Page 25 of Reckless Forever (Jennings Mafia Family #3)

Judah

Ivy had been blowing up my phone since we had been gone, and it wasn’t my intention to ignore her.

We were dealing with niggas from the cartel who ran a similar operation as us, so while we were in Bolivia, I didn’t want to be distracted.

One glance down to send a text message or take a phone call could end a life, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t one of ours.

All of us kept our heads on a swivel. Before we left, I tried to get her head together.

I told her that if she didn’t hear from me, she should just know that I was okay and not to panic.

Shit, from what I can see, that went right in one ear and out of the other.

We drove away from Santos’ crib like we were supposed to be there.

My jaw was tight, and I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on that nigga.

But I knew that he wasn’t going to be there when we made it.

He knew how we were coming. When Jax asked me if I was sure that I wanted to run in his estate, I didn’t think twice.

He knew the consequence for sending niggas to my parents’ crib.

We had staked out the estate for two days and knew that he had gone off the radar.

Turned off his phones so I couldn’t track his location, tried to revoke my access to his live feed, and unplugged all the security systems that I had installed for him at his other places.

He had cleared the whole estate, the maids and the security, and only left the nigga at the front gate, and the housemaid who always gave my girl a hard time.

“You might want to rethink this shit, Judah,” Jax said lowly from the side of me as we went down a dirt road.

I turned to him in confusion. Jax might have been the quiet one, but he was never the one to duck any smoke.

“What you mean?” I gritted.

“We’re down with whatever, and you know that.

But if you love Ivy, this shit is going to come back to bite you in the ass.

Santos damn near helped raise her and her father.

She loves him just like she loves you. If you kill him, y’all won’t last longer than a year.

I mean, if I saw him at the red light, I would do it myself with no hesitation.

But once he’s gone, be prepared to lose her.

” He said as he impatiently tapped his gun on his knee.

Trouble’s eyes looked at me through the rearview mirror to see what my response would be. I sat and thought about what Jaxon said.

“You said a year, right?” I asked. They both laughed.

Santos had already done way too much to spare him. He tried to get Ivy to leave me, put a hit out on me, and ran in my moms’ spot. If I could spend a year with the woman of my dreams, I might be aight.

“Fucking clown,” Trouble scoffed as we pulled into the strip where the jet waited for us to take us back home.

Once we were in the sky, I logged into the security system at the safe house and checked the cameras.

I found the room where Ivy was sleeping and clicked on it.

She was in there with my nieces on the side of her, curled up and taking a nap.

Shit fucked me up as I watched them for a second before clicking off and going to her tap on her phone.

Ivy didn’t know, but I hacked into her phone and read her messages. It wasn’t on no insecure shit, but I knew that she was in a weird position. She was caught between two different types of loyalty, and I felt like there would be some things that she didn’t tell me, and I was right.

That nigga who was her security guard, Emilio, had been blowing her phone up nonstop to get her to come back to Bolivia so he could save his ass.

He knew he slept on the job when he let her walk off from the conference for seven days.

I couldn’t wait to use one of those shock collars that I programmed on his ass.

Because if he thought that he was going to talk her into leaving with him, he had me fucked up.

I had already decided that it was blood over that, and it was nothing they could do to change my mind.

When all this started, I disabled her location and her ability to share it with anyone. After I read through the messages to see what he had been saying, I clicked out of it and tried to clear my mind long enough to check all of our properties.

I reviewed the manifests and logs from all our businesses to make sure nothing was out of place. Niggas might not strike us directly, but they might cause problems elsewhere. Once nothing seemed out of the ordinary, I put my phone back in my pocket and got a plan together.

Every angle is covered and every risk is identified and addressed.

Santos could try whatever he wanted. He could hide and plot.

But Ivy? She wasn’t going anywhere. He might have run shit in Bolivia, but as soon as I made up my mind that I wanted her, that meant that I wanted everything attached to her, even if it was a problem.

Because there was nothing that could shake me.

As soon as we touched down in the States, I had Hollow meet us at the landing strip.

When we landed, he had the engine running, and the headlights were the only thing cutting through the darkness of the night.

Nobody said a word as we climbed into the truck.

But the air inside felt tight, like even breathing too hard might set shit off.

I was already itching to get back to the safe house to Ivy.

That was, until my phone vibrated in my lap.

Door open.

It was a notification from the safe house, and it made my stomach drop.

I flipped over to the camera feed so fast my thumb damn near cracked the screen, and there was Ivy and Sanchez walking out the front door together. My chest squeezed as I tried to process the shit in front of me. My girl is disappearing into the night with another man.

My mind had a million thoughts all at once, but they all led to the same conclusion.

Where the fuck were they going at three in the morning?

What the fuck was Sanchez doing driving her around like her chauffeur?

I don’t give a fuck about his promotion in JMF.

If some creep shit was going on, Trouble was about to be down a soldier.

I watched Sanchez open the truck door for her, like it was routine, and she climbed in. They pulled off smooth with no hesitation, like it wasn’t the middle of the gah damn night. My chest was caving in.

