He hesitates, clearly unconvinced, then laughs shortly and nods.
A fool. All of them.
Then it occurs to me, my woman is in that house.
And suddenly incompetence isn’t amusing anymore. They should be protecting her, and they should do better.
I close the distance and haul one of them by the collar just as the other raises his gun and points it at me.
I turn my eyes to the man holding the weapon and give him a bored smirk.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say quietly. “Because we both know that if you pull that trigger, I’ll walk away with nothing more than a surface wound, while your brains are splattered across this pristine pavement.”
Then I look down at the man clenched in my fist, his face flushed bright red with fury.
“Don’t push your luck.” I continue coldly. “Do your job properly. No one enters or leaves these premises without my knowledge, and every person is searched thoroughly while my woman is in this house.”
He gulps.
“Understood?” I snap.
“Yes,” he says, swallowing hard.
I let go.
“Now give me your phone.”
He does. I enter my number and hand it back.
“You will text me updates,” I say evenly. “Everything. I want to know where my woman is at all times. Have a maid relay it if necessary, I don’t care. If she is not in her bedroom, I want to know what she is doing. Every second of it.”
“Understood,” he says, still looking uncertain.
“Do not fail me, boy,” I add, a hint of amusement crossing my expression as he is clearly older than I am.
“If I have to return here because you failed to follow through, you will not be given the courtesy of an explanation before I empty my magazine into you.”
“I’ll do as you asked,” he says quickly.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” I reply, already turning away.
It pains me with every step I take away from the house. The more distance I put between us, the less it sits right with me. A pressure tightens in my chest, my heart is beating too hard and far too fast. My stomach flips unpleasantly.
I think I’m having that heart attack again.
I need to make her my wife and bring her under my roof.
Immediately.
Being apart, having no idea where she is every hour of the day, is wearing my patience thin.
My phone vibrates as I step away from the gates, a message coming through from my father with nothing but an address and a code. Not that I ever expected him to ask how I was.
It means he wants someone dead, someone who has sold behind his back or crossed him in some way, and tonight I am the tool he has chosen to deal with it.
I snort. I haven’t done jobs for that fucker in a long time, but I never managed to get rid of him for good.
I am working on that.
