Page 191 of Stand: Part One

“Be very careful, little brother,” I warned, my words slow enough for him to understand. “We may be family, but that doesn’t mean my tolerance for disrespect is any different. If you weren’t recovering from a traumatic brain injury right now, you’d already be picking your teeth up from the fucking floor.” Releasing his throat with a shove, I stepped off and stood a few feet away from his bed, running my hands through my hair. “You haven’t even asked me about your wife or daughter. Is revenge really the only thing you care about?”

Daniel rubbed at his throat, scowling at me with eyes that wanted to set me on fire. “That man has caused us enough trouble,” he replied through clenched teeth. “He should have been dead a long time ago.”

“I agree, he should have,” I replied bitterly. “But that’s not how reality works, Daniel. These things do not end overnight. You know this. Matt’s not some small-time drug lord in a turf war whose resources are limited to one city,” I continued, my eyes snapping to his. “You need to be patient. He won’t survive much longer, not with a price on his head.”

He rolled his eyes and groaned. “You don’t get it, Darren. I want to be the one to kill him! His death belongs to me! Not some fucking scummy hitman from Romania.”

I shook my head, folding my arms across my chest, decidedly done with this conversation. “I’m not stopping you from killing him, Dan. If you’re so hell-bent, then by all means, have at it, but I am done wasting my personal time chasing that fuck around when I have other pursuits that also need my attention. I want this done and over with so we can all move the fuck on. If that means I utilize an additional resource I’ve always had access to, then so be it.”

He scoffed again and shook his head, his eyes maintaining a look of arrogance I wanted to smack right off his face. “If it’s really that important to you, Dan, I’ll let you skull-fuck his corpse until your heart’s content. Now get some fucking rest before I knock you the fuck out myself.”

With that, I turned around and walked out of the room, irritated that he was capable of running his mouth for so long.

Turning the corner, I stormed into Sid’s office, nearly knocking the old man out of his chair from my abrupt entrance.

“For a man who just took a bullet to the head, he has way too much energy to be that emotional. Up his meds,” I ordered.

Sid released an exasperated breath as he finally relaxed in his chair a bit, resting his hands on his desk. “We talked about this, Darren. We knew your brother’s cognitive state was going to be delicate. His behavior may become erratic at the most random of times. This will require some patience.”

My patience with my brother was running very thin lately.

“That’s fine when he’s fully healed and I can beat the shit out of him again. But until then, he needs to stay in a less wrathful state of mind before he does something stupid.”

Sid nodded before quickly turning away to cough into his sleeve. “I’ll.” Cough. “Take care.” Cough, cough. “Of it.” Cough, cough, cough.

“You do that,” I said over his coughing fit, turning around to head back up to my office. I had several positions that needed immediate replacements, and now I would have to add a private physician to the list too.

As I stepped out of the elevator, my phone rang, showing Scott on the other line.

“What?” I answered as I moved back to my office.

“We’ve got a big fucking problem. Someone just annihilated the Lobos.”

I stopped in my tracks, a blaze of fury mixed with disbelief swarming through my bloodstream.

“What?” I had to have misheard him.

“Someone just sent us a video of their entire village completely up in flames. Dead bodies were riddled with bullet holes, and the fields were decimated. They razed the entire place to the ground,” Scott explained.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm the growing rage so I could think rationally.

Mother. Fucker.

“Did they leave a calling card?” I asked. “Any indication as to who or why?” Even though I already had a damn good idea.

“Not yet. I’m sending a team down there to investigate while I get to work on who sent the video to us.”

I shook my head as I tried to contain my rage. “This had to be Matt. No one else would have a reason to attack the Lobos and destroy the crop. This was strictly retaliatory. Otherwise, they would have kept the fields for themselves.”

“I’m willing to bet the same,” Scott agreed. “From the looks of it, they were very thorough. Nothing was spared. It had to have been a sophisticated operation.”

My thoughts returned to my conversation with the general and his threats about my global operations. If anyone had the reason, the means, and the fucking ego, it would be him. No doubt Matt finally called in a fucking favor.

“When you confirm it was General Rainer, let me know.” I hung up the phone and practically stormed down the hallway back to my office, ready to pull out every single speck of damning evidence I had to finally bury that old motherfucker once and for all.

47

Sloane