I went to the tap I had on her phone and swiped fast. Then I went back through the messages to see what kind of communication she had been having. And what I saw made my heart race. It was a thread from Emilio; he had sent her the video that we sent Santos from inside the estate.

She wasn’t cheating on me; she was in the middle of some other shit.

And then another thread caught my eye. It was from Santos. He was telling her that he had our jet and that she needed to come back to Bolivia.

“Fuck!” I hit the window. My agitation broke the silence in the truck. Trouble’s head whipped toward me. So did Jax’s eyes as he waited for me to say what was wrong.

Before I could even break it all down, I saw Ivy trying to send her location, but it was blocked. Seconds later, she sent another message with a meet-up location.

“She texted her security to come get her,” I said, voice low but deadly. The heat in my body was some shit that I couldn’t even explain.

Jax’s head snapped so fast his neck almost cracked. “She gave that nigga the safehouse location?”

“Nah, she left with Sanchez. He’s taking her to the pharmacy on Broadway. Drive over there before he makes it to her.” I answered Jax, then gave an order to Hollow.

We jerked as Hollow damn near did the dashboard in that direction. My phone was pressed to my ear, over and over, as I called her. It kept going to voicemail; her phone was either dead or she had turned it off. All I could see was red.

Trouble pulled his phone from his pocket. “Let me call this nigga.”

I turned to him, “Nah, don’t. Everybody gotta see me.”

I pulled my gun from my hip, set it in my lap, and stared out of the window for the rest of the ride.

When we pulled up across the street from the pharmacy, I could see them. Ivy and Sanchez were stepping out, pharmacy bags dangling from her hand like she was going for a midnight snack run. Not trying to run away in the middle of the night.

Then I saw another truck at the light. Through the windshield, even behind tinted glass, I caught sight of Emilio behind the wheel.

His light changed just as we were coming up to the intersection; my voice cracked the silence. “Go through the light.”

We rolled up behind them, creeping to a slow stop. My hand was already on the handle. I didn’t wait. Before he could even shift into park, I stepped out onto the pavement.

And I emptied the clip straight through Emilio’s driver-side window. Glass shattered, and bullets flew like rain. His head snapped back, blood painting the dashboard. He slumped forward against the wheel, dead.

I turned and sent a shot toward Sanchez without thinking. The shot went through the air and hit the passenger window of his truck, shattering the glass. For the first time in my life, I missed. Sanchez ducked low, eyes wide, staring back at me like he was staring at the devil.

“What the fuck was she doing outside?” I barked, my chest heaving.

Sanchez threw his arms out, confusion all over his face. “Nigga, she told me her period came on! She made me take her to the pharmacy!”

For the first time, my eyes snapped to Ivy. Bags in her hands, looking guilty as hell.

“Get in the truck,” I gritted through teeth clenched so tight the words barely came out.

Trouble started barking orders. “Ain’t no fucking time to argue. Move the body. Hollow take his truck and go dump that nigga. You and Jax, take the one we came in. I’ll ride with Sanchez. Wipe the cameras, all of them. Nigga just lit up the middle of a fucking pharmacy!”

He scoffed and threw his hands in the air. “And I’m not killing Sanchez about this shit, your girl just as reckless as you.”

Sirens in the distance brought me back to the moment just for a second. I slid into the seat beside Ivy and slammed the door. It shook the whole truck as we pulled out of the parking lot.

I turned to her, chest still rising and falling. She looked at me from the corner of her eyes, like she was ready to jump out of the moving truck.

“What the fuck was that? How you trust a nigga you lied to? A nigga who had a hit put on him because of you?!” I gritted.

Her voice trembled when she spoke. “You weren’t answering the phone! They said they had y’all, and all I had to do was come back! I didn’t know what else to do!”

“Ivy, think!” I yelled; it changed the expression on her face.

“You think they was just gone let us walk away after that? Huh? And what the hell did you expect me to do while they had me tied up? Just sit there waiting on you to come in and save the day?”

Tears welled in her eyes as her voice dropped. “Judah… you didn’t answer. I thought I was saving you.”

For a moment, my anger was gone. I searched for her face as she spoke.

I grabbed her wrist, bringing her across the seat, and kissed her forehead. My voice was ice when I pulled back and looked her dead in the eyes. “That’s the stupidest, sweetest shit I ever heard. Don’t ever think you gotta save me. I’d never put you in that position. Aight?”

Her breath hitched, caught in her throat.

“I know you keep comparing us to Cartel niggas, but have you ever seen a nigga take blood back from his own uncle? You don’t know us like that yet. But you will, this shit ain’t never that easy, Ma.”

Her chest was pressed to mine, and I could feel when she held her breath.

I held her tight, tracing her jaw with my thumb. My other hand was already on my phone, wiping all the cameras in a fifteen-mile radius with a few swipes. By the time I was done, there was no evidence that we had been in the area.

She could pretend she didn’t see it or understand it. But the second she made it clear that she didn’t want to go back to Santos’ estate, it was up. If this wasn’t the proof that she needed, then she would hate to see what me being mad actually looked like.

I was ready to go the distance about her, and there wasn’t a nigga walking this earth that would change that, or they’d end up like Emilio.