Page 15

B

Grant's face twisted with fear as his bandaged stumps shifted against the chair.

Unlike Peter, the last man to die in that seat, I hadn't bothered with chains.

After all, Grant couldn't run anywhere without his legs or a wheelchair.

Peter had taken his final breaths here. Fucking dickhead had thought a simple "sorry" could make up for his ludicrous decision to use Whisper's brother to move that drug shipment last month.

His fuckup had cost us the corn farm. That land had been the perfect facade to hide our manufacturing operation.

Years of careful planning had been destroyed because some testosterone-addled idiot thought he knew better than me.

I despised men like that, the ones who went rogue, thinking they could outsmart the woman who'd kept this wharf running since Frank Morgan forced me to work here.

Every creaking board, every rusted crane, every salt-worn building: this place pumped through my veins like a second bloodstream.

I knew the rarely walked passages, knew which security guards could be bought with a hundred bucks, and where the camera blind spots were.

I'd learned every secret while the assholes around me dismissed me as just another paper-pusher in a dingy office.

Come Monday, when my desk would be empty, my boss and every other loser who worked here would realize how much they needed me.

By then, I would be sipping coconut rum in Fiji, or lounging on a Bali beach, or settled into any one of the dozen units I'd bought over the years and planned to live in until I clocked out for good.

They thought this wharf owned me, but I'd owned them all along.

Pity I wasn’t going to be here to watch the fallout. Let them try to rebuild from the ashes. Without me, they wouldn't even know where to start.

"B, please." Grant's whimper cut through my thoughts, dragging me back from the mental abyss that seemed to swallow me more often lately.

Revenge was like that . . . insidious. It crept in, corrupting every memory, crushing the few good ones and replacing them with darkness.

With rage. With the endless parade of men who'd tried to break me since I was old enough to remember.

At least twenty men had died by my hand. When today's plan played out, because it would, that number would reach thirty. There was something poetic about ending on such a clean number.

"You know what you have to do." I glared at Grant, taking a long drag on my last cigarette.

The smoke streamed out slowly, its familiar burn doing little to calm the irritation under my skin.

My last cigarette. Because I hadn't bought another pack before snatching Grant from the hospital.

Alice would've laughed, that perfect mix of teasing and scolding reserved just for me and my stubborn habit that began when I was eleven years old.

"Those cancer sticks will be the death of you," she would say as if fate didn't already have me in its crosshairs.

Only fate had taken her instead. My sweet Alice. The woman who had never hurt a soul.

Fucking hell. I exhaled sharply, watching the smoke twist into the dim air.

This was going to be a long day, and the hiccups I’d already hit were lining up to make it stretch even longer.

"Yes. I know what to say,” Grant stammered, his voice trembling. “I’ll do anything you ask."

"I know you will." I pressed the silencer against the bandaged stump of his left leg, watching him squirm. His amputations were a permanent reminder of what he'd already lost. The aim of my gun was a silent warning of how much more he could lose.

"I will. I promise," he whispered, his words barely holding together.

I took one final drag before flicking the cigarette through the large opening in the floorboards, and it hit the dark water below with a brief hiss, like a dying breath.

Strange that Grant hadn't asked about that opening yet.

Every other man who'd died in that chair had fixated on it as if drowning terrified them more than the bullet I'd promised them.

Funny what men feared in their final moments.

The warehouse was an old relic, built right over the water.

Back when this place still had a soul, boats would drift in from the ocean to that opening and get hoisted up for repairs by massive cranes that had long since rusted silent.

Now the only things that passed through the floorboards to that dark rectangle of water were the bodies I fed to the sharks.

A different kind of repair work, I supposed: fixing my broken world, one corpse at a time.

"Okay, Hughes, you only get one shot at this. Make it count."

"I will," he said, looking right at me, like he was holding an ace. "And you better keep your promise."

"Like I told you. Once those Alpha bastards are dead, I'm out of here, and you're a free man."

He nodded, gripping that fragile thread of hope as if it might save him.

I was always amazed at how men staring down death still clung to my words.

Maybe they couldn't believe a woman was capable of cold-blooded murder.

In my youth, they fell for my smile and fake charm.

Now they saw an old woman and thought I was harmless.

