42. Forty-Two
42
FORTY-TWO
ARCHER
M y mother’s voice droned on about potential wedding venues, but my attention was fixated on the bathroom door. My eyes darted to my watch repeatedly. Each tick of the minute hand felt like an eternity.
Something felt wrong.
She had been in there for too long.
Anxiety crept up my spine as I shoved my chair back and hurried toward the bathroom door, my heart thudding against my ribs. I knocked loudly, calling out Mila's name, but there was no response. Panic started to set in as I tried the doorknob, finding it locked. Without hesitation, I took a step back and threw my shoulder against the door, the wood splintering under the force of my weight. As the door swung open, my breath caught in my throat at the scene before me.
The bathroom was empty .
My eyes landed on the open window, a trail of blood leading out onto the windowsill. I stumbled forward, my legs weak beneath me as I reached the window, staring into the empty alleyway. The cold wind blew in, carrying with it the faint sound of sirens in the distance. I touched the droplets of blood, still warm and sticky .
Mila was gone .
Stumbling backward, my hand shook as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and fumbled to autodial Kai’s number.
“What’s up?” Kai answered.
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I spilled out the words. “He took her.”
“What?”
“Alexander took Mila.” The words felt like poison in my mouth.
“Shit. What do you need me to do?”
“Gather the men. I’m tracking her from the necklace. Sending you the coordinates now.” I stormed out of the café and headed toward the Suburban. My mother and Damion followed behind me, trying to keep up.
“Archer, we need to be smart about this. If he sees you, he might kill her before we get to her,” Kai cautioned.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do, Kai? Let him put his hands all over her or worse?”
“I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, you know how this dickbag operates. He wants you to follow him so he can kill you or kill her to get to you.”
“Goddamn it!” I yelled. Frustration boiled inside of me. I knew he was right, but the way I felt right now, I was bulletproof. I wouldn’t stop until Alexander was choking on his blood.
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll reach out to my contact and call you back.”
Kai hung up, and I let out a pained breath as I pulled up the GPS and her tracker. She was moving fast, heading to the outskirts of the city. I sent the coordinates to Kai and Theo and attached them to the car. “Follow these coordinates. Leave space. I don’t want him to know we are following him.”
“Archer, follow who? Where’s Mila?” my mother questioned from the back seat.
“Mom, I need you to get out and go home.”
“Archer, what’s going on?”
“They took Mila,” I replied through clenched teeth .
My mother’s gasp of shock in the backseat broke through my concentration. “Oh my God. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill them all.”
“Please be careful,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I want both of you back home safe. I’ll call your father and see if he can do anything.” She kissed my cheek and stepped out of the car, rushing toward her vehicle and speaking quickly on her phone.
My phone rang just as Damion pulled off onto the road, following the red dot on the screen. I answered, my voice tense. “Yeah?”
“Theo and I are heading your way. My contact will meet us when I send her the address,” Kai quickly reported.
“What’s the status of the men?”
“They’re standing by, ready for action depending on how you want to handle this.”
“Copy. See you soon.”
“Arch, there’s something else.”
“What?” I managed to get out. I didn’t know if I could handle anything else.
“Theo just sent over the footage from the café and alley.”
“What is it?”
“Maddie was there,” he stated hesitantly.
“What are you saying? They kidnapped Maddie too?”
“No. She wasn’t kidnapped. She helped them.”
My phone dinged, and I opened the attachment, watching multiple different camera angles as several masked men and Maddie helped load an unconscious Mila into the back of a black van. The air rushed out of my lungs, and my hands clenched into fists as pure rage burned through my veins like acid. Maddie had played us. She used Kai to get close, and I guessed she had been working with Alexander all along.
“I’m so sorry, Archer. I’m so fucking sorry,” Kai apologized repeatedly.
I drowned out his words, hung up my phone, and slammed my fists into the dashboard over and over, blood dripping down my fingers before I stopped .
“We’ll get her back,” Damion spoke softly.
He sped through the city, keeping several blocks of distance so we didn’t tip them off. I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest, and the temperature in the car felt suffocating. As we neared the city's outskirts, every second felt like an eternity. I promised never to let anything happen to her, and I failed. I fucking broke my promise. Alexander got to her anyway.
Kai texted me an address a mile from where the dot had been stopped for several minutes.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down, but my body shook with adrenaline. We pulled off into the parking lot of a high-rise apartment complex, driving down into the parking garage where we wouldn’t be seen. A few minutes later, Kai and Theo parked next to us.
I stepped out of the car, and Kai and Theo looked at me apologetically. “Where are we?”
“My contact’s apartment,” Kai responded.
“Where is she?”
“We are going up to her,” he replied cryptically.
“Why?” I pressed.
“She’s risking a lot by helping us. It’s not safe for her to meet us out in the open so close to where Mila is.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’ll explain everything when we get up there,” he said, leading us toward the elevator.
