The longer we stayed in that fucking warehouse, the more anxious I became. Every time I looked up at the clock, it felt like hours had passed, when really it had only been minutes. Sitting on my hands with my thumbs up my asshole wasn’t something I did well. If there was an issue, I wanted to resolve it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
Yet, Brooks was completely content with dragging his fucking feet.
“No,” he said curtly.
I shook my head. “Dude, we gotta do something. We can’t just coop everyone up here until further notice. They have lives. Jobs. Money to make and bills to pay.”
He glared at me. “And if they die, none of that will matter, Tan.”
I threw my hands up into the air. “So, we’re just going to keep those assholes tied up downstairs while we feed them our food and use them for nothing?”
He charged me until my back was against the wall. “You raise your voice like that one more time, and I’ll have your balls in a mason jar on my nightstand. You got that?”
I smirked. “Look who’s pissed off now.”
He stepped back and rolled his shoulders, but I wasn’t having it. I tore away from our president and went in search of the one person that I knew would be on board with my plan. The only other person that was pissed that we had even been put into this situation in the first place.
“Hey, Cole,” I said.
He looked over at me. “What?”
I crooked my finger. “Need you over here for a second.”
He sighed. “Man, I’m making myself a damn sandwich right now. You got something more important than my stomach being hungry?”
I walked up to him, leaned against the counter, and lowered my voice. “How about beating up on some Black Flags for info, huh?”
He slowly looked over at me before he pushed his plate away, and the two of us headed down into the basement. We had to sneak out of the warehouse and wrap around, but once we dipped in through the cellar doors and closed them behind us, I clicked on the small light we were afforded down here.
Only to watch the two Black Nugget assholes quickly scoot away from it.
“Light hurt your eyes?” Cole asked.
He walked over and fisted one of the guys shirts before tossing him into a chair.
“Good,” I said as I grabbed a chair of my own.
Cole hovered over my shoulder as I scraped the chair along the floor. The man’s lower lip already quivered, and if I didn’t have a heart of steel I probably would’ve felt bad for him.
Guess you should’ve chosen a better moral code.
“All right, this is how this is gonna work: I ask a question once, and if you don’t give me what I need, my friend here will beat you until I say ‘stop.’ Got it?”
Cole cracked his knuckles as the man’s swollen face nodded. “Got it.”
“Good. Now, where’s Chops?”
The guy still on the ground snickered and Cole reared his foot back. His steel-toed boot connected with the man’s ribs and the way he cried out made me happy that we had sound-proofed the fucking cellar in the first place. I held eye contact with the guy sitting in front of me as his one good eye widened. The more Cole beat the guy on the ground, the more unsettled he became.
Then, I raised my hand and Cole stopped.
“Don’t think you’re immune because you’re on the floor,” I said plainly.
The man panted for air and spat what I figured was blood onto the concrete flooring before I leveled my eyes with the guy in front of me again.
“Now, where is Chops?” I asked.
“Don’t tell them shit,” the guy on the ground growled.
But the second I stood up and clenched my fists, the man in front of me sang like a goddamn pussy-ass canary.
“He’s probably working on the other shipment coming in tonight! H-h-he’s—he’s got this loft somewhere downtown. I don’t know where it is. No one does. But he goes there sometimes to work on shit because it’s closer to the docks and—”
“Shut up, Barty!” the man on the ground roared.
“I can’t take this anymore!” the other man shrieked.
I grinned. “Thanks for the info. We’ll bring you food when we can remember it. Cole?”
He harrumphed. “What?”
“Give these two a little love tap before you go.”
The guy in the chair whimpered. “No, no, no. Please. My teeth. I’ve already lost—no!”
But the man on the floor made a very misguided calculation. “Raven’s lookin’ mighty fine these days, you know.”
Cole stopped beating the one guy as I froze halfway up the steps. “What did you just say?”
The man chuckled. “Molly, too. Swollen with pregnancy. How far along is she now? Seven months?”
Cole growled. “One more word out of you and—”
“Have you met your daughter in person yet?”
I whipped around and charged the man on the floor, yanking him up by his blood-stained jacket. He laughed like a maniac as I shoved him against the wall, practically holding him up in midair as he danced on his tiptoes.
