"That was me. Elbowed him in the nose. Then kicked him in the chin to lay him out."
"Right. This is the second time you've been attacked this month. I don't know why they're targeting you so hard, but I'm going to have some of our contacts poke around and find out. In the meantime, Ryker will make an example out of this guy’s corpse.” He kicked the body. “Let Tiernan know we mean business when it comes to our women."
"What about my family? Should we be concerned that they'll be targeted?" I asked, staring up at him as horror filled me.
"They're covered. I've had men watching them since your attack."
I sighed with relief as we left the bathroom to wait in Yavin's office until Ryker came with the clean-up crew.
I wanted to go home and stay there for a year.
27 Enzo
It killed me to abandon Sadie when she was so out of sorts, trapped in the reality of what she’d done and seen. A man’s blood stained her body and dead eyes imprinted on her memory. The comfort of her best friend would be enough to see her through the few hours to come until I could come home to her. A best friend who knew exactly what it was like to kill.
To look death in the face and say fuck you.
Pulling up at Tease once more after dropping both my girls at the estate, I barely had the car in park before I threw myself out of the driver’s seat. Rain poured down around me, my dress shoes splashing in the puddles. The parking lot was empty, only the recognizable vehicles of staff and Bellandi men closest to the black building with the tinted windows.
The doors flew open the moment I approached, Sandro and one of Rafael’s men standing guard. “Bryan said to tell you he’s set. He’s with Irina twenty-four seven now,” Sandro said as I passed. I froze just beyond him, turning on my heel so that my shoe squeaked against the floor. The room filled with sudden silence as I leveled him with a glare in warning.
“Do you think I give the first shit about that right now?” I asked.
“No, Sir,” he said, shaking his head quickly. With a growl of frustration, I moved further into the club. Ryker stood on stage, glaring down at the guards who’d been on duty all day.
“Go home, Enzo,” he grunted. “You should be with Sadie.” Matteo nodded his agreement, but I ignored both of them to ascend the steps slowly.
Casting my eyes about the room, I glared at every single one of the men we’d trusted to keep our business, our employees, ourselves safe. “The girls are in the back?” I asked Ryker.
“Yeah. Detained them in case we needed information, but we didn’t want to scare them in case it gets messy out here. Yav and Calix are with them,” he answered, narrowing his eyes at me and studying my face. “You good?”
I nodded absently in response, searching the small crowd of male employees for the one who’d been on guard when we arrived earlier in the day.
I tightened my jaw when I found him, fidgeting from one foot to the other anxiously. My hand darted to my holster, pulling it so quickly that Ryker barely had time to flinch away from the sudden movement at his side.
Pointing my gun at the guard, I fired a single shot into his thigh.
The scream that echoed through the room as the others flinched away from the shot and left him to his pain did nothing to settle the beast in my soul.
To calm the monster rattling the cage bars and demanding vengeance for the harm done to my woman.
“Jesus fuck! You shot him!” one of the male employees shouted as he backed away. Jumping down off the stage, I landed on my feet and stepped into the bastard’s face as he clung to the wound in his leg.
The barrel of my gun touched his forehead, and I applied just enough pressure to make him raise it to stare me in the eye. “Who let him in?” I growled.
He whimpered, swallowing around the saliva building in his mouth. The shifting weight, the guilt on his face even as he struggled to contain the pain. I already knew the answer to my question.
I just didn’t know why.
“I never meant for anyone to get hurt,” he said.
Matteo growled a warning, stepping into his face and pushing my gun away from his forehead. I holstered it, despite wanting nothing more than to put a bullet in his brain. The time for that would come, but answers were more important.
For the moment.
“What did you think would happen when you let someone unauthorized into the back rooms? At best, he would have gotten handsy with one of the girls. At worst, he could have killed Enzo’s woman,” Matteo said, shaking his head as his lips curled in disgust.
“I fail to see how that could have ended any way that didn’t involve someone getting hurt,” Ryker echoed. With his arms crossed over his chest on the stage, he towered over all of us like a monstrous sentry in black jeans and a black shirt.
“I left the door for five minutes. That’s all, I swear. I didn’t think anybody would be ballsy enough to stroll through it!” the man protested.
I stilled, considering how much worse the situation could have been. Five minutes.
Did he have any clue how many men could walk through a door in five minutes?
“Why would you abandon your post?” I asked him, my voice calm despite the storm that raged inside me. The time for blood approached. His answers were naïve enough to believe he’d genuinely just been stupid. I did not suffer idiots in my line of work.
“There was a woman. Blond hair, brown eyes. Tall and sexy as fuck. She wanted me, so—”
“So you thought it was appropriate to endanger everyone in
