Page 36 of Murder & Mayhem (Bloody Desires #9)

DOMINIC

“ C an you go faster?” I snapped at Gid as he drove at what felt like a leisurely pace down the road.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Can you fucking chill? I’m going thirty over the speed limit as it is. We don’t need cops up our ass, Nicky. It’ll only slow things down.”

I grunted, not wanting to admit he was right, but it wasn’t fast enough. Not when Jamie was out there alone, barely dressed, and trying to find his brother.

“We’re two minutes out,” Skye, one of Luca’s guys, said through the comms. Skye and Brooks had shown up just minutes after Jamie had disappeared.

Their first impression of me had been a very mature meltdown where I’d destroyed my phone and nearly broken my brother’s nose.

It wasn’t my proudest moment, but thankfully they didn’t seem to be holding it against me.

They’d gone ahead on Brooks’s bike while we’d taken the SUV that we kept at the house just in case we needed a bigger vehicle.

Gid had wanted to ride, too, but we needed room for Jamie and Bailey and whoever else.

We had no idea what shape Bailey would be in, and we had to be prepared for anything.

It meant that two strangers would be the first ones on scene, but I had to deal with it and trust them to protect the brothers if necessary.

Time dragged on. We were only five minutes away, but it might as well have been an hour.

I still couldn’t understand how things had gotten so fucked up.

It was my fault. If I’d kept my shit together, then Jamie wouldn’t have run.

Probably. He might not have done it on purpose, according to Gideon, but maybe he would have been in a better state of mind and thought things through.

Two minutes had passed and there was no word from Skye and Brooks. “Team Castellano,” I said into the comms, calling them by their leader/partner’s name, “come in. What’s going on?” Silence.

I looked at Gideon, but he shrugged. “We’re three minutes away,” was all he said.

“Ari! Ari, do you have visuals?” He’d also arrived right before Brooks and Skye and was set up in the house, watching us all from the body cams and whatever other surveillance he could hack into. He was getting help from Luca’s guy, Diego, as well.

“Yeah. I see them. Stay calm, Nicky. They have it under control.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I snapped, absolutely not staying calm.

“There were some complications, but they know what they’re doing. There’s nothing you can do till you get there, so no point worrying.”

Jamie really had gotten under my skin because while my brothers always irritated me, I had never been so close to hurting them as I had this weekend, since I’d met my boy. So if Ari thought he could get away with not telling me what the fuck was happening, then?—

“We’re here, Nicky.” Gideon swung the SUV in a sharp right and then slammed on the brakes.

We skidded a few feet but eventually stopped on an angle in front of a poorly lit bar.

I barely paid attention to that as I was out of the SUV before Gid put it in park, sprinting toward the scene in front of me.

Two men lay still on the ground. A third was pushed face-first against the van, fighting uselessly against Skye as he held him still, a gun pointed at the guy’s temple. Brooks was sitting on the back of another guy, a knife sticking out of his shoulder blade and his arms zip-tied behind him.

Kneeling next to another still body was a teenage boy wearing filthy jeans and an equally filthy T-shirt that might have been white at some point. I recognized him immediately: Bailey. He was brushing the hair off the face of the man and whispering something, quiet but frantic.

I was there in an instant, kneeling on Bailey’s other side, staring down at Jamie’s unmoving body, terror thrumming through my veins.

“Who are you?” Bailey snapped, half draping his body over Jamie’s protectively, and I didn’t know whether to be proud or cry.

“He’s with us,” Brooks called.

“Get the fuck off me, asshole. When my cousin finds you—” one of the captives shouted.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Brooks replied tiredly, and then there was the sound of a face smashing against the pavement.

I had to say, I was impressed. I hadn’t known what to expect when he’d first shown up with his baby face, dark hair that had been bleached nearly white on the tips and styled into a faux hawk, and tattooed-covered body.

I’d figured he’d be in way over his head.

He had on a hot pink shirt that said Sir’s brat on it. It hadn’t encouraged confidence.

