A year ago, a prostitute told me a story. My father got one of the women in his whorehouse pregnant, and she fled. I have a sister, and her name isRose. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s bull, but ever since that revelation, the idea of a sister has stuck with me. Haunted me. For the first time, I started asking a different question,what would Rose think?
Now…there’s Laurel.
Sweet. Brave. Brilliant.
And so fucking inconvenient.
I know what she’d think, how she’d look at this place. This mission.Me. She’d see it for what it is, control, dominance, fear dressed up as power. I hate how that splinter of her voice has embedded itself under my skin, poking at parts of me I don’t want to look at.
Get out of my head,I tell a phantom version of her.Go away.
I think of this morning, when she blinked sleepily at me with those pretty doe eyes. Of last night at dinner, when I made her laugh and it was the best part of my day. How in the middle of the night I woke up and searched for her, only able to relax when I saw her sighing softly in her sleep.
Get a grip,I tell myself.
I’m Carrson Fucking Ashford.
I don’t wait. I don’t compromise.
I take. I devour. I rule.
Just…not with her.
Fuck. Get your head in the game, Carrson. Or you die and your brothers die.
I shove her from my mind. Lock it down. Become who I was trained to be.
Ruthless. Focused. In control.
With one hand on my earpiece, I whisper, “Do we have eyes on the back door yet?”
The mic hidden in the cord picks it up easily. Thomson rigged this whole setup himself, and every time I use it I feel like I’ve stepped into some off-brand version of the Secret Service or maybe the FBI. Which is hilarious, considering the amount of illegal shit I’ve done. If they ever came knocking, it wouldn’t be to give me a badge. It’d be with a warrant for my arrest.
Jackson answers immediately, “On it. We have visualization.”
I hate involving that piece of crap in anything I do, but his father’s second-in-command to mine, which means I don’t always get a choice and as muchas I hate to admit it, Jackson is made for assignments like these. He’s calculated, brutal, not to mention built like a truck. As long as he keeps his temper in check, which is always a gamble, he’s an asset, at least for today.
I pull the knife from my waistband. My weapon of choice, it has a wicked curved blade. The other brothers have them too. A gun sits in a holster on my side, but I don’t plan on using it. Guns are too noisy, too easily traced. If everything goes to plan, this will be a simple mission.
Get in and get out.
I leave five brothers at the back door and take the other five to the front. They wait behind me while I ease the screen door open. I wince at the squeal of the hinges, but a quick glance around confirms we’re alone. No one outside. No curious eyes watching what we’re about to do.
I nod to Michaelson.
It takes him two hits with the hilt of his knife to snap the deadbolt clean off. The door swings open, and we’re in.
The smell hits first. Rotten eggs and paint thinner.
We all instinctively cover our noses.
Michaelson gags beside me. “What the hell is that?”
My stomach knots. I wasn’t expecting this. “Meth. They’re cooking methamphetamine in here.”
Sure enough, the kitchen comes into view, looking more like a mad scientist’s lab than a place where you would cook a steak. Empty boxes markedcold and flu medicationlitter the counters. Pyrex bowls, plastic bottles, and oversized Tupperware containers are connected to one another with a maze of plastic tubing. A fine white powder coats every surface like toxic snow.
On feather-light feet, with my knife before me, I advance farther into the apartment. The place is trashed with burn marks on the walls and empty pill bottles scattered across the floor. Someone’s been living here, but not well. The brothers and I move silently, a well-oiled machine of muscle and malice.
