“I have security around the Center, don’t go anywhere on your own, and if you need to leave for any reason, I want you to call me and I’ll get one of the guys to take you, okay?” I ask.
Emerson sits in the passenger seat with her eyes trained on her hands. She’s taking everything better than I expected, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t had setbacks over the last few days. Mostly it was my inability to let her out of my sight for more than a few minutes. Every time she moved to a different room in the penthouse I wasn’t far behind because my mind started wandering to all the things that could happen if I’m not there to protect her. Last night she blew up about the lack of privacy and my not letting her go to work or classes, and eventually I had to relent. Compromise and all that. She doesn’t know that at any one time there are ten men with eyes on her. Or that I put a tracker in her shoes. Or even that I’m tracking all incoming and outgoing phone calls and texts to both her phone and the Center’s. If she knew about most of that, she may actually kill me.
“I know, Rayne. I won’t leave. I’ll stay here until you come and pick me up, I promise.” She reaches out and takes my tense hand in hers. “I’m safe. You wouldn’t let me come if you didn’t think that was the case.”
I smirk. “You didn’t give me a lot of options either way, sweet girl.” That’s the problem. She doesn’t realize how she has me wrapped around her little finger. She doesn’t realize that I’ll do just about anything to see her smile, even allow her out of my sight despite my better judgment.
She giggles, the sound so pure that I almost turn the car around and lock her away. If only she wouldn’t murder me in my sleep if I did that. “I’ll be okay.”
I watch as she crosses the street and unlocks the front door. I hate that she gets here so fucking early, even before her dad, but she insisted and I apparently can’t say no to the little hellcat. Once she disappears inside, I climb from the car and head to the unmarked sedan parked up the street where Cameron is sitting.
“Hey boss.”
“She does not leave this building. I want your eyes on her at all times, and if I find out you so much as looked down at your phone for a second, you will not like the consequences. If something happens to her on your watch, I promise they won’t find any record of you even existing. Do I make myself clear?” The man who held Emerson’s hand a few moments ago is gone, and I’m back to being the enforcer I’ve always been. She’s the only one that will ever see my softness, the only one I will bend for.
“I understand,” Cameron says, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips.
“Is something funny?” I growl.
He shakes his head. “Never seen you so hung up on a girl, boss.”
“That’s because I’ve never been hung up on a girl. Call me if you have any issues.” I walk away before I can smash my fist into his face like my body screams at me to do.
By the time I reach the warehouse on the other side of town, I’m crawling out of my skin to get back to Emerson. The idea of putting her safety into someone else’s hands is making me want to murder every fucking threat in this city but starting with one of Russo’s bodyguards should scratch the itch that’s burning at me.
“Brother.” Storm smiles as I climb out of the car. He looks out of place in his tailored suit and three-thousand-dollar shoes in this part of town but getting intel on Russo is too tempting an opportunity for him to pass up. For the most part, Storm stays on the legal side of things, running the company and being the pretty face we need him to be, but occasionally he still likes to get his hands dirty. “How’s Emerson?”
“She’s okay. Dealing with shit a lot better than I gave her credit for,” I tell him as we make our way through the open space of the warehouse. We use most of the space to store our weapons prior to shipment, but there’s a basement we use for our dirty work, the stuff we can never allow anyone to find. It’s protected by more security than the White House and we have twenty-four-seven security details for the entire place to make sure our interests are protected.
“She’s strong,” he comments. “I think she’s good for you. And the girls are losing their minds at the idea of having another sister.” Storm scoffs, shaking his head, but it’s the affectionate smile on his face that tells me he’s not that annoyed by our sister’s antics. “They’ll make it easier for her to accept this life.”
I nod. They already are. The other night when they came to check on Emerson, I saw a different side of her. From the recon Everett did, she doesn’t seem to have many friends, but she got along with Wynter and Snow like they’d known one another their entire lives.
They talked. They gossiped. And at the end of the night, they exchanged numbers and had been texting ever since. I’m glad Emerson has people who understand to lean on, but the idea of my sisters corrupting my sweet girl makes me nervous.
“Where’d they pick this guy up?” he asks, moving to the more pressing issue.
“Outside his place. We’ve been following him for the last few weeks, has a wife and family we can leverage if need be.” The threat of harming a man’s family is almost as powerful as actually doing it, which we never have and I doubt we ever would.
