Uneven stone walls, raw and jagged, surrounded us on all sides, moody shadows covering half the vast space as Shep, King, and I stood surrounding the man tied to the lone chair in the room. There was a predatory stillness, the clock ticking down Ari’s last heartbeats. Pure rage still flowed through my veins, and it was all I could do to stand there while Alessio and Lachlan bolted the door shut behind us and then stood guard.
Leaving the three of us with a reason to draw blood waiting for who would make the first move.
I flexed my fingers at my side before balling them back into a fist as I studied the man who had to tried to take everything from me. From Shep. From King. All of us. He’d almost succeeded more than once, and that was too many close calls for me.
Deep cuts from Alessio’s fist marred one side of Ari’s face, and his nose was definitely broken. Blood had stopped pouring out of it, but had dried down his mouth and chin.
Still he looked straight ahead defiantly, not acknowledging any of us.
King arched a brow at us in question, and Shep and I gave curt nods for him to go ahead. Let King start this shit off, because I was going to be the one to finish it.
“I’ll give you this. You play a long game.” King’s voice was deadly calm as he stepped forward, looking down his nose at Ari. Had I been on the other side of his interrogation, that would’ve scared me more than anything. That “calm” was a smokescreen.
Ari didn’t say a word to that, and it wasn’t because his jaw was broken. Alessio had been pulled off him just in time, so the guy was beaten and bruised, but he could still give us the answers we wanted.
“Now’s the time to say your piece. You’ve waited years for the chance.” King spread his hands wide, offering him the floor, and Ari scoffed.
“Why don’t you just shoot me in the head and get it over with? That’s your MO, right? Shoot first, don’t bother with the questions.” He shook his head in disgust and spat on the floor by King’s polished shoes.
“He was your brother,” Shep spoke up, sounding more levelheaded than I could even fathom after being shot at. But that was Shep’s superpower, his unwavering control. The icier he got, the more terrifying he was. “Any of us would’ve done the same thing. Your only downfall was in underestimating us.”
Ari’s eyes shifted past King to narrow on Shep. “Hardly. I played you and lover boy there like a fiddle. Add in a jealousKingand every single one of you walked right into my trap.”
I cocked my head, running my eyes over the pathetic bastard. “Says the asshole tied to the chair.”
Ari then turned his attention to me, his number one. “How are your ribs feeling,PrinceRinaldi? I heard they made a satisfying cracking sound that echoed through the jung?—”
Shep’s fist connected with his jaw, resulting in a similar sound as Ari’s head snapped to the side at an ugly angle, blood flying from his mouth. For someone who’d lost as much blood as Shep had, he showed no signs of faltering. His anger fueled his drive to be there and bring this fucker to the ending he deserved.
Ari rotated his jaw from side to side as if testing it wasn’t broken, as Shep leaned down to say by his ear, “Give me a reason to punch it off its hinges, fucker.”
The dumb shit then angled his head to face Shep, his eyes wild as he faced off with King’s number two—and his own choice of number two.
“You know, you and King were the easiest to predict out of the lot of you,” Ari sneered, seeming to delight in his own downfall at this stage. “The fact you started fucking my number one target in bringing you assholes down was just icing on the cake.”
He barely got the wordcakeout of his mouth before Shep was once again planting his fist in the corner of it.
Once for Wales.
Twice for the jungle.
And a third time, I was assuming, for Ari’s bullet grazing his arm.
That was when King stepped in to pull Shep back, because there was no way in hellIwas about to stop him.
“This could’ve ended so differently,” King said, shaking his head. “You obviously have skills that could be put to better use. You could’ve been an asset?—”
“If you weren’t a fucking psycho who wanted us dead,” I said as Ari spat blood out the corner of his mouth.
“Watching some asshole shoot your brother in cold blood will do that to you.”
“He was stealing from us,” King said in a tone so cold I was shocked icicles didn’t form from the ceiling. “He threatened to expose Libertine?—”
“You.”
“—to the world. I couldn’t let that happen. Not with everything we do. The people involved. You knew that and so did he. That’s clear on that video. He knew you were both compromised, but you kept pushing.”
“So it’s my fault you put a bullet through his head?”
