Page 18

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

NASH

Axel locks the door behind us, and Sire starts clapping.

Slowly.

Loudly.

Sarcastically.

“Well done, Nash.” Sire laughs. “You’ve really picked an easy one.”

“I haven’t picked a fucking thing,” I seethe. “She’s not my queen.”

“Nope.” Jace plops in his king’s chair. It’s the fifth in a row of seven. “She’s going to be one of our queens, and it’s about time. If I have to hear you two fight instead of fuck for another week, I quit.”

“No one’s quitting.” Axel swipes his fingertip over the center platform. It’s new. It’s made of pristine, tufted black leather, but of course, he checks for dust. “But Jasha is right.”

“ Jace ,” he rumbles his own American name. “Don’t slip up. Not in this house.”

Jasha, aka. Jace is right.

Their real names are their greatest liability.

Sire was born Sergei. Axel was born Aleksi. Grant, Grigori. Jace, Jasha. Nick, Nikifor. And the baby was named Lyov. And all six brothers have the most dangerous last name in Russia—Kholodov.

That’s why they hide under American names and pseudonyms like Michael Cummings and more. And they do it in a city where their father would never think to look for them.

Me? I’m the money man. Of course, I prefer using our numbers. Axel is “One,” I’m “Two,” Sire is “Three,” and so on.

“We’re running out of time,” Axel continues, dropping his dickhead Michael Cummings guise. “Alena’s wedding is soon, and you know what you must do.”

When it’s just us, I get the real him, the man who’s been my best friend since I was eighteen. I met Sire first, but he’s always been a loner, while Axel and I became men together.

“Vows can’t be broken,” Sire adds, “even if the bond breaks you.”

“Fuck you all,” I snarl. “You don’t have a daughter. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“But I will one day,” Sire adds. “Wren and I want to try next year.”

I shake my head. “That’s like saying you know how it feels to cry when you never have. I’ll never hurt my daughter, so I can’t choose Vale.”

“She can handle us,” Jace argues. “Vale fits right in. Hell, she’s already in. Sort of.”

“She knows too much now,” Axel adds. “You don’t have a choice.”

“The hell I don’t.” My steps eat the ground between us. I stand eye-to-eye with Axel. “We keep the secret. We keep her safe. We find Turner. We kill him, and then Vale’s free. Done, or someone else dies. We clear?”

“We found him,” Axel answers coldly. “More specifically, we know where he’ll be next Wednesday.”

“Where?”

“Our club.” He smirks. “We’re hosting a Vegas-style golf tournament that he can’t resist.”

“Turner is a notorious gambler,” Sire adds, “and a mediocre golf player. We got the word out, invited some pros, and he took the bait. He’s ponied up ten K to play.”

“What’s the plan?” I sit in my king’s chair, the second one, envisioning how this could go down.

“He plays. He loses.” Axel sits beside me in the first chair, tenting his fingers. “We wait for the after-party, he gets drunk, goes to take a piss, and then?—”

“No one goes to an after-party if they lose,” I argue. “He needs to win some.”

“True,” Jace adds. “Let him win a few holes.”

“So, who’s playing him?”

They look at me. “Fuck. No.”

“You’re the only one exposed,” Sire points out. “It has to be you. He doesn’t know that’s our club and course. We’ll secure it. You can play him, fuck with his mind a bit and maybe get some intel before we scoop him up.”

“Admit it,” Axel says. “After what he tried to do to you and Vale? You’re dying to watch him squirm.”

“It should be you,” I tell Axel. “You’re our best player. You live on the course.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I make the best deals out there, get the best intel, and trust me, I want to watch that fucker suffer after what he did to those girls, but it’s too risky. He found you, followed you, and almost found us.

“So, I admit,” Axel continues, “your idea of meeting here is genius. We look like random customers, Jace and Grant look like staff, and you look like the man he knows you to be: Nash Allen, the accountant who moves dirty money like a shell game. He has no idea we’re connected.”

“He hasn’t found Delta’s yet,” Jace adds. “Grant has the block surveilled. No one’s been around. So far, we’re covered.”

“That’s why we strike now,” Axel continues. “We take him down before he can find another second in command and rebuild his network.”

“Fine.” I demand, “I’ll play with one of our pros, and we’ll let him win five holes, but you better cover my six. Don’t let one of his men snipe me from the river and ruin my game.”

“Grant’s got it covered,” Jace promises. “We’ll establish a perimeter, and I’ll cover Vale that day. I won’t let her out of my sight until Turner’s deep-six in the Atlantic.”

“Sounds like Jace is already her second king.”

Sire’s joking, but red rage suddenly veils my vision. On instinct, I jump, pressing my forearm to his throat and shoving him against the wall.

“Fucking say it again!” I thunder. “Say someone’s going to touch her when she’s mine! Do it! Do it, goddammit, and I’ll kill someone!”

“Brother,” Sire soothes, holding his palms up. “Calm down. You love her, and I understand.”

He could match me, punch for punch, bullet for bullet. We all can. If a brother goes after a brother, it would be a tragic mutual kill. We’re that skilled and stubborn.

“Hey, man.” Jace’s hand lands on my shoulder, tugging me away. “We love you, and we’ll love her. It’ll be okay.”

“It’s not happening.” I step away from Sire, pulling back from Jace, too. “You don’t touch my daughter, and you don’t touch my woman.”

“Okay.” Axel puts his hands up. “One deal at a time. We take down Turner. Everything else will be here when we’re done.”

Here?

He means our room, our bond, our history.

I’ve never questioned it before. Why would I? It’s not like I can walk away. When a man and his family that’s not yours save your baby girl and her mother from ruin, you don’t walk away. You owe them your life.

“Just.” I clench my teeth. I’ve never wavered like this. “Just… Fuck you, Axel! Give me time.”

“Hey.” He stands. “We don’t do this to make the other suffer. We do this to survive. We do this because we believe in a bond, and we’re brothers. You’re our brother.”

Silently, I turn. I need air. I need to calm down. I haven’t raised my fist to a brother in years.

With a quick flip of the lock, I swing the door open … and Vale falls into my arms.