Not that he hadn't tried to cover his tracks. He had dozens of legitimate businesses. Clothing stores. A coffee chain. A fucking luxury car dealership. He put up appearances of being a normal, everyday businessman. He went to gallery openings, held lavish charity auctions. He was in the god damn society pages for chrissakes.
But he had an empire.
One with footmen. A mini military. Dozens of dealers.
He wasn't known for being a ruthless fuck like most drug lords. He was just smart. Careful. He had his shit locked down tight so there didn't need to be a lot of blood in the streets. Which was how he kept the cops off his back. How he managed to fly under the radar of all his socialite friends. All his legitimate business partners.
The door to my room flew open, making my head jerk up.
And there was Wolf.
A little knocked around, his shirt torn, blood on his collar. But unharmed. As expected. He rarely ever had someone who could get the better of him.
He nodded his head at me. “Shed,” he said, then was gone.
I looked at Cash who shook his head. “Who the fucks he got in the shed?” he asked, getting up and making his way toward the door.
“Dunno,” I said, my hands already curling into fists. I didn't know. I didn't fucking care. All I knew was I was going to get some fucking information. Enough dicking around not doing anything. Anything. While fuck-knew was happening to Summer.
Cash let himself into the shed where Wolf had already disappeared into. I took a deep breath, then followed in, slamming the door.
There was a man cuffed to the chair. In a thousand dollar fucking suit.
My eyebrow quirked up, looking at Wolf.
Because... no fucking way. No way in hell was he that crazy.
“He took her,” Wolf answered on a shrug.
“What?” I growled, rushing forward toward him.
Him being Richard Lyon.
Summer's father.
I had an international drug lord cuffed to a chair in my fucking shed.
“He took her,” Wolf repeated. “V took her back.”
The second of relief I had at knowing she was with her father evaporated.
“You're gonna have to fucking start from the beginning,” I bit off, looking at Richard Lyon who seemed tense, but not completely freaked out like most would be cuffed in my shed.
“I don't see how it's any of your business,” he started, his tone cold. “Low life gun runners. She's none of your concern.”
“I made her my concern when I offered her protection from V. When I helped her work through the shit you let her go through, you sonovabitch. When I killed one of V's lackeys after watching Summer beat the shit out of him. She's. My. Fucking. Concern.”
Richard's head tilted, watching me, his brows drawing low. “Summer would never beat anyone. She was raised better than that. She's not base like you.”
“Watched it my damn self,” Cash pitched in. “She's got a mean right hook. She also told us that when we catch the other guy who used to slice her up, that we should use knives on him.”
“No, she wouldn't...”
“Then when she was done beating him,” I added, enjoying his look of outrage, “she told me to have fun killing him.” I watched him a beat, then laughed humorlessly. “What's the matter? Bother you that she's more like you than you planned?”
“I don't beat and kill people.”
“Not personally, no. But you have it done. You've got blood on your hands just like me. Just like your daughter.” That was a direct hit. His breath hissed out of his mouth.
“She only has blood on her hands because of you. You filthy little...”
He lost the rest of his sentence. Mainly because my fist collided with his mouth.
“How the fuck d'ya get him?” I asked, looking over at Wolf.
Last I'd heard, his home was like a fortress.
“V got his men,” Wolf shrugged.
I turned back to Richard. “I don't give a fuck how much money you lose, but you're going to call V and you're going to tell him that you're going to give into the demands.”
“Her.”
“What?” I growled, my hands itching to hit him again.
“V isn't a him. V is a her,” Richard clarified.
I caught Cash's surprised face, then he shook his head. “No, man. Don't fuckin' lie to us. I met V.”
Richard's head turned, looking pleased that he knew more than we did. “No. You met Daniel. Daniel pretends to be V in public. But he isn't V.”
“Then who the fuck is?” I exploded, getting closer to the chair.
Richard's head tilted up toward me, a look of distaste covering his features. “My wife.”
Alright. Of all the things he could have said, that might have been the only one that could have made me step away from him. Lose the urge to beat him into little meaty pieces. Because I needed answers.
“The fuck?” I asked, moving to lean against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest.
“V is Vanessa Lyon. She came from the ghetto and try as I might, I could never rid that street persona from her. And believe me, I tried,” he said in an odd tone, a tone that made me think there was a fair amount of street underneath his suit as well. “Then I found out that she was acting as a pimp. Had herself a barn of whores. I couldn't let that be a part of my daughter's life. So I let her go.”
“And she built her own criminal empire to rival yours.”
“Her's is built on blood,” Richard said, seeming to be insulted by being compared to her. “Rivers and rivers of blood. She's... unhinged.”
“No, really?” I ground out. “How could you tell? Because she had her own fucking daughter branded, sliced up, beat, and threatened to be raped?” At my words, Richard paled. Though I knew from Summer's own mouth that he had known she was being tortured. “Yeah. Your fucking containers of coke worth your daughter suffering like that?”
Richard's face fell to look at his lap. “You don't understand.”
“Then enlighten us,” Cash offered, looking like he was losing patience.
