COLE
The tip came in through Ken.
He wasn’t told who took Addison. We already knew that. He was told where she was, and we didn’t hesitate. We were moving within the hour. I was in the weapons room when one of my men gave me the news I’d been expecting since Addison was taken. He coughed. “Sir, Carter Reed is at the door.”
I stopped, knife in hand, and looked at my soldier. He fidgeted in the doorway, and I knew he wanted to run. Right now I wasn’t the nice boss, the boss who joked around sometimes, the young boss everyone underestimated. I was the assassin the Bertals had created, the weapon Carter himself helped hone.
I was the fucking head of the Mauricio family staring back at him.
“You’re new,” I said.
His eyes narrowed before he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ve killed before?”
Another jerk of his head. “I have, sir.”
I pointed my knife at him. “And if they attack right now—if Carter’s actually a traitor and he’s going to try to kill me, what do you do?”
To give him credit, he didn’t hesitate. He rolled back his shoulders and tucked his hands behind his back, spreading his feet evenly. “I’d kill him instead.”
The door to the room opened and Carter walked past the soldier, but he paused and glanced at him. “You would, huh?”
The soldier’s eyes went wide. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I would. Sorry, sir.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Other sir, I mean,” he corrected. “But I would. I’m loyal to the head of the Mauricio family and…” He hesitated, glancing to me again before returning to Carter. Their eyes met and held.
My respect for him went up a notch.
“You are not in the Mauricio family in the official capacity anymore, Mr. Reed, sir.”
Carter was holding back a grin, but he wasn’t here to goad my soldiers. He was here for a whole other reason, and as I remembered that, the moment passed. I tossed my knife in the air, caught it by the handle and sent it soaring past my soldier. It stuck in the wall behind him.
He’d gone still, his eyes not even moving to the knife.
I gestured to it. “Take it. You’re going to need more than a few guns tonight.”
He stepped to the side, grabbed the knife, and yanked it out of the wall. He nodded to each of us before stepping out into the hallway.
Carter waited until the door closed, then turned to me. “You got his ear. Did you know that?”
I threw him a look. Of course I knew. I wasn’t feeling particularly talkative. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes narrowed, looking over the assembly of weapons I spread on the table. “Are you ready to do this?”
“To do what?”
I knew. He knew. I wanted him to say it.
“Start a war.”
There it was. “Like you did?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He crossed the room and stood on the opposite side of the table now. He lowered his eyes, studying me. “Do you love her?”
Emotion flickered in my gut, hardening everything again. I scowled, picking up another knife and shoving it into my shoulder holster. It hung beneath a 9mm. “You started a war for the woman you loved.”
“I did.”
“You finished a second one, too. For her.” My eyes cooled. My jaw hardened.
“I did.” Carter was waiting.
“So, you flew all this way to ask me if I love Addison?”
“Don’t go to war if you don’t,” he said quietly. He leaned forward on the table. “She’s theirs. They took one of their own. You broke in to take one of theirs—that’s how they’ll spin this. Are you ready for the fallout afterward? Businesses will be affected. Lives are going to end. Families will be torn apart. You could die. She could die. Are you ready for that?”
“She could be dead already.” I waited, keeping myself controlled. There was another question still coming.
He asked it. “Is she worth this?”
A second passed between us. Another. And a third. I waited, and so did Carter. He’d said his piece. This was why he’d come, to test me. I leaned forward, my weapons ready to go, and said what needed to be said, “Yes. She’s mine.”
Nothing else mattered. Addison was mine.
Carter stood back as I took one more weapon and left. He wasn’t in the family, not as one who would kill beside us, so he remained behind.
I swept out of the room, down the hallway, and out to the warehouse where my men waited. My arrival was the signal. Everything had been planned. Everyone knew their places, and as I went past them, they followed.
We were going to get what was mine.
We knocked once on the back door of a whorehouse. The door opened, and the bass from the main floor vibrated in the night. Some of the smoke and dry ice floated out, and the person who’d given us the tip stepped out into the alley.
I stared down at her. Hard. “Are you doing this to save your life?”
Addison’s former mother-in-law, Carol, flinched, folding her hands together in front of her. She’d pulled on a light jacket but still wore the same clothes I’d seen in the Gala’s security footage. I noticed dried blood on her sweater, and before she’d said a word, I noted, “That better not be Addison’s blood.”
Her head lowered, and I looked down at the top of her hair. But now she glanced back up. Fear lined her eyes. “She’s been hurt. I can’t lie about that.”
“She’s in the basement?”
She nodded, unable to hold my gaze. “Yes. I locked the door going to the main floor. None of the girls will bother you. There’s a room right when you go down. Four guards are in there. They’re supposed to be up here, but they’re watching a game right now. Keep going. I counted maybe eight others down there. Addison is in the back room, all the way down on the left side. There’s another room back there where the guards take their girls. I couldn’t open it to see who was in there, so there might be more men.”
“They’re going to hunt you down.”
Her skinny shoulders shrugged. She looked pathetic. “I’d like to take Addison away with me. She’s family.” She sounded pathetic, too.
“Not going to happen.” I leaned forward. I wanted her to see the disgust in my eyes. “She’s not your family. You never accepted her before, and you’re using her to get rid of your own guilt. If you were my family?” I held a finger out and touched it to the top of her head, pretending to shoot her. “I’d put two right here.” I stepped back. “But that’s how I deal with traitors. Addison might be more forgiving.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “Yes. Well. Please, just get her out.” Carol took off after that, running down the alley between my guys. I waited for the perimeters to check in, and once they signaled everything was clear, we moved in.
