62. Chapter 62
Chapter 62
DECLAN
T he suited asshole in front of me revealing his lineage gives me enough energy to lift my head. I sneer at him.
“Go ahead, bark at me like the fucking dog you are,” he taunts. “You’d still be fucking hustling the streets if you hadn’t fucking stolen everything from my father. These roles would be reversed,” he says, swinging his finger between us.
“Where is Vivian?” I demand. I’ve had enough of this game and I’ve seen enough. I need to ensure she’s safe before I do anything else. If they kill me, there is nothing I can do to save her.
He looks at me perplexed and then dissolves into a fit of laughter, shaking his head. “She isn’t here, you stupid fuck. I told you I used her to get you here,” he says like that is obvious. He shakes his head and strokes his chin. “My father told me she was the piece to getting you, but I didn’t believe it, not until I figured out who she is and saw you with her the other night. What a pussy-whipped dolt.”
“Where is she?”
He shrugs his shoulders and irritation covers his face. “I have no idea. My idiot brother probably used his ass-kicked face to try and get sympathy from her and win her over,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Brother?”
“Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? My brother, August—well, he goes by Kent now, his middle name. I was Edrick, but I go by Heath, my middle name. See, we all had to change our names after you destroyed my family. Me, my brother, my mother. My father didn’t because you killed him.”
“Your piece of shit father killed himself like the fucking coward he was,” I tell him hotly.
I expected the hit before he swung, so I’m able to keep my head still against his fist. It hurts like crazy, but it hurts him too, and I smile at him as he shakes out his hand. When he pulls out his gun and shoots my thigh in anger, I know he’s starting to unravel. This simpleton thought chaining me up to a wall and smacking me around would break me. Well, he thought wrong, and I have a front-row seat to the fact that he is realizing it. On top of that, this stupid fuck showed his cards. It just further proves to me he’s an amateur, a wannabe who doesn’t know what he is doing and hasn’t thought far enough ahead to realize he’s going to lose it all. Just like his stupid father.
And the best part? He doesn’t have Vivian.
That could have been another ace up his sleeve he could have held over me, but again, he showed his hand. She isn’t here or in danger of any harm from him. My brothers will take care of her. They will figure this stupidity out and make sure she is okay. They will take care of Kent and whatever lies he is spewing. She will be okay, she will be safe, and she will have the life she wants and deserves.
And so if I die here taking this asshole out, I’m okay with that. Because they are all safe.
“If you’re going to shoot me every time I tell the truth, you’re going to run out of bullets,” I say, letting the pain throb in my face and leg, sucking the adrenaline from it, letting my agony feed my madness until all I have is tunnel vision at destroying the threat in front of me. “Your father stole money from people, he feigned need or interest in people weaker than him. Then he put their money in big-name projects and never repaid his debts, robbing innocent people. He was a bully, a liar, and a cheat.”
“If you keep talking, I’m going to kill you,” Heath sneers, glowering at me, getting angered by what I am saying. Now I have him, and I’m not going to stop taunting him, because that buys time by distracting him.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Do it. You won’t make it until tomorrow morning.”
He looks at me like it’s a joke. “What? Your brothers? Please,” he says, making a dismissive noise. “I’ll be taking them out too.”
“Yeah? With those fools?” I ask him, angling my head to the way his henchmen had gone out. My voice is imbedded with humor.
“Shut your fucking mouth, Falco!” he shouts, pointing his gun at me, and I give him a smirk. There is a fine tremor in the Glock he’s got pointed at me. He’s ready to crack. He’s slowly tallying up that he is in way over his head. That he took on too much too soon. He was probably banking on his rage to be enough, but he is realizing now he doesn’t have the experience or knowledge to back it up.
“You have a bunch of muscleheads who couldn’t even take me on, chained to a fucking wall. And you, well, you are ready to just put holes in me, not even a fair fight. Just as much of a pussy as your father,” I bait him. It seems cliché and lame, but usually when a man starts becoming aware that his plan he thought was perfect is falling apart, he becomes confused and conflicted. His ego takes a hit and he becomes desperate to still pull it all off. It makes him malleable to influences around him, so he’ll try to pivot and fix his plan. And he’ll overcorrect.
And I am betting that the fucker in front of me is one of those men.
“I said shut up,” he says through his teeth, “or I am going to fucking kill you! Just like my father should have fucking killed you!”
“Another failure for him?” I ask. “Palmer Lexington underestimated me, and thought I was just some thug who couldn’t figure out what he had done and expose him to the world.”
“That’s not what happened,” Heath hisses at me. “My father told me what happened, how you told lies about him and everyone believed them. He told me how you ruined his name, how no one trusted him after that.”
