14 Months 14: ANZAC Day

He knew it was all over when without stopping, Michael drove past the weigh gates without stopping and directly onto a ferry which was preparing to leave the dock. Michael looked into the rear-view mirror seeing the substantial metal gangplank rise to seal off the ferry from any late arrivals as the engines churned to life below them.

"That was close, let's go up and get some air, shall we?" he asked and opened his door as if nothing was amiss in this whole situation. David followed knowing he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

*****

Kai heard the roar of the bikes and the sudden cursing from Zander and knew what had happened without asking, but he rushed into the living room to stop Zander from doing anything stupid like following him. Not only did he think Connor was suspect but he had been observing all of his brothers. As Kai looked at Zander, he could bet his right arm that Asher had gone with Darius. It was wrong that he was suddenly so suspicious of his brothers, but after reading David's texts and the evident despair there, he knew someone was betraying them from within, but he had no proof.

"Fucking stupid fucking, shit!" Zander yelled as he read the text on his phone and got up heading towards the front door as the roar of Motorcycles told him he was already too late to stop the fucking suicide mission Darius had embarked on.

"Fuck, I couldn't have said it better myself. Of all the stupid fucking..." Kai's words died off as Zander rounded on him, "You think they've gone to help David?"

"Fuck no, they've gone to get Sophie! Why would they go to get David?" Zander growled but was confused.

"David's texts," Kai held up his phone. "Michael's got him and taking him somewhere, but his phone is suddenly dead."

"Asher convinced Darius they could take on Justin alone and their riding up to Calypso Cove," Zander said.

"What the fuck?" Jayce said, coming into the room after following all the shouting.

Both speechlessly held up their phones and Jayce took his time reading and absorbing what they both said, the hardest to believe was Darius's text.

Darius: 12:05: Asher's breaking me out. It doesn't make sense, and I have a bad feeling that he is the leak we have been looking for. It will take us about five hours to get there and a little time to scout around. If I haven't texted by six, then you have your answer about who has been betraying us. Don't worry; I won't put our Angel in any more danger.

"If any of that's even remotely true then we have to warn Rob and his brothers that the council knows all the details about them helping us," Jayce said tamping down his emotions and becoming cold, hard and analytical. He scanned over the couple of texts from David that had come through before they stopped abruptly with a one-word text. "Ferry."

"Alright two choices. We conference with the guys in Sin City and work on a plan, or I call Jack while we get on the road to Sin City to try and head off Darius and Asher while we work out which ferry David is on as well as when and where it will land.

"What if that's what they want? All of us in the same place at the same time?" Kai asked. "I have a different plan, but it would mean you need to trust me, and given what these messages entail, you would be trusting me with your lives. You two are the only chosen ones, not in council custody as of this moment, if Ash is walking Darius into a trap as he suspected."

"Fuck," Zander ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Jayce. "How did this fucking happen?"

"We are Alliance men, supposedly untouchable," Jayce shrugged. "What did we have to fear? Okay, Kai, I'll trust you. Just so you know, though, if you get me killed, I will haunt you until the end of your days and into the afterlife."

"I'm in," Zander said not seeing that he had any choice now but to go with them or stand-alone because he wouldn't let his injuries which still slowed him down to become a burden to his brothers that were in Calypso Cove already.

"Okay, then we leave anything that can be tracked here: phones, computers, cars everything. We'll ride, but I need to sweep each of the bikes first so go get what you need and can't live without and be sure nothing you take can be traced in any way," he instructed and went to pack his own gear.

*****

Jack watched with a detached cynicism as Darius and Asher rode into the small town of Calypso Cove. He'd had hours to come to terms with what was happening. The chosen brothers seemed expendable to the council now, and he had to try and work out the truth from the many lies they'd been told. It was a well-known fact within the brotherhood that Asher was in love with Darius and for that reason alone what was happening was hard to believe.

There were theories on why he may have betrayed them and enacted the ultimate betrayal on the man he loved, but none rang true—none but one niggling gut feeling that Jack was loathed to acknowledge.

