Chapter Eleven
Things guaranteed in life besides taxes and death; stupid people will always exist, they will always irritate me, and you will be stuck with your family, and yes, that means even the bad ones.
Unless there’s an apocalypse in which case, many of your “family” members will run for supplies and shut the door in your face.
But swinging back to the certainty of dying.
Kane’s father was dead. Now he’s not. Seriously, the highs and lows of that reality for Kane must be a real bitch, especially if he prefers Roberto dead.
He’s going to absolutely love me coming at him with a suggestion he let his father live on another day.
As he knows this, Kane waits on me beside the foyer door, planted solidly in place, steam and fury all but billowing from his head.
He’s ridiculously pissed to the point that I can guarantee he’s vibrating.
He’s simply too good at containing rage to allow anyone but me to see it firsthand, unless he so chooses for them to see it while praying to their maker.
Kane has a dark side. Somehow mine stores his away, pushes it deep down and leaves no room for anything but what he sees in me, what he needs to control, but never quite can.
I halt in front of my stressed-the-fuck-out husband and he’s not as in control as I thought.
He captures my hand and drags me to the other side of the door, back inside the foyer.
We’re barely sealed inside when I’m pressed against the door and his hands are planted on either side of me.
Kane rarely pulls the dominance thing on me and even when he does, neither of us are fooled into thinking it’s going to last long with me in this relationship.
“What the fuck, Lilah?” he demands.
“I had a plan.”
“We had a plan. For you to go upstairs alone.”
“And then he showed up,” I remind him, “intending to confront you about trying to kill him. For all I knew, he was planning to kill you”
He curses in Spanish. “He’s not going to kill me and you know it. I serve a purpose. He will never relinquish his empire to anyone but me.”
“If it’s life or death, you or him, he’d choose him every time, and on that note, ask me why he’s still alive?”
“You knew I didn’t want to deal with getting a body twenty plus floors down and in the ground? Or the fact that he came here to be seen?”
“Nope to both,” I say. “You’re resourceful. You’d have handled the fallout and body, but this isn’t as bad as it might seem.”
“I don’t even want to know where you’re going with this.” He pushes off the wall, his hands settling on his hips. “Fuck, Lilah.”
“Fuck him, Kane. We can use him. He’s willing to step back into the kingpin role and leave you alone.”
“No. Never. That will never happen.”
“He’s desperate to stay alive and wants the shelter of the cartel. Submit him. Use him to leverage the Society.”
“If he just wanted to stay alive, he wouldn’t have come back. And let’s not forget, the resources he used to try and kill us with the very men I once called loyal to me.”
I do love the way he says “try” as if he assumes their failure. “They can try is right,” I say. “But they won’t. No one wants him as their leader. The ones who have honor want you. The ones who do not, want to kill him and take his place.”
“Which means killing me,” he counters. “My father has set me up to claim the throne, so to speak. They have to kill me to get it even though I don’t fucking want it.”
“But we need it. And while you’re not wrong about the risk to you and him, him being alive and well adds a layer of protection for you.”
“Or Pocher sees a chance to get rid of both of us. We’re fast, easy targets.”
“Nothing about either of you is easy to target and if that were true, they’d have ended you already.”
“They tried, remember?”
“We don’t know who tried to get rid of you in that chopper, Kane, but back to Roberto. We have no idea why he came back or what drove him back in the open. If he ran to stay alive, he’s surely back to stay alive.”
“Did you ask him?”
“He says the Society had a hit on him.”
“And they don’t anymore?”
“He didn’t say either way. Just a bunch of stuff about revealing himself being the only way to control the Society and that by pulling you into my father’s fold, they’ve castrated you and the cartel.
” I hold up a hand. “And of course, that’s not true, but we both know he’s right.
You need the cartel to apply pressure on the Society. ”
“And you want to let him take it?”
“I want him in the hotseat while you’re in control,” I explain.
“Easier said than done, bella.”
“The men are loyal to you.”
“Some,” he warns. “Not all. And when they see him and fear him, they’ll follow him. They’ll have no choice.”
“The bottom line here, Kane, is that until we destroy the Society, really dig in and find the demon heads, and cut them off, we need the cartel. Pocher fears you and it.”
“Which is why he can’t see my father as in charge,” he reminds me.
