Chapter Forty-Three Ryder
Chapter Forty-Three
Ryder
“I hate you for making me—”
“At least you’ll be alive to hate me.” I slid the door shut and spun my finger in the air, signaling to head out. “Make sure no one gets near him at the hospital,” I told the other GRS operator who’d be accompanying Alex as an escort on the helo.
ángel’s men had delivered us to our villa, as ángel had promised they would. ángel would be joining us soon, bringing with him the coordinates for Beth and Ezra’s location. He assured us he wouldn’t let them out of his sight, and God help me, I couldn’t believe it, but I trusted him.
I waited for the pilot to take off, a foreboding, sinking feeling in the deep pit of my stomach. Not going along with Alex was killing me. Once they were out of sight, I started for our villa, grateful all over again for this place Carter had provided us.
I nodded at the two GRS operators who were keeping post outside on my way in. I needed to call the president, but first, I had to remove the blood from my hands and talk to Carter and Hudson.
Seraphina was hanging back by the front door, quietly waiting for my return. The only reason I was keeping my shit together, to control-freak my way forward through this, was because of her.
I was seconds away from reaching for her hand, but then spied the blood staining mine, so I signaled with my head to come with me.
Once we were in the bathroom en suite, I cut straight to the sink to wash my hands.
I stared at the blood circling the drain, trying to wrap my head around the turn of events and the fact I nearly lost one of my best friends tonight.
I could’ve lost her, too. I closed my eyes, clenching my teeth as I continued to scrub and scrub.
I couldn’t stop, not until she set a hand on my forearm.
A heavy breath sailed from deep within my lungs as she whispered, “What are you thinking?”
It was the first time we’d actually spoken since we realized Beth had more than likely double-crossed her own team by going behind their back to have a side thing with Ezra Fucking Sokolov.
“A lot.” I opened my eyes, turned off the water, then dried my hands before facing her, resting my hip against the vanity counter. “Ezra’s how Beth found out you were undercover for the DEA. Same with Lev. Now it all makes sense.”
“Oh shit.” She blinked her way up from where she’d been staring at my hands and to my face.
“The phone call he had to take in his office that night, which bought me time before he’d have started torturing me .
.. it was from Beth, not Nina.” She visibly cringed.
“Makes sense why she was staring at me like she was, like ... well, like she was jealous.”
I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. Beth was ten times the control freak I was, which was saying a lot. So maybe she was pissed she didn’t have total power over Ezra, hating he’d kept Seraphina’s real identity from her.
“So, he kept you a secret because ...” I didn’t want to finish that sentence, dammit, but I had to. “Because of his attraction to you. He probably hoped one day he’d be able to have you for himself.” Fucking asshole.
“He’d know Beth would’ve never let me work for him if she knew the truth about my background.
” She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt.
“Beth clearly didn’t recognize my face from any surveillance she must’ve had on him, which means my family’s deaths weren’t a significant detail to her.
” Those words punched out hard, and I was right there with her in hating Beth for so many reasons now.
“What are you thinking? I can tell there’s something in that beautiful mind of yours.”
“What if they were lovers? I don’t take her for the jealous type, but the possessive one? Yeah.” Her lashes fluttered, and she finally met my eyes as her brows pinched. “It was never Nina keeping me safe by demanding her husband remain faithful, but Beth.”
I didn’t know what to say. I refused to believe Beth had a heart and was capable of love. No, it had to still be about power and control for her.
“But why is Andrej dead, then? His death, not to mention knowing who I really am, was why we thought Ezra was just an asshole figurehead in all of this. Just a bad-guy pawn.”
I folded my arms, working through everything we already knew. At this point we’d been right about so many things, and wrong only about a few, but I was starting to forget what was still based in fact and what was speculation on our part.
“What if Andrej found out Beth and Ezra were secretly working together on the side?” I proposed. “He threatened to expose them.”
“So she had him killed. They set him up. Made it look like a cartel hit.” Her gaze flew between us to the tiled floor.
“That frame job was to cover her ass and hide the truth from her team. From Director Johnson, too. Beth killed my family. They weren’t a casualty of war.
They died so she could try and save her own ass and keep whatever money I bet she’s been pocketing on the side from all of this. ”
“And had Ezra ever told her your real name,” I said after letting go of a deep breath, “she’d have killed you, too.”
