“And survive, right?” Derek quietly asked. “I mean, we should probably add that in there somewhere.”
Mason nodded and stepped forward, completing the small circle of bodies we had formed. “I think we should use this moment to our advantage.”
“How so?”
“I think we should set our sights on wiping out the entire Sanchez family.”
I let my eyes shut and imagined how that would go with only five men against their entire squad. What they lacked in experience—they made up for in numbers. Arranging an all out war while our team wasn’t at full strength was absolutely insane.
“No. We can make our point by doing less than that,” I said, adding a hard edge to my voice to make sure my point was made.
“Bullshit. You think killing some lower ranking guys is going to get them off your girl? You can’t be planning on killing any of the sons—there would be no coming back from that.”
Derek, ever the black sheep of the group, raised his hand and waited for everyone to quiet down before he spoke.
“What if we just shut down the trafficking portion of their operation and make amends with a peace offering?”
“A peace offering?” Mason snarled in disbelief. “We’re fucking hitmen!”
“What kind of offering?” I asked, ignoring Mason’s outburst and tilting my head to the side as I considered the idea.
“Well... didn’t you try to buy out the guy’s debt? Why not a cash offering?”
“Troy. What do you think?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then shrugged. “It may work. If we take out a lot of their lower ranked men while destroying the trafficking branch, it’ll show that we’re strong enough to take out all their braches. They’d likely take the peace offering just to save themselves the trouble, but it would only be a temporary solution at best. Not to mention incredibly risky.”
Mason snorted. “No shit. And have you thought about how we’re going to take down the entire trafficking branch without killing Dante? Because he runs that division and if killing the youngest Sanchez son doesn’t start a war, I don’t know what will.”
John shook his head. “We won’t touch him. We’ll take out Mario and capture Dante if we have to. Mario is high enough in rank for it to hurt them, but not enough to declare war over.”
I nodded in agreement. “Sounds solid. Any objections to the current plan?”
I waited a beat, glancing around to make sure no one raised their hand or nervously fidgeted. Mason sighed with resignation, but otherwise it appeared that this plan was a go.
Now the real planning could begin.
“Alright, boys. Let’s talk about how we’re going to do this.”
Chapter Thirteen
Amber
My heart felt like it was lodged in my throat and beating a mile a minute as I listened to the men in the kitchen plotting ways to take out people like they were nothing more than pawns on a chessboard. Even though I already knew, I still couldn’t believe that this was the life my stepbrother now led.
Could I live with this?
I shook my head as if to clear the thought, not wanting to think about it right now. Possibly because I already knew the answer.
I didn’t like it one bit, but I’d stay for Allen and John.
After all, all this violence—this killing—they were doing it to keep me safe.
Which just made me feel even more like shit. How could I just sit here and be okay with countless people dying in my name?
They’re human traffickers, my mind hissed as my survival instincts started to creep in and take control. Do you think they deserve to live more than you do? Do you really want to become a sex toy for some thug?
Aren’t I already?
I gasped and backed away from my hidden spot in the hallway, wincing when I slammed my elbow into the wall in my haste to get away.
The muffled voices in the kitchen stopped all at once and I was paralyzed with fear—my body screaming to run but my mind saying they might consider me a threat if I did.
When I heard the unmistakable sound of guns being loaded, I froze in my spot and raised both hands in the air, Allen’s t-shirt riding up higher on my thighs as I slammed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see it coming if someone accidentally fired at me.
I could hear footsteps as they rapidly approached then the sound of a pistol being cocked right before the booming sound of Allen’s voice as he shouted, “STOP!”
I winced at the loudness and tried to keep my hands from shaking as I cracked open an eye to see what was happening.
Should’ve kept them closed, I thought as I stared straight into the barrel of a gun.
“Mason, lower your weapon or I’ll put a fucking bullet in your head,” Allen growled from behind him, his own pistol raised in the air.
The man—Mason—frowned, the movement jarring the long scar that marred half his face and making harsh shadows appear on his skin. I held his gaze even though I was desperate to look away.
“I take it this is the girl who means so much to you?” he asked in a gravelly voice as he slowly aimed the gun at the ceiling and backed up a step.
“It is,” he replied, his gun still trained on the man’s skull. “Now unload and holster your weapon.”
Mason chuckled as he lowered the gun and followed Allen’s order. The bullets clinked on the ground before he shoved the pistol beneath his coat, reemerging with empty hands.
Allen gave him a jerky nod and followed suit. While he was excellent at covering his emotions under masks, I could read him like a book. He was almost as terrified as I was.
If he had been a second too late, there was a chance that Mason could have seriously hurt or even killed me.
With a shaky sigh, I leaned back against the wall and lowered my hands, immediately tugging down the hem of Allen’s t-shirt to preserve my modesty. After the sex and the crazy adrenaline rush of having a gun pointed in my face, all I wanted to do now was take a nap.
