Still, I’m so content in this moment I wouldn’t change anything for the world.
Well… maybe one thing. It’s impolite to leave a dangerous gangster hanging no matter how many favours he owes you. “I love you, too.”
My body might be bruised and battered but when I touch my lips to his, everything is better.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
BAXTER
Six Months Later
When my plane touches down in Christchurch, I breathe a sigh of contentment that I’m home. The trip to Auckland was fruitless as I always knew it would be. The moment the abduction was connected to the MC gang, it became a foregone conclusion that Pavle wouldn’t let me kill Andrej. Not even once I added Isabelle’s assault into the mix.
Punish him? Yes. Censure him? A given. But kill? Not a chance.
Not matter how much I begged.
The highway mob are gone. The syndicate picked off their leaders and the rival MC gangs took whichever members they found useful, decimating the rest and leaving their splintered remnants to fend for themselves.
You don’t fuck with a man’s kids. Even the most savage road crew can grasp that basic tenet.
Especially when it’s unclear what they hoped to gain from the action. Some part of my team had crossed with theirs in a minor territory dispute months before. Not even worth seven figures judging from the scant intel we dragged from the mouths of their rank members before we killed them.
Hard to believe that a tiny scuffle festered to become the proximate cause for my daughter’s abduction. A plan that almost immediately went sideways, making me even more grateful to Isabelle. People don’t make good decisions when the pressure’s on and their plans go awry.
As for Andrej, twelve months of sanctions, paying ten percent of his across-the-board earnings into my silo, doesn’t seem like enough of a penalty to me.
Of course, that’s because I have interests other than collecting money. When Pavle issued his pronouncement today, it was clear that it stung Andrej deeply and that’ll have to be good enough.
This way, the syndicate avoids an internal war and everybody’s equally unhappy. At least I didn’t get ordered to play nicely with the man, or I really would have been looking for another team.
As the driver heads away from the airport, the route coincidentally takes me past the skating rink where, half a year ago, Isabelle fought two men for my daughter. With Sergio’s demise, the property was in limbo. After today’s rulings, ownership transfers to me. Not that I have the slightest idea of what to do with such an eyesore. Bowl it over and put up a new apartment block, perhaps.
“Stop here,” I order the driver as we draw near to our destination. The privately run retirement home sprawls over an entire suburban block but I don’t want to get too close. Not when I’m waiting for somebody to leave.
The man I want is tardy enough that I’m trying to put out work orders from my phone by the time he finally exits his worksite for the day. Life as a carer doesn’t suit the man—he looks a decade older than he is, and that’s being polite—but I suppose it wasn’t his first choice of career.
With the abduction of my daughter as settled as it will ever be, my security team were grateful for a new task. In tracking down Isabelle’s old coach, I discovered he’d been forced from his role on the back of a formal complaint.
With no other training to fall back on, he’d gone into a string of occupations all of which had failed to turn into a career. His latest venture was working as a carer, how’s that for a laugh?
It will be his last position.
A member of my team approaches him, ostensibly to ask for directions but they soon overpower him with the help of some chloroform, bundling him into the back of their vehicle.
The trip back home is the best journey I’ve taken for a while.
When I walk into the underground garage, my victim is already tied into position. There isn’t a scratch on him—yet—and I scan his face, looking for signs of the man who Isabelle trusted, then grew to fear.
“Look, I don’t know why you’ve brought me here,” the man babbles the moment I peel the tape from his mouth. “But you’ve got the wrong guy. I work in a home. I must be one of the lowest paid staff members they have. Whoever you were after, I’m not him.”
The screen behind me is already cued up and I press the button, watching the man’s face as Isabelle and her skating partner appear on the screen.
“You’re Jacob Marlbrook, aren’t you?”
He nods, the look of confidence that he can sort whatever-this-is with just a quick explanation replaced with the dawning realisation that he’s in serious trouble. The understanding that he’s the right man and everything else is outside of his control.
And this is a man who loves control.
