Forty
Linc
My veins burned, as if they were pumping violence instead of blood throughout my body. Stalking from the plane that had taken me from Georgia to Nashville toward the black Escalade that waited for me, I felt like I was going to snap at any second, leaving a path of destruction in my wake.
I hadn’t been completely sane since Locke had called me.
I’d been in the underground my grandfather had built that sat on the back side of my brother’s land for over five hours when I finally stepped out of it to check with Locke on how the day had gone with the girls. Once I was aboveground, seeing five missed calls and ten text messages hit my phone made my blood run cold. I’d never been gripped by terror like I had in that moment. If he was calling, something was wrong. I didn’t take the time to read the texts. I called him and started for the closest vehicle. I hadn’t told my brother or the other men with him that I was leaving. I’d just left.
Hale, Ransom, Than, Locke, and Bane were all inside the vehicle when I climbed inside the passenger seat.
“Where the fuck is Luther?” I demanded, looking at Bane, who was in the driver’s seat.
“He’s been drinking. Apparently with Jayda and, uh, Branwen. I mean, it’s just wine, but he’s tipsy,” Bane replied. “I thought Hale would be a better choice. He’s not drunk.”
Narrowing my eyes, I listened to him. “Why the fuck is Branwen drinking?” I seethed.
“Probably because she’s traumatized,” Locke said. “The dude was yelling shit at her, and Stevie was sobbing and clinging to her mom. When I left them at your house, Branwen was barely holding herself together.”
I was shaking. Every muscle in my body was clenched so tight that I started vibrating with rage.
Bane hadn’t started driving yet, and I was seconds away from slamming my hands down on the dashboard and roaring at him to fucking move.
“I know you’re the one who makes the call. But this time, it’s personal, and I know from experience that when it is personal, we don’t think clearly. We act and get sloppy. Take a breath. They are both safe. Locke put a gun in the bastard’s mouth, and when he took it out, he used the butt of it to knock him out cold before dragging him over behind the bushes and leaving him. He never got close enough to touch either of them,” Bane said.
I already knew all this. He needed to drive.
“What call do you think you’re gonna be making, Bane?” I challenged.
He didn’t lead the branch yet. I did. And if he thought he was going to step in before it was time, he was gonna find out how wrong he was.
“Linc, listen,” he said. “We are going in and making sure he never comes near her again. Break his nose, beat the shit out of him, but don’t kill him. That’s a bigger mess to clean up. If he’d have touched her, then yeah. But do you want to explain to Blaise why we slaughtered a man in his house who hadn’t taken, hurt, or even touched something of ours?”
“If he had, he would already be dead,” Locke said matter-of-factly.
Bane nodded. “Right. But he didn’t. This is a revenge visit. One that will keep him in line, quiet, and far away from Branwen and Stevie.”
She could have married that bastard. She and Stevie would have been in his house. For the first time in my life, I didn’t give a fuck what the boss told me to do or would want me to do. The compulsion to beat the dentist until he was unrecognizable, then cut his dick off and shove it up his ass was dominating all other thoughts.
“Just drive,” I demanded, pulling my gun from its holster to make sure it was fully loaded.
“He’s right, Linc,” Hale said from the seat behind me. “You know he is. I understand he attempted to get near your girls, but he didn’t. Because you had protection on them. You kept them safe. All that is needed is to make sure he never tries it again.”
My girls. He’d called them my girls. I glared out the window as my chest rose and fell. Those words hammering in my head. Stevie was my daughter. But Branwen…she was…she was mine. I wasn’t letting anyone else touch her and live. I wasn’t even sure Luther would be safe from me when I got back.
“He lives in a suburban neighborhood,” Bane said. “I went online and pulled up a video from the real estate company that had sold the house to him. I have the layout. We know the points of easiest entry.”
I unclenched my hands and laid them flat on the tops of my thighs. I had to restrain the savage fury that felt like claws sinking into my back, wanting to consume me.
They were okay. He hadn’t gotten close enough to touch them. I kept repeating that over and over in my head while we drove out of the city lights and onto the dark streets, lit only with streetlamps.
When we turned onto a dirt path, I didn’t question it. I knew we weren’t going to pull into the driveway and park. Bane had done his research while they tried to get me on the phone. We moved off the road, and the dirt path ended as we drove slowly over limbs and debris.
“I called Brock,” Bane said. “He sent me this location. It’s family-owned by their branch. Belongs to a sister-in-law of one of the wives. He’s sending two guys to stay with the vehicle for backup.”
Brock Keller was the head of the Tennessee branch. It was smart. Bane had used his head.
I just nodded. I’d thank him later. Right now, I had one focus. Not snapping the dentist’s neck the moment I saw him.
The Escalade came to a stop, and two figures stepped out of the dark woods. I recognized Brock’s oldest son, Arrow, but I wasn’t sure who the other one was. All four doors opened at once as we joined them.
Arrow looked from Bane to me. “Higgens and I will stay here. Call if you need us.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
“No problem,” he replied.
Bane moved to the front. “All right, boys, this way,” he said.
We moved in behind him almost silently, except for the crackle of limbs and leaves beneath our feet. But even then, it was quieter than any other footsteps would be.