Now that the crisis had been averted, I could feel Allen’s steely gaze on my face as he realized I had been eavesdropping. I swallowed hard and turned to run up the stairs—my body slamming directly into John’s broad chest. His hands went right to my shoulders and he spun me around to face Allen once again.
“How much did you hear?”
“Um... A lot more than you probably wanted me to.”
Allen’s face remained stony. “That’s true considering I didn’t want you to hear any of it.”
I frowned. “That’s not very fair. This whole mess is because of me.”
“No,” he drawled slowly, as if he was speaking to a child. “This mess is because of Chris. Not you. Although if you hadn’t dated such an asshat in the first place—”
“Allen, knock it off,” John said, his voice loud and close to my ear. His hands slid from my shoulders to my upper arms and he gently rubbed up and down in a comforting gesture. “She’s scared enough as it is. Just leave her alone.”
Allen eyed the area where John’s hands were touching me with a look of overwhelming jealousy. John noticed it as well and let go, stepping back to keep from increasing his ire.
Mason looked between the three of us a few times before he finally shouted, “Holy fuck, I got it!”
“Mason!” Allen growled. “Shut the fuck up.”
“You three are—”
“None of your damn business,” John chimed in, cutting him off. “So lay off it.”
The other two men who lingered in the background looked between us all a number of times. Recognition dawned in the older man’s eyes, while the other’s just narrowed in confusion.
“I missed something,” he said, looking to the man beside him for answers. “What’s going on?”
He shook his bald head and patted the younger guy on the back. “Nothing that’s any of our business, Derek. Just forget about it.”
Allen’s eyes were still focused on me and I knew that I hadn’t been let off the hook just yet. His eyes flashed over my sh
oulder to John for a brief second and he jerked his chin, sending his friend some sort of silent signal.
When John started pushing me forward and leading me into the kitchen, it started to make sense. He led me to a chair at the dinner table and gestured for me to sit down, everyone else following suit and filling in around me.
From across the table, Allen sent me a grim smile as he said, “Since you’re so curious, you can stay for the rest of our conversation.”
For the hundredth time since I got to this city I wondered, What the hell have I gotten myself into?
* * *
Allen
This was quite possibly the stupidest idea I’d ever had.
For whatever reason, I had allowed myself to give in to my baser instincts and silently asked John to lead Amber into the kitchen with us. I thought that perhaps she would become so scared by the conversation that she would realize why I wanted her to stay up in the room and away from my business.
I didn’t even consider the fact that it might scare her away completely.
Derek was surprisingly silent as the conversation reopened, almost as if he was afraid to say the wrong thing in front of the new member of our little group. Mason didn’t give a fuck—he jumped right back to where we left off without a second thought. Troy was uncertain about Amber’s presence, but he didn’t hold back when he had something to add.
Meanwhile, John was sitting beside Amber and even though I couldn’t actually see it, I knew he had his hand resting on her knee in a comforting gesture. There was no other reason why he would have moved his chair so close to hers.
I grit my teeth together and tried to calm the jealousy that was making my blood boil. I knew I had no right to be pissed at John for wanting to ease Amber’s fears because if our roles had been reversed—if John had been the one to suggest this—I’d be doing the exact same thing that he was doing right now.
Which just made it all the more obvious to me that this was a really stupid idea. I just couldn’t seem to think straight wherever Amber was concerned.
“Boss?”
“Hmm?” I hummed, my mind snapping back into focus.
“So we’ve pretty much decided what we need to do, now we need to decide how to do it. What do you think?”
I cocked my head to the side and stared into space for a moment, considering the options.
“Do we know where the base of their operation is?”
Derek piped up for the first time since I brought Amber into the conversation. “Sort of. Dante and Mario do the selling half of their business out of an office in SoHo, but the safe house itself is in Queens. The Sanchez family owns all the warehouses in a three block radius and I’m certain it’s one of those, but I’m not sure which one.”
“That won’t do. We can’t just run through them all without starting a full-on war. We need to know which building.”
“What’s the goal?”
John answered for me. “Run through anyone associated with the family and free any captives.”
I hadn’t even thought about the fact that there would likely be innocent people in the building and while I agreed with the idea of setting them free, that caused another problem.
“We’ll have to wear masks. The captives will be witnesses we can’t afford if any of them decide to go to the cops.”
Derek frowned. “That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? How will they know it’s us?”
“Assuming a few don’t manage to escape during the raid, then we’ll leave one alive with a message for Dante.”
Mason leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table as he grinned. “Can we carve the message into their skin?”
While we were pretty much used to the sadistic pleasure Mason got out of shit like this, I watched as Amber’s eyes grew wide with horror. She jerked violently in her chair, freeing herself from John’s grip before she stood up.
“I don’t want to hear any more. I’m sorry for eavesdropping—it won’t happen again,” she muttered before spinning around on her heel and rushing for the stairs.
“Let her go,” John said as I started to stand.
