2. Emmett
Emmett
It’s completely dark but I’m very familiar with the layout of this house, breaking and entering in it for so many years that I know where every creak is.
I go past the living room to the kitchen, then I open the second door there that leads to the garage.
It’s also dark in here, save for the one light bulb that casts a low orange glow, but also enhances the darkness somehow.
I’m used to such settings, so this doesn’t faze me.
What does turn my blood until it’s stone cold is the man I see chained down to a metal chair directly under the lone light bulb.
He’s severely bruised, his face almost completely disfigured, but I’d recognize him even if he’s bleeding from every inch of skin from the cuts all over his body, the nasty bruises and mushy tissue that’s beginning to fester.
He’s been stripped of all his clothes, so I can see the deep indent on the side of his upper arm. It’s likely that he was hit with something that caved in his humerus bone.
It’s obvious he’s been tortured and brutally beaten nonstop from the moment I was told he’d been caught.
Now he’s unconscious but panting, likely due to a punctured lung.
He’s hanging on by a thread… but I intend to make him live longer.
This torture is nothing compared to what I’m going to do with him for the next several months.
“He’s one of yours, isn’t he?”
A livid voice suddenly speaks to my left. My eyesight is disturbingly clear in the dark as a result of having spent most of my life in it.
“Yes,” I mutter.
Spider scoffs, but it does nothing to tame the anger radiating from him.
“Even your own men aren’t loyal, huh?” he mocks.
“Spider, listen?—”
“Guess what we found on the other shitheads your man was meeting up with,” he cuts me off, glaring at me.
“What?”
Spider responds by aggressively shoving something in my hand.
Not daring to be offended, I unfold the crumpled-up paper, only to see from the quality and feel that it’s a photo.
A foreboding sense of alarm and panic sweeps through me as I slowly flatten the photo.
I move closer to the light, but I think I already know what it is.
It’s a picture of Angel…
A very recent picture judging by the clothes she was wearing when she landed earlier today.
The thing in my chest stops entirely. I know exactly what this means.
“There were four Russians,” Spider starts, not caring about my distress. “Of course they decided to quit breathing, but I especially brought this bastard here for you to see that I was right for not trusting you!”
“Spider—” I start, but he holds up a hand. I clamp my jaw shut as a storm brews in me.
“No, this isn’t the time for you to explain anything. This is where you listen and act!”
I clench my fists and stand still, bracing for what’s coming.
“These past few years, you expanded all your efforts to track me down without your granddaddy finding out,” Spider starts. “Why?”
He glares at me, demanding that I fess up my most hidden secrets, but I can only stare back, unable to say anything.
“You could only find me because you knew I’m the only one who knew where Ivy was and your goal was to see her, wasn’t it?”
My jaw tightens, but I can feel a shiver going down my spine. Spider shakes his head.
“You hounded me for four fucking years! Four years of you constantly nagging me to see my sister! Hell, I was so fucking moved by your diligence and when I found out that you had been secretly protecting my grandmother, I felt bad for you and almost caved to tell you where she was, or at the very least, have you do a fucking FaceTime call with her since you almost died three times in these past four years!”
I freeze.
“You didn’t tell her about that, did you?” I quickly ask, my voice low, revealing the tension within.
“Tell her that you were desperately hungry for a glimpse of her or that you were lying at the gates of hell three times in quick succession? Which do you fucking mean?”
I’m not in any position to tell him to calm down, seeing as all of this is my fault, so I remain mute.
“I never told her shit. I believed it was none of my business, so after that last gift you gave and the promise you made me of her safety, I brought her back, against my fucking better judgment! I brought her back to this shit town, but guess what?”
Spider doesn’t shout.
He doesn’t throw a tantrum.
He doesn’t swing at me as he should.
He just looks at me with a hard glare, his anger perfectly valid.
“Within sixteen hours of my sister being back, your crap family who want her dead already got to work to kill her!”
“That’s not?—”
“They even got a picture of her!” Spider seethes. “Who’s to say the mastermind isn’t gearing up to try and eliminate her yet again?”
“That won’t happen,” I grit out.
Spider scoffs, but I can hardly back down now.
“I’ve already had their servers shut down and their networks destroyed. If anything was digitally communicated, it’s been obliterated.”
