Renzo sat back in his chair, staring at the papers in front of him. His contact inside the GBI had finally come through. In front of him, he finally had proof of who’d tried to kill him.

The Gangster Disciples were one of the largest and bloodiest gangs in the Greater Atlanta area, involved in an orgy of murder, drug trafficking, robbery and more in DeKalb, Cobb County, Atlanta and even Macon. They finally decided they wanted in on the gun trade.

But that was Renzo’s territory. He had that shit on lock, except one day one of his shipments went missing. He’d sent Bubbles sniffing around and he learned GD had been behind it. But Renzo had no proof and he wasn’t about to go to war with those bastards on a whisper on the wind. He had to send someone inside.

That someone turned out to be Kenton, Low’s cousin, who’d been ultimately killed before Renzo got anything concrete. With the news of the auction and everything else, he’d put his issues with Gangster Disciples on the backburner.

The bullet Dax pulled from Renzo’s shoulder came from that stolen cache of weapons, and the two shooters Renzo put down were members of GD’s HATE committee, or enforcement unit. So they wanted him dead. Sucked for them that he was too fucking stubborn to die. He’d never completely wipe the gang off the map, as much as he’d like to. But he knew where and who to hit to make a statement.

He picked up the phone on his desk. He had a date tonight with Low, but first, he had some calls to make and favors to cash in before he went to see a cop about a kill order.

He found Gregory “G-God” Clayton where the informant told Renzo he would be, in the parking lot of a pizza shop along Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain—just down the road from the DeKalb County Jail—eating his lunch all by himself in his vehicle. Renzo strode over to him with a curl of his lips.

Dax would hate this. He hadn’t told his friend what he’d be doing while Dax handled other related business, but Dax would be pissed. He always said Renzo had a death wish. Maybe he did. But they were in public, with at least—Renzo glanced around discreetly—five security cameras on them.

He approached the car and knocked on the passenger side window, bending over to smile at Clayton. Recognition flashed in the cop’s eyes before he murmured into the phone at his ear and ended his call. The window rolled down and Renzo greeted him with a wink.

“Officer Clayton, fancy seeing you here.”

Clayton’s expression smoothed out. He was in his mid-thirties with medium brown skin, bald head, a face that could be considered good looking with a trimmed goatee and dark brown eyes. He was supposed to be one of the good ones. Honorable discharge from the army, some time spent in college before he dropped out to join the force two years ago. Policing the streets he grew up in while being the head of Gangster Disciples, and one of their deadliest gun men.

Aspirational, in a fucked up kind of way.

Was DeKalb County so hard up to man its forces that they weren’t doing their due diligence when it came to who they recruited?

“What the fuck are you doing here, Vega?” Clayton’s hand dropped to his weapon resting on the passenger seat.

Renzo clucked his tongue as he opened the door and used the napkins from Clayton’s pizza lunch to pick up the gun and put it on the floor of the vehicle before sliding into the passenger seat. “I’m unarmed.” He chuckled. “Unlike the last time you sent your men after me.”

Clayton held his gaze without blinking, but Renzo couldn’t help but feel the animosity that blasted out of the cop’s pores. Renzo had something Clayton wanted—a death grip on Atlanta’s illegal gun trade—and the man would do anything to get it. Renzo understood that kind of thinking. Didn’t mean he had to hand it over like a fucking martyr.

“You came so I can finish the job personally?” Clayton’s eyebrow quirked. “I never miss, Vega.”

“Yeah, you should have been at the club that night instead of taking the coward’s way out and sending the help. You don’t get a do over.” He blew out a breath. “What you get is a choice.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it out to Clayton.

The cop took it with a frown, fingertip touching the screen as he hit play on the paused video.

“You get to be a hero. Or not.”

“Son of a—” Clayton reached for his weapon, but Renzo shook his head.

“Ah-ah.” He nodded to the phone that had dropped into Clayton’s lap. “Come with me or those people die. They die slowly, painfully, begging for you to save them.”

Those people were Clayton’s girlfriend and their two children, aged seven and five. They’d been easy enough to reach at the girlfriend’s mother’s house in College Park. Renzo also had his team pick up Clayton’s father and brother, both of whom were also in leadership positions inside the GD. They put up a helluva fight when they were ambushed, but in the end Renzo’s men had overpowered each man, taking them from their respective apartments in handcuffs. They’d been smug too, because of their man on the inside and the different cops on their payroll.

Little did they know, Renzo had zero intentions of taking them to jail.

The girlfriend and kids were being kept in a separate location than the other two men, but Clayton didn’t know that.

Renzo didn’t intentionally hurt women, and he for damn sure didn’t hurt children. But Clayton didn’t know that. If he had to use that kind of fear to secure his own life, Renzo wasn’t above doing it.

Breath whistled in Clayton’s nostrils as he stared Renzo down. “Do you know what you just did?” He grabbed Renzo by the collar, dragging him close to snarl into his face. “You’re dead, you understand that?” His upper lip shone with sweat. “You’re dead!”

Nah, he wasn’t. “You boys—and yes, that’s who the fuck you are—like to think you’re the baddest.” Renzo smiled at him, pitying. “I’ve got news for you, no matter how much you try, you can’t kill me, I died a long time ago.” He winked. “Drive. My men have a timetable, and if we don’t show up in—” He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Fifteen minutes, they’re gonna start shooting and there’s no telling who they’ll start with.”

Rage puffed up Clayton’s face and darkened his eyes, a vein in his forehead throbbing as he glared at Renzo.