“I can't give in to her. Not even for Summer.”
“Why the fuck not?” Wolf exploded. Exploded. The sound of his voice loud enough for the walls to vibrate. Cash's body got tense, ready if needed, to try to grab Wolf and hold him back.
“There's no one to hold her back,” Richard said, sounding worried. “Without me, without me standing up to her... there's no telling what she would do. She's dangerous. More than me,” he looked up, staring me in the eye. “More than you.”
“You have no fucking idea how dangerous I am,” I countered.
“Oh, I know,” he said in a tone that suggested he did. A tone that said he knew about every life my hands had taken. Every body I had broken. “But she's bigger. She's richer. And she's out of her mind.”
“What the...” Cash started, but Richard went on talking.
“That's her baby. You get that, right? She carried her. She sang her to sleep as an infant. She was a good mother for those three years she was with us. She loved Summer. And yet she is holding her. Beating her. Starving her. Because nothing is more important to her than power. I can't let her have that power. It would be catastrophic.”
Unfortunately, that made it's own kind of sick sense.
I'd been around long enough to see crime lords get too big for their britches. Get too powerful. And with power came the urge to stay in power. Which, he was right, led to rivers of blood. Often for no good reason. And it always took a bigger, badder fuck to take them down. Or the cops. But the cops weren't touching V. So she either had deep pockets or she had something else on them.
She was dangerous.
“There has to be someone who can stand up to her. Someone she's afraid of. Other than you,” Cash clarified.
“Not who would get involved over one girl,” Richard said, shaking his head. Like he had already maybe went through the channels. Like, maybe, he had been trying to get her back all along.
&nb
sp; “Who'd you approach?” I asked.
Richard shrugged. “Everyone. O'neils. The Alamanis. Even the Changs. They want to run the skin trade. But even they don't want to go to war over this.”
I shook my head. “You approached the families?” I asked. The Irish. Italian. Chinese. They were old school operations. Families that survived because of caution and ironclad rules. “What about the MCs or the...”
“I don't associate with the likes of motor clubs and low life criminals.”
So we were back to that.
“Lo,” Wolf mumbled. Low. So I ignored him.
“This is your fucking daughter we are talking about and you can't swallow your pride and approach...”
“Lo,” Wolf said, louder, making me turn to him.
“Lo?” I asked, my brows drawing together.
“We'll get Lo,” he added.
My eyes went to Cash and I saw a look there that mirrored what I was feeling inside.
There were criminals. Me. Cash. Wolf. We were criminals. There were crime lords. Lyon and V and the families, they were crime lords. And then there were just plain old crazy mother fuckers.
Lo was a plain old crazy mother fucker.
Some kind of ex military or shit like that. Had a massive compound. Acres up in the hills with electric fences and a dozen long, low, buildings made of shipping containers, meant to withstand any kind of natural disaster or most bullets. He had men stationed everywhere. Guns strapped across their backs. Guns that I had sold them. And then there were the dogs. Dozens of them. Vicious breeds. Pitbulls, rotties, dobermans. Dogs meant to instill fear. Dogs capable of being trained for security.
He lived like he expected the government to declare a permanent Marshall Law and he wanted to be able to fight them off.
And, like I said, he was a crazy mother fucker.
I had been hearing stories about Lo for the better part of a decade. Slowly building up his personal army, full of ex military and street brats who needed some way to harness their anger.
He didn't run drugs or guns or girls.
No one really knew what the fuck he did.
All anyone knew was that he took lives easily and in new and inventive ways.
“I don't think bringing in a lunatic like that would be the best bet,” Richard pitched in, as if he was part of a board meeting, not cuffed to a chair in my blood stained shed.
“Why not?” Cash asked. “You said yourself, your wife is crazy. What better way to fight crazy but with more crazy?”
“No one has even met Lo,” Richard tried to reason. “We know nothing about him. If we can't control him, then we can't get Summer out.”
Another not altogether stupid point.
His dedication to rationality was starting to piss me off.
“We'll go,” Wolf tried, looking at me.
“Go where?” I asked.
“To meet Lo.”
“That's not a bad plan,” Cash offered. “Meet him. Get a feel for him and his loyalties. See if we want to get involved with him. Then go from there.”
“We're wasting fucking time,” I growled.
Richard's eyes found mine, and I saw the same kind of hollowness that I felt inside. He wanted his daughter back. As cold and detached as he was being about the whole affair, he wanted her back just as badly as I did.
“She's not who she was four months ago,” he said, watching me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Summer,” he clarified. “I raised her soft and sweet and compliant. She was a good girl. The kind of girl who never learned to fully stand on her own. She's not that girl anymore. She's stronger. She's resilient. She survived three months under V. And we both know what happened to her there. Three months. And when I got my hands on her again, she was ready to fight. V didn't break her. Three months and she didn't even get close to breaking her. It's only been three days.”
I swallowed hard. He was right. Even after what she had gone through, she was steel. “She screams,” I said, the sound piercing in my ears.
