Page 41 of Protected By the Bikers Next Door
“Who did that to him?” I gasp, feeling a swell of sympathy for the man I should hate.
“We’ll find out,” Wolf says, slapping Paul to wake him.
When Paul finally opens his eyes, he doesn’t seem surprised or scared of his predicament, merely accepting, as if he had always known it would come to this. Or perhaps, based on his injuries, this isn’t the first time this has happened.
Wincing, the cut on his head bleeding, dripping close to his eye, he takes in the guys and me. When his gaze falls on me, Wolf strikes him hard across the face, the sound echoing off the walls. “You don’t look at her,” he snarls.
Paul hangs his head. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Start talking,” Hawk snaps.
“I’m sorry, Harper, I was trying to protect you, to warn you,” Paul says, his pitiful eyes looking up at me.
Wolf punches him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, and he doubles over, coughing. “I said, don’t fucking look at her, you creep.”
“Wolf, don’t. Let him speak,” I say softly.
“Thank you, Harper, you’re a good person, you don’t deserve this,” Paul says, being careful to avoid looking at me in case it provokes Wolf’s fury again.
“Then why do it?” I ask bluntly.
“I had no choice.”
“Enough riddles,” Bear growls.
“He told me that if I didn’t watch Harper, he’d kill my sister, Katie.”
“Who did?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Viktor Volkov.”
Paul begins to tell us his story. He explains how close he and his sister Katie are, first describing how they lost their parents at an early age. He describes his sister as beautiful andoutgoing, saying that she was only nineteen when a modeling audition turned out to be a job at a strip club. Lured by the promise of money and glamour, Katie took the job, and she soon fell in with the wrong crowd.
“A few months ago she started dating a guy called Vik. She became infatuated, would do anything for the guy, and I quickly realized he was bad news. He was controlling and manipulative. Violent, too. More often than not, when we met up, she had a black eye. But she said she loves him. But when she told him about me, about my computer skills, that’s when things got really bad. Vik started asking me all kinds of questions, including whether I could find someone who was under witness protection.”
I gasp at that, drawing everyone’s gaze. Shaking my head I gesture for Paul to continue.
“To begin with, I thought he was talking hypothetically, and I told him it was possible. When he started asking me to find you, I realized he was being serious. I tried saying no, honestly, I did,” he says, looking desperately at the guys.
“But then he revealed who he really was. He told me that Katie would be safe, that she would remain ignorant and under his protection. All I needed to do was find you. I should have known the demands would continue to come. Once I found you, he wanted me to watch you, to report your every move to him. He asked me to send that first note to you—he planned on kidnapping you shortly after that. But then you met these guys, and it became more complicated. He wanted to draw you out, away from the protection of the Shadow Pack. I tried to protect you by making my notes as scary as I could so you wouldn’t ever be alone for him to take. I got so focused on following you,I didn’t think you might follow me, or that he might have been watching me.”
“So it was his guys that jumped ours tonight?” Wolf asks.
“I can only assume so,” he says as a tear falls from his eye. “He must know you have me by now. Please, please, will you let me check my phone?” he begs.
“Why?” Hawk asks suspiciously. He turns to the others and says, “He’s a tech wiz. He could have rigged this thing to give away his location or call Viktor the second it’s unlocked. We should have destroyed it already.”
“Please, no, I promise it isn’t,” Paul practically screams in fear. “He’ll have taken my sister now as punishment, or to ensure I won’t speak. Please, the texts on my phone will confirm everything.”
Hawk moves closer, holding the phone up in front of Paul so the Face ID unlocks it. “Five new messages, unknown number. Shit,” he says softly. “There are photos of a man holding a woman with a gun to her head.”
He passes the phone over to me, and I recognize the man instantly. The slate gray hair, cool, indifferent blue eyes, and the deep scar that runs down one side of his face, pulling his mouth into a permanent grimace. “That’s him. It’s Viktor.”
“Is this Katie?” Hawk says, showing the phone to Paul.
“Yes, it looks like they’re in her apartment.”
“Can you take us there?”
