My throat burns as I read the part of my brother’s message about Savage Reign. I wish. It makes sense, but I can never reach out to Kade “Phantom” Maddox. If Phantom ever finds out where I am after all these years…
I shiver and this time it’s not the freak ass snowstorm making me cold.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting down the memories. The taste of his kiss, the sound of his laughter, the day I left him standing in the rain, my heart breaking for a thousand different reasons.
No. I can’t go back. That chapter is closed. Dead and buried with everything else I’ve sacrificed. All that matters now is my daughter. Her safety and her future means everything to me. The rest of me is just collateral damage. What I want means nothing as long as she and Phantom never have to face my father’s wrath.
Still, I’d do anything for my brother, even if it means crawling back through the filth of the world I tried to escape to take down our corrupt father.
A heavy truck rumbles past, spraying light over the cracked concrete, and I duck low, pressing myself into the shadow between a battered shipping container and a stack of wooden spools thick with splinters and old paint. My breath is loud in my own ears, each inhale catching on the sharp, sour tang of spilled fuel and distant smoke. The yard is alive with ghosts from past crimes, rusted out freight cars, and men who carry violence like a second skin. I peek around the edge to catch the faces of a few who walk a little too close to my hiding spot. A few faces I recognize, and a few I don't. My father must have hired help to carry out his crimes-are-us ventures.
Right on time, light bursts through the darkness as the train engine comes around a steep bend and slows to a stop at the edge of a loading dock. Silhouettes crawl out of the shadows and the rail yard comes to life with a fresh wave of men.
I freeze in place.Please, God, don’t let anyone see me.
I slowly reach for my cell phone and bring up the camera. My hand trembles with nerves I wish I could control, but I give up and shakily start snapping. If anyone finds me here, if my father’s men catch me skulking around the shipment, it’s not just my neck on the line. It’s my brother’s. It’s my little girl’s. I swallow hard, the weight of it nearly enough to drive me out of this place and back to my corner of the world.
But I can’t think about that now. Not when I’m already in too deep. The only way out is through, right?
God, I hope I don’t get killed tonight.
Movement draws my gaze to the far corner of the railway station where a craggy old main warehouse hangs out near the abandoned tracks. Two men in black—one tall and sharp-edged, the other bulky and lumbering—stride across the uneven loading platform. Their boots land heavily as they haul open the sliding door to one of the freight cars, revealing the glow of overhead lamps and the gleam of stacked crates.
And there it is. I swear I don’t know if I should jump up and down right now, run over and snap a million pictures or haul ass to the local police department. Probably none of the above.
But hell yeah! I am one step closer to shutting my father down for good and freeing my brother from the hellhole he’s living in.
“Bingo, bitches.”
My fingers go numb from how hard I grip my phone. It would be easy to let fear in and freeze me up, but not when I am so close I can taste my father’s incoming rage when he finds out what I’ve done.
I force myself to breathe. I switch modes and press the record button, holding my phone steady as I zoom in on the cargo, faces, and the ill-placed logos on the sides of the crates.
“What kind of criminal puts their name on the freaking illegal product?”
Maybe they are pushing the drugs through my father’s furniture stores. Okay, that makes sense, but still. I zoom in on the mammoth of a man unloading one piece of cargo all the while, my heart pounds against my chest. I don’t know how I manage to keep the camera steady, but I breathe through my nerves, anyway.
“Please, God, let this be enough.”
Just outside the halo of light near the train, I see another man. He keeps to the shadows so no matter how much I zoom in with my camera, I can’t make out any features. His posture alone marks him as someone in charge. Even from this distance I can tell his coat is tailored and he operates with the kind of moneyed authority you can’t fake.
My breath hitches. Wait. I immediately know who it is.
Veles. My brother has told me all about him in our monthly secret phone calls.
My stomach gurgles with acid.
He’s the Russian backing my father’s power move into the drug world and my father’s new favorite devil, as my brotherexplained. Veles and the Vultures. I’ve known about them for a while and it doesn’t surprise me that my father could wrangle them into doing his dirty work.
My skin prickles with cold sweat. Veles is talking to a short, stocky figure. His shoulders hunch, and he has his hands jammed in his pockets. There’s something familiar in the angle of that chin, the restless tension in his stance. And then he moves his hand from his pocket and I catch the glint off the family ring.
For a moment, my heart stops.
“Micah?” I clamp a hand over my mouth and huddle back into the shadows.
What the hell is he doing here? He said he was staying away from the railway station tonight so I could film and get the proof needed to take our father down. If I catch Micah on film, the cops will take him down right along with our father.
Damn it! I pause the video recording.
