of surprise come out like a raspy croak as a panic attack threatened to overwhelm her and make her lose her mind. She didn't know this man and any hope that she had been brought here by Darius and his brothers dissipated as he spoke to her in an authoritarian voice.

"Hello Sophie, I trust you slept well," the man said in deep, resonant tones and stalked slowly toward her like a lion stalking his prey, wary yet confident of his ability to subdue her.

Sophie slipped off the bed dragging the sheet with her taking a step backwards for every step he took forward until she backed into the wall and looked up into his intense gaze, preparing to defend herself. He stopped an arm's length away from her and held out a bottle of water. She looked from the bottle to him sceptically. She wasn't stupid. He could just be trying to drug her again.

"I know you must be thirsty, take it," he encouraged. "It is just water. I assure you. I want you awake and conscious for what comes next."

"What comes next?" she whispered with her sandpaper voice.

"Take it," he said again edging closer until she reached out and took it from him to stop his advance. He stopped moving and tilted his head, watching her curiously as she tucked the sheet under her arms tightly and twisted the cap off the bottle before taking a drink.

Sophie sipped at the water, eyeing the man curiously. Her mouth and throat were so dry they seemed to rejoice at the sweet flavour of the water. Water had never tasted this good to her before, and she took a bigger sip further easing her throat. When she looked up again, he was still staring with that strange small smile on his lips as if he was pleased with her. He lifted his hand and touched her softly with just his fingertips caressing her cheek and jawline as she stood there helplessly mesmerised by the movement.

"Who are you?" she stuttered before taking another sip.

"My name is Justin Marquis," he responded, his voice soft as if not wanting to spook her any further.

"Where, why?" she asked, not knowing which question was more important at that moment. "Where am I? Why am I here," she asked, trying to make sense of her own words as he continued to watch her.

"You are in my house because I want you here. I have wanted you here since you were promised to me almost a decade ago, but others saw fit to hide you from me. Now they have paid for their sins," he spoke the last words with an edge of menace.

"Darius?" Sophie asked. "Zander?" She felt fear twist in her gut for the men who had looked after her so well until now. "Are they alive?" She asked her voice trembling.

"For the moment," he nodded. "My men were only ordered to incapacitate them not kill them. Though that is not who I was speaking of," he explained. "The continued well-being of your Alliance friends, however, depends on you and if you are going to be a good girl from now on."

"A good girl? What do you mean? I'm hardly a child," she asked her voice becoming high pitched with anxiety now that she had eased the dryness. "What do you want from me?"

Justin said nothing but moved closer, picking up a strand of her long hair and lifting it to his face breathing it in. Sophie watched him fear coursing through her as she fought not to strike out at him. She knew she couldn't fight this man. He was as big as Zander, and she knew deep down what his words had meant and what he wanted her to do to be 'a good girl.'

"You don't want me. I am not the girl I was. I'm a..." Sophie began but stopped on a garbled hiss as his eyes suddenly blazed, and his hand snapped out to grasp her throat. His grip was not overly hard but seemed to flex as if testing her necks size and frailness. Sophie could see the muscles in his arm and chest flexing as he held her there for long silent moments.

"You are mine. What you were or did before coming here, does not concern me and you will not talk about that time in your life again. You belong to me now and as such, what has come before me does not matter," he said in low, calm tones as if channelling the patience of a saint. "You are the granddaughter of Anthony Calabrese and you were promised to me when you were but a child. We were to be married on your eighteenth birthday. That time has come and gone, but the delay caused by your cousin can be rectified now that I have taken you back from those who did not deserve you."