Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Carrson
The apartment complex is on the outskirts of town, just shy of the line that marks the edge of my territory. Run-down, two stories, with a dilapidated stairwell and rust-streaked screen doors, it reminds me a little too much of the place Laurel used to live with her father.
Crap. I’m thinking about her. Again.
When I was younger, I saw the world through one lens, his. What would my father think? Would he approve? Be proud? Punish me?
A year ago, a prostitute told me a story.
My father got one of the women in his whorehouse pregnant, and she fled.
I have a sister, and her name is Rose. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s bull, but ever since that revelation, the idea of a sister has stuck with me.
Haunted me. For the first time, I started asking a different question, what would Rose think?
Now…there’s Laurel.
Sweet. Brave. Brilliant.
And so fucking inconvenient.
I know what she’d think, how she’d look at this place. This mission. Me. She’d see it for what it is, control, dominance, fear dressed up as power. I hate how that splinter of her voice has embedded itself under my skin, poking at parts of me I don’t want to look at.
Get out of my head, I tell a phantom version of her. Go away.
I think of this morning, when she blinked sleepily at me with those pretty doe eyes. Of last night at dinner, when I made her laugh and it was the best part of my day. How in the middle of the night I woke up and searched for her, only able to relax when I saw her sighing softly in her sleep.
Get a grip, I tell myself.
I’m Carrson Fucking Ashford.
I don’t wait. I don’t compromise.
I take. I devour. I rule.
Just…not with her.
Fuck. Get your head in the game, Carrson. Or you die and your brothers die.
I shove her from my mind. Lock it down. Become who I was trained to be.
Ruthless. Focused. In control.
With one hand on my earpiece, I whisper, “Do we have eyes on the back door yet?”
The mic hidden in the cord picks it up easily.
Thomson rigged this whole setup himself, and every time I use it I feel like I’ve stepped into some off-brand version of the Secret Service or maybe the FBI.
Which is hilarious, considering the amount of illegal shit I’ve done.
If they ever came knocking, it wouldn’t be to give me a badge. It’d be with a warrant for my arrest.
Jackson answers immediately, “On it. We have visualization.”
I hate involving that piece of crap in anything I do, but his father’s second-in-command to mine, which means I don’t always get a choice and as much as I hate to admit it, Jackson is made for assignments like these.
He’s calculated, brutal, not to mention built like a truck.
As long as he keeps his temper in check, which is always a gamble, he’s an asset, at least for today.
I pull the knife from my waistband. My weapon of choice, it has a wicked curved blade. The other brothers have them too. A gun sits in a holster on my side, but I don’t plan on using it. Guns are too noisy, too easily traced. If everything goes to plan, this will be a simple mission.
Get in and get out.
I leave five brothers at the back door and take the other five to the front. They wait behind me while I ease the screen door open. I wince at the squeal of the hinges, but a quick glance around confirms we’re alone. No one outside. No curious eyes watching what we’re about to do.
I nod to Michaelson.
It takes him two hits with the hilt of his knife to snap the deadbolt clean off. The door swings open, and we’re in.
The smell hits first. Rotten eggs and paint thinner.
We all instinctively cover our noses.
Michaelson gags beside me. “What the hell is that?”
My stomach knots. I wasn’t expecting this. “Meth. They’re cooking methamphetamine in here.”
Sure enough, the kitchen comes into view, looking more like a mad scientist’s lab than a place where you would cook a steak.
Empty boxes marked cold and flu medication litter the counters.
Pyrex bowls, plastic bottles, and oversized Tupperware containers are connected to one another with a maze of plastic tubing.
A fine white powder coats every surface like toxic snow.
On feather-light feet, with my knife before me, I advance farther into the apartment.
The place is trashed with burn marks on the walls and empty pill bottles scattered across the floor.
Someone’s been living here, but not well.
The brothers and I move silently, a well-oiled machine of muscle and malice.
Then I hear it. A floorboard creaks to the right.
I raise a fist. Everyone freezes.
Another creak. This one louder. Closer.
“Living room,” I mouth.
We shift direction.
As soon as we cross the threshold a man bolts upright from a sagging couch.
Shirtless. Late thirties, maybe older. At least six-two and thick, arms like tree trunks, a gut that stretches the waistband of his stained cargo shorts.
Track marks run from wrist to elbow. Five teardrops inked into his cheek.
His eyes land on me. Wide. Wild. His hand jerks toward the coffee table. Gun. He’s fast for someone that size.
I’m faster. I cross the room in two strides and slam him against the wall.
The knife finds his throat.
“Try it,” I whisper.
He freezes, glances at the blade, then at my face. “You—you’re Ashford.” He swallows. “I didn’t know this was your territory. I swear—”
“Your boss knew.” I twist the blade slightly, not enough to kill, just enough to make him whimper.
Even as I say it, frustration curls low in my gut.
I know how this will go. There won’t be anything in this shithole to tie back to Silas Creed, the leader of the Jackals.
No fingerprints. No names. No texts or calls or dumb mistakes.
Silas is too fucking smart for that. He keeps his hands clean while his henchmen do the dirty work.
Suddenly, there’s movement to my left.