“I left you alone,” Renzo told him. “I left you people alone and you decide to come after me anyway.” He shrugged. “You think I’d let a challenge like that go unchecked?” The cop was a bigger fool if he thought that.

“You had one of your men inside my organization,” Clayton spit out.

Renzo tensed. Kenton, he was talking about Kenton. He’d suspected Kenton’s death meant he’d been made, but had nothing concrete to go on.

“My people followed him right to your fucking door.”

Right. Renzo had worried about Kenton being able to maintain his cover, so they’d met in random locations. There’d been only one time that Kenton showed up at the club unannounced. Renzo hadn’t been there. The next day they found Kenton’s body. There wasn’t a day that went by that Renzo didn’t question if he’d made the right call, sending Kenton into that viper’s nest, but Kenton hadn’t been a stranger to gang life. He’d assured Renzo he could handle it.

He’d been wrong.

As Clayton drove out of the parking lot and onto Memorial drive, Renzo instructed him to make the left on South Hairston. “You knew he was working for me, but you waited so long to retaliate?”

Clayton didn’t look at him, his scowling attention focused on the road, but at Renzo’s question he smirked. “You’re not the only one who knows strategy, Vega. I waited for you to lower your guard.” He paused. “And you did.”

He had. There’d been no sightings of the weapons and other cases had taken precedence. Renzo always figured he’d go after Clayton and his Gangster Disciples once everything calmed down a bit. It wasn’t as if the GD were going anywhere. That decision had been a mistake, one he was damn sure about to correct.

He directed Clayton to an empty factory slash warehouse along Jimmy Carter Boulevard, hidden behind a burnt out gas station, overgrown weeds and tall trees. Renzo owned the entire lot through a shell company and he kept it looking the way it did for a reason. The security cameras hidden up in the trees told him no one bothered the place. He did bloody work inside the warehouse that used to be a plastic bag factory.

Once Clayton parked behind a white paneled van, the only other vehicle in the parking lot, Renzo picked up the cop’s gun, this time with a blue scarf he grabbed from the backseat.

“You gonna kill a cop?” Clayton asked mildly as he stepped out the vehicle and looked around. “That why we’re here?”

Renzo chuckled and motioned for Clayton to precede him into the building with its used-to-be-white paint now yellow with age and peeling from a lack of upkeep. Some of the windows were broken and vines climbed in through that open space as well.

Clayton didn’t say anything else until they entered the warehouse. “Whatever you do to me…” He glanced at Renzo over his shoulder. “I need Quasia and our kids to be aight.”

“I make no promises.” He pushed at Clayton’s shoulders until they entered the room where Renzo wanted him.

Dax waited in there for him. He wore a balaclava, leaving only his mouth and eyes exposed. Eyes that narrowed when his gaze landed on Clayton. His friend always wanted to be the one to get his hands dirty, but Renzo didn’t move like that. This was his world and yeah Dax was in it, but only because Renzo had enticed him down from Chicago when Dax had been having a hard time with the man he loved. Dax was his personal security, but this was Renzo’s business and at the end of the day, he had to be the one making the tough calls and scrubbing dirt from under his nails.

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t hear an earful about this from Dax later.

“Sit.” Renzo pushed Clayton into a chair—the only one in the place—then nodded at Dax who walked over and blindfolded him. When that was finished, Renzo slapped Clayton on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, “You cooperate, things might work out for you. If you don’t, well—”

“I want to see Quasia. Don’t hurt my kids, Vega. I’m warning you.”

Renzo ignored him. Dax exited the room then came back with company, a figure stumbling ahead of him, hands bound, a hood over his head. Dax kicked the back of his knees and the man fell to the floor in front of Clayton.

The cop jumped at the sound. “Quasia? Quasia, that you baby?” He started struggling, but Renzo stood behind him and grabbed him by the throat, choking off his sounds, silencing him just in time to hear the bark of the gun as Dax put a bullet in the head of the man on the ground.

Clayton fought then, lifting his knees, legs kicking out, body twisting as he wrestled Renzo’s hold. Renzo didn’t let up, nodding to Dax who went and brought the second man in. Same deal: hands bound, head covered. This one fell to his knees before Dax could help with that.

One bullet to the back of his head.

Clayton cried out, tears rolling down his cheeks as he called for his girlfriend. It didn’t matter how dangerous you were. The people you loved would always be your weak spot. Renzo knew that first hand.

“Shh.” He smoothed a hand over the cop’s head. “Shh, easy.” Clayton shook in his hold.

“You’re fucking dead, Vega. Swear to God, I’m coming for you.”

Renzo patted him on the wet cheek. “No need to come for me.” He undid the blindfold, letting the piece of cloth fall to his feet as Clayton lurched toward the bodies on the floor. Renzo caught him by the chin, forcing the cop to meet his gaze with wet eyes. “I’m already here.” He moved to the side so Clayton could watch as Dax pulled the hoods off the dead men, exposing their identities.

Clayton’s father and brother. The cop’s eyes widened and a huff of breath left him as his body went limp. Relief. He’d gladly exchange the life of his father and brother for that of his girlfriend and their kids.

Admirable.

“Quasia and your children will remain alive only because I say so.” Renzo smiled. “They’re under my protection now.” He pointed to Clayton’s brother. “That bullet was for my guy you killed. And that one?” He gestured to Gregory Clayton Senior. “That’s just to show you I could.”

Clayton moved his head backward slowly, as if the appendage was suddenly too heavy for his neck. “What do you want?”

Renzo grinned. “For you to die now, Officer.”

Dax pulled the trigger a final time.