Page 33 of Kill Shot

Unlikely Bonding

Nico

Nico couldn’t remember the last time that he had been this sore, and he knew that it was only going to get worse in the days to come.

He and Pablo had gotten their aggression out on one another alright. They’d bloodied each other to a pulp, and he’d been shocked at just how in shape Altamirano was. The man was clearly getting on in years, but he had enough experience and pent-up rage to more than make up for it.

Now, the two men were sitting across from one another in his office, Pablo sagging into his chair and icing a nasty black eye, and Nico gasping for breath in the chair that he had been bound to just a few minutes ago.

It was astonishing just how much one’s feelings could change after a bare knuckle brawl.

All it took was a few dozen blows to the body and Nico was ready to listen to the horseshit that Pablo had been spewing earlier.

Part of that was certainly that he no longer had the strength to resist, but that was neither here nor there.

Pablo, for his part, looked just as relieved. He must have been keeping a great deal of this bottled up inside while Nico had been hunting him down, and he’d finally gotten a chance to take it all out on Nico.

Now all they had to do was wait for Seb to finally cool off and come back inside, then they could have a real discussion between the three of them. And maybe things could somehow work out.

As for Bolero… that was a question that would have to wait for later. Nico still wasn’t ready to examine his feelings too closely on that matter. If Pablo was telling the truth, then Bolero had a great many sins to answer for.

“Nasty right hook you got there,” Pablo wheezed, then coughed to clear his throat. Nico had landed a pretty good hit to his neck that had probably stopped just short of collapsing the man’s windpipe entirely.

“Got nothing on your elbow,” Nico replied, every word making his ribs protest dreadfully. “Fuck, you don’t hesitate to fight dirty.”

Pablo laughed, but it sounded more like a dying smoker riddled with emphysema than anything else.

There was silence for a moment as the two men considered one another.

All the guests had been sent home a while ago, an order relayed through the guards in the immediate aftermath of their brawl.

For the first time, Nico looked around and took in the office not as an arena of death, but as the place that his boyfriend’s father lived in.

His boyfriend…

Yes, this simplified everything, didn’t it? By a stroke of incredible fortune, he was now able to actually be with Seb. He didn’t have to think about revenge anymore, and he didn’t need to decide between honoring his uncle and following his heart.

“My uncle… what was he like?” Nico croaked. He looked Pablo in the eye, or at least he tried, but his swollen eyelids weren’t cooperating. Still, he wanted to see if Pablo was going to lie to him.

“We were never friends,” Pablo said after careful consideration. “But I would say that we were more than acquaintances at one point. We were business partners, and we did share a few drinks together. For what it’s worth, I don’t think he was a rotten man to the core.”

“You were singing a different tune a few minutes ago,” Nico pointed out.

“Yes, but part of me was just trying to hurt you. I’ve had a great many years to think about Mattias and what a piece of shit he was.

I’ve since come to accept that he probably had a lot of pressure on him down in El Paso from the top.

That doesn’t make what he did right, but…

I don’t know, I just wonder what I would have done in his shoes, especially if he actually was a decent father figure to you. ”

Nico hadn’t thought about his uncle in a long, long time, at least not in that way. He’d been a martyr to avenge, a man wronged by a distant enemy. It was hard to even remember the years that Nico had spent with him, and what he did remember…

“He ain’t the worst father figure I’ve had.” Nico couldn’t help but chuckle with self-derision. “But I guess my frame of reference may have been lacking.”

“Bolero,” Pablo said flatly, and nothing more. Nico was of half a mind to press the issue and find out as much as he could about how deep this betrayal went, but that could wait until later. For now, he was exhausted, and all he wanted was to make up with Seb and do things the right way.

It was at that exact moment that the door was flung open. There was no knock, just a closed door one moment, then Carl, along with three panicked guards bursting in the next.

Nico reflexively turned and readied himself for a fight, but he was so exhausted that he couldn’t even manage to get out of the chair.

“Boss!” Carl cried out, breathless, eyes wide with terror.

Nico’s stomach dropped. It was the same guard that had been sent to find Seb earlier and coax him back.

“Where’s Seb? Where’s Frederick?” Pablo demanded, surging to his feet. He was clearly just as exhausted as Nico, but a father’s love and fear knew no bounds.

“Seb’s not in the house, nor is he anywhere on the property grounds,” the guard reported. “No cars have been taken, and his phone appears to be dead, but we pinged the location to his room. It appears he left without it. Sir—” Carl’s voice cracked. “We think something bad happened.”

Pablo blanched, and for the very first time, Nico saw what the man looked like when he was afraid. Staring down a vengeful, murderous specter of the past hadn’t given him pause, but losing track of his son certainly did.

“Well? Spit it out!” Pablo roared.

Carl swallowed, a trail of sweat rolling down the side of his face.

“We found Frederick a few miles from the west perimeter. He’d been shot.

Alive but unconscious. Judging by the scene, he fought back.

There was a suppressor next to him when we arrived.

Bob’s taking him to the hospital as we speak. ”

“And Seb?” The question tore from both Pablo and Nico at once.

Carl’s face crumpled. “No sign of him directly. But we searched further and found blood. Not much, but enough. And drag marks in the dirt, leading into the trees. We think it might be Seb’s.”

Nico’s pulse roared in his ears.

“We think he’s been taken,” Carl finished.

“Shit,” Nico said under his breath, barely a step ahead of Pablo’s accusing gaze. “It wasn’t me, I swear. I came here alone.”

That stayed Pablo’s hand from ordering his immediate execution, but it didn’t make his gaze any warmer.

It had only taken a matter of moments for the man to transform into the same force of nature that had slaughtered Mattias and his gang two decades ago, and if Nico had doubted the man capable of it before, then he certainly had no such doubts now.

“But you know who did it,” Pablo stated. It was not a question.

Nico swallowed. Yes, he unfortunately did know.

Part of him had been trying to push Lucas away to prevent this exact sort of showdown.

He wanted the man to fuck off so they could go their separate ways and enjoy the memories they had of one another, but Lucas wasn’t satisfied with that.

He wouldn’t be content until Nico had eyes for him and him alone.

“Lucas. Bolero’s son,” Nico snarled. “I’m absolutely certain of it.”

“Then that simplifies things,” Pablo said as he pulled open a drawer, took out a holster and began to put it on. “We may not know where they are now, but we sure know exactly where they’re going. Don’t we, Nico?”

Nico felt a weight settle in his gut once more, but this time, it wasn’t dread of the unknown. He knew exactly what he had to do, and he knew who he had to kill.

“Never thought I’d be going back down to Mexico.” Pablo gave Nico a calculating look. “Hope you’ve got a gun of your own because I ain’t giving you anything.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Nico said softly. “I came to this town with enough firepower to take you and all your men down. And here I was thinking that I wouldn’t get to play with any of my toys.”