Jackson’s already there, pinning a second guy to the floor. This one’s younger. Scrawny. Twitchy eyes that dart everywhere. Only one teardrop tattoo, probably from his initiation. You don’t earn the Jackal name until you’ve spilled blood.
Jackson looks up at me, grinning like he’s having a great time. “Want me to make an example of him?”
“No,” I say, my voice low. “Not yet.” I turn back to the man I have up against the wall and hiss, “You’re cooking meth in my town. Selling dirty coke to kids.” I press the knife deeper. “You’ve got two options. One,” my voice dropping to a near-growl, “you give me the drugs.”
“And option two?” he croaks.
I smile, slow and cold. “You don’t get one.”
He nods, frantic. “Okay. Okay. Just don’t—don’t kill me.”
“Smart man.”
I glance at my brothers, eight of them in the house with me now. I left one by the front door and one at the back as lookouts. “Sweep the place. Make sure it’s just these two losers. We don’t need any surprises.”
A minute later, Michaelson steps back into the room, pale and tense.
“There’s something in the bedroom you need to see,” he tells me. “Come quick.”
I motion for two of the brothers to hold the twitchy kid and the cook and for two more to come with me. We follow Michaelson down a narrow, trash-strewn hallway. The door at the end is half-closed.
The smell hits before I even reach it, something foul layered with perfume and sweat.
Michaelson pushes the door open, and there she is.
Barely conscious. Maybe seventeen. A sheet twisted around her like an afterthought. Bruises on her thighs, her jaw, and one arm. Wearing only a thin pair of underwear.
Rage pours through me, cold and merciless.
“Get her covered. Gently,” I order.
I don’t raise my voice, but every brother in the room stiffens.
They know that tone. The one I use right before blood gets spilled.
I’m halfway back down the hall when the first guy, the one I pinned to the wall, explodes into motion.
He grabs a second gun from under the pile of dirty clothes on the couch and fires at me.
The shot misses, but barely. Wood splinters off the doorframe next to my head.
I charge him. We slam into the wall, hard.
His elbow clips my cheek, and I feel the skin split.
Hot blood slides down my face. He punches, lashing out wild and desperate.
I drive my knee into his ribs. He grunts but doesn’t drop the weapon.
My knife finds his arm. Slicing deep, it carves into his skin, and he finally loses his grip on the gun.
It hits the ground with a thunk. He snarls in pain and headbutts me.
I shake off a wave of dizziness. Another punch from him that I dodge, barely.
I grin, a broken part of me thrilling as adrenaline pumps through my veins.
I was born for this. Raised for this. Blood and pain. That’s when I feel the most alive.
Behind me there’s a commotion. The other Jackal was apparently inspired and decided to make a run of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jackson take him down with three sharp jabs of his knife to the man’s gut.
The Jackal I’m fighting uses the distraction to flail at me, driving his shoulder into my side.
With effort, I keep my balance and dance away from him.
Then I see my opening. I twist behind him, wrap one arm around his chest, and drag the blade across his throat in a clean, brutal arc.
He gurgles as blood sprays in a jet of red.
Slowly, I let him slide to the floor as he collapses, his lifeblood pooling at my feet.
I stand over him with my chest heaving, cheek burning.
“Get this cleaned up,” I bark.
Jackson moves in without hesitation, dragging the body out of the way. He throws it in the corner with the other dead man. He grins when he sees my face.
“That’s going to make a nice scar. You can look like me.”
“Fuck off.”
I press a hand to my cheek, sticky with blood.
“Is she okay?” I ask, nodding toward the back room.
“She’s awake now,” Michaelson replies, his voice subdued. “Crying but talking. They were pimping her. Forcing her.”
I nod once. It’s what I suspected. I glance down at the corpses.
“You want to sell drugs in my town?” I murmur. “Fine. You pay. But you prostitute girls?” My voice drops to a whisper. “You die.”
I’m furious because what if that girl was Rose? What if it was Laurel?
My father may run brothels, but I never will.
It only takes a minute to find what we came for. The cocaine is stacked neatly in the second bedroom. Bricks of it wrapped in gray plastic. At least fifty of them.
“Take it,” I order my brothers. “Leave the meth and the girl.”
We brought duffle bags with us. The coke goes into them until the sides bulge.
Unable to stand the stench any longer, I step out the back door and make a phone call, using a number I have on speed dial.
Chief of Police Dobbs answers on the first ring. “Carrson, what’s up?”
“Got a present for you.” I tell him about the drugs. The girl. The guy I killed. The one Jackson killed.
“I’m leaving it all for you. Except the coke. That’s coming with me so I can make sure it gets properly disposed of.”
Dobbs grunts but doesn’t argue. He’s been expecting this call. He’s the one who gave me the heads up about the bad coke in the first place.
What no one in this town knows, because we’ve made damn sure they don’t, is that his real name was once Dobbson.
He’s one of us. The Order put him in that uniform and pinned that badge on his chest, just like they’ll put the next guy in the post when Dobbs retires in five years and moves somewhere quiet to become a Father.
Every chief before him was one of ours. Every chief after will be too.
We don’t just run this town.
We own it.
Always have.
Always will.