“So find a way to make him a figurehead as you’d planned to make Raz, and then Raz can be your third, but in all scenarios, you have to be the main decision maker.”
“You want me to run the cartel? That is everything we never wanted.”
“You’ve ultimately been the one not to piss off for a very long time. Nothing changes. That’s what I’m talking about. And in the process, convince the right people that Raz is trusted and powerful enough to step up when we’re done with the Society.”
“This plan of yours forgets one thing, Lilah. My father needs to go away. I’m not playing games with him.
He’s too volatile. He’s too dangerous.” He steps into me and catches me right under the jawline, his grip biting, his gaze piercing when it meets mine.
“He’s too dangerous,” he repeats, and I like this part of him.
I like his roughness. I like the look in his eyes.
All of this tells me he’s invested, he’s hearing me.
Even if he doesn’t think my plan is the right move, I’ve hit the kind of nerves that wakes him the fuck up before we all end up dead.
“Damn it, Lilah,” he bites out, and then he kisses me, a rough, demanding kiss that tastes of a bitter mix of anger and fear, and fear is not familiar in Kane. He thought I wouldn’t win a matchup with his father. He thought he’d find me up here dead.
I shove against him and force our mouths apart. “Don’t underestimate me, Kane.”
“Do not fuck with him again,” he orders, his voice roughened up with emotion.
“He is the man who ordered those heads chopped off you gave me hell about when you came back into town. I don’t do that shit.
He does. And I will not give him the power to do any such thing again.
” He releases me. “I’m taking him out of here. Now.”
I’m not sure what that means. He’s getting him out of our apartment because he doesn’t want him in our personal space or he’s taking him somewhere to kill him.
All I know is he’s at his limit and that’s not a good place to operate from, not with a parent, when parents manage to hit the biological markers that build us up and tear us down.
I lived that shit when Ghost wanted permission to kill my father.
I close the small space he’s placed between us, step into him and catch his waist on both sides, my chin lifting to meet his stare. “You’re not in the right headspace to make decisions that can’t be undone. You know it. I know it. Stop a minute, take a breath, and think before you act.”
“I don’t want to think, Lilah. I want him the fuck out of here.”
“And take him where?” I challenge. “To a graveyard?”
His hands come down on my shoulders and he steps me into the wall. “He belongs in the Mexico wetlands with the crocodiles. He’s a mass murderer, bella. What part of that do you not understand?”
“I understand him better than you might wish, Kane, but when he’s gone there’s no way to use him. He’s not in control here. You are. And you don’t need him to be dead to prove that.”
“It’s the cartel. Of which I have intimate knowledge and thank fuck you do not.”
“Fair enough, but set that aside for moment and focus on how you gain full control with him standing in front of you and them. We need to know why he ran away, and he did, I saw that in his eyes when I was talking to him—what scared him and why is he back now? Those two questions might hold answers we need to deal with the cartel and the Society. Can we risk not knowing what he knows? If he’s dead, we won’t know.
” I don’t wait for his reply. “Step back. Think about this.”
“And if I let him walk out of here and he burns us?”
“Then you end him.”
His jaw sets and he glares at me, though I’m not sure he’s really seeing me in this moment.
He’s processing, thinking, putting his brilliant mind to work, but I’m not sure that works in my favor.
“I brought him up here to kill him,” I say, making my case, one last time.
“And yet he’s alive when I’m not known for my restraint.
Something is telling me to wait. When do I wait, ever? ”
His eyes narrow ever-so-slightly. “More than you give yourself credit for which is only part of the reason I trust you.” He cups my face and studies me. “If you ask me to do this, I’ll do my best to give him one more night. I do not promise two.”
“You’ll do your best?” I challenge at the ridiculous statement.
“If he says one wrong thing about you, Lilah, I’m done. He’s done.”
“Try not to be done. Not yet.”
His lips press together, his voice flat. “We go out there as one, but you leave us alone to talk.”
I don’t miss the way he’s ignored my last plea. I’ve pushed him as far as I can push him at this point, so I simply agree. “Yes.”
“If he pushes me the wrong direction, he dies anyway,” he stresses yet again, building up the expectation. I give his dad about a thirty percent chance of surviving the night.
“Yes,” I say again.
And with that, he releases me and opens the door.