Robert nodded rapidly, still gasping for breath. King stood and gestured to Dante, who grabbed Frank by the front of his shirt and yanked him up. Callum noticed that Dante kept his body between Frank and the omegas, even with the weapon trained on him and Frank so clearly subdued.
A feeling of safety settled in Callum’s chest, growing when Bianca took his hand and pulled him with her back to King’s side. King brushed a thumb over Callum’s cheek, as if he couldn’t resist the urge to touch him, just as he had Bianca. Callum leaned into it.
Dante shoved Frank to his knees beside his packmate. The tenderness disappeared from King’s face, replaced by a mask of cold nothingness. Frank paled. Robert looked a bit green.
King didn’t say a word as he circled the kneeling alphas, then stopped behind them to stand next to Daniel. Before they could even begin to react, King had snatched one of Frank’s arms up and behind his head. In another fluid movement, King braced Frank’s elbow over his knee, pivoted his hips, applied pressure, and used the torque to hyperextend the joint.
Something snapped, Frank’s forearm bending in a way that made Callum queasy. King punched Frank in the throat to cut off his scream, then did the same to Robert for good measure. They both collapsed to the concrete, choking and retching, the sounds lost in another boom of fireworks overhead.
King locked eyes with Callum and Bianca. “How do you want this to end? For you, we’ll do anything. Even let these motherfuckers live, as much as the idea pains me.”
“There’s a lot of space between alive and dead,” Dante said darkly.
“It’s up to you two,” King told the omegas. “I want you to feel safe and at peace. If you don’t want to know and you just want us to handle it, we can do that too, but I’ll never exclude you from important pack decisions.”
Callum’s chest warmed again. Bianca squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.
“They’re your exes, Queen B,” he told her. “I’ll follow your lead. As long as I never have to see them again, I’m good.”
Bianca stared at Robert and Frank for a long moment. Callum wondered if some part of her still cared for them, at least enough that she wouldn’t wish them seriously harmed. He didn’t know what instincts might linger after a broken bond, and he couldn’t really blame her if she didn’t want them murdered. Callum supposed he didn’t really wantthem dead either, though he certainly wouldn’t mind a lengthy hospitalization and a long, painful recovery.
“Don’t kill them,” Bianca said finally, smiling a truly unsettling smile. “They don’t deserve death. They owe me a pound of flesh, and they need to live to pay that debt.”
King nodded as though he’d expected as much. “How are they going to do that?”
Bianca heaved a sigh. “I never thought I’d say this, but I need to call Serenity Rhodes. She has a relationship with the FBI agents of the anti-trafficking division. I’m sure Robert and Frank will be very useful in their investigation. Unless, of course, they want me to use my significant resources to ensure they are fully prosecuted for their crimes here today—stalking, attempted kidnapping, armed assault, trafficking, cybercrimes—and a few extra trumped-up charges just for funsies.”
Daniel had pulled both men to their feet, holding them by the scruffs of their necks as they fought for balance while cradling their injuries. Callum was surprised by how quickly their faces had swollen and how many colors their skin had turned. It was hard to believe they’d had the upper hand only a short while ago.
Bianca stepped closer to glare into their battered faces. “If you thought my family destroyed you before, just imagine what we could do to you now. You threatened to sell me, tried to take me from my home, and make me someone’s slave. If you think this is mercy, you’re sadly mistaken. I own you. You owe me your miserable lives. You only draw breath because I let you. And you’re going to use that breath to tell the FBI all about your buyer and do anything they ask of you to aid in bringing down the bastards you tried to sell me to. Then, you’re going to plead guilty to whatever bullshit charges we decide on and spend the rest of your lives under legal supervision. If you play nice, I’ll consider helpingyou get house arrest after you’ve spent a few years in prison reflecting on your mistakes. You’re welcome, you fucking cunts.”
Bianca tightened her grip on Callum’s hand and turned away from her exes with a tangible finality. It was as if they no longer existed, whatever had been left of their power over her now evaporated. There was a newfound peacefulness in her eyes that Callum liked very much.
“Bag ‘em,” King ordered.
Dante produced two black bags from seemingly nowhere, which he and Daniel promptly secured over Robert’s and Frank’s heads, then they forced them to their feet and secured their arms behind them with gods knew what. Between Robert’s busted leg and Frank’s mangled arm, it was a miracle they didn’t pass out from the rough handling, especially given how much they moaned and whimpered as they were half-shoved, half-dragged along. It gave Callum a vicious twinge of satisfaction.
“Well, that’s one pack of assholes handled,” Bianca announced sarcastically. “Shall we go deal with one more?”
Callum grinned. “I’ll follow your lead, Queenie.”
He would follow Bianca Bonnycastle anywhere. Always.
Chapter twenty-four
Bianca
What a fucking rollercoaster of a day.
How had she gone from waking up on the beach surrounded by Callum and Pack King, to the devastating conversation with her family, to deciding whether two men would live or die? It was an absolutely preposterous series of events. Bianca should’ve been an emotional wreck.
But she’d never felt better.
At some point between feeling like her parents were selling her into slavery and her exes actually trying to sell her into slavery, she’d accepted a few truths. First, she could not endure either of those wretched lives. She couldn’t be the person they wanted her to be or even the person she used to be. She didn’t want to.
Second, she could not and would not share the rest of her life with anyone but the vexing, infuriating, thoughtful, trustworthy, irresistible idiots she’d fallen for despite her best efforts to the contrary. Callum, Daniel, Dante, and Quentin were her mates, and she was done making excuses not to be happy with them.
Thus, after the whirlwind of activity that followed the attempted kidnapping, Bianca was ready to finish the conversation she’d run away from. Robert and Frank would be recovering in a prison hospital. TheBonnycastle family had more than a few judges in their inner circle, so her assailants would be sentenced to however many years Bianca deemed necessary, with a chance at home incarceration if the FBI was satisfied with their cooperation. With that situation settled for the time being and the pricks whisked away to pay for their crimes, Pack Bonnycastle and Pack King returned to Bianca’s living room.
