The Heir She Loved (Shadows of Sin #4)

21 Everett

August 3rd, 2022

I shoved the barrel of my gun under his chin, tears streaming down his face, hatred in his eyes.

He was surrounded by his dead family, his dead people. Why wouldn’t he be angry? But he was also in a significant amount of pain.

“Tell me where they are.”

I had already broken both of his legs. I had exposed a nerve in his arm and clamped it down, blood pouring from that wound. He only had a few teeth left, the others scattered on the ground among the body parts of the people I had tortured before him. He was the last one left. He had to have an answer.

“I don’t know,”

he panted, his accent thick. “They don’t share with us everything. My wife tried to tell you that before you shot her.”

I laughed, but it was far from humorous. “I truly don’t like liars.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before working for one,” he spat.

I snapped that nerve, his screams filling the room, sweat pouring from his skin. “Don’t talk about Malachi Adler,”

I threatened. “He gave you a chance, and you ignored it. Tell me where they’re keeping her. Tell me and maybe I’ll give you a merciful death.”

“Mercy,”

he spat, panting. “That’s what got you into this in the first—”

I pulled the trigger, his brain matter, blood, and skull fragments coating the ceiling. “You’re right,”

I stated coldly. Mercy is what caused all of this. It had been causing a lot of problems in the past and I wouldn’t allow it to cause any more.

They had met here. Had their meetings here. Some house near the outskirts of The Springs, further away from the busier parts of the city, but not quite a suburb. There had been 28 of them, and now they were all in pieces, scattered around the house.

“I always thought I was the cold one,”

I heard Azrael say behind me.

My lip curled and I released the mag, shoved it into my belt, and exchanged it for a new one. “What did Jack always say? We were all one snapped thought away from replacing Azrael in that asylum.”

“No,”

Evelyn said, walking out of the back bedroom, blood splattered across her face, her hair back in a tight ponytail. “He said that even if we did crack, we would never become Azrael.”

I heard a shift and turned just in time to see Azrael shove a 17-year-old boy off his dead mother. “I think we’ve surpassed that.”

His blue eyes lifted to mine, cold and unwavering, threatening. As if he were disappointed with the choices I had made.

Fuck him.

I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if Malachi put a bullet in my goddamn chest for breaking his precious fucking rules, I would find my girl. I would find her, and I would bring her home.

I looked across the bodies again. Nobody had said a word. Not even the wives serving the drinks. And why would they? They were all loyal to Alexei. All of them. The wives probably beaten into submission, fearing their husbands more than they feared death. But someone had to talk eventually. Someone had to say something.

“Everett!”

Rae called from the other room. “Get in here!”

I was already halfway there, jumping over the bodies of the members of this Meeting of the Russians, to get to the room she and Jack were in.

I skidded through the doorway, Lucy right behind me, blood coating her white fur.

She had become quite the murderous little creature since realizing Olivia was still gone. She hadn’t left my side, killing right alongside me, earning a few scars herself as she aided in the search.

I didn’t even know where she had gone when the chaos started, but by the looks of the shredded meat hanging from her jaws, I suspected she had herself a little revenge in another room while we finished off those in the living area. Out of the 28 of them, only four belonged to the actual Delepski bloodline, the others were just grunts, workers. None of them had any information they would willingly give up, even after 26 hours here, torturing them for a morsal. Even after Lucy had continued to shred people in the other room, their screams echoing through the house.

They hadn’t given up a damn thing. Another dead end. Unless Jack and Rae found something useful on the computers, we were back to square one.

Rae stepped back from Jack, her full-face black bunny mask securely in place, stark against her long blonde hair.

Jack straightened, his own mask in place, his eyes painted black. “Security cameras,”

he told me as I joined his side.

There were four of them on the monitor, only trees to be seen in all but one.

One camera, placed high above the property, looking down on a compound of some sort. There were a few buildings, all wooden, some sort of campground. There were men and cars scattered about, lights on in several buildings. “Which are you guessing?”

I asked, trying to force my heart to remain calm, my mind steady. She was in one of them, I could feel it. I could feel it in my fucking bones.

Jack clicked on the one, making it larger. “See here,”

he said, pointing at one guy in particular. “That’s Isaak, and right next to him is his daughter Lillian.”

I couldn’t tell how big the place was from where they had positioned these cameras. I couldn’t tell how many people they had or how many buildings there were, but I knew she was there. I knew she was there.

I straightened, turning to the doorway to find Azrael standing just outside of it. He was splattered in blood just like the rest of us, his eyes glowing brightly in the dim hallway. “I don’t care what you have to do, who you have to kill, what bridges you have to burn. Find it.”

That creepy smile stretched across my brother’s face, a glint lighting in his eye. “The mountains have finally sung. Jacky-boy?”

“It’ll take me time to triangulate the location. When I do, it’ll be a large area, depending on how deep in the woods will tell me how large the area.”

Azrael’s grip tightened around his cane. “I’ll narrow it down without breaking a sweat. Don’t worry, mountain-boy, I’ll find your little rose soon enough, if not prickling than perhaps covered in blades.”

I didn’t care for his riddles. I didn’t have the energy to decipher what he could possibly mean by that. I just wanted her home. “Fine,”

I said, and brushed by him, Lucy close on my heels.

Six Weeks Later