I set Athena down on the ground and stand. “Let’s go now.” I’m done waiting to have my revenge.
“Woah, wait up.” Knight climbs to his feet. “No one is going near Amos Martin until we have proof and then there are legitimate channels we need to pursue. If he’s guilty, I promise he will be punished.”
“Fuck that.” I square off with him. “That asshole is not going to jail. He deserves to die a slow, torturous death.”
“I like you,” Baz says, standing beside Knight. “And I wish we could give you his death, but we can’t act above the law. We can’t say we are changing things and then make exceptions when it’s personal to us.”
“If we go there, we’re no better than our predecessors,” Jase says, also standing.
“Then turn a blind eye,” I say. “Let us do this and lose the trail.”
Ares rises from his chair, and I shoot him a daggered look, preparing to deal with his shit when he surprises me. “Didn’t think we’d ever find common ground, but I’m with Manning. If we find irrefutable proof Martin is involved, let’s hand his ass to Drew and let him do his worst. It still won’t come even close to payback, but it’s something.”
“It’s too personal for you.” Baz clamps a hand on Ares’s shoulder. “You can’t be objective.”
“And you can?” Ares quirks a brow.
“None of us like this,” Knight says. “But we can’t jeopardize our reputations and everything we’ve sacrificed for one man.”
“You said you eliminated others who were core Rhett Carter supporters,” Abby says. “So why can’t Amos be eliminated if he’s guilty?”
“Because there’s too much of a trail from Drew to my father,” Athena replies.
“And if he’s going to this much trouble to hide his involvement and to silence you, Drew, you can bet he has provisions in place should anything happen to him.”
“This is fucking bullshit,” I roar, shucking out of Athena’s hold. “If that bastard is responsible for this, he needs to die!”
Athena takes my hand and steps up beside me. “I’m with Drew. If my father has done this, he deserves a gruesome death. What if there is another way to play this?”
“What do you have in mind?” Ares asks.
“We set a trap and let someone else take the fall for his murder.” She squeezes my hand. “We go ahead with the Petrov play, and we make it easy for Amos to know what we’re up to. We shadow his every move because my father won’t show up to the meet himself. He’ll either send me or his backup. We have a team ready in Lowell to swoop in and grab him. Then we stage a very public shoot-out between him and Petrov, and we feed it to the mainstream media. We show them both dead, but in reality, my father and that fucker Emil will be alive and enjoying Drew’s and my hospitality at the hotel.”
Anderson snorts out a laugh, and my lips are fighting a grin.
“It could work,” Ares says, nodding. “Our members will buy it because it was out of our hands.”
“Except our handprints will be all over this.” Knight drags a hand through his dirty-blond hair.
“As would be expected when one of ours is involved in a very public takedown of a known felon,” Jase says.
“Amos will look like the hero taking out the big bad sex trafficker,” Baz says.
“No way,” Athena responds before I can. “We spin it so it’s two sex traffickers trying to eliminate their competition. There can be no scenario where my father looks like the hero. He needs to be shown as the villain he is.”
“I hate to play devil’s advocate,” Hunt says, “but we’re all assuming Athena’s father is the guilty party when he may have only played a part in it. We don’t know he didn’t hand the entire family over to Rhett and his wife and they did the rest.”
“Hunt has a point,” Charlie says. “It seems like Rhett might be the guilty party if he was running trafficking rings, and it seems his wife was involved in Silas’s death.”
“That doesn’t exonerate Amos,” Anderson says.
“And if he’s still doing Carter’s bidding years after his death, it seems likely he knew what was going to happen to the Fords whether they died at his hands or not,” Abby adds.
“I could ask him,” Athena says. “When I’m home for Christmas. I’ll spin it so he has to give me an explanation.”
“He’ll lie, Thena,” Ares says, and I instinctively tuck her closer.
“I think we need to go home and reflect on it until we devise an appropriate strategy.” Knight walks right up to me. “I understand why you need to do this, and while it makes me nervous, if we can find a way to do this so you get to end him, we’ll do it. But we need to ensure he’s guilty first.” He eyeballs me in clear warning. “We need your promise you will not take matters into your own hands until we’ve formulated a joint plan.”
