Biting my tongue at her sarcasm, I refrained from sighing again. I'd apologized multiple times, but I actually understood her frustration with the situation and with me. "We had a lead; Logan went to confirm it. Honestly, I'm not even surprised anymore. I'm just disappointed."
"And was it Carson?"
"It was Anna, and we assume Carson orchestrated it with the Navarros. That's the confirmation I need before I take action. I won't execute them without proof."
"You have enough proof of other insults, Burke."
"But not attempted murder. There's a different level of retribution for that."
"I see."
I didn't think she really did, not when I had been prepared to kill my father a few months ago for lesser crimes. Once again, not taking Carson out myself had been a mistake. He’d managed to dodge his assassin and turn the tables on us. All the more reason I had to stick around and take care of it personally. "My sperm donor is ruthless, and I should have remembered that. Maybe I'll thank him for the wake-up call."
"Please don't. I'd rather put a bullet between his eyes myself than thank him for killing our unborn child. He may be retired, but he isn't senile. Still, I know it was hard on you to make the decision about your flesh and blood, and I don't blame you for hesitating."
There it was again; her sweet understanding. "I don't deserve your forgiveness."
"You have it anyway."
"Thank you. I'm trying to wrap this up so I can be with you again." The words were a struggle, but I tried. "I miss you and our son."
"We miss you too."
Hanging up, I felt more confused than ever. I wanted to go to Chester, to tell my wife how I felt. Carson was a horrible role model growing up, but I used to think my mother had done a remarkable job filling in the gap. Armed with the knowledge of what I could have had, what Kinsley was building with our son and with me, the differences were stark. Elena had not been a decent stand-in for my father's shortcomings, had not conveyed to her children what love and devotion looked like in a healthy relationship. Instead, she'd shown blind loyalty to her husband at the detriment of her children's mental and emotional health. It pained me to realize how much happiness my stunted growth had cost me, and what kind of person Anna had turned out to be because of it.
Without a doubt, I needed to finish what I'd been unable to in the past. If I hadn't hesitated, as Kinsley kindly put it, we'd be expecting another baby. Another joy. It was the knowledge my father had once again meddled in the life of my child that set my determination. With that in mind, I decided to go to Logan and lend him a hand.
It was unusual for me to drive myself anymore, but not unheard of entirely. Paranoia caused me to check my mirrors repeatedly, but then I spotted a tail and realized it was not undue fear making me extra cautious, but stark reality. Without overthinking it, I veered into the next lane and sped up. As I dodged cars and checked behind me to see if it worked, I discovered a car coming at me head on in the wrong lane. Between the two vehicles closing in and the other cars on the road, my alternatives were slim.
Checking all my mirrors, I pulled the handbrake and steered into the 180 degree spinout. The other cars kept coming, and I had just enough time to downshift and then punch it, charging through the gravel scattered across the median as a boom of crashing metal sounded behind me.
I sped off in the opposite direction, circling the city until I was positive those were the only two vehicles after me. When I arrived at the warehouse, I found my hands were shaking. Kinsley would dig up my corpse and murder me again if I managed to die on this mission.
"Logan!" I called as I walked in.
"Over here!"
I found him in the back corner of the warehouse, blood covering his shirt. "Did you have a tail on the way here?"
"Yeah, I had to shake them. Why?"
"I barely avoided a head-on collision."
"Fuck, they're relentless."
"Do you think there's a contract?"
Logan paused while he wiped the excess blood from his gloved hands. "I haven't heard. Want me to check?"
"I'll do it later. You seem busy."
With a voracious smile, Logan inclined his head in the direction of the naked and extremely mangled man strapped to a metal coroner's table set over a drain in the floor. "Did you come to join in on the fun?"
"I'm not here to steal your thunder, but I want to know if you've learned anything new."
"Well, let's see." Logan circled the table. The man was blindfolded, gagged, and duct taped in place. "Our man David here says a woman named Mary paid him a large sum of money to infiltrate the catering company Caden and I scoped out. Once he was a trusted employee, they began an affair of a sexual nature. Sort of like a reward for a job well done." As he spoke, Logan attached jumper cables to various parts of David's body, including his nipples and shriveled testicles. "And once they'd been together a few times, she asked if he would do her a teeny tiny favor." Logan hit the juice on the battery charger, and the man screamed as his body locked in a high arch. "He's very sorry he slept with my wife because he didn't know she was married at the time, but he's not sorry he hurt innocent people. Apparently, them's the breaks."
I winced when Logan plucked a hatchet from among his instruments of pain and whacked off David's dick with zero remorse.