I turned incredulous eyes to him, but he only shook his head. “I get it—believe me, I do—but right now, business takes precedence. She’ll be fine.”
The fact that he was right just pissed me off more. I lowered myself back into the seat, ignoring the stunned looks from Derek and Troy. Mason didn’t look surprised by my reaction in the least, which raised a ton of questions in my mind.
Ones that were answered when he dropped the grin and opened his mouth to speak.
“Sorry, but the girl doesn’t need to hear this shit. I was doing her a favor.”
“Agreed,” John said pointedly, turning to glare at me. “Her curiosity is explainable, but she shouldn’t be drug into this any more than is necessary.”
My shoulder slumped and I let out a heavy sigh. “I was trying to make a point.”
“What point is that?” John asked, clearly pissed.
“The point that she shouldn’t be listening in on this because it’s just going to scare the shit out of her!” I yelled, slamming my fist down on the table and startling everyone with the noise. I nodded to Mason and said, “Thank you for proving me right.”
“Not a problem. Now, let’s get back to business. Troy, think you can figure out which warehouse they’re in?”
“I can do you one better. I already know.”
My eyebrows raised with surprise. “How’s that?”
He shrugged non-committedly and I could feel the tension in my body rise as it became clear that he was hiding something. Nevertheless, I wasn’t planning on holding it against him at the moment if he had useful information.
“I’ve been keeping track of them for months.”
“Why?”
He sent Derek a dry look. “Because I knew this shaky alliance wasn’t going to last forever. In my down time, I’ve been mapping their base of operations so we’d have a leg up if they ever declared war.”
John raised his hands in the air and laughed. “Man, I would be pissed at you for keeping this a secret if I wasn’t so damn grateful. You got a map?”
“Yeah, at my place. But if you want my opinion...” he said before trailing off and looking pointedly at me. “I think we shouldn’t throw down first. It would be a more strategic maneuver to contact them without violence first—to both make sure that there’s no chance to resolve this peacefully and to make it clear that we won’t take any threats lightly.”
Mason leaned back in his chair, nodding in agreement. “And if they make it clear that our alliance is broken, they’ll know it was us once we make our move.”
“Exactly. Win-win.”
“So let’s do it,” I said as I rose my from chair and glanced down at my watch. “In three hours, there’s only one place Dante and Mario will be.”
“Club Monaco,” Troy confirmed with a nod.
“And we won’t be at risk of an attack there.”
John stood up and stared me down. “Someone needs to keep her safe.”
Much as it pained me to say, I knew the person I trusted most with Amber’s well-being was John himself. Not that I particularly liked the idea of them together and alone. But I wouldn’t put her safety at risk for my own selfish reasons.
“You stay with Amber. The rest of you—let’s get moving. We’ll drop by your places first to load up and grab Troy’s maps. Until the threat is over, I want everyone staying here.”
“Agreed. This house is the most fortified and we’ll be better off together.”
All at once, the rest of the men stood up and started making their way to the front door. I waited until they were out of earshot before I turned back to John.
“Don’t let—”
“I’ll keep her safe. You know I will.”
With a hesitant nod, I turned around and moved to follow the rest of the team out the front door. I paused when I looked down at my bare chest and rolled my eyes
before turning back to John.
“Can I borrow your shirt? If I go upstairs and see her, I might not come back down.”
John laughed and pulled it over his head, tossing it to me before he followed me to the door. I gave him a sharp nod and went outside, trying not to think about what was probably going to happen between them as I pulled the shirt over my head and listened to the sounds of the deadbolts being thrown into place.
Chapter Fourteen
John
“Amber? Sweetheart, please open the door.”
“No!”
I braced my palms against the heavy wood of Allen’s bathroom door, wondering why the hell she went back to this room and locked herself in the tiny bathroom instead of going to her own bedroom.
The lock to her bedroom door would’ve been easy to get inside considering there was a key lying for it. But if she wouldn’t unlock this door, I’d have to break it down.
“Everyone else is gone. It’s just you and me,” I told her, hoping it would put her at ease.
There was a long pause then—
“Where did Allen go?”
“Open the door and I’ll tell you.”
Another pause, this one even longer than the first. Just as I was about to give up and rear back to force my way in, the lock twisted and the knob slowly turned.
The light from the bedroom illuminated her face and I frowned when I saw she had been crying again. She was still crying, actually.
“Baby, no,” I murmured as I cupped her cheeks with my hands. “Don’t cry. I hate seeing you cry.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she breathed out, her voice cracking with the words. “I-I can’t st-stop.”
That damn string around my heart tightened and I did the only thing I could think to do—I reached out and pulled her into my arms, smoothing her hair with my hands and hoping to calm her with the motions. Instead, it seemed to upset her more and I desperately look around the room, trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Even with all my previous experience with women, comforting one was definitely an area I lacked in. I had never been emotionally involved enough with a woman to ever get to this point in the relationship.
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