Page 34

Asher

It killed me to see Charlee running after me in the rearview mirror, but I know she’s safer at the house than anywhere else. I can’t risk anything happening to her. She’s become too important for me to risk.

“What did Carl say?”

Axel fidgets next to me. Both, he and Zane are nervous as fuck since I told them we needed to go without much of an explanation.

“That he found something—something that was too important to say over the phone.”

I flick the ash of my cigarette out the window and keep a steady grip on the steering wheel with my other hand. For a brief second, I toy with keeping the information Charlee shared to myself, but I know better. My brothers are as knee deep in this shit as I am. “Charlee said something earlier, something that has put a serious fucking wrench in our plans.”

“What did she say?”

Zane’s attention turns from the window and onto me.

I play with the butt of my cigarette a few times before I manage to get the words out. “The hit wasn’t ordered by Diego.”

“Then who the hell was it?”

I see Axel grind his teeth out of the corner of my eyes.

“Marco.”

The second I say his name, the air in the cab becomes thick with tension.

“Are you fucking serious?”

Zane’s voice deepens as he puts together the same thing I did the second Charlee told me. “This means Marco has to have another partner because there’s no way he’d be able to keep it from Diego on his own.”

“It does.”

I take my eyes off the road for a quick second to nod in his direction.

“Fuck me.”

Axel runs a hand down his face. “This is bad. This is really fucking bad. What are we gonna do?”

“Let’s see what Carl says first and go from there.”

I shrug off his concern, but inside, I’m a ball of chaos. I’m not sure what the hell this all means, and I have a bad feeling things are about to get worse before they get better.

The rest of the thirty-minute drive is done in silence. We’re each left to stew in our own thoughts. Things are fucked up, but we’ve come too far to quit now. A few minutes later we pull up to Carl’s house and a strange sense of unease hits me the second I park in the driveway. I feel it down to my bones. It’s a feeling that never failed to keep my ass safe in prison.

“What’s wrong?”

Zane asks the second I kill the ignition.

“Something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?”

Axel glances around the front yard looking for anything to back up my words.

“I don’t know. I just feel it in my gut. We need to watch our asses. Zane, you cover the rear and Axel, you keep your eyes open.”

I exit the truck but leave the door open. The last thing we want to do is attract any more attention if we can help it.

Both of my brothers nod and slowly creep out of the truck, careful not to make a sound. They pull out their guns and flank me the whole way up the front porch. When we reach the door, my jaw clenches. It’s slightly open and the wood of the doorjamb is splintered. A vein throbs in my temple as a flashback of the night Lauren was killed threatens to break free, but I do my best to breathe through it and stay focused. I can’t afford any mistakes. Not right now.

The toe of my boot nudges the door open and we slip through without making a sound. Nothing appears to be out of place in the living room, so we ease our way farther inside to the back of the house where the kitchen is. The second we round the corner, everything turns to shit.

Glass and broken dishes litter the dingy linoleum floor. Cupboards are broken and blood is splattered across the white cabinets. Carl’s body is lying limp in the middle of his kitchen. Blood is all over him and pooling on the floor around his body.

I rush over to him and kneel down to check his pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there nonetheless. “Carl? Who the fuck did this?”

My hands roam over his body, assessing his injuries. He has several knife wounds to his abdomen and chest. Whoever did this carved him up like a fucking turkey.

“Ash…I’m…so..rr..y…”

he wheezes out as blood spews out of his mouth and down the side of his face.

“Hang on, brother.”

I rip off my shirt and use it to stop some of the blood flow. Zane and Axel rush to my side and do their best to help me.

“That’s a lot of blood, Ash.”

Axel presses his shirt into Carl’s side, the gray material turning crimson.

“We need to stop it.”

I refuse to believe this is the end for him.

“I’m sorry, Ash. We can’t. He’s lost too much blood.”

Zane’s mouth presses together into a firm line as he shakes his head.

I glance up at my friend’s face and see that he’s fading fast. His fingers twitch and I grip his hand to let him know he’s not going to die alone. Something hard hits my hand, but I’m not taking my eyes off of Carl. Not until he takes his last breath.

“I’m not going to let them get away with this. I promise you that.”

Carl wheezes a few more times before his chest stops moving and the sound fades away. His eyes stare unblinking as the life leaves his body.

“Rest in peace, my brother.”

I close his eyes and bow my head, allowing him that last respect. My hand squeezes his one last time, and when I let go, I see what he was holding.

“Goddamn it!”

A vein throbs in my forehead as I see red.

“What’s wrong?”

I glance up to answer Zane when a flashing light from underneath one of the kitchen chairs catches my eye. Things have just gone from bad to worse.

“Outside, now!”

I grab my brothers by the arms and haul ass out the back door. We only get a few feet away from the house before the blast hits. The force of it knocks us forward a good distance. We land in the grass, face first. Hands cradle our heads to protect our faces from flying debris. When things settle, I roll onto my feet and help my brothers up.

“They knew we were coming.”

Axel coughs and brushes himself off.

Images of dark hair and green eyes flood my mind, and heaviness settles into my gut like a lead weight. This is not fucking good.

“They did.”

“How?”

Zane pulls his eyebrows together.

“This.”

I slap the badge in Zane’s hand.

Axel’s eyes narrow as he takes in what I’m holding. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It is.”

I swallow down the bile of betrayal building in my throat. “I should have figured this shit out sooner. If I did, I could have…”

My words get lodged in my throat.

“Don’t go there, brother. It’s not your fault.”

Zane’s words do nothing to stop the ache that spreads across my chest.

“But, it is. It was my case that brought them to my house that night. They’re dead because of me. Because I failed to protect them.”

The words feel like acid on my tongue, but it doesn’t make them any less true.

“You can’t shoulder the blame for this. It’s on those fuckers who put the bullet in Lauren. Axel and I know it. And the fuckers will get everything that’s coming to them, in spades.”

“Damn right they will.”

Axel nods. I’ve never seen him so pissed.

This situation is more fucked than I could have ever thought. “We have to get back to the house, now!”

I race to the truck with my brothers close behind. My foot hits the gas and I gun it toward Charlee, my heart in my throat the entire time.

I know something’s wrong the second we pull up to the door and she doesn’t run out to greet me. My feet tear up the gravel and into the house the second I kill the engine and everything is quiet. Too fucking quiet.

“Charlee?”

I call out for her, hoping that my instincts are wrong. Silence answers me back. I run through the entire house, but come up empty. This can’t be happening.

The sound of my phone ringing cuts through the empty house like a knife. When I pull it out and see Carl’s number, my teeth grind together. I press the answer button and hold it up to my ear. “You’re fucking dead.”

A laugh—one that I haven’t heard in six years—echoes through the phone’s speaker. “I see you got my message.”

“If you hurt her, I’m going to make you fucking suffer before I kill you.”

My throat burns with every word I speak, but I somehow manage to keep my shit together.

“She’s too pretty for that. And besides, Marco has plans for her.”

The way he’s referring to Charlee like she’s a toy has my fists aching to break his neck.

“Don’t you fucking touch her.”

“Meet me at Viper’s Den. Her safety depends on you, partner.”

The call goes dead before I can ask to hear her voice, and the line of sanity I’ve been straddling fades away.

They’ve taken enough from me. I’m bringing hell to their front door. And not a single one of them will survive this massacre when I’m through.