“Say one more word about those women. Try me,” I growled.
He leaned his face closer to mine. “I can’t wait to put Cheyenne to work. She’s gonna rake in so much money for us. I’ll buy a fucking mansion off the way she shakes her—”
“That’s it,” I glowered.
I felt the first punch as my knuckles cracked. I even felt the second punch as his jaw broke against my skin. But as my vision dripped with red, all I heard was Cole calling out to me in the distance while the other guy in the chair cried out in horror. Blood splattered against my face. The man gasped for air as I watched the light drain from his eyes.
And by the time Cole pried me off him, he slumped to the floor.
Dead as a fucking doornail.
“No, no, no, no, no,” the man in the chair whimpered.
I walked over and gripped his hair, pulling his head back until he looked up into my face. “You see that? Did you see it?”
Tears streamed down his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
I held my finger up to his face. “You utter one word—one word about our families—and you’ll meet his same fate. Got it?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I g—got it.”
I shoved his head off to the side. “Great.”
I felt Cole staring at me as we made our way out of the cellar. I had no idea what in the hell we were going to do about that guy’s body, but his friend could stew with it until he decided to make better life decisions.
“Stop,” Cole commanded.
I halted my tracks before he wiped off my hands with a wipe he pulled out of his pocket. “Can’t go inside with your fists looking like a warzone.”
I stared straight ahead. “He had it coming.”
“Brooks is gonna be livid with you, my dude.”
I shrugged. “He had it coming, too.”
“Had what coming?” Brooks asked.
Cole paused, but I didn’t care. I took the wipe from his hand and continued wiping the blood off my skin as I turned around and faced our cowardly president. He didn’t have the kind of balls I figured he would have, and while he was a decent overseer of shit, he had no idea what the fuck he was doing.
And it showed.
“Don’t tell me you went into the cellar,” Brooks said as he walked up to both of us.
Cole stepped up to my side. “Dude, it was an accident. All we were trying to do is—”
I held up my hand, silencing him in his tracks. “Yes, we did. And we figured out that not only does Chops have some studio apartment near the docks, but he’s there right now finalizing plans for a shipment that comes in tonight.”
Brooks nodded slowly. “Uh huh. And if I go into the cellar, both of those guys are still going to be alive?”
I swallowed hard. “One of them mentioned Molly. They know how far along she is in her pregnancy.”
Brooks sighed. “Tan, what did you—”
I pointed my finger at his face, too. “And he mentioned Cheyenne. Said she’d rake in loads of money for them. That he’d buy a house with her work. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Let them spout that kind of shit? That’s my daughter!”
“And this is your future!” he bellowed.
I took a step toward him, closing the distance. “I will choose my daughter over some scum of the earth any day of the fucking week.”
Brooks tilted his head off to the side. “Was he hurting Cheyenne?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Did he have Cheyenne in his grasp somehow?”
I clenched my jaw. “You know damn good and well—”
Then, he shoved me. “You killed one of our two lucky leads because you don’t know what to do with your pent-up energy. Is that it!?”
I shoved him right back. “No, Brooks. I killed one of our two lucky leads because he had the audacity to put my daughter’s name in his mouth. And if you can’t understand that, that’s on you. Not me!”
Cole stepped in between us. “Enough! Both of you!”
But Brooks turned on him. “And where you were, huh!? Where were you when he was beating the ever-loving snot out of this guy!?”
“He mentioned Raven, you know,” I said flatly.
Brooks froze. “What did he say?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
He shoved Cole out of the way and gripped my leather jacket in both of his hands. “You better tell me what the fuck that sorry excuse for a human being said about Raven.”
I smirked. “Not so easy when it’s someone you love being talked about, huh?”
He shoved me away. “What did he say!?”
“He said that Raven was looking mighty fine nowadays!”
Brooks’ nostrils flared. “They’re still tracking the girls.”
In a flash, Brooks was down in the cellar. In a flash, he had our other prisoner up against the wall with his feet dangling in midair.
And in a flash, the man spilled his secrets as if he were an overturned cup.
