“Liam will destroy any evidence before we go.”
I hold up my hand. “Don’t. Leave him exactly like he is. I want them to see.”
I want Keane and Jax to see what I did. To understand how far I’m willing to go. I want the families to know what’s coming for them. I want them to be afraid. Of me. See my name carved into his chest and his fetid dick shoved down his throat.
Declan gives me a small smile of approval. He looks proud of me.
“What do you want me to do with the others?”
So, it really was him that kidnapped Uncle Dom and the other capos. “Are they alive?”
He actually laughs.
I should feel bad that Uncle Dom is dead. But I don’t. He’s as culpable as my not-real father. Uncle Dom should have stood up for me, protected me. Done something to stop his nephew from using me to make a deal with Julio Ortiz.
I thoughtfully consider Declan’s question. No one has ever asked me what I wanted before.
Rising from the couch, Declan comes over to kiss me on the top of the head, then he goes into the kitchen to the coffee maker. There is a pot already half-full. I eye it like it’s chocolate cake. Pouring me a cup, he hands it to me when I join him. I take a very grateful sip of caffeine, its effects instantaneous.
“Bring the bodies here and lay them at his feet. He wanted to be a king. He can rule over their dead bodies.”
I get another small smile of approval. Might as well add on another request since Declan is being magnanimous this morning.
“One more thing. I have a niece, Sarah. I want her found and brought to me. Without her nanny,” I add.
It suddenly came to me during the night as I stared at the wall. The song Sarah had been humming that sounded so familiar, and where I’d seen the expensive jewelry on Meribella’s dresser. The song was from an old Victorian music box. One that Kellan had given me for my seventh birthday. And the jewelry was my mother’s. Either Meribella stole them—which is highly unlikely since she left them out in the open—or she was literally in bed with the devil. The thought of her fucking Max is repulsive. How she could let that man touch her… regardless, her fate is sealed now. Sarah is mine, not hers.
I finish my coffee, set down the mug, and ask Declan, “What should we have for breakfast? I’m starving.”
Chapter 9
I manipulate the knife between my fingers. Over. Under. Over. Under. It feels foreign, not quite right. Not like my red one that I gave to Andie. It was the knife I killed my father with. It holds the first part of my soul—the pure and innocent part—I lost that day. A part of me that now belongs to Alexandria Rossi.
I tune out Keane’s angry yelling. He’s been on the phone all fucking morning trying to allay the fears of the other families. Running the business is more politics than anything else. I have no patience for it. I have no tolerance for it. I’d rather bathe in the blood of my enemy than coddle a bunch of rich, privileged, spoiled old men because they’re scared. They should be. Declan Levine has finally made his move in a big fucking way. But he made one huge, fatal mistake. He took my girl. Andie may bitch, and moan, and protest, and say she belongs to no one, but she couldn’t be more fucking wrong.
“God, I hate that pompous jackass,” Keane grumbles after he hangs up and tosses his phone to Enzo in the front seat.
“You know we’re more than likely walking into a trap, right?” I reiterate.
Someone was able to send me a message on the dark web alluding to the location of where Andie is being held. The place is out in the middle of nowhere. Perfect for an ambush or to bury bodies you never want found. I traced back the deed of sale for the property. And sure enough, after peeling back a thousand layers that took more time than I’d like to admit, I discovered that the cottage is owned by another of Declan’s ghost subsidiaries, just like the warehouse Andie was being held in.
Keane stares out the window. My friend is not doing well. The stress of the past two days is creeping its way into his psyche, slowly unraveling him. Everybody always assumes that I’m the ticking time bomb of the group.
“I don’t fucking care,” he eventually replies. “It’s the first solid lead we have to find her.”
Keane already sent three men ahead to scope out the property and the surrounding woods. Enzo and Dante are riding with us in the SUV, and Marco, Johnny, and two others are in the car behind us. We have enough weapons to equip a small army, which in a sense, I guess we are. I understand Keane’s caution and why he brought so many of our men—what’s left of them—with us, but I honestly would’ve preferred it to have been just me. I do my best work alone.
“ETA?” Keane asks Dante.
“Almost there. Five more minutes.”
We’ve been driving for over an hour. Once you get out of the city, it’s nothing but fields and forests as far as the eye can see. It’s monotonous as hell.
“If he’s there, I want him captured and contained.”
I look over at Keane. TheheKeane is referring to is Rafe. Since the whole relationship fiasco with Andie five years ago, her leaving, Kellan’s death, the shit with his dad, and his engagement to Rita, our friend had been slowly slipping away from us. As each day passed, he would retreat a little further. Rafe made it perfectly clear to me and Keane that he wanted out. We just never knew he would go to the extremes that he did, nor could we have ever contemplated he would use Andie to do it.
Dante slows and turns onto a hidden dirt road. You’d pass right by it if you weren’t looking. It’s rutted and uneven, making traversing it in the SUV feel like sitting in a bouncy castle. I’m putting that on my places-to-fuck-Andie bucket list. I could pound the shit out of her delectable pussy in one of those.