"You think he's getting him out of the line of fire?" Nick asked. He never held back on any of his thoughts no matter how confronting they were.

"Could be," Jack nodded. "We don't know that Ash has betrayed us at all. It could just be one of his stupid stunts."

"Rob and his brothers have all gone to ground and offered us a safe house to use as a home base," Tom said coming back to the window of the hotel they were staying in, close to Justin's hotel. "Are they here yet?"

"Yep, stopped down at that café," Nick pointed out the two bikes sitting in front of the café.

"Kai is taking the others to the Duke. No one has seen or heard from David since they boarded that ferry. Connor is still in the safe house, and those two are playing games down there. Somethings going down soon and whatever it is we're right at ground zero, and they're fucking playing games. Fuck! Ash is going to regret this shit when I see him next," Nick swore.

"You think he wouldn't know that?" Matt asked. "You think Ash has any intention of returning to us whether he is leading Darius into the snake pit on purpose or not? There is no way he'd even consider this if he didn't have an escape plan in place. We all know he's a fucking genius who only acts like a dick with no clue, and we also know that if he is the betrayer he is putting Darius somewhere he thinks is safe from whatever is coming. There is no way he would sacrifice him, so the question is not just what is coming, but when?"

"Better question," Nick grumbled. "Do we act first and get the jump on them all and retrieve what is ours to protect or do we wait like sheep while the wolves get their pack together to enact their plan?"

"There we have it, gentlemen," Tom sighed as four large men entered the same café and within minutes exited with Asher and Darius walking between them across the road and into the hotel owned by Justin Marquis. While Darius looked furious as two men shepherded him, Asher seemed relaxed as he walked behind Darius between two more of the men.

"Good enough for me," Tom sighed and walked away from the windows to plan their next move.

Jack closed his eyes and breathed, leaning his forehead against the window. This whole mess just kept getting more complicated, and all he wanted to do was honour his debt to his Angel, Frankie and save her daughter. Sophie deserved the life she wanted before her world fell apart and no matter what happened with his brothers. Her fate was the priority for him. She deserved far better than what she got at the hands of all of these men, including his brothers.

"Wait! That's not Darius," Matt snatched up a pair of binoculars that had dropped from Jack's hand. "The look-alikes are very good, but it's not them!" He turned his head back toward the café, the bikes were still there and dropping the binoculars he rushed out the door. He knew that the two men would probably be long gone by the time he got there, but he had to try.

Matt burst into the café, followed by Tom. He looked around wildly and seeing no one resembling his brothers. He barged his way through the small kitchen to the back door to find an alley and cursed. They'd lost them. He only hoped Jack would be able to track them if they still had their phones.

*****

Justin stalked into the gym, making both Sophie and Bill freeze in their training as he approached fury radiating from him. First, he had a brief whispered conversation with Lachlan and then he turned on Sophie.

"Come with me," he ordered. His tone was brittle as he took her by the elbow and steered her from the room.

"Justin, what's wrong? I haven't done anything. Justin, you're hurting me!" Sophie struggled to release her arm from his hold as he forced her from the room. She didn't need to look over her shoulder to know that Lachlan was following them and she felt dread pool in the bottom of her stomach. She had seen his darkness and anger but the fury radiating off Justin right then terrified Sophie.

Justin said nothing. The fact that her former captor had been stupid enough to come here and then tell a stupid story that they weren't who he knew them to be, made him boil. They would tell him why they were in Calypso Cove and what their plan had been. She was nothing but a contracted prostitute to these men, and even if there were any residual feelings for her, the fact that she was willingly and happily married now should have been enough to make them give up their hold on her. There was more to these men arriving two days before the planned battle, and he was going to find out what that was, even at the expense of his wife.

When she was finally dragged into a room and halted, Sophie gasped at what greeted her there. Two men bound to metal chairs, their heads were hanging down as if they weren't conscious. At a glance, they could have been Darius and Asher, but something was off about them, and she frowned.

"You know these two men?" Justin asked after hearing her gasp.

