Anarchy (Hades Book 2)

by Tate James

  "Yes, boss," Rio replied. "Absolutely."

  He hung up, and Zed exploded from his chair. "I knew it!" he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Lucas. "I fucking knew it."

  25

  Calming breaths were a distant memory as I clenched my steering wheel with white-knuckled hands. "Lucas, if you know anything—"

  "I don't!" he cut me off, shaking his head.

  Zed and Cass were tight on my ass in Zed's Ferrari, and the fact that the Audi was only a two-seater was the only thing that’d saved Lucas from the Spanish Inquisition on the way over to his house.

  "Hayden, I swear to you I have no idea what guns are at my place, and I sure as fuck didn't put them there. I wouldn't lie to you about this. You know that." His tone was firm and even with just an edge of a plea.

  I raised one hand from the steering wheel, rubbing my temple where a huge-ass stress headache was building. "I want to believe you..." That statement sounded weak even to my own ears.

  Lucas jerked a sharp nod, shifting to turn his attention out the window. "But Zed doesn't."

  Fucking hell. Zed was painful on the best of days when he was right about shit. This, though? This was going to be a whole new level of infuriating. Not to mention he was probably going to kill Lucas if this revealed him as some sort of double agent for Chase.

  I needed to admit to myself how bad my feelings for Lucas had developed when I'd already decided I couldn't kill him. Even if there was something... even if he'd deliberately targeted me in the first instance... I didn't believe it was all fake. His feelings for me were genuine now. So did it matter how it’d come about?

  Yes. Short answer, yes. It absolutely mattered. And yet I still didn't want to kill him.

  Shit. I'd totally lost my edge. I’d never known I had the emotional capacity left to care about anyone outside of Seph and Demi. I’d thought I'd salted and burned that part of my soul five years ago.

  Apparently, I was wrong.

  "Just..." We pulled up in front of Lucas's house where several trade vans were parked in the driveway and a bunch of my Timberwolves in orange vests and hard hats stood around on the front lawn. "Just don't fucking speak, okay? Don't do anything to get in Zed's way until we sort this out."

  Lucas flicked a sharp look at me, confused, but nodded his understanding anyway as we got out of the car.

  There was no real opportunity for him to steer clear of Zed, though. The Ferrari parked directly behind us, and Zed clamped a strong hand on the back of Lucas's neck before we even approached the building team.

  "This bastard should be chained up in the basement of Anarchy right now, boss," he spat, shoving Lucas ahead of him with furious motions.

  Cass rumbled a grunt that sounded awfully like agreement. "He should, if he's guilty, be choking on his own blood right now." Then he paused and narrowed his eyes at Lucas. "If he's guilty."

  "Which we don't know he is," I snapped, "and the fact that he is cooperating should go a long way here." I gave Lucas another warning glare, begging him not to antagonize Zed or Cass right now. I'd underestimated how seriously Cass was taking my safety since we'd fucked, but he was almost as bad as Zed.

  "Hades, sir," Rio, the foreman, greeted me as I strode up the path to his group of workers. I cast my gaze over all of them, checking that I recognized each and every face, no matter how vaguely. I might not know names for all of them, but I was confident there were no new sneaky plants within the crew.

  "Show me," I ordered Rio, indicating he lead the way into the house. The guys could follow or wait outside, I didn't much care so long as they were keeping Lucas alive for the time being.

  Rio strode through the front door and headed for the back of the house. "We found it while we were installing the elevator, sir," he told me, glancing over his shoulder. "We needed to knock out this side of the house to allow for the box shaft and, well shit, hang on." He held aside a heavy piece of plastic sheeting and indicated for me to enter their current work zone. "One of my boys somehow managed to let go of his sledgehammer, fucking moron, and it smashed through the floorboards over here."

  I frowned at the section of flooring he pointed to where there was now a hole considerably larger than a sledgehammer would have made.

  "Anyway, the hammer dropped straight through. Made us fucking suspicious, you know? The plans don't show a basement level." He raised his brows at me, totally ignoring the three muscular shadows at my back. Smart man. I knew there was a reason I'd taken him into the Wolves.

