She reached for the bread, the same sadness that had invaded before she and Savage had begun to work things out settling over her. Blythe leaned toward Seychelle and laid her hand over Seychelle’s nervous fingers, stilling them. “They’ll be right back. There’s nothing to worry about. Alena will be fine. I think Pierce actually cares for her. I don’t know why he would keep coming around to warn her if he didn’t. She told me he’s been asking her not to go on the run. To just stay here and work the restaurant and to always be with someone.”
“Why would he say that to her?” Seychelle asked, knowing Blythe was misinterpreting her sudden change in mood, although she was worried for Alena. “That’s a little worrisome. Do you think he’s warning her that someone wants to hurt her?”
Breezy sighed. “I don’t know why anyone in the Diamondback club would want to harm Alena, but clubs are unpredictable. Right now, the Venomous club is trying to take over parts of Diamondback territory. They just keep chipping away at it. Just tiny pieces, but the Diamondbacks will appear weak if they let them continue. If that happens, all hell will break loose. No one sees how that can have anything to do with Alena. Or you, for that matter. Nothing the Diamondbacks are doing or saying or even asking of our club is making sense.”
Blythe nodded. “Pierce has been coming around and texting Alena quite often since his mishap with her. It came out that he was cheating with Tawny Farmer. She was a woman who used to hang around our club quite a bit. She made trouble all the time. Now she’s with the Diamondbacks. Pierce seems to want Alena back. Tawny is just plain trouble.”
Breezy buttered another piece of bread. “Tell us about this Brandon Campbell, Seychelle. Why is it he’s so interested in you? Savage went absolutely still when his name first came up, and you looked like you might bolt from the table.”
Seychelle sighed. “Brandon has a psychic gift enabling him to use his voice on others, to get them to do what he wants them to do.”
Breezy nodded. “Some of the Torpedo Ink members have gifts like that in varying degrees.”
“Brandon’s is pretty developed, and he uses it on women. He likes to make women think they are totally inferior to him and that they need only him. I think his ultimate goal is to see if he can drive them to suicide. He craves power over them. He had a woman, Sahara Higgens, bright, pretty, successful in her own right, and he totally separated her from her family, got her under his thumb and managed to turn her into a shell of a human being. She was very close to taking her own life when I happened to meet her.”
Seychelle pressed her palm into her thigh, trying not to be nervous. Savage would be really angry if he knew the extent of Brandon Campbell’s capabilities. To be fair, she hadn’t known—not until she had stupidly challenged him when he came to her home with Doris after she’d broken up with Savage early on in their relationship.
“I got Sahara away from him. It took some doing. I had to sneak visits to her because I knew he had influenced my friend Doris to report any visitors or activity to him. I had to be careful using my own voice to counter his. If I went too fast, I could have done irreparable damage to Sahara. In any case, the bottom line is, with Torpedo Ink’s help, I got her out of there. Brandon already had another victim, this one very young, still in her teens.”
“The girl Lana is helping,” Blythe said.
Breezy was the vice president’s wife. She knew everything happening in the club. “Yes, Tessa, she’s coming back nicely. Lana told us you were able to use your voice to take her away from Campbell.”
“Lana helped as well. It became about her being so young, but he knew it was me taking away his prey. That’s how he views them, and already he was watching me. He’d asked me out before he’d gone after Tessa, and I turned him down. I’d seen him a time or two walking along the headlands by my street. He didn’t have to do that. He did it on purpose. That was before I met Savage. I didn’t respond to his voice, and that intrigued him, I think. At least at first. Then it was a matter of pride. I took something he valued. Then it was a challenge. He came to my house with Doris, trying to turn her against me, showing me he could manipulate her.”
She looked around the restaurant and lowered her voice. Mostly, she didn’t want Savage to know. “I made a terrible mistake that day. I wasn’t going to see Savage again. I felt empty and lost without him. I was so angry that Brandon would dare come to my house with Doris, that he’d take advantage of an older woman who had so little joy in her life.”
She shook her head, trying not to think about that moment when she’d made the decision to show Brandon that she was quite happy to bring him all the way down. If he wanted to go to war, she was more than happy to oblige. He’d tried his voice on her several times. He’d used it on Doris and, like an idiot, Seychelle had countered his influence right there, right in front of him, opening herself to him. It wasn’t a lot, but it was an in.
She should have backed off there, but she hadn’t. “I knew better, but he was so sure of himself. So positive that he could take Doris back anytime he wanted, and I’d be afraid of him. Like a lot of men, he believes males are superior to women in every way and his talent is stronger than mine, just because he’s a man.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t at my best. I was missing Savage and upset that he’d been with another …” She broke off.
Breezy and Blythe exchanged a long look. Seychelle was fairly certain they knew what happened. Blythe did. All of Torpedo Ink probably did. They seemed to be in each other’s business. That was difficult for her. She was a private person for the most part. She’d grown up alone, and she tended to spend long periods of time by herself. She’d come out of her shell for brief singing gigs, and then she’d crawl back into her house and pull her armor around her.
Shifting uncomfortably in her seat reminded her of Savage’s punishment for even engaging with Brandon. Going near him. Strangely, the aching pain on her bottom felt comforting, as if Savage was there with her. As if he cared enough to tell her in a physical way that she wouldn’t ever forget that Brandon Campbell was a man out for revenge, and he was plotting to harm her—and he was. She’d given him a far more powerful tool, if he knew how to wield it, than she’d admitted to Savage, and she wasn’t looking forward to telling her man she’d done that. And she had to. She just didn’t know how.
“I knew better, but when he tried to use his voice on Doris, to turn her against me, I made certain to look him right in the eye, something a man like him can’t take. I let him see that I wasn’t meek. I wasn’t afraid. He hadn’t conned me or made me submit to him. I also let him see his voice didn’t work on me, and that every time he tried to find a path inside my brain to make me submit, I turned it back to find a path inside of his.”
Blythe sat up very straight. “Wait, wait.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m struggling to understand what you’re saying. I know that several of the club members can use their voices for various things. I’m not certain I realized that your gift was that different or that someone else could in any way compromise you through it.”
Seychelle wasn’t happy going into detail. Anything she said to these women would get back to their husbands. As president and vice president of Torpedo Ink, the men would expect their wives to tell them anything that could eventually impact the club—like Seychelle’s screwup. Savage needed to hear it first.