Capone grabs my arm, pulling me aside. “Something’s wrong.”
“Even if Ryan was desperate, he’d drop a good chunk of change to get reliable people.”
“If they get caught… This is just…”
He can’t finish the sentence because there are just too many options. Stupid. Irrational. Unreliable. Illogical. Nonsensical.
“What did Ryan hire you to do?” I ask.
“Look, you’re not the cops, okay? We don’t gotta answer your questions. So either call the cops or let us go,” the leader says.
The buzzing in the office continues, and I wish I’d grabbed my phone when I walked in here.
Crouching in front of him, I smile. The type of smile that immediately strikes fear into anyone who isn’t related to me. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re fucking dead. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to get you dead that you’re determining right now.”
His eyes widen. “Why do you even care who hired us? We attacked your business. Just kill us if you’re going to, man.”
“Ryan Vega… the man who hired you is my brother. And you’re not the type he usually works with. Then you come here and attack our girls. I want answers before I kill you, and if that means I have to pull out every fucking finger and toenail you have to get you to tell me what I want to know, I will.”
“Don’t forget the fact they use our enemy’s product. That gives us even more reason to break what teeth they still have on the curbs out front. That might get their attention,” Capone says.
Normally, Zep and Jethro would be running this, but this isn’t really club territory. It’s the world Capone and I ran from, and we need to handle this. Pull from our past to fix the present.
My phone continues buzzing, and it makes me itch not to check it. What if it’s Phoebe? She’d have to use Scotty’s phone because I haven’t given her the one I bought for her to replace the one Ryan and his men broke yet. And if she’s calling from his phone, it’s an emergency.
“Someone go check my phone in the office, will you?” I ask.
Rooster nods and heads out of the room.
“Okay, look, Ryan told us through one of his men what to tell you. We were given fifty grand to keep you busy. Told us to attack the brothel and get you here.”
A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach makes me stand. “They’re a distraction.”
“For what?” Capone asks.
“Pacino, your phone’s blowing up. Some alarm is going off,” Rooster says.
Taking it from him, I look to see it’s been going off for over thirty minutes. “Phoebe knows the alarm code. She’d shut it off if it was an accident.” I look up at Capone. “Ryan did this to take Phoebe.”
“Are you sure?”
I run to the office and log into my home security system. Sure enough, not fifteen minutes after I left, Ryan and his men broke into the gate to my house.
“Jesus,” Jethro mutters behind me.
Ten minutes later, Phoebe’s brought out and shoved into an SUV. They’ve been gone almost half an hour. “Where the fuck is Scotty?”
“He was there?” Capone asks.
I scour through the footage. No Scotty.
“He wouldn’t have just let them take her and not called me. They did something to him.”
“Why didn’t she fight?” Zep asks.
Shaking my head, I shrug. “I don’t know. She might’ve thought it would be easier for her if she didn’t.”
“What do you want us to do here?” Rooster asks.