“I've heard her,” he agreed.
Fuck.
“Fine. Tomorrow,” I declared. “We'll go to Lo's tomorrow. With or without him, I want Summer back the day after. I don't care what the fuck we have to do to make that happen.”
I started toward the door when Cash's voice stopped me. “Ah, Reign...”
“What?”
“What are we supposed to do with him?” he said, motioning toward Richard.
“He looks comfortable enough,” I shrugged. “Put Repo on his watch. He's dying for responsibility. Oh,” I said, turning back, a smirk at my lips. “Repo is one of my men who got busted up pretty good at your hands. I'm curious to see what kind of self control he has when he learns that fact,” I said, watching Richard pale.
I went into the compound, ignoring the curious eyes of the men who were hanging about and went right up to my room. Kicking off my boots. Lying down on the bed. I needed to sleep. Even for a few hours. I needed to be sharp. I needed to get my fucking head on straight.
But as I tossed and turned, sleep didn't come.
Memories did.
**
“What is this one for?” Summer asked, lying on my chest, her fingers tracing over my tattoos, asking what they stood for, bitching at me if she found out they meant nothing. That I just liked the design. Apparently if I was going to ink something into my skin permanently, it should have some kind of personal meaning.
Her finger was running over the edge of a dark anchor.
“That one is for Cash,” I supplied.
“Really?” she asked, pushing up on my chest to look down at me, her hair falling forward and I reached up to tuck it behind her ear. “An anchor?”
I nodded. “And he has the wheel.” Her brows drew together, trying to make sense of that information. “It's an old sayin',” I provided. “The one with the wheel means 'be the one who guides me', and the anchor means 'but never hold me down'.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes dropping to my mouth.
“Keep lookin' at my mouth, babe, and I'm gonna start thinkin' about what I can do with it.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “I can't come again,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I think four times is my max. My legs feel like jello.”
I laughed. Laughed. I never fucking laughed. But I laughed. Then made a grab for her, rolling her onto her back and putting my body over hers. “Care to test that theory?” I asked, running my mouth between her tits, down her stomach.
“Reign... I can't...” she objected, sounding airy.
“We'll see,” I said, my face going between her legs.
We did see.
And she could.
**
“Fuck,” I growled, getting up off the bed and pacing the room.
That was why I couldn't sleep. Not just the idea that she was being hurt again, that she was getting more reasons to scream at night. But the memories of the short time we got to spend together. Then I had to fucking leave her for some shitty meeting with the Russians. Which led fucking nowhere.
If I had been there, there would have been no way she would have been taken.
Mainly because we spent most of our damn time naked in bed. Or the shower.
No way would she have been outside.
Certainly not with a fucking probate like Flee.
I tore out of my room, going out into the main area, empty but for Wolf and Cash.
“What's going on?” I asked, sensing the tension in the room.
“We're both going,” Cash supplied.
My head was shaking before he even stopped talking. “No. I need one of you here. You know that. And you know it's supposed to be you, Cash. But if you're hellbent on goin', it can be Wolf here.”
Wolf was shaking his head. “Goin' too,” he said.
“Wolf. I need you...”
“Good woman,” he said, looking at me, his eyes firm.
She was a good woman. And it hadn't
exactly escaped my notice that she and Wolf had gotten on. Fuck if I knew how seeing as he almost never spoke. But then again, half the time Summer didn't shut up. So I guessed it could work. He had been bringing her down to the basement little by little to get her over her fear so she could do her laundry. He was soft with her. Well, as soft as a man as hard as he could be. She brought that out. And that meant something to him.
“Fuck,” I said, leaning against the bar. “Who then?” I asked, looking between them.
Cash shrugged. “Vin. For the day, Vin.”
He really was the only option. Which I wasn't overly happy about. Vin was good. Stable. Level-headed. All for the brotherhood. But he tended to be too black and white. And with the gray shit we had going on...
“I guess he'll do for a day. So long as he reverts all decisions to me. Shit should be calm now. We'll keep Repo on Lyon. Tell everyone else to stay the fuck out of the shed.”
“First light?” Wolf asked, looking anxious to get going.
“First light,” I agreed. None of us were going to bother with sleep anyway.
So we sat, watched out the window, and waited.
–
Lo's compound was named. As in there was a huge as fuck green sign out front with white print on it, staked with steel beams into the ground like a road sign on a highway.
Hailstorm.
That was it. It was named Hailstorm.
I shared a look with Cash who shrugged, looking past the sign and behind the gates. It had been months since I had seen the property. Probably closer to a year. Lo had expanded. Red, blue, and green shipping containers were everywhere, some connected, forming a big outer hollow square building. In the center was a small brick building. There were other outer laying containers, standing alone. Each with a man or two walking the surface, looking into the distance.
The dogs were everywhere too. Alert. Sniffing. Their heads jerking when they caught an unfamiliar scent.
Beside the containers were huge white barrels for water catching. Toward the back of the property, there was a field of solar panels.
Not only was Lo some kind of psycho. He was some sort of prepper.
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