"They look like two men I know, but something isn't right," She took a step closer really looking at the men. "I don't think so," she said, tilting her head.

"Why do you think they aren't the men you know?" Justin demanded.

"Darius has a different body shape to that man; his neck isn't so thick. He just looks different," she shrugged. The man raised his head then and looked at her with dark coffee coloured eyes the swelling and bruising on one side of his face threatening to close one of those eyes. "Also, Darius has blue eyes," she said with certainty. "I can't help you, I'm sorry," she whispered, looking directly at the man.

He nodded wordlessly and lowered his head again as the guard standing behind the other man, who at first glance appeared to be Ash, lifted his head.

"And the other man?" Justin prompted his voice still brittle and his features hard.

"As I said at first glance, they could be mistaken for men I know, Darius and his best friend Asher, but it's not them. Maybe they are brothers," she suggested. "But that can't be right either. I'm sorry, I can't help you." She spoke directly to the man who groaned as his head was dropped down again.

"I'm sorry too," he croaked, lifting his head to look at Sophie. "Looks like you're as much a prisoner as we are."

"Shut up," Justin sneered. "Do you know who this woman is?"

"I don't know," he sighed and peered at Sophie with his one good eye. "Can you give me a hint? Was she on TV? In a movie? A singer?"

"I don't believe in coincidence, so you need to start telling me what you are doing here instead of the story you have been telling my men for the last hour," Justin sneered. Then he pulled out a gun from the back of his pants and shot the man in the foot so quickly that Sophie had barely had time to make sense of what she saw before the blood and yelling invaded her senses making her scream as much as the man who had been shot.

"I don't know her, man! I have never even seen her before!" he yelled. "Fuck!"

"So, you won't care that I am about to shoot her as well then," Justin said calmly and raised his gun to her chest.

Sophie froze all of the panic and fear she had been feeling stunted by the fact that this furious version of Justin was just about to shoot her. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't think.

"I don't know what the chick did to you man or if she deserves it or not but I can't tell you what I don't know!" he said in a rush of words.

"And you?" Justin swung the gun to the Darius look-a-like and shot at the floor between his feet.

"Look at me, mate. That chick would look like a child in my arms, and that's not how I roll," he shook his head. "I don't know her and don't want to know her.

Sophie watched the exchange, the gun coming to rest against her chest again. She tried to take a breath, but she couldn't. She felt the world shrink before her eyes to tiny pinpricks of light. It would finally be over. She had so much she wanted to do with her life, but deep down, she knew she would never get to live any of her dreams. Then even the small dancing dots of light were gone. Blackness.

*****

The moment Darius had stepped inside the café, he registered that coming here was a wrong decision. The question was who had set it up. He took a seat near the window as Asher ordered their coffee and came to join him. When he looked up, he saw the men behind Asher and went to alert him, but it was too late. Asher himself was being held as if he had been surprised by the ambush and as he felt the cold metal of a gun against his back, Darius knew it would be better to go and find out what was happening and pray his brothers were watching him.

Shock registered in his mind as two men of similar colouring took their seats, and they were forced to the back of the café and through the kitchen. All he could think of was why? Why had Asher done this to him, to himself? He assumed he knew the who and was living through the how, but the why of it eluded him.

"They took the bait," one of their captors said to Asher.

"I don't envy them," Asher sighed.

"They knew what they were getting into. Those men grew up in this life and have endured far worse trust me," another of their captors spoke. "Did you tell him?"

"No," Asher said and gave Darius a guilty sideways look.

"Good, she can fill him in herself," he said. "I'm Paul, that's Lincoln and the man with the gun trained on your friend is Boyd."

"What the fuck have you done?" Darius growled his eyes boring into Asher.

"The right thing for once. It's obvious someone back at the house is informing the council if not Justin of our every move. Whoever is doing that just gave them bad intel, and they picked up a couple of innocent bikers who bear a passing resemblance to us. Not only were we replaced but our bikes were replaced, and we are in the wind. Even if you let our brothers know where we were going," Ash explained patiently. "For once you have to trust me, brother, because one of our own is selling us out."

