Chapter 10 Rage
TEN
Rage
LOGAN
“It’s almost Christmas, Logan.”
“And?” I tuned out whatever Adrian was blathering on about over the phone as I moved across the tarmac at a pace that was just shy of a jog. “Look, I understand everyone is worried but I have to do this. I’ll be back before Christmas, hopefully with a guest.”
“Lo, she disappeared for a reason.”
“Yeah and that reason was because I fucked up and let her down.”
“You said she was engaged to another man. Don’t you think it’s time to finally let her go?
There was something off about the way my brother spoke to me.
It sounded almost as though he had been the one to give up on Aoife all those years ago.
They were never close, though. I wanted to ask, to find out if there was something else going on with my brother, but the need to get to Aoife, to put her ahead of everyone else this time, won out. I would check in with Adrian later.
“I can’t.” I hung up the call before he could argue with me further.
I was not operating under any delusions.
After what I did, there was a good chance that Aoife would never want to speak to me again.
I understood and accepted that. Even if her choice was to remain a stranger to me, I had to hear that directly from her.
That was why I was about to hop on a flight to San Diego.
If her friend, Shaina Carmine, lived there, then chances were that Aoife did as well.
About twenty minutes after we took off, a message came through from Miles on my phone.
Miles: We got another hit on your girl.
Logan: What do you mean? Like an actual hit or something else?
Miles: Caught another ping from the laptop. Facial rec caught her at the airport.
I stewed over that last message for the duration of my flight. There was no point in asking for more information. Miles would update me as soon as he knew where she was headed, if she didn’t change her ID for a new identity again.
My cell rang the minute we touched down, and I didn’t hesitate to answer. “What the fuck did you find out?” I yelled into the phone as I grabbed my bags and got ready to hop off the plane.
“She’s here,” Miles huffed impatiently.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We got another hit on the laptop. She’s in New York. Arrived today, you probably passed her in the sky as the two of you swapped coasts.”
“What fucking kind of luck is this?” I growled and then marched in to see the pilot. “I’m headed back, but I still need someone out here to talk to the friend and find out everything.”
“I can put Christian on it.”
I thought about that for a minute and decided that would probably work best. “Do you know where he is right now?”
“He’s currently in LA. I’ll divert him from his job there and send him to San Diego to find out what he can.”
“Thanks, Miles.”
“And don’t worry about yelling at the pilot to do your bidding. They’re going to fuel up and get you back in the air as quickly as possible.”
“You’re the best. If you don’t already have someone on it, get eyes on my girl and don’t lose her.”
“I will do what I can. We’re still searching for where she went after leaving the airport but we have a picture of the man she was with - presumably her fiancé. That should help us track them both down.”
“Fuck,” I hissed. I didn’t need another damn reminder that Aoife was taken now. “Stay on top of it. Nothing else matters.”
“What about your brothers?” Miles asked.
“Nothing. I prioritized someone else’s bullshit ahead of her once before and look what happened. Never again, Miles.”
“Good. If you’d given me any other answer, I wouldn’t have helped you.”
“Thanks, asshole.”
Miles had been just as worried about Aoife over the past twelve years and held a lot of guilt because he dropped her off at her dorm without a thought to her safety.
When she disappeared, it killed a bit of my friend’s spirit, as none of us were sure she was even alive.
The only indicator we had was that her father had made a huge stink about his daughter’s whereabouts in the beginning but he hadn’t started a war to get her back or retaliate against anyone.
It was the reason we all assumed she had disappeared of her own free will.
It took entirely too fucking long to turn around and get back to New York.
By the time I landed, exhaustion threatened to pull me under.
I stayed in contact with Miles and we had a fairly decent idea of where Aoife would be that evening.
I didn’t want to wait. A million things could go wrong, but I had to see this through.
If she truly, knowingly chose this life, then there was nothing to be done anyway.
If that was the case, why in the fuck would she still be operating under an assumed identity?
Nothing made sense. Least of all my best friend’s sudden reappearance.
I couldn’t be bothered to think about what I’d do if she chose the path she was on with eyes wide open.
That would mean she had well and truly given up on us and the life we always dreamed of.
Granted, I deserved for that to happen, considering why she ran without me in the first place.
“Here. Go change,” Miles ordered as he thrust my suit at me the minute I walked into MadDox Security Company.