We stepped out of the tree line into a backyard. I thought about the fact that they’d almost lived here. My girls had almost been his. I wanted to burn the place to the ground and watch it until all that was left were the embers. This backyard wasn’t big enough to hold the playset I’d bought Stevie. She wouldn’t have had a pool here. My eyes cut to the driveway, where that fucking ugly blue car he had given Branwen was parked beside his luxury sedan.
They were never his. He’d almost stolen them. Taken what belonged to me.
“You look like you’re about to torch the place. Don’t,” Bane said under his breath.
He nodded his head, and the others moved out, going to their entry point. I followed Bane as we headed for the downstairs door.
“It has an alarm system, but I used the code Wilder gave me to hack into the system and disarm it.” His voice was almost too quiet to hear.
Taking out his tool, he slid it into the dead bolt and turned it. After the metal bar slid out, he moved on to the keyhole in the doorknob and eased it slowly around. His gloved hand wrapped around the handle and turned, and then we moved inside.
It was dark, but I could make out the game room. It had a mediocre pool table, a couple of arcade machines, and a well-worn leather sofa. The stairs weren’t anything impressive, and the railing needed tightening. The dentist didn’t take care of his shit properly. Much like he hadn’t taken care of Branwen’s cunt properly.
The main floor had some light coming from the left, but it went out quickly, meaning whoever had come in that way was inside without issue. I didn’t ask who had cut any phone lines he might have, knowing it had been handled.
Ransom stepped into the hallway, followed by Hale. Which meant Locke and Than would be coming in on the opposite side of the house.
The others took their places, and Bane led me down another hallway and then to a room with two double doors that stood open. The king-size bed with the dentist forming a lump under the covers made my stomach turn. Knowing Branwen had been in that bed, that he’d had her in this room, ignited a roar in my ears that drowned out everything else as I took long strides to the bed. Needing to see him suffer. Hating every inch of this fucking house and what it represented.
I stood over him. Loathing that he breathed. He had called her names. Screamed at her in public. In front of Stevie.
Hearing the words he’d said had sent a bolt of remorse through me. I’d wanted to make her the word he’d lashed out at her. I’d planned to make her my whore. Use her when I wanted her. Problem with that was, my cock only wanted her cunt now.
I had requested the flight attendant who had sucked my cock like a professional for the trip to Georgia. But her hands had felt wrong. She smelled wrong. Her voice was wrong. I had to tell her I’d changed my mind. I’d not gotten as far as unzipping my pants, and I knew it wasn’t happening. She even sat down on the sofa and opened her thighs to play with her cunt for me. The fact that it didn’t look like Branwen’s had annoyed me.
The dentist’s eyelids started to move. Then, his eyes opened, and he was looking up at me. There was a moment of confusion, then panic. I stood there as he scrambled to sit up, reaching for his cell phone that he’d left charging by his bed. But it was gone. Bane had pocketed it while I waited. When he realized there was no phone, he swung his gaze back to me.
“What the fuck do you want?” he shouted.
Bane moved up, grabbing his hair to jerk his head forward, and then Than tied on his gag to muffle the screams he was trying to make.
“Touch the gag and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes,” Bane warned him. When they both stepped back, his eyes looked frantically around the room. When he recognized Locke, I knew it because he began to try and move backward, as if he could push through the headboard behind him.
“Remember me?” Locke drawled.
The dentist tried talking, but his words were hard to make out. I was almost positive he’d said something about the police.
“You made the grave mistake of getting close to what is mine. You yelled at Branwen, called her names that no one gets to call her but me.” An evil smirk curled my lips. “She likes it when I slam my cock into her tight cunt. When I call her my pretty little whore, she gets off on it. Screams my name while her orgasm milks my load right out of me.”
His eyes flared with hate and jealousy, overtaking the fear.
“You made my little girl cry.” I shook my head and made a tsking sound. “No one does that,” I told him, taking another step closer.
He reached out a hand to hold me back, and I grabbed his forearm and twisted until the sound of the bone cracking sent a smile to my face. His muted wails only had me forcing the abnormal bend further while the continued snapping sent a balm over me.
He began to go limp, as if he might pass out from the pain, and I dropped his arm. He fell back, and his head bounced off the headboard, but his eyes remained opened.
“You didn’t touch her, so you get to live. This is your only warning. If you are caught within a thirty-mile radius of Branwen or Stevie, I will hang you up by your wrists and slice you into pieces while you bleed out.”
I closed in on him, wrapping my hand around his neck and squeezing. “And if you tell the police, I’ll know within minutes, and you won’t see another sunrise.”
Tears ran down until the cloth, jammed in his mouth and wrapped around his head, soaked them up. He was trembling from not only fear, but also the injury to his arm, which, I was sure, was breathtakingly painful. He wouldn’t be able to fix any teeth for a while.
I grabbed the cloth tied around his head and tore it off.
He let out a gasp.
“Go ahead and scream. See how long I let you live,” I taunted him, wanting him to make that mistake.
“Ah, Linc, now, you’re just trying to get him to give you a reason to kill him,” Hale said from the other side of the room.
“Sh-she was my fiancée,” he stammered.
“That was a lapse in judgment,” I replied. “One she corrected.”
“Wh-why ar-are you do-doing this? You barely know he-her.”
I grinned. “That’s where you’re wrong. She was mine long before she was with you.”