Page 48 of The Loves We Lost

We collectively hold our breath, waiting for the moment. He gestures that there are indeed four people within his sight. When he gives us the signal to go, it coincides with a muffled scream from the front.

Niro shoulders the door open, and I throw a stun grenade into the room. Then the two of us put our backs to either side of the exterior door frame, covering our ears and closing oureyes as it explodes. If the excessively loud bang wasn’t enough to stun them temporarily, the excruciatingly bright flash will do the trick. It’s all aimed to disorient them.

Before they can respond, the four of us enter the premises with our weapons raised. The goal is to capture them alive to question them, and I have to bank the urge to let off a round and shoot each one of these fuckers. Without the opportunity to reorient themselves before we attack, they have no time to grab weapons, and after minimal resistance, we have the four men in the house subdued.

“Who the fuck are you?” None of the men are particularly big, but this one is the smallest, with weak arms and knotted hair tied back at the nape of his neck.

“I thought we agreed dinner at eight. Did we get the day wrong?” Niro replies before chuckling at his own comment. Then he looks at me and winks.

A moment later, King and the rest of the Outlaws break down the front door.

“We could have opened that,” Halo says.

“Felt better to break it,” Spark says, tossing one of the men from outside on the ground. The victim’s hands are tied behind his back, so his face hits the floor with anumf. Spark follows it with a swift kick to the man’s balls. He’s been on a mission to eradicate the Righteous Brotherhood ever since what they did to Iris.

King was reluctant to start a war back then.

But now it’s a different story.

The men on the ground still have fight in them. They tug hard against the cable ties that bind their wrists and cut into their skin. They curse and wriggle like the fucking worms they are.

“Let’s take ’em one at a time into the kitchen,” King says. “Bates?”

I grab the man closest to me. He’s balding, wearing a camouflage hunting jacket. In my head, he becomes one of the men who showed up at Vi’s house. A man who took a fight between men to the house of a child.

Once in the kitchen, I stand him upright and lean him against the counter. And just when he’s found his balance and his breathing settles, I punch him hard in the stomach so he bends forward again.

King grips his hair and pulls him to standing again. “What is the Brotherhood trying to do here in Jersey?”

“Fuck you,” the man says.

I whip a knife from my belt. “There are six of you. How many dead bodies on this floor do you think it will take for one of you to speak?”

Blue eyes flash with anger. “Again, fuck you.”

“You come after my old lady, my fucking daughter, and have the balls to look me in the eye like you’re a hero. One.”

“One what?”

Before he realizes what I’m about to do, I’ve stabbed him through the right side of his chest, enough to puncture a lung. The sudden gasping suggests I hit my target. “One collapsed lung down, one to go.”

His mouth opens and closes to form words, but pain and shock have him so on edge, he can’t make them properly.

I throw him to the ground. “Sayfuck younow, you piece of shit.”

I march out and grab a second man. This one is older. His white hair is short, and he has tattoos that give him away as a white supremacist. He looks like the picture we have of Amos Greene.

“The first one a dud?” Niro asks.

“Yeah. He’s dying and can’t speak anymore,” I reply. It’s not factually true. A punctured lung is not always deadly. It can berepaired and reinflated. But I want each and every man in here shitting themselves with fear.

This time, I don’t even let the man stand. I drag him, his feet flailing against the wood in an attempt to find purchase.

“I’m not telling you anything, fuckwad,” he yells. “You can suck my dick.”

“Yeah,” I say, and unable to control myself, I grab my gun from my belt and shoot him through the head before I even get to the kitchen.

“No,” yells a younger man I guess is in his early twenties. “Dad, no. You murderous fuckers.” I want to find an ounce of sympathy because of how he’s likely been spoon-fed bullshit rhetoric his entire life. How it might not be his fault he was groomed by his father into this shit group of humans. But I can’t.