“Tommy in there with him?”
“Yep.”
He looks down at his suit. “Should have brought a change of clothes.”
I laugh as I push the door open that leads to the stairs for the basement. A man crying fills my ears and I shake my head. “Looks like he got started without us.”
“Doesn’t he always?”
The moment we reach the top of the stairs, we have our game face on. There’s a slight chance—and I mean fucking minuscule—that we’ll let the guy go, meaning we can’t let him see our weakness even for a moment, and our brotherly connection is just another target Russo could hit to hurt us. He wouldn’t, not if he wanted to keep his head attached to his body, but in our line of work it’s always best to plan for every eventuality.
“I wonder if Russo knows he has such a little bitch in his ranks,” I muse as I look over the man’s injuries. Andrew Cranburn. Unassuming name, and honestly, unassuming man. He has a stocky build, a good few inches shorter than me, and it looks like he’s been enjoying a few too many home-cooked meals. His hair graying and balding on the top, and his eyes are vacant even as he cries from the pain of the injuries Tommy has inflicted. If only he knew how much worse it’s going to get before we reach the climax, the moment where we decide just how generous we’re feeling. If Tommy has it his way, it will end in death. His thirst for blood would disturb me if he didn’t work for me, and the joy he gets from taking others’ lives is even a little unsettling for me.
“Let me go, please. I don’t know anything,” Andrew begs.
“See, I’m not that inclined to believe you know nothing seeing as you are the head of Russo’s security, are you not?” I step in front of him. “See, I think you’re going to know a whole lot of interesting stuff, and I think if you ever want to see your pretty wife and kids again, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know.”
He blanches. “I can’t. Russo will kill me.”
“If you don’t tell us, I’ll let Tommy over here kill you, and do you see that table over there?” I point toward the expansive table of tools he always keeps on hand for moments just like these.
Andrew pales further and nods.
“Tommy here will use every single one of those instruments on you until your body can’t handle anymore and you die of exhaustion.”
“Please, I have a family. Angelo sold a guy’s wife and children last week for crossing him. I can’t do that to them.”
In the background, I hear a heavy thud and when I turn around, Storm’s fist is meeting the concrete wall for a second time. Tommy is standing in the corner, looking more murderous than I’ve ever seen him. There are things in his past he hasn’t even told us, and he likely won’t ever share with anyone, but every time we come across human trafficking, he becomes even more psycho than normal.
I take a deep breath and wait for Storm to stop hitting the wall like it’s a punching bag and turn back to us. “What do you want to do?” I ask.
“We’ll get you out of Chicago. You and your family. New names. Enough money to start a new life. But only if you can tell us everything you know about our missing shipment, about Russo’s trafficking operation, and any information you have about plans to take a girl Angelo has his eyes on,” Storm lists. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d helped one of his men get the hell out of dodge, and it probably won’t be the last.
Andrew nods. “Thank you. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know if you can guarantee their safety.”
Storm taps on his phone for a few minutes, glancing over the file on the small table beside him before shoving his phone into his jacket pocket. “It’s being organized. By the time you get out of this room, your new passports will be ready and a jet is on standby at the airport to take you anywhere you want to go.”
“Tell me about the woman.” The words leave my mouth the moment Storm stops talking. As much as I want to know about the shipment and the operation we’ve been trying to take down for years, all I can think about is making sure Emerson is safe, making sure we are prepared to protect her against whatever Russo is going to throw at us next.
“He’s been talking about needing a woman to give him heirs to pass the Russo name down to. Something about this redhead that worked at the club really got under his skin. He’s been obsessed with her for a few months, but only started making moves in the last few weeks. He’s had people following her and when she rejected his advances recently he lost it, and when the men tailing her told him she was involved with you, he started making moves to take her.” The grimace on his face tells me all I need to know about his loyalties. He doesn’t like what his boss does, and it makes me feel better about letting this fucker live. “He’s fucking furious about you murdering Kevin. The only reason he hasn’t made a move is because he knows you’re expecting it. He wants to hit you hard, and he can’t do that when the element of surprise is gone. He has people tailing your whole family, and if he can’t get to your woman, he’s going to go after your sisters.”
The sound that tears from Storm’s throat is a roar of pure anger, and a moment later he’s on the phone. “Castle protocol,” he growls at whoever is on the other end of the line and ends the call.
We’re going into lockdown.
