Page 49 of The Loves We Lost

There is no sympathy for men like this.

Because I keep thinking of how Avery might not have grown up to be his age if they’d been successful.

I grab him. And the rest of my brothers let me. There’s an unspoken agreement that I’m the one who needs revenge. I need to know that Avery and Vi are safe, and sometimes that can only happen by your own hand.

Otherwise, you’d be left wondering, did it even happen?

King is waiting. Busted-lung guy is lying on the floor, his breath labored. It’s not being helped by the fact King’s size-thirteen boot is squarely planted on the man’s chest.

The son bucks against my hold. “Fuck you, you—”

“You’ve got one chance.” King interrupts him mid-spiel. “Your dad’s dead. Your man on the floor is dying. You’re gonna be third. I guarantee one of the ones who follow you will tell us what we need to know. So your choice is this: Do you want to be the one who spills, or do you want to be a dead body we use to motivate someone else to tell us?”

“Don’t ... say ... anything,” the man beneath King’s boot tries to say.

King looks down at him and spits on the man’s face.

I grab a knife and throw it straight down onto the man’s foot, where it cuts through his sneaker, skin, and bone. It’s almost funny the way he tries to scream, to suck in air at the intensity of the pain, but can’t because he only has half his breathing system left.

We both look back at the young man whose skin has turned clammy and grey. I grab him around the neck and squeeze tightly. “You want to choke for air too?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“What does the Righteous Brotherhood want with the Iron Outlaws?”

“They want control of the docks.”

King scoffs. “We already know that. Tell us something we don’t.”

“I heard the Brotherhood aren’t prepared to give up because ...”

“Because?” King questions.

“Some bullshit about how one of you is the father of Brad Collins, the Brotherhood leader.”

King and I exchange a glance. I ask, “You know who his father is supposed to be?”

The young man’s gaze travels to the man on the floor, who appears to have either passed out with pain or possibly died. I’m not sure and certainly don’t give a shit.

“No. Just that he’s a Jersey old-timer and he’s still alive. I don’t know who. Please don’t kill me.”

“You know shit about two guys showing up at my woman’s house?”

The man’s head drops forward. “Donovan York and Peter Rubin. That’s all I know, I swear.”

I pull my fist back and punch him so hard, he slumps unconscious to the ground. The new intel is valuable, but troubling.

King sucks in a breath. “Assuming this is true, there aren’t that many old-timers. Spark’s dad is alive and lives in Florida now. There’s Track. I mean, he lived wild for a while before he met Tess. There’s Wrinkle, Halo’s dad. Thank fuck my old man is dead, or he’d be a contender. Any one of them could have knocked up some bitch on a ride out somewhere.”

“And that’s all we need. A turf war is one thing—you can shut it down if you hack at it for long enough. But a personal grudge match, that’s hard to overcome,” I say.

“Work with Vex. Get me all the details on this leader. Who he is. What he looks like.”

“What he looks like?”

“Have you seen you and Avery together? You’re like peas in a pod. Rae has a theory that kids come out looking like their fathers so their dads don’t eat them in the wild. I know it’s a reach, but maybe when we see him, we’ll have a better idea of whose son he could be.”

“On it. What do you want to do now?”