  "So you investigated." It was rhetorical because of course that's what he’d done. I would, too.

  He grimaced and ran a hand over his thick moustache. "Yes, sir. We cut the hole bigger and then... well, then that's when I called you, boss."

  "Thank you, Rio." I held out my hand, and he passed me the flashlight from his tool belt. "I'll take it from here."

  "I've got a bigger floodlight in my truck, sir. I'll get the boys to bring it through if you want." He jerked his head at the hole in the floor. "Pretty dark down there otherwise."

  I nodded my acceptance, and he hurried away to do what he’d offered. Alone with the guys, I arched a brow directly at Lucas and tilted my head to the hole in the floor.

  "I don't know," he answered my silent question. "I'm just as shocked as the rest of you."

  Zed scoffed a laugh, his fingers digging into the back of Lucas's neck. "Or you're a fucking excellent actor, Gumdrop."

  With a sigh, I kicked my high-heeled shoes off as I approached the hole and shone the flashlight inside. It was a deep enough drop that I would need my hands, so I held the flashlight out for Cass to hold. With him training the light on the darkness below, I gripped the rough edges of the broken floor and lowered myself down. The drop when I let go wasn't significant, and I landed in a crouch.

  "Throw the light down," I called out to Cass. I held my hands out and caught the heavy flashlight when he dropped it, then spun it around to inspect my surroundings. "Holy shit."

  Rio hadn't been exaggerating.

  "What is it?" Zed yelled down at me as I made my way deeper into the room and ran my pissy little flashlight over walls stacked with an entire arsenal of weapons.

  "Come down and see for yourself," I yelled back. "I'm not your fucking secretary." That didn't even make a whole lot of sense, but my attention was wholly focused on working out why in the hell there were so many fucking guns under Lucas's house.

  There was some muttering of men's voices above me, and a moment later Zed dropped through the hole to join me.

  I flashed my light over him, giving a small chuckle. "Knew you couldn't resist. You let go of Lucas, finally?"

  Zed scowled at me in the eerie shadows. "Cass is holding him." He took the flashlight from my hand and ran the beam across the walls just like I'd done, then let out a low whistle.

  "Dare... if this doesn't convince you that kid is a plant, I don't know what will." His voice was pitched low, his tone disappointed like he actually hadn't wanted Lucas to be anything more than he seemed. I knew the feeling.

  But this wasn't evidence of guilt. "Zed, don't be so narrow-minded," I chastised, stepping closer to him in the darkness so we could speak without being overheard. Why it mattered, I had no idea. But old habits died hard. "Lucas and his mother have been in Shadow Grove for less than two months now, and the past eight days he's been staying with us and workmen have been here. You want to tell me he built this... massive weapons cache under his uncle's house within that time and imported all these guns undetected?" I clicked my tongue. "There's no way."

  Zed huffed an annoyed sound. "Sure, if that's how long he's been here."

  "Or doesn't it make more sense that this was his uncle's doing? Demi said he was squeaky clean, but this suggests otherwise." I nudged him in the ribs, making him look at me rather than scowl at the guns. "Zed. Come on. You've spent a whole lot of time with Lucas this week. Do you honestly think he knew about this?"

  Zed's eyes blazed with stubborn defiance, the
flashlight casting all kinds of harsh shadows and emphasizing his tight jaw. "I just..." He broke off with a sharp exhale. "I'm worried you're going to regret this later, boss. I'm scared you'll trust the wrong man with your heart and be burned for it." He all but whispered the confession, and it struck me right in the chest.

  Something had shifted between us, something important, and I was starting to think maybe I was okay with it.

  I reached up, placing my palm against the rough of his cheek as anxious energy buzzed through me like electricity.

  "So who is the right person to trust with my heart, Zayden?" I tipped my chin, trying to meet his eyes in the darkness. "You?" I said that word so softly, but it shocked through me with the force of a freight train. Had I seriously just said that out loud?

  Luckily—or unluckily, depending on your perspective—a loud scraping and thumping upstairs sounded a split second after I’d asked that heavy fucking question, and I stiffened. It was entirely possible Zed hadn't even heard me, so I was freaking out over nothing.

