“Are you’re sure what you did was the right thing?” I asked, worried sick this would blow up in his face.
“What choice did I have, Bran?”
My shoulders sagged. “None, I guess.”
“I know it was risky, and that I can’t trust them, but if I refused their deal, then they’d have arrested me and Dominic. They don’t care about a couple of dead untraceable bodies because they know who they are without me having to say it. No one misses evil gangsters, Branna, especially the law.”
“I understand that, scarcely, but what exactly were the terms of the deal?” I asked as a pounding took up residence in my temples. “What did they expect of you?”
“They wanted me to wear a wire, and get a job running shit for Brandon. He is squeaky clean, and is more private than Marco ever was, which made him a mystery to the Feds. They wanted to know who his contacts were, where he got his product from… they basically wanted to know everything about him.”
“The FBI has been keeping tabs on Brandon?” I questioned with raised brows.
“Of course, everyone with power like him is on the Feds’ radar.”
That shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.
“So the deal was for you to be a mole, pass on information and that’s it?”
“Almost,” Ryder said on a grunt. “Marco, the son of a bitch, had me listed as owner on a lot of fucked up properties where shit went down in the city. He had contacts everywhere, and filing the fake paperwork to make me look like a legit owner of somewhere wouldn’t have been hard for him. Now, since I’ve been living here the last five years the Feds know I physically had no interaction with any of the properties, but because they were in my name, I was responsible for what was found during the busts.”
Oh, my God.
“The Feds threw out the cases as part of the deal, but they refused to pick up the bill for ‘damages’. They said they would clear me of any wrong doing if I paid it instead. I didn’t have a choice, they could have deported me and tried me in the States for that. And when my sentence there was up, I could be brought back here to be tried and imprisoned for murder. I had to pay them a lot of fucking money to make that bullshit go away, but I didn’t have enough so Dominic and Alec gave up their shares from what they earned over the years and helped me. Kane did too, but because he has his business, he wasn’t broke like the rest of us. I told you that I got mixed up in a bad investment deal when you asked where the money went because I didn’t want to tell you the truth, and to be honest, if I hadn’t ruined everything and you never noticed the change in me, I would have never told you.”
“You’d keep this from me?” I asked, shocked.
He’d really keep this from me?
Ryder nodded and without hesitation said, “I’d do anything to keep you safe from harm or worry. Anything.”
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed over that or appreciative.
“My brothers, bar Damien because we never want him involved in nightmares like this, helped me with my job. I had to look like a shiny diamond to Brandon so he’d learn to trust me. I had to run every shipment successfully, and turn him a sizeable profit. I didn’t want to be at this for years, so I needed to fully invest myself back in the life to make it end faster. I had to be become close to him. But by bringing myself into his world, I pulled away from you. I didn’t want to, I didn’t even notice it at the beginning because I was so stressed out. I now know I was bringing my anger and resentment for the situation I was in back home to you, and you didn’t deserve it.”
I exhaled an unsteady breath. “How were your brothers involved?”
“As you know, Dominic got a job fighting for Brandon. With his money being gone, and being a personal trainer not making enough income, it was the perfect cover to Bronagh. He’d fight under Brandon, get paid, but also keep his ear to the ground to help me with any information he could find. That’s why there’d be days here and there where I was out with him all the time. He was helping me. Kane and Alec too. Kane came with me on a few jobs to watch my back because I don’t trust anyone in Brandon’s crew—except Gavin, but he’s only a small ranked solider, and he wouldn’t have any information that I wouldn’t already know.”
Aideen’s little brother was caught up in Brandon Daley’s world still, and I hated it. The stubborn little bastard wouldn’t bow out no matter how much Aideen and his brothers tried to force him to. Keela was working on having her uncle just kick him out of the gang, but he was proving to be just as difficult.
“Alec can charm a snake, and I was dealing with a lot of snakes, especially when I was trying to close deals on weapons. Once or twice I’d be dealing with a hard-ass woman, or a stuck up man, and that’s when I needed Alec. I’d bring him along with me, and without making it obvious, he would do his thing—flirt, and effortlessly make people like him. He didn’t even touch anyone; he just smiled and struck up conversations with them. Typical Alec style. It made closing those kinds of deals with greedy people a lot easier.”
I lifted my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes. I lowered my arms, and shook my head, not being able to comprehend the depth of what I was hearing.
“This is a lot to take in.”
“I know it is, but you need to know everything so you understand how tied my hands were.”
I couldn’t begin to imagine what he felt like, or went through, but… I understood that he had to do what he was made to do in order to remain prison free. I got that. It was so hard to believe it was real life, but I got it. My mind pieced together all the fall-outs, fights and the general break down of our relationship and concluded it was inevitable.