The more they underestimated me, the more they believed they would walk away alive.

I pulled the hypodermic I’d prepared this morning from my pocket and grabbed his arm. He thrashed as I drove the needle into his bicep.

“What the fuck!”

I pressed the plunger home.

"Insurance policy." Grinning, I tapped his cheek. "Don't fight it, Hughes. You’re taking another little nap, that’s all."

“You’re a total bitch. You know that? ”

“Stop with the flattery.” I winked. “It’s time to put on your act.”

I placed Doctor Lurami’s phone on speaker and dialed the Alpha Ops HQ number.

"Alpha Tactical Ops," Billie’s voice sang through the speaker, all chirpy and happy – like a new mother should be.

Out of all of them, Billie was the only one I felt a connection to.

She was also fucked over by a man. But she got her revenge when the boss who ruined her career was exposed for the bastard he was.

"Help! Help me," Grant whispered, his voice splintering. "Please . . . it’s Grant Hughes. I . . . I’ve been kidnapped."

“Grant Hughes?” Billie said.

“Yes. Is Aria there?”

“Yes. Hold the line.” I imagined Billie sprinting toward Aria’s office, which would no doubt be huge.

"Where are you?" Aria’s first question came fast, confirming she knew he’d been taken from the hospital.

"I don’t know," Grant stammered, his voice trembling. "I’m in a huge, abandoned warehouse, and I think it’s near the ocean. I can smell saltwater. It looks like they used to repair boats here."

His words tumbled out in a rush, desperation dripping from every syllable.

Aria would know this place. This was the warehouse where my boy, Thomas, had tried to end Ryder Westwood’s life. But Ryder had slipped through his fingers, and poor Thomas had paid for that failure with his life.

The line went silent, and I could almost hear Aria piecing the clues together, marking the location, mobilizing her team.

A small part of me couldn’t help but admire Aria.

She was at the top of her game, commanding loyalty and respect from her men, who obeyed her commands.

It was ironic that she’d killed one of the men I’d had on my kill list for decades—Frank Morgan, Aria’s father and the asshole who had made my life at Angelsong Orphanage pure hell.

The sadistic monster who had owned me for decades.

"Who took you?" Aria asked, her voice sharp, cutting straight to the point .

"It was B. I told you she’d get me,” Grant said, his words growing thick as the drug kicked in.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She wore a mask." Grant studied my face like he was memorizing every wrinkle, ready to describe my looks to a police artist later. I didn’t give a fuck. He wouldn’t be alive long enough for that. "I don’t know who she is, but she’ll kill me."

His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard.

I had to hand it to him, Grant's acting was good. Then again, he'd pretended to be a Good Samaritan, saving gorillas in the Congo Jungle, while secretly laundering billions for our criminal empire. His hardworking parents devoured every lie about their precious son.

Faking it was just part of the criminal toolkit.

I'd learned that dance when I was fifteen, when my teacher, Mr. O’Leary, at Angelsong thought he was going to get a blow job down in the dusty archiving room.

I’d made sure he never touched another girl again.

Alice and I had laughed ourselves breathless that night, dragging his body to the back paddock.

Though digging his grave had sobered us up quick enough.

I resisted a smile at that memory. Brian O’Leary had no idea how good my acting was, and I’d been perfecting it over the decades since. Just like the art of body disposal, only a handful of people who’d died at my hand had turned up over the decades.

My chest hollowed thinking of Alice. She was meant to rest forever beneath her beloved angel fountain. My jaw clenched against a scream. Those bastards had no right to disturb her grave.

I had to move fast and save her before they took her body from me forever.

Through the speaker came the sharp snap of Aria's fingers, summoning her elite dogs. Levi, Viper, Maya, Cobra, and that bastard Blade would be mobilizing now, acting on her commands. But even with their chopper screaming in from Risky Shores, they would be too late to catch me.

By the time they arrived, I would be gone, and I would have my finger on the detonator, ready to kill the lot of them.

Grant’s head lolled forward, then jerked back up. Shit, that drug was hitting his system faster than I'd expected. His gaze locked onto mine, and his fear was so thick his eyes were bloodshot.

"How are you calling me?" Aria’s tone was suspicious and probing.