But I had been mistaken, clearly. He pulled that shirt off now, exposing more inked skin, and shoved it in O’Malley’s mouth as a makeshift gag.

Skye also looked completely relaxed in this situation, like they took down traffickers on the side of the road, practically in the public eye every day. Fuck, maybe they did.

I drowned out whatever was going on there, trusting them to handle it. I pressed my fingers against Jamie’s throat, and I really did start crying when I felt his pulse strong and steady beneath them.

“He got hit on the head with the butt of the gun,” Bailey informed me. “He’s just unconscious.”

“Thank God.” I rubbed my thumb across a forming bruise on his cheek. “C’mon, beautiful, wake up for me. Let me see those pretty green eyes.”

Bailey was drilling holes into my skull with his gaze. I was sure he was wondering who the fuck I was and how I’d gotten so familiar with his brother in 48 hours, but that wasn’t my problem, right? I wouldn’t be able to fully breathe until I was sure he was okay.

Gideon came and knelt next to me. “Hey, man. We got O’Malley. No one’s speaking about where Slash is.”

“There are other kids too. I ran and left them, but that woman, she was going to sell them, sell us. You need to get them,” Bailey told us, a frantic tone to his voice.

Gideon flashed a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry, kid.

We’ll get them. Those guys—” He gestured behind him to Brooks and Skye.

“They have four other boyfriends who are all fucking badass, and they’ll get the kids.

We’ll call them now and tell them it’s okay to move.

Let’s focus on getting you two out of here and getting help, alright? ”

I didn’t need to look up at Bailey to know he was skeptical—he’d been raised by Jamie after all—but he made some kind of sound of agreement. It wasn’t like he had much choice but to trust us now.

“Boyfriends?” I asked, shocked. Ari kept calling them partners, but I assumed he meant in business, not life.

Gideon laughed and rolled his eyes at me.

“Well, you would know all about their dynamic if you hadn’t been too busy going apeshit on our house.

Ari’s pissed you broke his favorite vase, by the way.

” I flinched. I’d lost control. I hadn’t been like this since our fighting days, and even then, Adam had worked hard to keep me somewhat restrained.

When we had first escaped foster care, I had been so fucking angry then but had learned with the help of my brothers that routine, discipline, and control kept me stable.

All of that had gone right out the damn window when I’d learned that Jamie was no longer in the yard.

That boy had put a wrench in my perfectly planned life and I was paying the price for it. So were my brothers.

“We need to get moving. Someone’s gonna notice us soon,” Skye cut in.

The guy he’d been holding was now lying on his stomach and hog-tied and gagged.

Skye’s words reminded me that we weren’t hidden.

There was a bar right there. So far, I hadn’t noticed any unwanted eyes, but still.

We needed to go. Also, the longer this took, the more likely that Slash would run and they’d dispose of those kids.

Hopefully, Luca and his men worked quickly.

Jamie’s eyes fluttered like he was starting to come out of it. He still didn’t fully wake up though. But he was going to be okay. I was sure of it.

“Jamie and Bailey need medical care. Do whatever you want with them.” I gestured to the guard on the ground and the other bodies who were either dead or unconscious. I didn’t care. “O’Malley’s mine.”

I stood up and walked to Brooks, who was still sitting on O’Malley’s back.

I doubted he needed to anymore, but he seemed to be enjoying himself.

I grabbed the hilt of the knife that was hanging out of O’Malley’s shoulder, placed my other hand on the middle of his back to keep him still, and pulled.

O’Malley screamed, loud even though it was slightly muffled by the shirt shoved in his mouth.

Gideon cursed. If no one had noticed us yet, they sure would now.

“God, you’re so fucking loud.”

“Hold him up?” I asked Brooks.

The man grinned and wrenched O’Malley’s head up with a painful grip on the back of his hair.

I slammed the knife back into the open wound in the exact same location. O’Malley wailed and bucked so hard I was afraid Brooks would fall off, but he managed to hold on.

