Page 54 of Chaos Luck Wrath

“Since Gage doesn’t remember shit, what do you remember?” Joey wanted to be pissed at his brother for getting behind the wheel and risking their girl’s life, but there had been no way of knowing that the Rohypnol was in his system until he was already on the road. It wasn’t until the doctors got Gage’s blood work back that it was confirmed he had been inadvertently drugged when he consumed Layne’s beverage.

Both sets of brown eyes were staring at her, begging her to recall even the slightest detail. She frowned, unsure that she had anything rattling around in her brain that was of any use. “I told you, I don’t know what I saw. When we left Cassidy’s, I had a pretty heavy buzz. The next thing I knew, all I felt was the car getting slammed into, followed by a bright ass fuckin’ light in my face.”

Gage held up a piece of paper that they all had read multiple times. “This note left behind in your lap doesn’t even make sense. Are you sure it wasn’t Liam?”

“I know my brother’s voice, it wasn’t his. Though I’m sure he had something to do with this.” She leaned forward and took the piece of paper from Gage. Her eyes scanned over the words again.

Family First. Fucktoys Second.

Time to honor your commitments to this family.

430 at 830 on 227 for 611.

Frustration overcame her. None of this made sense. It looked like some cheat code for a game console. She was on the verge of crumpling up the note and tossing it in the trash when her phone began to ring in her pocket.

The familiar name on the screen popped up, prompting her to immediately answer. “Hey, what do you have for me?”

Cowboy, the technological genius, didn’t sound like his typical giddy self on the other end of the line. “Hi there. Using the password you gave me for that contact of yours, I was able to coordinate a meeting for you.”

Oh good, this was perfect timing to meet with a Russian who quite possibly was off his rocker. “Mmhmm. You don’t sound like this is a good thing.”

A slight pause before Brandon responded, “There’s not much that creeps me out, but doing some digging on this guy… Well, just be careful is all I’m saying. Does Joey know that you’re meeting him?”

“No, and I expect it to stay that way for now.” Her eyes glanced over at the man who had altered the course of her life forever. She wanted to tell Joey everything, especially given her shitty choices lately that had landed her in hot water with both of her guys. There’s no way they would understand why she was doing this though.

When her nerdy friend didn’t respond, she prompted him, “You got it?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just,” he sighed. “He’d want to know.” He also didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Joey’s anger when he found out that he had helped Layne with this.

“There’s a lot of things we all want, but that’s not how life works. Anything else?”

Brandon was able to confirm that one of the men in the Chinese restaurant was indeed Nicholas Orellano, but all the scans of the second man in the ballcap were coming up with nothing at all: shit angles and no matches in public or private databases.

“Keep looking. Text me what I need to know and I will take it from here.” She ended the call with a tap of the screen and tucked her phone away.

Joey and Gage were both staring at her, expecting a recap of her conversation.

Gently, she eased the ice pack in Joey’s hand away from her face. “Cowboy confirmed that Orellano was with Liam at the restaurant, but he said whoever else was with him is like trying to track down a damn ghost. He hasn’t found anything so far.”

“Our work is cut out for us then. We find Orellano and go from there.” Joey was determined to make it as simple as that.

Seeing that Layne didn’t readily agree, he rested a hand on her knee. “Layney, it’s a step in the right direction,” he tried to reassure her.

She frowned as she stared down at the note in her hand again. “It’s always one step forward, two steps back, Joey. I feel like we keep showing up late to the party. We get a lead and Liam is already three steps ahead of us.”

Gage wrinkled his forehead in deep thought. “You need to stop trying to think like your brother, and start thinking like Liam.”

Layne lifted her eyes to look at Gage, overcome with confusion at his statement. Initially, she wondered if his brain was still half-drugged at the sense he wasn’t making. “What?”

Lifting his brow, Joey also looked at Gage. “Yeah. What?”

Easing himself off the gurney, Gage came over to Layne, squatting in front of her chair. “If you stop approaching this like Liam is your family and start considering him like the violently unhinged asshole he is, the less predictable you’ll be to him. I guaran-damn-tee you that he’s been banking on the small part of you that remembers a time when he wasn’t this warped.”

It was hard for Gage to imagine that Liam wasn’t ever this big of a psychopath, but Layne needed to see that any memories of Liam resembling a human being should remain in the past.

She sat there, letting his words sink in. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how much she was at fault for letting this situation get out of her control. If Liam wanted to go to war with his sister, he was going to be shit out of luck. Layne was going to bring the war to him as the judge, jury, and executioner of O’Reilly Enterprises.

Joey had driven them all back to O’Reilly Manor after escaping the slow as fuck discharge process, none of them wanted one another out of sight after everything that had transpired.

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