Page 2 of Climbing Everest

Four Years Later

Kato

S hoving my pistol against this asshole’s temple has to be the highlight of my day. I’ve been looking for this motherfucker for weeks. He knew I was looking for him, and the dumbass decided to visit one of my clubs.

I swear it feels like he was giving himself up without walking right up to the front gate of my estate.

“I told you I don’t know shit,” Lorenzo whines. He’s about two seconds from pissing himself. I hate the smell of piss.

If I don’t end up putting a bullet through his skull, Lorenzo will still end up with a permanent imprint of the muzzle of my gun. I’m shoving it so hard against his head he has no choice but to lean to the side, nearly falling from the chair.

Not that he’ll get far with his wrists and ankles zip tied to the fucking thing.

Brix steps out of the shadows and saunters forward, lowering to the balls of his feet with far more grace than a fucker his size should possess.

Lorenzo might have been afraid of the gun against his head, but the absolute terror shining in his wide eyes at my surrogate brother’s appearance is a sight to behold.

The big fucker’s hands hang off his knees as he tilts his head and stares into Lorenzo’s face. He doesn’t have to say a word – his appearance and reputation do all the work for him.

The longer Brix glares at Lorenzo, the sorrier I feel for the bastard…because the pure, unadulterated rage etched into every line of my brother’s face is a sign Lorenzo won’t be walking out of here regardless of the information he gives us.

“Listen, it’s nothing more than a rumor,” Lorenzo finally says, grunting a sound of relief when I pull the pistol from his head. He thinks he might have saved his own life.

“What kind of rumor?” Madd asks from across the room.

He’s leaning against the counter, his arms crossed, a mixture of anger and boredom in his eyes as he sighs and rolls his head on his shoulders to crack his neck. I know he’s pissed he doesn’t get to exert some of his pent up energy through a little torture.

Thing is, we’ve been chasing rumors and tidbits of information for four years and have found jack shit.

But someone has to know where the bitch is, someone has to have seen her over the years. Even if she crossed the ocean and is living overseas, our reach is endless. We have contacts in every corner of the fucking universe, and she knows that.

“She’s dancing,” Lorenzo says when Brix pushes to his full height and looms over him like the fucking grim reaper.

Honestly, I’m not sure which of us would win if I ever had to go toe to toe with my brother. I can only hope his loyalty to me and the Family is enough to keep him from ripping my arm from my shoulder and beating me to death with it someday.

“Stripping?” Madd asks, pushing from the counter and stalking over, his arms hanging loose at his sides as he flexes his hands then curls them into tight fists.

The dark ink running from his fingertips, up and around his wrists, and up his arms to disappear under his sleeves almost looks like a living organism with the way the tattoos move with the rippling of his muscles.

“Yeah. That’s the word. Two states over.” Lorenzo licks at the blood seeping from his split lip.

Dude looks like shit, his eye already swelling shut, bruising and swelling making him damned near unrecognizable. But if he doesn’t start talking a little faster, it’s going to get a whole lot worse instead of earning him a quick death.

He’ll die either way, but no point in telling him that. He should fucking know from history alone. He’s been a low-level informant for my Family long enough to know how this show ends.

“Which direction? Which fucking state? You’re not giving us much,” I say, keeping the gun where he can see it without directly shoving it against his head again.

Nah. Brix taking another step closer is enough to get his lips flapping like a fucking fish out of water.

“I heard she was in Georgia.”

I glance at Brix then Madd. “Why the fuck would she go to Georgia?” I mutter.

For some reason, I’d always thought she would have gotten on a plane and headed to the UK. While nowhere would ever be out of our reach, it might have been harder to find her there.

Then again, the three of us have been searching for Everest for the past four years, and the crafty bitch has been able to stay off the grid and under our radar. No paper trail. No social media.

Nothing. She has become a fucking ghost.

Madd sucks his teeth. Brix continues to glare down at Lorenzo as though he’s the cause of our lives being turned upside down and almost fucking completely ruined.

“Got a city? A club name? A fucking stage name ? Anything?” I ask as I circle behind him and jerk my chin at Brix, the only warning he’ll get to move out of the way now before he ends up painted with blood, brains, and pieces of skull.

“Fuck…uh…” Lorenzo tries to follow my movement but can only turn so much. He’s panicking now, his voice rising a couple octaves. He could easily clam up now and the end result would be the same.

“Come on, man. How the fuck am I taking the blame for this shit?”

I hate when they whine. Not as much as when they piss themselves, but that whiney shit grates my nerves.

“You sat on information for months. Information you knew damn well we wanted. You could have ended up as a trusted member of the Family if you’d been more loyal,” I remind him.

“Fuck you,” he says after a few moments. He still has some intel we want, information we need. But he’s come to the correct conclusion – he’s a dead man either way.

I don’t blame him. If I knew I would end up in a puddle of my own blood I probably wouldn’t sing, either.

Brix quickly moves to the left a second before I put the muzzle to the back of Lorenzo’s head and pull the trigger. The force of the bullet forces his head forward as a hole explodes through his forehead.

As he goes limp in the chair, his face pointed at his lap, blood pours from the gaping wound and puddles in his lap before trailing over his legs and onto the concrete floor below him.

“Son of a cock sucker,” Brix says as he stares down at his shoes. A few splatters mar his Doc Martens.

“Georgia’s a big fucking state,” Madd says as he pulls his phone from his pocket and taps on the screen a few times, no doubt calling for someone to come clean this shit up.

“Get a list of the strip joints and we’ll send someone down to do some digging,” I say as I wipe the blood from my muzzle onto the back of Lorenzo’s shirt then shove it into the back of my pants.

“You realize there are no restrictions on Georgia’s clubs, right? Meaning there’s a shit load of them,” Madd says with a scowl.

“I don’t give a shit. Pick a couple lower-level guys and send them down.” I turn my attention to Lorenzo and smirk. “Maybe hold off the clean up until after you’ve figured out who to send so they can see firsthand what happens if they fail me again.”

“Us,” Brix grumbles. “What happens if they fail us .”

Because yeah, all three of us have a bone to pick with the woman who betrayed us and nearly cost us everything.

Maddox sends out another text as I step away from the body and make my way to the steps.

“And if they find her? You want them to bring her back?” Madd asks from behind as we all ascend the stairs to the main level of the house.

Stopping at the fridge, I pull a beer from inside, twist the top, and take a long pull. My mind immediately starts turning, trying to picture what I’ll say, what I’ll do, how I’ll feel when I finally set eyes on Everest again.

She took everything from us after promising us the fucking world. The three of us still carry the letter E scarred on our chests from the night she told us we would not only be fathers but begged us to run away with her.

And the whole thing had been an act, a way to fuck with our heads.

I have no idea whether she was ever truly pregnant, but her father told us she’d aborted the baby and he’d helped her take off, that she had already been married to someone else.

I might have been able to forgive her if her father had forced her hand, but not if she’d killed our child. And not after begging us to turn our backs on my family, begging us to run away with her.

And fuck yeah, my father had been made aware of that fucking promise. He’d found out everything, and a price had been paid.

Now, it’s that whore’s turn to pay.

“If they find her, make sure they keep eyes on her at all times and wait for our arrival. It’s time to bring the cunt home.”