“How the hell did a street thug who owned some bars and buildings do that to the richest man in America?” I ask softly. My level voice and sensible questions are lighting up something within him. What his father told him can’t sound right to him now. I see him start to question what he knows.
“You, you told people. My mother said you had false documents. That—”
“Listen to yourself,” I say, shifting my shoulders and leg to incite more pain within me, more pain that can keep me going, keep me awake. I feel grogginess trying to come over me, but I can’t let this stop now.
“I know all about you! I know what you and your miserable mutt brothers—”
“Your father was a hustler far more than I ever was, plain and simple. He took people’s money and made himself richer. He stole patents and designs, offering to help people who didn’t know where to start, and destroyed legal documents in order to get what he wanted. Your father was more of a thug than I ever was!” I shout at the blithering idiot in front of me.
“No!” he shouts, firing off another shot in my arm.
I grunt out but I go on. “He took my father’s life savings and made a deal to give him stocks. He destroyed every document associated with it and the people who were involved in creating it. He killed people to keep money, to give you the life he had. That sweet life is all built on blood money. Built by taking advantage of hardworking, trying-their-best people. He took them out for his profit, for his gain.”
“No!” Another shot is fired into my chest this time, and that one sucks the wind out of me. I wheeze in and feel my head spin. That one might be the one. It might be over for me.
But Vivian is safe. Spots fill my vision as I suck air in.
Suddenly the door bursts open and one of my captor’s thugs rushes in. “They are coming in through the door, man! Just breaking it down.”
“So fucking stop them,” he shouts.
“Nah man, nah, they already took down the six guards outside.”
“Is it the police?” the captor demands, reaching for his phone, presumably to check his cameras.
“No, it’s private, some suits in SUVs, black vests.”
My brothers are here. I can rest, and maybe I’ll make it out of this after all. But I am okay if not. Because Axel and Slade will take this fucker down. And Vivian will be okay.
“Get the fuck out there before I shoot you!” Heath shouts at his worker. The man hesitates, but he reluctantly runs back the way he came. Heath looks at his phone, and a maniacal smile spreads across his face. “It is your goon brothers, but they brought someone else. Take a look.” He shoves the screen into my face, and I see Vivian surrounded by Falco security. They are trying to keep her back, but she is pushing her way past them.
Vivian. She is here.
She is in danger now. That thought courses through me, generating a newfound wave of alertness.
“Looks like your brothers brought your beloved to me,” Heath says with a new smile. “Fabulous news!” he adds, laughing now. He too seems to be regenerated from the defeat he was feeling just moments before. “Now, I can kill you in front of your brothers and her. Then I will kill your brothers and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with your girl. In fact, maybe I will keep her alive and make you watch before I kill you.”
This motherfucker is running on pure hysteria. He has nothing to lose. I know what that can do to a man—I had been that man. I glare at him and he glares right back, his crazed smile glued to his face.
A noise beyond the walls startles Heath, and I watch him lean to listen to the shouting and wails. Those are his guys, screaming like little bitches. No one from my organization would be that ridiculous. In his distracted frame of mind, Heath starts to mindlessly move away from the noise, his body responding to the fear he is feeling. Seems his crazy isn’t completely in charge.
And he’s put himself just in the reach of my legs.
I waste no time and use what little strength I have to shove my foot into his knee and send him crashing to the floor. The noise is coming closer outside, and the adrenaline running through him sends him standing up in one movement and putting a gun to my chin.
The door bursts open and Falco men come in, suited in swat gear with guns drawn.
“Come any closer and I’ll shoot him,” Heath shouts.
“Drop the weapon,” orders one of the guards, but Matthews shakes his head. The shake is erratic. He knows he is losing; he knows it has all gone downhill.
“I’m walking out of here!” Matthews shouts at him.
“Drop the weapon from Mr. Falco, or you will be shot,” another order comes.
“Not unless you let me out of here!”
“This is your final warning.”
I see Matthews’s finger twitch and I close my eyes. He’s a desperate man. He’s going to do it. I hear the sound of the gun firing, Matthews jerks into my body, and I feel the gun fall away from my chin.
But I feel no pain. Have I been shot? Maybe I am dying and that’s why there is no feeling.
Suddenly, the black-dressed Falco guards come into my view, but I’m still unsure of what is happening. When Vivian’s face fill my view, I know I am okay.
“Declan,” she says faintly as tears run down her face. She turns to the others around her. “Can someone get him down! Now! Please! He needs to get to the hospital!”
“Vivian,” I say, leaning my face into her hand.
“I’m here, baby,” she says to me. “Stay with me, okay?”
“I’m fine,” I murmur, finding her hands a very comfortable place for my head to rest. So I lean my head into her, take a deep breath of her scent, and go to sleep.