Killing isn’t a big deal to me.
It happens. People are here, then they’re gone. Carter told me one day my viewpoint was skewed because of my family’s past. Fuck if I care. Usually for a job like this, the head of the family wouldn’t be in the lead. But I wasn’t like the previous head, or even Carter. I wanted to go first. I started to thirst for it. Maybe it was the element of surprise. Maybe it made me feel like a badass. Or maybe—two guys stepped around the corner, and I fired off two bullets, one for each of their foreheads—maybe it was this moment. As their bodies hit the ground, maybe I savored the feeling of stepping over them and continuing on, like they were nothing, like they’d always been there and I was going on with my day.
Whatever it was, I felt alive.
Kicking down the first room’s door, I stepped in and put two more bullets in the first guy I saw. One of my men stepped up next to me and took out the second guy. Then we were both yanked backward. We heard the cock of guns readying behind the door, right on the other side of where we’d been standing. As we fell back into our men, someone blasted two holes through the door. I recognized the clip of an assault rifle and lunged forward. I slid past the door on the ground, and shot as I cleared it.
I got one. The other fell as one of my men shot through the holes in the door.
“Let’s go.” Another of my men slapped a hand on the wall. He was revved up. They were all revved up, and I nodded, jumping to my feet. They didn’t wait. They were already kicking down the next door.
I turned and waved for some of the others to move forward. “Keep clearing out rooms.” I pointed to five of them. “You guys, come with me.”
There was gunfire from the next room. We waited until it cleared, then sprinted all the way to the end of the hallway. I came to the last two rooms. Carol said the one on the left was Addison, but the right one was an unknown.
I hated fucking unknowns.
“Cole.” One of my men, Ford, grabbed my arm and held me back. “Let us clear it.” He gestured to Addison’s room with his gun. “Get your girl.”
I nodded, but I had to wait as they kicked down the right door. I heard gunfire as I did the same to Addison’s door. And as I stepped inside, my heart stopped. All the adrenaline and buzzing simply left me.
She was strapped to a bed, covered in bruises.
I almost fell to my knees.
I loved her.
I couldn’t move, not at first. They had beaten her. Half her face was swollen. One of her eyes wouldn’t open. Her throat was black, blue, and a grotesque yellow color. Her hands—I took the three steps toward her, I was falling with each one—her hands had shoe marks on them.
They’d stepped on her.
My mouth dried.
I gripped my gun more tightly, needing the feel of my knife in the other. I wanted to turn around, find one of their men, and gut him. I wanted him to bleed slowly, and I wanted his blood all over the floor when the Bertals came back for their men.
But then Addison’s good eye opened, and a shaky calm came over me.
Tenderness like I’d never experienced covered the rage inside. It was like a thin sheet, veiling the blood lust, and I swallowed hard, forcing my mouth into a smile. She had to see me smile. She had to know everything was going to be okay. I would say anything, promise anything, do anything to make this woman feel safe once again.
“Hey,” I said softly, kneeling at her side.
Tears welled up and fell down her face, sliding over the bruises.
“Hey.” I lifted my hand. I was going to wipe some of the tears away, but I hesitated, holding my hand in the air. I didn’t want to hurt her anymore. I loved her. It rushed through me, coating my lungs, my voice, my thoughts. “I have you. I love you.”
She just kept crying.
“Addison?” I wiped my thumb over her face, hoping to God that I hadn’t hurt her with that slight touch. “Addison, can you talk?”
Her head shook an inch, barely. She couldn’t talk, and she just kept crying.
“I love you.”
Keep going. Get her safe. Come back and murder who you have to. Those were my objectives. I made quick work untying the ropes. Once the last pulled free, I slid my arms under her and lifted. She was so light, so goddamn light—like she’d lost weight in the day she was gone. I almost stumbled heading back for the door, but took a deep breath and held her tight, securing her so she’d never feel unsafe again. Two of my men were waiting for me. They saw Addison, what they’d done to her, and everyone fell silent. The men stood next to the rooms they’d cleared and watched silently, letting me pass by.
The door that led to the main floor was open now, and a group of girls stood there. They were barely dressed. Some only wore thongs with their breasts hanging out. A few wore lingerie corsets, and all had heavy makeup and their hair done up. When they saw Addison in my arms, I heard quiet gasps. Two of them started crying. Another covered her mouth as they stepped back to let me pass.
One woman stepped outside. One of my men held her back, and her eyes widened. She pointed to Addison as I walked past, heading for the car that had turned down the alley. “They did that to her?”
“Yes,” I ground out.
The car stopped beside me, and the back door flew open. Carter was there. “Give her to me so you can get in.”
I held her tighter, unable to bear letting her go, even for one second. I climbed in and sat, cradling her in my lap. The driver shut the door, and we were off. My men would follow behind. Once we were clear of the whorehouse, I turned to Carter. “Why’d you come?”
His eyes fell to Addison before he murmured, “We’re family. I came to back you up.”
I nodded. That was how we were.
My eyes never left Addison the entire ride back home. And when we arrived, instead of going to her floor, I took her to mine and laid her in my bed. We called a doctor, and once he’d looked her over, treated her injuries, and given her pain medication, I let her sleep.
When I emerged, Carter waited in the kitchen, along with more of my men. Everyone knew this meant we were going to war again, but for tonight, I decided we would wait.
I returned to lean against the wall of my bedroom, watching Addison’s breathing. After a while I slid to the floor and waited for her to wake up.
I never moved.