  "Floodlight incoming!" Cass shouted down to us, and I stepped smoothly away from Zed, heading back to the hole where a large floodlight on a tripod stand was being lowered on ropes.

  "Got it!" I yelled back when the light touched down. Zed and I quickly untied the ropes from it and repositioned it away from the entry hole. Cass tossed an extension cord down, and Zed plugged the light in.

  The brightness that flooded the room made me flinch and cover my eyes, but Zed's surprised curse made me blink rapidly to adjust.

  The room was enormous, probably covering the entire footprint of the house with structural pillars at regular intervals to support the building above. After several moments of staring around, silent, I turned to Zed with an eyebrow arched.

  "Yeah," he admitted softly. "You might have a point."

  I rolled my eyes. Might. Might have a point. This basement had quite clearly been built before the house itself, meaning it predated Lucas by at least a decade, if not more.

  "Oh shit," Cass's voice echoed down to us. He was crouched down, peering through the hole. Lucas was beside him, looking damn shell-shocked.

  "Come down," I called up to them. "Zed's going to play nice for the time being."

  My second huffed in annoyance, shooting me a glare. "That's not to say he didn't know about this. He inherited the house; who's to say he didn't inherit some Timberwolf vendetta from his uncle?"

  I didn't have a response to that because he posed a relevant question. Telling him I wanted to trust my gut probably wasn't going to fly either. So I just ignored him and watched Cass and Lucas drop down through the hole.

  Lucas's face was the definition of shocked as he stared around the massive armory in awe. "Fucking hell," he murmured. "I had no idea."

  "Didn't you, though?" Zed muttered with a dark glare.

  "Fuck off," I hissed at my second. "Go look around a bit. Find me some answers about why Lucas's uncle needed all this firepower."

  Zed shot a pointed look at Lucas, still radiating suspicion, then stalked off to do as I asked. The air smelled clean, and not a speck of dust covered the weapons. A slight breeze clued me in to the fact that there was an air purifying system keeping the weapons in pristine, dust-free condition, rather than a regular cleaner.

  "Gumdrop, I'm gonna say this now," Cass rumbled, giving Lucas a skeptical look, "if you knew anything about this, you'd better start fucking talking."

  Lucas threw his hands up in frustration. "Jesus Christ, Cass. I didn't. I don't. This is... I'm just as confused as you guys. More. My uncle wasn't in any gangs or... anything. He was a fucking accountant."

  Cass twitched a micro-smile. "I thought accountant was code for sex worker, not hitman."

  As amusing as that observation was, his comment struck something in me, and my brows hitched.

  "Shit," I breathed. "I reckon you nailed it, Cass."

  He wasn't following my train of thought, just squinting at me across the bright stream of light. "Nailed what, Red?"

  I waved my hand around, indicating where we were. "This. Lucas's uncle with the squeaky-clean background check and the secret arsenal underneath his house. He wasn't an accountant... he was a fucking mercenary."

  Cass stiffened, his eyes wide. Lucas looked more confused than ever, and Zed? Zed yelled from further into the room, pulling my attention toward him.

  "I think you might be right, boss!" he called out. "Look what I found." He tossed a sheathed dagger to me, and I caught it easily.

  Turning it over in my hands, I let out a groan when I recognized the ancient crest printed into the handle.

  "Lucas," I said, licking my lips and holding the knife up for him and Cass to see. "Did you know your uncle was in the Guild?"

  26

  It didn’t take us long to work out exactly how the secret basement was accessed without the need for a huge-ass hole in the floor. There was a staircase further down the room that ended in a false back to the closet in the downstairs guest room. Based on the level of dust in that room, it was an easy guess as to why Lucas had never found the hidden door. I'd have been surprised if he had ever even stepped foot into the guest room at all.

  Even then, it would have only taken five minutes to find the access had we not been locked in an argument about whether Lucas's uncle being in the Guild also meant Lucas was and whether it was possible he somehow didn't even know he was doing their work.