“Can you be certain?” Spider snaps. “Can you even give me a guarantee?”
My blood is simmering in my veins, coming to boil with each second.
“You are the smartest, single most ruthless, vicious Mafioso underboss with the most insane underhanded tactics and strategies that I have ever seen, and I’m entrenched in the ugliest parts of the underworld!
But even with your power, you can’t give me a guarantee of her safety like you did before. Do you know why?”
I don’t want to ask why.
I’d rather the earth open up and swallow me whole than experience this excruciating shredding happening to my insides.
It feels like several hooks and chains have been attached to my spinal cord and now the other ends are being pulled by strong, invisible forces, all with a common goal of tearing me apart.
“It’s because you know what I know,” Spider says slowly but clearly. “As long as you are in her life, she’s in fatal danger.”
And there it is.
The truth I’ve spent four years trying to make untrue by any means possible.
I put myself through the wringer.
I humbled myself and pretended like hell in front of my grandfather to gain his trust.
I sacrificed a shit ton of my own anger and plans of revenge for my mother just to gain the power that I now have to weaken all my uncles’ influence.
Over ten years ago, when my uncle’s men came for Angel, I happened to be there.
Kai and Ty, who protect me from the shadows, gunned all of them down, but for them to do that, I needed to get out of the way.
How could I have left that heartbroken, grieving, and devastated girl alone?
I could only save the girl by jumping over the cliff with her.
She was already the target. A witness that needed to be silenced, but I met her by chance.
It didn’t take long to piece everything together, so my goal switched.
In the years to follow, I went to great lengths to make sure that it never happens again, that no one would ever brazenly come after Angel, or covertly try to assassinate her.
But… I failed.
Hell, just when I thought I was being extra careful, one of my own men within my Capo betrayed me.
It’s all my fault.
But, I still can’t let go.
“Spider, I know you’re angry, and rightfully so, but?—”
“This is all your fault!” Spider bellows, cutting me off.
“Your family is vermin! You destroy everything you touch! Even your own mother, as the Don herself who changed the game and grew your Family’s old-money empire into one of the most respected families, she wasn’t safe at all.
What more my sister? Her life is severely insignificant. ”
“She’s not insignificant!” I grit out, glaring at him while the thing in my chest groans and strains like it’s about to be the last time it beats, so I confess, “Ivy is everything to me!”
Spider’s expression falters for a split second, frowning at me with complicated emotions flashing in his eyes before they harden again.
“If she’s everything to you, then do the right thing,” he says calmly.
Heartbeat.
Heartbeat.
Heartbeat.
I don’t want to ask, but do I have a choice?
Have I ever had a choice?
“What do I need to do?” I mutter more to myself than to him.
Spider is silent for some fifty-nine and a half seconds, before he gestures for me to follow him.
Alarms go off in the back of my head, but I still pretend like I can weather the storm.
I glance at Ty and Kai who are waiting in the garage. They silently nod, knowing what to do, then I follow Spider.
He takes me upstairs and straight to the room I just came from.
“These last few years, you did things completely out of your norm, Em. You initiated contact, calling constantly, sometimes twice a day to ask me how she was. I never wanted to tell you a thing since you were the reason she had to leave her own home in the first place, but I’ll show you now,” Spider says as we reach Angel’s room.
He looks back at me, about to say something, but I silence him and he reels back, stunned.
“She’s a light sleeper and has constant nightmares. Shut your mouth,” I whisper-shout.
Spider stares at me for thirty-night seconds, blinking slowly.
“I was going to tell you to stay your ass right there, Mr. Knows-Everything-About-Ivy!” he responds. I almost go red.
Thank God the hallway is dimly lit.
Spider glowers at me before he opens the door as silently as he can and skillfully heads for Angel’s closet and noiselessly opens the doors, reaches in for something, then comes back without making a single sound.
The dude went to military school, then was recruited into the Navy Seals. He just finished some secret government training shit, likely to be special ops.
Basically, Spider is hardcore. I know better than to throw my weight around in front of him.
Partly because he’s Angel’s brother.
And because, well, he’s Angel’s favorite brother.
I can only severely humble myself and take it. Besides, I respect the hell out of this guy.
With a faded purple box in his hand, Spider gestures for me to follow him back downstairs.