“It has to be somewhere else.” Angus drummed his pencil on the desk and stared at the ledger.

“There is nowhere else.” Peter glared at the paper. “I know it’s the fucking rat. I just know it.”

“They’re connected?” Angus scratched his chin.

“Have to be, but I can’t figure out how.” Peter flung his pencil onto the desk. “Fuck!”

“I thought you were good with numbers.” David smirked from his seat on the couch.

Peter stood and advanced on his brother. “Hey, meathead, why don’t you come over here and figure it out if you’re so smart?”

“I’m not the one who claims to be smart.” David shrugged, more than happy to light Peter’s short fuse. “You’re the one who tells everyone he’s a member of Menstrual.”

I choked on a laugh.

“It’s MENSA, you dumbass.” Peter unbuttoned his sleeve and began rolling it up.

Angus shot me an amused look. Surprisingly, he seemed to fit in well around here. After his night next door to my room, he didn’t give Sabrina any more longing looks—which was good for his life span—and he seemed to get along well with my guys.

“That’s what I said. Menstrual.” David grinned. He must not have had enough exercise at his morning sparring lesson with Sabrina.

“Outside.” Peter jerked his chin toward the door.

“What if I don’t feel like kicking your ass right now?” David cracked his knuckles. “I’m a busy man.”

“Shut the fuck up, you overgrown turd, and get outside so I can beat your ass.”

Angus dug around in his wallet and slid me a twenty. “On the Butcher.”

I sized up the brothers. On any given day, David would be the obvious pick, but Peter was riled up just enough that he might be able to win it.

“I’ll take it.” I nodded at Angus as we all rose and walked outside.

Sabrina sat in a chair by the pool, her legs in the sun, but the rest of her in the shade. Thank god she was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. If she’d been in a bikini I would have either had to fuck her in the pool shed or wrap her in a towel. Or, possibly, wrap her in a towel and then fuck her in the pool shed. Tomayto, tomahto.

“What’s going on?” She rested the book in her lap and eyed us with intelligent apprehension.

“I’m about to drop a beat down on Frankenstein here.” Peter shook out his hands, then brought his fists up.

“Name calling isn’t nice.” David shook his head in mock disapproval.

“Then you won’t like this next part at all, you dickless piece of chickenshit pie.”

“Jesus.” I laughed and circled around them to stand at Sabrina’s back. I massaged her shoulders as the brothers eyed each other.

“Why is Peter so pissed?” She rolled her head around on her neck as I loosened her up.

“He gets frustrated when he can’t figure shit out with his super smart dork brain. This is a good way to work it off and get him refocused. It’s like a pressure valve.”

“So you’re saying David’s trying to help him?” She didn’t sound convinced as Peter barely missed getting socked in the face by David’s left jab.

I pressed my thumbs into the tense spots along her shoulders. “Yeah, but David also enjoys beating the shit out of people, so it’s really like group therapy.”

Peter landed a vicious punch to David’s midsection, but the big guy answered with a backhand to Peter’s jaw.

I watched as Peter staggered back, then resumed his stance. “That’s going to leave a mark.”

She laughed and dropped her head back, giving me a nice view down her shirt. “Can’t you tell them to work it out like adults?”

“What’s the fun in that?” I leaned down to kiss her forehead.

A bullet shattered the umbrella stand just to the left of where my head had been. The canopy dropped onto us as the crack of the shot finally made it to my ears.

“Up, run!” Tossing off the umbrella, I yanked Sabrina from the chair as another shot whizzed by and exploded into the stone side of the house.

Shielding her with my body, I pushed her ahead of me and toward the house. David and Peter had their pieces out, but it wouldn’t do any good.

“He’s far. Too far. You’ll never get a chance. We need cover.” I pushed Sabrina down behind the bushes that lined the house’s foundation, but it was shitty cover at best.

David kicked over a patio table, which was about as useful as a lemon meringue dildo. We were out in the open, the nearest trees too far to help. We could have jumped in the pool, but it would only take a second for one of us to come up for air and get a brand new mouth through our forehead. Fucked, so fucked. We had to get inside.

Angus yanked at the back door. “What the hell? It’s locked.” He banged on it.

David dove in front of me, two layers of protection for Sabrina. Or maybe he was protecting me. I didn’t give a shit, as long as Sabrina would walk out of this alive.

A thunk drew my eye to the window at my right. A large-caliber slug lodged there, and the window rattled, the bullet-proof glass barely able to contain it. The crack of the shot followed soon after.

“We have to move.” I eyed the side of the house, but the door finally opened, George standing just inside.

I shoved Sabrina into the house and kept my body between her and the gunfire as Angus, Peter, and David hurried in and slammed the door.

“Are you okay?” I ran my hands along Sabrina’s body, her wide blue eyes telegraphing fear and ripping my heart open. I never wanted to see that emotion there again. She’d already spent too much of her life in terror.

“I-I’m fine.” She patted around on my chest. “You?”

“I’m good. The shooter won’t be, though.” The distress in her eyes was a powerful motivator, and I swore to myself that the shooter would pay with blood.

