Page 2 of Captive Audience

Instead, I’d sworn an oath: Protect her at all costs.

Even from myself.

Asha raised a tiny mic to her lips. “Listen up, Captees. The next episode ofCaptive Audiencedrops Saturday. Tune in to hear my interview with criminology professor Dr. Celia Ward, where we talk killers. Are they born or made? And find out the latest on my investigation into missing teenager Sierra Witkowski. Hope you can join me.”

She did three takes and edited the audio to disguise her voice before smiling to herself.

I left the study to pour another whiskey, and by the time I got back, her TikTok post was already blowing up, racking up likes and comments faster than usual.

Can’t wait.

Girl, your new look is

You need a new chair. I’ve got something you can sit on.

I clenched the cut-crystal tumbler, and the whiskey sloshed.

Getting mad wouldn’t solve anything, so I shot my tech guy a message asking for everything he could find on @Big_Daddy_69. Name, photo, location. That was all I needed. Then we’d see how funny the wanker was when choking on his own balls.

My phone rang. Torin. The boss of the Philadelphia Irish Mob, who had become like a brother to me since I’d lost my own.

I answered and puthim on speaker. “Tor.”

“Can you talk?”

“Aye.”

“I got a call from Brandon Lewis today. He wanted to share some intel his Zulu mercs uncovered during an interrogation.”

I didn’t know Brandon well, had only met him once, but I knew that if he called, you listened. The guy was some genius-level ex–black ops hacker.

Four years ago, he and a few others had toppled the Wolf Street Mafia. With the top seat vacant, the Beasts of Belfast had a clear path to take control of Philly. That hadn’t been Brandon’s intent, but we’d made the most of the Italian Mob’s bad fortune.

Now, Brandon ran Team Zulu, a crew of ex–special ops mercenaries that brought down human trafficking rings all around the world. The Beasts had an alliance with them—of sorts. Zulu didn’t upset our operations as long as we kept the skin trade out of our territory. Fine by us. We weren’t interested in profiting from the misery of women and children.

Torin hesitated, which wasn’t like him at all. “Listen, Rook, there’s no easy way to say this. It’s about Niall.”

Niall? My brother had been dead for two years, killed here in Philly by the Albanians while I’d still been part of the Belfast crew. What news could there possibly be, and why the fuck was Tor tiptoeing around it as if he’d found himself in the cave of a sleeping bear?

“I’m listening,” I said.

His deep exhale came over the speaker. “The Albanians didn’t order his hit.”

No. That was impossible.

Niall’s murder had been textbook Albanian. A bullet to the temple and their calling card—anXcarved deep into his chest.

As soon as the news had reached me, I’d flown from Belfast to Philly to hunt down the bastards responsible. It hadn’t been hard to trace it to Altin Zeqiri. The prick hadn’t even denied it when I’d ordered him to his knees and pressed my pistol to his forehead. In Zeqiri’s last moments, he’d stared me right in the eyes and laughed, like it was all some big fucking joke and I was the punch line.

I’d shut the bastard up by pullingthe trigger.

The Albanians had known that taking out a high-ranking Beast would lead to one thing: war.

And that was what we had given them.

They’d been ready for us, too. But after months of fighting, we’d decimated the Albanian crew. The few who’d survived had fled the country.

I rose to pace the room. “What are you talking about?”