"Fuck," Darius groaned as he studied Asher's face. "So, what's your plan then?"

"To get you to show your willingness to give me the benefit of the doubt by handing over your phone," Asher said, holding out his hand for it. "You know as well as I do that someone is betraying us. All I am asking is that you trust me D. Trust that our friendship is worth more to me than anything anyone could offer me in a bribe."

Darius said nothing but stared into Asher's eyes. He knew him better than anyone, and he could see the sincerity in his face. He handed over his phone with a sigh and watched as Asher turned it off and popped out the battery for good measure. The gun in Boyd's hand disappeared and returned as some kind of magnetic wand that he waved over Darius checking for trackers of any description.

"Can I at least know where we're going?" Darius asked.

"You can ask, but I probably won't give you a straight answer," Asher let his grin show. Now that Darius had decided albeit grudgingly to give him the benefit of the doubt, he could relax a little.

The remainder of the car ride was silent. Darius frowned when they entered a gated drive, and he scanned the area surrounding the car, noting that where ever they were was highly fortified.

There seemed to be men and women everywhere, training or running the fence line. The car pulled up at a large farmhouse, and the men exited the vehicle indicating that Darius and Asher should follow them inside. Darius remained silent despite every nerve ending in his body being on fire with adrenaline, fuelled by the danger of being in an unknown situation with unknown enemies or were they enemies? He glanced at Asher, who seemed relaxed and unconcerned by the amount of muscle and firepower surrounding them. They were ushered into a cosy sitting room, and an elderly lady looked up at their entrance.

"Darius, it's good to see you again," she smiled.

"Maeve?" he questioned frowning at her. What the hell was Maeve Teasdale doing here of all places and looking for all the world like she was in charge? He turned to look at Ash for answers, but he just shrugged and stepped away to take a seat in a comfortable looking couch.

"Relax, Darius. I'm going to help you take down those stupid bastards on the council and get your Angel and the other women to safety," Maeve said seriously. "Have a seat," it was more of a command than a request, but he was so stunned by what was happening that he did as she asked without even thinking about it. "Now I'm going to tell you a story, one that's close to my heart and you are going to listen, not just listen like you normally would to indulge an old lady but actively listen and understand."

"Okay, but if that's what you want, you better feed and water him first," Ash chuckled. "It was a long ride, and we didn't get to enjoy our coffee."

"You're right," Maeve acknowledged and spoke quietly to one of the women beside her. "Gentlemen, if you would like to clean up, we'll have an early dinner. The boys will show you the way," she indicated the three men who had escorted them to this place.

*****

David got out of the car but rather than follow Michael, he leaned on the hood and watched him walk away confident that David would do as he asked. If this was an ambush, he wasn't going to make it easy for him. So, for the entirety of the ferry ride, he stood and watched the man as he climbed to the observation walk and viewed the ocean for close to an hour before he returned and got back into the car.

David considered his options. He could get back in the car with Michael and at his mercy or walk off with the pedestrian traffic. At least he knew what island they were landing on now thanks to the people who had stopped to chat as they walked around the old ferry. There were no bells and whistles on the old rust bucket, no lounge or canteen for comfort just a flatbed for cars and a few chairs for pedestrian travellers who probably had someone on the other side picking them up. He needed answers and the only way to do that was to stay with the man who could tell him what was happening and why. He took a deep breath. He was younger, faster and stronger he had no reason to worry, as long as it remained just the two of them. With, some trepidation, he moved to get back into the car when Michael returned.

"Why are we here?" David asked as Michael started the engine.

"Because it's a stepping stone to where you need to be," Michael answered enigmatically. "Despite what you believe, you are perfectly safe with me."

"Then why come without warning and give me no option but to leave the house, and Stella?" David pressed.

"The war is coming," Michael sighed. "Alliances aren't what they once were, and betrayals run deep." The cars in front of him began to move, and he edged forward slowly cursing at the time it was taking and checking his watch.