The woman needed to die. Slowly. Painfully. For everything she’d put everyone through, including shooting Alex.
“Dominoes. She actually set most of them up. This whole thing down here has clearly never been about drawing out Ezra. She let her team think that. Us too. She wanted Ezra to take credit for finishing off the Moraleses, and they’d effectively have the monopoly they were working to create.”
I shook my head. “You were the curveball she didn’t expect.”
“And she lucked out because of me.” She huffed out a deep, exhausted breath.
I was on the same page of fatigue, too. “She turned Ezra’s lie to her about my real identity, and the fact I escaped, into an opportunity.
The bitch knows how to play chess, that’s for sure.
” She rested her hand on my chest above my folded arms. “Nina doesn’t know about them.
She’d have narc’d or done the same as I bet Andrej tried to do.
Blackmail them. The fact Nina’s still alive, unlike her brother, means she was ignorant.
A true pawn. Then, at some point, Beth came up with her own plan. At least a side hustle.”
What a fucking hustle.
She swept her hand from my chest up to my shoulder. “Beth’s plan is a bust now. I was truly only bait for the Moraleses. Beth just wanted the Moraleses to leave Mexico so they could be taken out, and with the US government’s assistance.”
Like we’re doing. Only now, it’s not because she wants it done.
She closed her eyes, and I relaxed my arms and brought my chin to the top of her head.
“What do we do now? How will we draw out the Moraleses without Ezra?” she asked, turning her cheek to my chest to talk. “The Moraleses won’t be coming here.”
“If the president wants them dead, then he’ll have to deal with them on his own.” I pulled away so I could frame her face between my palms. “You’ll be staying here while I go and kill Ezra and Beth.”
“Beth? You’ll really take her out?”
“I’ve never killed a woman, but ...” I couldn’t finish what I’d planned to say because Reed filled the doorway.
“Hudson reached out. His guys in Moscow managed to pull a clip from surveillance footage there that confirms our theory,” he shared. “Beth and Ezra were there together before.”
We walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “Anything else? You talk to Carter, too? Potus ?”
The pained expression on Reed’s face had me diving a hand through my hair as I waited for him to lay news on me I didn’t want to hear. “The president wants us to continue on mission.”
“Of course he does.” Fuck. My hand plummeted to my side.
“How? The Moraleses won’t show up tonight without Ezra.
I plan to kill him within the hour.” I may have been running on fumes and coffee, but I was also running on anger and hate on behalf of Seraphina and Alex, so I had that going for me.
“We can’t send Nina down here to take his place. They’ll never buy that.”
“So we keep Ezra alive and force him to go through with the call. Not being killed is usually a decent motivator.” Reed shrugged.
He was right, but there was another glaring problem to deal with, and that was the Moraleses would want their hands on Seraphina before heading to the agreed-upon meeting point.
“The meeting doesn’t actually need to take place, right?
” She used those big brown eyes of hers as ammo against me.
“We don’t even need Ezra to show up. So, I mean, after the neutral location is arranged over the phone, we could technically kill him.
He’ll no longer be needed. We have ángel on our side to help us with the cartel from that point on. ”
“They’re reaching out to ángel to have him deliver Seraphina to them thirty minutes before the meeting is supposed to take place.” I reminded them both of that tight window of time.
“So we follow ángel to where they’re staying, and we take them down,” Seraphina suggested.
I highly doubted the cartel would text ángel an address. It’d never be that easy. No, we’d need proof ángel had what the cartel wanted first.
“Hell, we can even leave Ezra’s dead body behind after we kill them,” Reed proposed. “Along with a few of his men to make it look like a meeting that went sideways between two criminals.”
“And ángel gets what he wants, too. The cartel gone. Martín can still handle business at the same time in Mexico, too.” She used those brown-eyed weapons again.
A deep exhalation fell from my mouth as I worked through the roadblock still preventing me from getting on board with this plan. “I’m not allowing ángel to bring you anywhere near his family. Are we clear?”
“How are we supposed to—”
“Beth,” I cut her off, looking over at Reed. “Find out from ángel if his family knows what Anna Cruz looks like. If not, let the plan she wanted to happen play out.” I snarled in anger, “Let her see what it’s like to be used as bait her-motherfucking-self.”