  Eventually, I'd reached the point where I either shot Zed in the knee for being such a contrary dick or walked away from the conversation. Based on the fact that Zed was following me out of the house with two perfectly hole-free legs under him, it wouldn't be hard to guess which option I'd taken.

  "Seal up the floor," I told Rio as I approached his team all sitting around smoking on the lawn. "No one goes in there without my permission, understood?"

  The foreman jerked a sharp nod, and I ran my eyes over his men to reinforce my order.

  "Seal the floor and forget what you fucking saw, Rio. Trust me on this one; I'm not the scariest bastard out there."

  His eyes widened, but he was firm in his assurances that they'd do exactly as instructed. Satisfied with his response, I made my way back to the cars.

  I didn't wait to see if the guys had all followed or not, and Lucas slid into the passenger seat a split second after I turned the ignition.

  Neither of us spoke, and Zed's Ferrari roared past me when we hit the highway on the outskirts of Shadow Grove, heading toward his estate.

  My lips twitched in a smirk as he accelerated faster ahead of us, and I gave a short laugh. "Fucking show off," I muttered.

  "Okay, so, I really don't want to tempt my fate here or anything," Lucas said, breaking the tense silence as I drove. "But... am I... are we...?"

  I flicked a glance at him, and his brow was furrowed with genuine anxiety. His hands were balled into fists in his lap, and his whole posture was tighter than a piano string.

  As instinctual as it was to immediately reassure him, to put his fears to rest, I couldn't do that. Not truthfully. But I owed him more than my silence and suspicions.

  "I really want to tell you that we're fine, Lucas," I finally said, my grip on the steering wheel easing. "There's no question in my mind that your uncle was in the Guild, that much we're unilateral on." The copious amount of fake IDs and passports we'd found with his uncle's picture added weight to that theory. "But Zed's not wrong in being paranoid about whether you knew."

  Lucas just blew out a long breath and rubbed his hand over the back of his head. "Yeah, I can understand that," he said in a resigned voice. "The evidence does look pretty damning, and you guys are used to people being more than they seem."

  I quirked a brow. "That's a very mature response to a shitty situation, Lucas."

  His lips curved up as he tipped his head to the side. "I figure I have a moral responsibility to act more like an adult than Zed, if only to show him up when he's being a jealous fucknut."

  I could
n't fight my laugh at that statement.

  When we pulled up outside Zed's house, I leaned over and pressed a quick kiss against Lucas's lips. "You're a little bit amazing," I murmured, my hand cupping his face. "I think that's why I'm still so suspicious. I haven't done anything in my life to deserve someone like you."

  His brow creased, and he slid a hand around the back of my neck to hold me close a moment longer. "That breaks my heart that you believe that, Hayden. I think out of anyone in this fucked up town, you’re the most deserving of everything and more."

  At a loss for words, I kissed him again, then climbed out of the Audi to head inside.

  Zed was in the kitchen, angrily slamming cabinet doors and throwing food onto the counter like it had personally offended him, and Cass was nowhere to be seen.

  I raised a brow, looking around and not finding anywhere where that sexy, tattooed biker-man might be lurking.

  I propped my hip against the counter and folded my arms. "Where's Grumpy Cat?"

  Zed paused to glare at me with a deadly sharp chef's knife in his hand and a handful of vegetables on the board in front of him. "Why? You worried I shot him and stashed the body while you were busy making out with Gumdrop in the car?"

  I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, 'cause you totally know how to clean up a scene that quick."

  Zed huffed a short laugh, slicing into the vegetables. "He got a call from someone and took off to deal with it. Reaper shit, I guess."

  "Is it just me," Lucas asked thoughtfully, "or does Cass seem like he'd rather not be the Reapers’ leader?"

  The glare Zed sent towards Lucas was pure acid, and I swallowed a frustrated sigh.

  "Lucas, do you mind giving Zed and I a moment to talk? We have some things to discuss." I kept my tone friendly, but the look I gave Zed told him just how pissed off I was getting with his attitude.

  Lucas wasn't stupid, either. He saw it and wisely must have realized Zed had it coming, so he left the kitchen without another word.