2. Maddoc
“What the fuck,what the fuck, what the fuck?”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel and a muscle tightens in my jaw as the chant pours out of Logan like frozen smoke off dry ice, his rage as cold as his ice-blue eyes.
He’s poised in the passenger seat of the Escalade like a coiled snake, still and deadly. When I take a corner without bothering to slow the fuck down, no part of him moves, not even his golden blond hair. Nothing except his mouth.
And I want to know the same goddamn thing. What the fuck just happened?
But the fastest way to find out is to get to the scene of the crime, so I don’t bother letting any of my own frustration out. I just drive.
“Where?” I bite out as soon as I know I’m in the right neighborhood, my own rage contained by sheer force of will. Not contained in the chilling way Logan’s is, but if I’ve learned one thing over the years that it took to carve out the territory I’ve claimed for the Reapers in Halston, it’s how to stay calm no matter what.
And I’ll be damned if I let myself boil over now.
If my father’s death taught me anything, it was that if you lose control, it’s not the only thing you’ll lose.
So I don’t.
Ever.
Dante glances down at his phone, then points up ahead. “There, Madd,” he answers me. “The fight went down behind the bodega.”
He’s sprawled out in the seat behind Logan, messy, chocolate-colored hair in a state of perpetual bedhead and dark green eyes lazily scanning the neighborhood around us as I barrel through it.
Where Logan is always ready to strike, Dante is the one who reels in his prey with sparkling eyes and a warm smile that never drops, not even when he snaps the prey’s neck.
I’d be happy to unleash him on some prey right now, but I doubt there will be anyone for him to take out when we reach our destination. According to the kid who called in the shooting, the attackers were in and out. A surgical strike. Not an accident or a misunderstanding or a minor dispute, but a focused assault in the heart of our territory.
They were sending a message, and I’m pretty fucking sure I know who “they” are. But another thing I learned from my father’s mistakes is that pretty fucking sure isn’t good enough.
I haven’t succeeded where he failed by going into anything half-assed or under-informed.
I pull up in front of the alley Dante pointed out and slam the Escalade into park. Logan instantly goes from total stillness to a cyclone of movement. He explodes out of the passenger door, making a complete circuit of the alley before stalking over to where one of our gang members crouches next to a body on the ground.
Dante and I follow, and Dante nods his chin at a bright red spray of blood across the front of the dumpster we pass. “Pretty.”
My jaw clenches even harder, but it’s not Dante I’m pissed at. He and Logan are my seconds-in-command, my brothers in every way that counts, and they’re the only two people alive that I trust completely. And right now, I appreciate the way that Dante’s mask of laid-back chill helps me keep the calm I need to deal with this shit, just like I appreciate the way Logan will always slash right to the heart of a fucked-up situation, carving out the information we need with one brutal, deadly slice after another.
“Dead?” Dante asks as we flank Logan and stare down at the Reaper on the ground.
I recognize the slumped man immediately. I know every fucking person who’s sworn allegiance to me, and this man’s name is Jay Lawrence. He’s not muscle. He runs numbers for us.
“No, not dead,” Logan replies evenly.
Jay’s eyes flutter open, just a crack. “Not… yet,” he wheezes, his hand twitching a little where it’s pressed against his stomach.
Dammit. The fuckers gut-shot him.
“What the fuck happened?” I grit out, forcing my hands to unclench. I know Logan’s probably already asked him the same thing, no doubt building a matrix of facts in that deadly brain of his in the time it took me and Dante to walk over here from the Escalade. But I need to hear the answer myself.
“West Point,” the kid who called in the attack spits out, his chest heaving as he confirms my suspicion.
The kid is roughed up a little, and even if it takes me a minute to place him—Levi Blau, his uncle was loyal to my father but got taken out a year before he did—I’ll make sure West Point pays for that too.
Reapers take care of their own.
Itake care of my own.
“West Point, huh? You sure about that?” Dante asks Levi, scratching his chin. He gazes around the alley, rocking back on his heels, then lets out a low whistle. “Pretty far from home to find a few weasels running loose.”
Levi scowls. “Oh, I’m fucking sure,” he says as he starts to pace back and forth next to Jay, every word getting more agitated as he starts to gesture with his hands. “Even if they hadn’t all been wearing those pussy-ass rings, they started this shit by talking about all the ‘renovations’ Austin had in mind for the neighborhood.”
He comes to a sudden stop, throwing his arm out to take in the whole street as he indicates this section of our territory.
My lip curls at his mention of the gaudy gold rings with the initials WPG that the West Point gang members have to earn or die trying to; a three-fingered spread more like brass knuckles than jewelry. And if the fuckers who initiated this attack were acting on Austin McKenna’s orders, then yeah, it was definitely West Point.
Dante snorts, folding his arms over his chest. “Renovations? By fucking West Point? Never gonna happen.”
He’s right. It will never happen on my watch. But for a moment, the burning rage rising up in my gut makes it hard to keep my own temper in check.
I carved this territory out of nothing, and the three of us have fought, killed, and bled for every fucking inch of it. Even if I didn’t already have a personal reason to hate McKenna, there’s no way I’ll ever let any of it go.
Austin may think he’s taunting us by fucking around like this. That he’s just feeling things out and trying to get under our skin. But what he’s actually done is bought himself a war with a down payment of blood. Reaper blood.
