It fucking burns.

Makes my heart feel like it’s being torn into a thousand different pieces.

I’m angry. And I’m fucking disappointed. In myself. I fucked her like she was some whore, because I was so angry, and so fucking jealous. But when she told me I was wrong, and that she wasn’t with that other loser, my whole body stopped working. For a few seconds, everything seemed numb.

I’m a fucking idiot.

Now she’s gone, and I don’t know how in the hell I’m supposed to get her back. I didn’t give her a chance. All this time, I told her I believed in her, but when the time came, I took that away. I took it and I crushed it. I crushed everything she believed in. Which was mostly me.

I’m a fucking idiot.

“Sorry to interrupt, Prez,” Koda says, walking into my room, his face grim. “Got a man here, think he might have information. Thought you might wanna deal with him, given the mood you’re clearly in.”

I shoot him a glare but he doesn’t back down. Koda rarely backs down from anything. He just holds my eyes, the challenge apparent on his face. He’s daring me to take him on. He’s as stressed and angry about this entire situation with Trey, as I am. He knows we’re getting nowhere, and he knows Charlie is in danger because of us.

And he hates an innocent being put in danger on a good day.

Let alone this.

I stand, my anger and rage a fire inside my body. “Let me see this fucker. I need something to let some steam out on.”

Koda grins, his eyes twinkling with that darkness he hides so well. I follow him to the door and out into the sheds at the back where Boston, Maverick, and Mason are all waiting. There’s a man, stony eyed, strapped to a chair in the middle of the shed, glaring at the men, his face already bloodied. I guess they already got to him. I walk in, not acknowledging any of them. I go straight over to the blue-eyed man who looks up at me.

It’s no doubt he is a user.

His face is sunken, bones poking out where bones shouldn’t be poking out. The whites of his eyes are yellow, and he looks like crap. He’ll know something, I can tell in the set of his jaw and the way his eyes are refusing to break contact. He knows exactly what I’m going to ask him about, and by the looks of it, he isn’t going to tell me anything without a fight.

That’s fine, I’m up for a fight.

“I’m not going to start with the old-fashioned line we can do this the easy way or the hard way, because you already know that. I’m just simply goin’ to give you an option. Tell me what I need to know, and you walk out of here, alive, to carry on with your life. Don’t tell me what I need to know, and I’ll take this wild fuckin’ anger bubblin’ in my chest out on you, then I’ll put a bullet in your skull. Mark my words, I don’t tell lies.”

He spits at me.

The dirty little fucker.

I raise a ringed hand and drive it into his face. The sickening crunch of his nose breaking brings me such satisfaction, I do it again. This time blood spurts out and lands on me, but I don’t give a fuck. It feels better already, knowing someone is suffering. Sick, perhaps. But satisfying.

“I’ll tell you nothing,” he snarls at me, blood pouring down his lip.

“Fine by me, I’ll just keep goin’ through you fuckers until one of you gives me what I need. I’m not going to waste my time convincin’ you. If you don’t want to play the game, I’ll end you now.”

I wave a hand and Maverick steps forward, handing me a gun. The man’s eyes bulge, and I keep a casual expression as I aim it toward his head. He stammers something, and then yells out, “You’ll not find him. He made sure of it. Kill as many of us as you want, you won’t get close.”

“Oh,” I say casually, almost bored sounding. “I plan to kill as many of you as I want, purely to make myself feel better. It makes me feel good riddin’ the world of scum like you.”

He swears at me in a different language, and his eyes flare with anger.

“Got any Whack on you before I go?” I murmur. “Hear it’s good stuff.”

His eyes flash and he starts squirming in his chair. He doesn’t want me to look on his body. My smile gets big, massive even. “Somethin’ you don’t want me to find on you?”

His eyes bulge and he starts swearing even more frantically in a different language. I don’t usually check bodies outside of looking for a wallet, or a phone, but this man has sparked my curiosity. So I keep the gun aimed on him and say to Koda and Maverick. “Search him. Every part of him.”

“I ain’t touchin’ his ass, bro,” Maverick mutters. “No fuckin’ way.”

“You’ll touch whatever the fuck I tell you to touch if it means we get information.”

Maverick glares at me, and I grin at him. “You’re my brother, but fuck I want to knock you the fuck out sometimes.”

“Have at it, bro. Later, though. Start searching.”

Koda strips the man down without hesitation, using a knife to cut his clothes off around the ropes that bind him. They empty out the clothes, finding a phone, a wallet, a few cards and some drugs. Then they really get searching, pressing on his stomach feeling for anything hard, and then Koda, without hesitation, shoves his hand down the back of the man, making him squirm and curse.

He comes up with another phone.

“Tucked between his ass cheeks, disgusting fucker,” Koda mutters, tossing the phone at Mason who catches it, and then drops it quickly, cursing at him.

“Pick the fuckin’ thing up, it’s hidden for a reason. Stop bein’ fuckin’ babies. You handle blood all the damned time.”

“Blood ain’t close to a man’s asshole,” Koda grunts, going over to the sink and washing his hands three times. He tosses Mason a plastic bag, and Mason picks up the phone and the other things and then washes his hands too.

“Well,” I say to the man, “that’s all I need from you. Thanks for your cooperation.”

He opens his mouth to scream at me again, but I pull the trigger. The bullet goes straight through his forehead and doesn’t come out the other side. His head slumps forward and I turn to Maverick, but he’s not looking at me, his eyes are at the door. I turn and look over my shoulder, and what I see makes my blood run cold.

Amalie is standing at the shed door, staring at me, her face white, her mouth slightly agape.

She saw me kill him in cold blood.

She saw it all.

She stares at me like she’s just seen a ghost.

She turns and she runs out, stumbling a few times.

“Fuck,” I bark, tossing Maverick the gun. “Fuck! Why didn’t one of you fuckers tell me she was there?”

“She opened the door as you pulled the trigger, boss,” Mason says. “Couldn’t have stopped that one if you tried.”

“God fuckin’ dammit. You three sort this shit out. Get rid of that body. See if you can find anythin’ on those phones. I’ll be back soon.”

I charge out of the shed and toward the front gates, but she’s already gone, her car disappearing into the street.

What in the hell did she come down to the shed for? None of my men would have ever told her to come down there, and as far as I knew, she had left.

She just saw me at my worst, covered in blood and putting a bullet in another man’s head. As if me fucking hurting her wasn’t bad enough, now she’s seen that.

I’m going to fucking lose her.

I can feel it right down to my core.

And I won’t fucking allow it.

I have to fix this.

Somehow.

~*~*~*~