Seychelle nodded. Czar walked boldly through the restaurant, Steele by his side. Savage moved deeper into the long, rectangle room, going to the farthest corner, where it was nearly impossible to see him and really impossible if you weren’t in the room. He opened a door she hadn’t known was there and slipped out into the night.
A chill crept down her spine. Something really was wrong, something to do with Alena. This was what Savage had been worried about all along. She looked at the other two women. Breezy was Steele’s wife. She knew. Whatever it was, her husband had shared with her ahead of time. He had made certain she wasn’t blindsided. Blythe definitely knew. Whether she had asked the right questions or Czar had volunteered the information, she was the only one unaware of what the powder keg was. Must be club business. She was definitely not included. Clearly, no one had expected this business to affect their dinner out, but it had.
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.”