“You’re so pathetic. Spent your whole life hurting people who are weaker than you, defenseless, and you can’t even take a little bit of pain.

What have you done to those boys over there?

Huh? The others? Whatever you did, be prepared to experience it tenfold.

I’ll make sure you feel every ounce of pain you ever caused him.

You’ll be begging for death, but it won’t come.

No matter how much you plead and cry, it won’t end till you’ve endured every bit of terror, pain, and moments of hopelessness you put them through.

I couldn’t give Byrne the death he deserved, but you?

For you, I have all the time in the world. ”

I gave Brooks a nod, and he climbed off.

Before O’Malley could register the change, I was gripping his hair so tightly he was lucky I didn’t tear it out.

Then I slammed his face against the concrete.

Once. Twice. Three times. The world blurred around me.

I was so fucking angry. How dare this fucker!

I forgot all about my plans of slow torture and retribution.

All I wanted was to see his brains splattered across the pavement.

I didn’t care who saw me, what happened to me.

Nothing mattered but killing this monster underneath me.

I could hear voices, people tugging at me, but I ignored them. Couldn’t they see I was trying to rid the world of an evil? I was doing a civic duty.

“Dominic. You need to stop, Nicky. Please.”

Rough fingers brushed against my cheek before a comforting weight settled in my lap. The faint scent of my body wash and aftershave, that always clung to my clothes, mixed with sweat and blood washed over me.

“Come back to me, Nicky.” My eyes opened, and I was staring directly into Jamie’s sad ones.

Though, now they looked more scared than anything.

He had somehow managed to half straddle me.

One hand was on my face, the other curled around my wrist that was still holding O’Malley by his hair.

O’Malley, who might not be breathing and whose face was practically unrecognizable.

Blood splattered the pavement. Hair matted with blood was stuck to my palm like I’d pulled chunks of it out. But I didn’t remember any of it.

Brooks wasn’t sitting on his back anymore.

He and Skye were busy dragging the bodies into the van they had come in.

Gideon stood close, his arms around Bailey, both protecting him and keeping him from running after Jamie.

To protect him from me. It was a bitter pill, and I immediately dropped O’ Malley’s head.

“He deserves to die,” I told Jamie. My blood-covered hand cupped his cheek, but Jamie didn’t seem to mind.

“He does. But you can’t do it. You promised Flame.”

That seemed so long ago. So irrelevant. “I don’t care.”

Jamie smiled sadly. “Well, I do. I don’t want you beholden to the Wraiths because of me.

Please, Nicky.” When he realized that I wasn’t entirely convinced, because I would happily work for that asshole for as long as needed if I got my hands on O’Malley now, he switched strategies.

“I heard what you promised him. What you wanted to do to him. You can't if you kill him here. So at least wait? I’m sure Skye and Brooks have somewhere to store him?” Jamie asked that loud enough for the two guys to hear.

“We do. We’ll take care of it. You and Bailey need medical care, and all of you need to get outta here, now. Someone saw us and I’m sure cops are on the way. Brooks and I can handle this. But I doubt you want to be here when they show up.”

Fuck. That was the last thing we needed.

I looked at Jamie. Really looked at him.

The side of his face was swelling a lot, and there was a little bit of dried blood.

He was swaying slightly on my lap, and his eyes were unfocused.

He probably had a concussion, and instead of getting the medical care he needed, he was keeping me from losing myself.

“Okay. Let’s get you two out of here.”

“What about the others?” Bailey asked, still hovering close to Gideon.

“They’re at the docks now, Bailey,” Skye told him. “My men. They’re getting the kids out safely. They’ll meet you at the hospital, okay? Everything else, we’ll talk about later.”

I helped Jamie to his feet and then climbed unsteadily after him. “C’mon, beautiful. We need to go.”

Jamie nodded, took one step, and nearly fell. I had him in my arms before he could hit the pavement.