I turned to the handful of men who crowded into the hall, word already spreading through the house. “Get out there and find him. Now.” The bite in my voice could have snapped a diamond in half. “He’s in a tree to the Northwest. Probably high-tailing it to his car right now.”

George pulled out a radio and began relaying my instructions to the men at the gate.

“He’s only 100 to 150 yards away, but the motherfucker has a fifty cal and he knows how to use it. Go!”

The men scattered, with Peter rushing out with them. David stayed at my side. Protocol. Whenever shit went down, at least one of the Raven brothers served as my personal bodyguard. But that was about to change.

“Sabrina, baby.” I smoothed the hair off her ashen face.

“You could have died.” Her eyes watered. “You almost died.”

“I’m alive. Don’t worry.” I pulled her close and wrapped my arms around her. What if that bullet had hit a foot lower? Had hit Sabrina? I swallowed hard, resolve solidifying in my gut. “I need you to go to your room with David and lock the door until you get the all clear, all right?”

“Where are you going?”

To find the asshole who tried to take me out and gut him. “I’m going to help secure the place, okay?”

“Please don’t go.” She grabbed my hand.

“I have to. But David will stay with you.”

David’s thick eyebrows lowered. He wanted to protest and stick with me, but he was a good soldier. He’d do what I said.

“Trust me.” I kissed her on the crown of her head.

“I do. I always will.” Her chin trembled. “Promise me you’ll come back.” She was a woman, one with more strength than I ever imagined. But in that moment, she reminded me of the lost little girl who’d stolen my heart. And I vowed again to protect her for as long as I drew breath.

I cupped her face in my hands. “I’ll come back.” I kissed her, far longer than I had time for, but Sabrina was worth every second.

Breaking the kiss hurt me on some gut level, but I needed to make an example of the man who put her life in danger. One that the Russians would never forget.

“David.” I nodded at him. “You know what to do.”

“I’ll protect her with my life.”

“Stay in the room. Don’t trust anyone. Someone locked the door while we were outside. Someone knew about the shooter.” I glanced at George who had his phone up to his ear and was giving rapid instructions. “When I find the rat, I intend to roast him slowly.”

David grunted in approval.

Turning back to Sabrina, the worry in her eyes for me, the sheer depth of emotion that she showed with her whole heart, moved me to tell her the truth—to tell her I’d fallen for her. But I couldn’t. She didn’t deserve the weight that the love of a man like me carried. Who was I to love anyone? A selfish asshole who wasted half his life drinking, whoring, and working for whatever boss would have me. My love would only bury her slowly until she suffocated under the pressure of all my mistakes, each flaw another shovelful of dirt on top of her.

I kept my mouth shut and strode away, never looking back despite the crushing need to do just that.

* * *

“Take off the hood.” I flipped open my lighter and raked my thumb over the wheel to light it up. The orange flared in the darkness of the basement. We’d caught him about two miles away from his shooting spot, speeding like the devil was after him. And I was.

He’d killed the retired couple who lived two streets over and used one of their oak trees as his perch. They’d been dead for a couple of days, their bodies left in the kitchen where it appeared they’d been sitting down to breakfast. Unchecked fury lit my veins at the sheer butchery of it, but more so at how the shooter had been sighting down his barrel at Sabrina, waiting for his chance to take a shot at me.

David’s heavy steps on the stairs reassured me that the house was all clear—all except for the piece of shit in the basement. Sabrina was safe, and now it was time for payback.

The bulb overhead flickered on, and Peter yanked the shooter’s hood away to reveal a battered and bloody face. He could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, judging from the gray hair and the busted cheek bones, but I recognized his eyes.

“Karilev, isn’t that right?” I spat on the blood-stained floor and flipped my lighter shut, plunging us into darkness. Scuffling sounds behind me told me my men were getting set up. Low light shone from a laptop on the table at my back.

The Russian smiled, blood in his teeth. “You’ve heard of me? Good.”

“I’ve seen you before. At Vince’s house. You came for a bounty, carried the body in over your shoulder.”

“Many times.” He shrugged. “Can’t remember any in particular.”

“It was a woman.”

He swallowed, his gaze shifting away from me.

“You remember now?”

“Just a job. Like this one. Taking you out. Just a job.”

“Wasn’t she Vince’s mistress? Pregnant with his kid, right? She already had a kid, married to one of the Irish, if I remember correctly. But you killed her anyway, then brought him the body.”

“Money is money.”

I nailed him across the cheek with a right cross. The crunch of bone under my knuckles burned, but it was more than worth it to hear the fucker squeal.

Pulling back, I straightened my lapels and ignored my bloody knuckles. “Maybe so. But payback is a bitch.” Turning to my men, I asked, “We ready?”

David flipped on the overhead light.

“Good to go. Skype is set up.” Peter adjusted the laptop so the camera captured the scene.

I pulled a long, thin filleting knife from my coat pocket. “Let’s give our old pal Dmitri a call, shall we?”