“Stabilize him,” I tell Dante, tempering my rage as I nod down at Jay. The gut shot is bad, but he’s a fucking Reaper. One of mine. He’s not bleeding out today.
Dante squats down to do it, and I jerk my head toward the back door of the little bodega.
Logan disappears inside it like smoke. If there’s anything useful in there, whether it’s a witness statement or a bullet casing, he’ll find it. He’ll also clean the place up, leaving nothing for the cops to discover.
Not that Halston’s finest bother responding to many 9-1-1 calls in this neighborhood. They know better.
But another lesson I learned from my late father is that the fastest way to fuck yourself over is to assume shit will go down in your favor. It never does, not when it matters, and if anyone shows up to investigate this bullshit other than me and mine, Logan is the one I trust to make sure that investigation ends up dead in the water.
“Walk me through it, Levi,” I bite out, focusing all my attention on him now that I know Dante and Logan are handling the other priorities here. “Everything that happened.”
Dante starts humming something under his breath, improvising a quick field dressing with the trained hands of someone who knows everything there is to know about human anatomy. But I know he’s still absorbing every word as Levi rattles off what he saw. Which boils down to a handful of West Point members strolling right into our territory—my territory, Reaper territory—and going on a rampage of property damage, harassment, and vandalism until they finally got the attention they’d been looking for.
Until they finally found someone to hurt who would get my attention.
My shoulders are so tense they feel like steel, but the more details Levi gives us, the calmer I get.
Jonas Gray, my father, was heavily involved in the criminal underworld of Halston, but he still failed to make a real mark for himself… and that was because his vision wasn’t big enough.
It was because he made mistakes, and because every fucking one of us reaps what we sow.
Including, sooner or later, Austin fucking McKenna.
Austin is opportunistic, arrogant, and bold. And he may be swinging his dick around right now, but he’s also too fucking stupid to realize mine will always be bigger.
He doesn’t understand the three truths that keep this city’s heart beating.
The three truths that are in my blood.
The three truths I used to carve something for myself out of nothing.
The three truths that will turn the Reapers into the legacy my father deserves.
One, territory is power. Two, loyalty is power. And three… information? That’s not power. Information is what you use to weaponize power, and every word out of Levi’s mouth is arming me to the teeth.
“There’s still a bullet inside,” Dante says, straightening up from where he’s been crouching over Jay and wiping his bloody hands on his black jeans. “He needs to see Payton.”
He cocks his head, waiting on me to decide if we’re done with Levi yet or if I want him to take Jay in to get that taken care of.
But Levi’s told us everything he knows, so I grunt, jerking my chin at the kid to dismiss him, my attention moving behind him to where the brick of the building was torn up by the bullets that didn’t hit Jay.
I scowl, because that means I’ll have to leave Logan here to take care of it.
“Come on now,” Dante says to Jay, grinning as he hauls him upright. “Time for you to go play doctor.”
Jay is dead weight. Dante’s arms bulge, and Jay curses up a storm, all the color draining from his face, but between Dante and Levi, they manage to get him into the back of the Jeep Levi has parked at the other end of the alley.
“You know where to find Payton?” Dante asks Levi. The kid nods, and Dante pats the hood twice. “Take Jay in. She’ll fix him up.”
“Get Logan,” I tell him as soon as they drive off, scowling at the blood stains on the ground. “Let’s see if we can track these fuckers.”
“Got it. Be right back.”
Dante is in and out of the bodega in a flash, Logan on his heels, and the three of us head back toward the Escalade, then peel out in the direction Levi told us the West Point members ran after they took Jay down.
“They’re getting too fucking bold,” I grit out, my eyes scanning the empty sidewalk. There’s nothing to track, but I’ll leave behind my seconds and let them do some deeper digging, poking around to find out if anyone heard or saw anything useful.
“Sounds like it’s time to remind West Point who owns this territory, Madd,” Dante says, his lips curving into the type of smile that would only seem friendly to someone without any self-preservation instincts. His eyes glint, and he rubs his hands together. “We gonna do something about that? Go hunt some weasels?”
“Have to,” Logan says, his whole body as tense as a tightly coiled spring. “Can’t have them encroaching.”
I take a breath then let it out through my nose, forcing my jaw to relax. I’m still fucking furious, but that’s just fuel to bank for later use.
Right now, it’s time to weaponize some of that information I’ve been gathering.
We’re not the only ones Austin has been fucking with lately, so maybe this blatant attack on our turf will inspire some of his other enemies to help us push back against him before he turns his sights on them.
“Who can you meet with in the 17th Street Gang?” I ask Dante.
“Ruiz, Tyson, Masters.” He ticks the names of a few 17th Street gang members off on his fingers, then grins, reading my mind like he often does. “Finally time to strengthen our ties over there, Madd?”
I nod sharply.
“Allegiance,” Logan murmurs, staring off into space the way he always does when his brain is working overtime. “With all the gangs that hate West Point. Not a bad idea.”
“Make it happen, Dante,” I say, nodding at the burly man as his piercing green eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “Start with Ruiz. We need to fortify our fucking territory.”
“And then…” Logan trails off, shooting me a glance.
I nod, knowing that just like Dante, he’s picked up on the thoughts surging through my mind. He’s connected the dots and realized that the attack tonight changed everything.
We need to fortify our territory first—every street, sidewalk, and building that we control. And then…
Then we won’t just make West Point pay.
One way or another, we’ll fucking destroy them.