Page 123 of Arran's Obsession

That’s why Moniqua had been here, and what her glance across the room had meant. He’d come looking for me.

Just as I was taking him in, he reached for me. The heavy music cut out. Riordan captured me in a rugby tackle and threw me over his shoulder.

In the same instant, Shade wrestled me back then threw a punch at my brother. Riordan returned the act, laying his fist into Shade’s gut. The two men tussled.

“Get your fucking hands off my sister,” Rio yelled. “Gen, run for it.”

In shock, I staggered back on my heels, Manny’s skeleton t-shirt men right behind me. Overhead, bright lights sprang on, dousing everything in sudden, sobering white. At the club entrance, the big doors were thrown open, the team working to get everyone out.

“Time, everyone. Divide is now closed,” the DJ announced. “Blame your friends for the early finish and get the fuck out.”

Amid dismayed groans, the room began to empty.

“Go, now,” my brother repeated in desperation.

“No, Rio.” I rubbed my forehead.

“She doesn’t want to be here,” he yelled for whoever was listening, dislodging Shade from his vice-like grip before being captured again. “She’s been kidnapped. Fucking held hostage.”

My heart throbbed. “You came here to save me?”

“Of course I did. You’re my sister. It’s my job to protect you.”

Space appeared around us. With his arm around my brother’s neck in a chokehold, Shade forced him to his knees. Behind, a furious Jamieson had Cassie’s attacker on the filthy floor with a knee in his spine. Reluctantly, he stepped away to hand over the arsehole to the security team.

On the plinth, Cassie sat on the edge, her ankles crossed and her head tilted to one side. Her gaze was fixed on my brother, curiosity and fascination in her stare.

“That one,” she said, audible at last now the fuss had died. “I’ll take that one.”

Chapter 35

Arran

Detective Dickhead, Chief Constable Kenney, gifted me a crocodile smile from across the brightly lit interview room. I’d drive that fucking expression down his throat.

In the same breath, I was relieved that it was him heading up the joke of an interrogation, because it only meant one thing.

The flash-and-bang raid on Divine.

The handcuffs on me and my staff, and the slow walking of us to the police transport vans with the cage inside.

The asshole needed a public takedown with as much fanfare as possible, no doubt courtesy of the mayor.

I’d not given him the satisfaction of putting on a show and had barely bothered reading the warrant he’d produced. Lasttime, it was Divide he’d raided, claims of drug dealing being the excuse. This time, the file readorganised prostitution. Neither were worth the paper they were written on.

It was bullshit—they’d find no evidence of sex work in Divine, and the warrant didn’t permit them to search anywhere else in the warehouse, and the access routes to the floors upstairs would be blocked off. The brothel wasn’t a single organised business. It had no name, and the sex workers were all self-employed, contracting the different services they needed to share such as client vetting, security, room rental, and cleaning. Each individual paid her, his, or their own way. I knew the law and skated it with expert precision.

Hence why I knew this was a mockery of real police activity. It pissed me off that he’d taken in Alisha and some of the dancers, though.

“Let the others go,” I said, low and deadly.

He gave an easy shrug. “In time, they’ll all be sent on their way.”

“With nothing on their record?”

“That depends on you.”

Something in his eyes made my skin crawl. I’d been cuffed any number of times in the past but despised it. My father had done it to me as a boy ahead of beating me bloody.

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