“Thanks,” I tossed back on my way to the ensuite bathroom in my office. After flying all fucking day, I took a quick shower to try to wake myself up and clear away the airplane funk, suited up, and then made my way back into my office.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Lucian as he stood there in his own monkey suit and grinned at me in that way he did that was slightly discomfiting, or maybe menacing was a better descriptor.
“You think I’m going to let my baby brother walk into a mafia engagement party operating as a holiday shindig and not be there as backup? We’re getting in, getting your girl, and getting the fuck out. No harm to you, Aoife, or me.”
“Everyone else?” I questioned.
“Collateral damage doesn’t bother me. It’s not like anyone there will call the cops if shit goes down.”
“What about Calista?”
“She’s safe.”
My brother was a man of few words. He was also a man of action.
If he said we were all getting in and back out again unharmed, then we would.
Everything he said about not giving a damn if there’s collateral damage was also the real deal.
He’d burn the city down for any of us. Our parents might not have given a shit about us, but we always had each other’s back.
“Are Adrian and Gideon coming?” Miles asked when he entered into the office straightening his tie.
“They’re both neck-deep in shit.” Lucian chuckled and shook his head as if there was something funny about it.
“What’s going on with them?” I asked.
“Women troubles. We’re going to leave them to it while we deal with yours. If we need them, they’re on standby.”
Miles shrugged and I gave a quick tip of my chin in acknowledgment as we left the office. “I can’t believe she’s here,” I whispered more to myself than anyone else.
“Doesn’t feel real,” Miles agreed.
“It will,” my brother said as he made his way onto the elevator. “Stay with me. Don’t let any of those punks lure either one of you off.” Lucian turned his dead-eye, in-the-zone, man-hunter eyes on me. “Did you put on the extra layer of your suit?”
“You know I did.” The extra layer was a bullet proof material that was deceptively thin and easily concealed beneath clothing.
It was something new that our research and development team picked up and perfected based on the Diamene material that some collegiate knuckleheads theorized at a local college.
We all invested in it to make it real. MadShield was the product.
It was a combination of Graphene layers, some special, super-secret added scientific shit that I didn’t even understand, and it all boiled down to light-weight, second-skin armor that hardened to the strength of a fucking diamond when impacted by a bullet traveling at velocity.
“Good thing they already ran the real world trials on it,” Miles said as he adjusted his tie again.
It was the one tell that my best friend was nervous to be one of the few humans to go into a situation where our new body armor might be necessary.
“We should probably look into lining ball caps with it or something. These fancy undershirts aren’t going to keep us from the finality of a bullet to the head. ”
“Noted,” I agreed as we made our way out of the elevator, our building, and into the waiting car that would take us to the one place where the woman I’d been dreaming about since I was six fucking years old would be.
After twelve, long fucking years of not seeing her, the possibilities of how the night could go were endless.
Lucian handed me a Glock10 with a suppressor on it. “Just in case.” I gave a nod and replaced the one I had holstered, knowing that the one my brother handed off wouldn’t be traceable. “Remember, you can’t put a hole in her father if he’s there.”
“Why the fuck not? He’s the reason I lost her.”Lucian cocked his brow up as if to challenge that. “If he hadn’t mandated that she had to marry a goon of his choosing, she would have never ran. We would have been able to fix my fuck ups.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She wouldn’t have run,” I doubled down. “Even if we couldn’t fix everything, she wouldn’t have run. There was always a chance that we could fix things if she was here to do that.”
“No matter what, you can’t kill the fucker. Not yet.”
“Why?” It was Miles who asked for the explanation that time.
“He doesn’t have an heir, specifically, he doesn’t have a male heir to take over.
When there’s no male heir, whoever marries the female inherits the position as head of the family.
That’s how the Sweeney Gang has always worked.
It’s why he was very adamant about who his daughter would marry.
If we take him out, it will create a power vacuum of assholes who want to be the man on top and it will create a world of chaos for us. ”
“Because whoever takes over has to get revenge,” Miles muttered.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Lucian informed us.
Fucking hell.
There was no way Aoife would trust me if her father was still out there able to call the shots. I didn’t have time to come up with a foolproof plan, though. We had arrived and it was go time.
“Let’s go. If shots are fired, stay low, find cover, and don’t be afraid to return fire.”