I wanted to press him for more answers, but I knew that he wouldn’t steer me wrong. I needed to hear what his contact had to say. He was good for always finding people willing to backstab their bosses for money or drugs, so I assumed I would be writing a fat check before the day was done.
The high-rise was modern and clean, shocking compared to the usual places his contacts resided. We ascended to the 20th floor in silence, the doors opening to reveal a large, well-lit hallway. We stopped outside a black door with the number 7201 in gold. Kai knocked, and we waited .
The door opened, and a woman with green eyes the same shade as mine and long, dark black hair looked up at Kai. She moved out of the way, inviting us in, and quickly closed the door behind us.
“This is Haven,” Kai introduced her. “Archer and Theo are with me.”
“What exactly do you think you can help us with?” I asked her, skeptical about what this petite brunette, living in a nice ass apartment, would be able to help with other than giving us beauty tips and blowjobs.
“Really, Kai?” she scoffed, crossing her arms. “Who does this asshat think he is?”
“Asshat?” I laughed bitterly. “Tell us what you know and how much money you want for the information.”
“Fuck you.” She turned around and stormed away from us.
“Archer, I told you to hear her out,” Kai sighed. “I wouldn’t waste your time and jeopardize Mila for some fool’s errand. Please, show her some respect.”
“Fine.” I gestured toward where Haven walked and followed Kai into her living room.
“Archer wants to apologize for being an asshat,” Kai told her, grinning in my direction.
Smartass.
Haven turned to face me, waiting for my apology. I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I forced out through gritted teeth. “Now, can you please tell me how you think you can help find Mila?”
She walked over to the long black-out curtains on her window and pulled them open, pointing toward a building in the distance. “This is where Alexander took her,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“GPS already told me that,” I retorted.
“Yes, but you’ll never get within a mile of that building,” she promised.
“What, and you can?”
“As his sister…I’d like to think so,” she challenged.
I fought to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor and stood with my fists clenched as I stared at the bloodline of the disgusting fucker that kidnapped my wife and sold women for sex. I could have strangled her, wrapped my hands around her neck, and satisfied the itch I had for revenge.
Then I had a thought.
“What makes you think I won’t use you as leverage to get her back?”
“And in doing so, you’ll get yourself and everyone else killed, and what do you think will happen to your wife then?” she countered calmly.
“You’re his sister. I’m sure he’d be willing to make a trade.”
“You really are dumber than you look,” she laughed, completely unfazed by my threats.
I looked at Kai.
He mouthed the words "calm down" to me, his expression serious.
“Alex couldn’t give two shits about me. Even his own sister isn’t enough for him to trade for someone he fought so hard to get.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, curious.
She stared at me for a moment before speaking in a quiet voice. “You don’t know him like I do.”
“All I care about is getting to Mila and burning him and the rest of those nasty fucks to ash,” I replied flatly.
“The chances of me getting you inside unnoticed are slim. There are too many cameras, and he has that place guarded by an army. You’ll be dead before you ever get to her.”
“Then what good are you?”
“I can get to her. I can get her out.” she announced confidently.
“How much do you want?”
“I don’t want your money. I have enough of my own.”
“Then why would you help me?” No one in our world did favors for free. She had to have an ulterior motive.
“I want out, and the only way I can do that is to deliver Mila to you. I know who you are, Archer. I’m well aware of the reach The Brotherhood has. I know that once Mila is safe, you will get your revenge. And when you do, I want to watch you burn him alive. I want to be free of my brother and The Collectors once and for all. ”
“You want me to kill your brother for you?”
“There’s no love lost.”
I eyed her skeptically because the last girl Kai trusted worked for Alexander the entire time. “Can you excuse us for a second?” I asked her, gesturing toward Kai and Theo.
“Of course. Take all the time you need,” she responded, disappearing into another room.
“What are you thinking?” Kai asked me.
“I’m thinking the last time you trusted a woman, she helped kidnap Mila.”
“I’m sorry, man. I feel terrible enough as it is. I didn’t know. But I wasn’t looking for anything other than pussy with Maddie, so I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
“How do I know it’s not pussy clouding your mind again?” I raised an eyebrow.
“With Haven? Come on, man. She’s Alexander’s sister,” he whispered, blushing.
“She turned you down,” Theo chuckled.
“Shut up. That’s not why we’re here. Look, Haven is nothing like her brother. She’s ruthless and cunning, but I trust her when she says she can help us.”
“How do I know it’s not a trap?”
“You don’t,” Haven interjected behind us.
I looked over my shoulder to see Haven emerging from her room with a large black bag slung over her shoulder.
“Sorry to rush you. I just got a text from Alex. He needs me to pick up a shipment and bring it to work tonight for some of his buyers,” she sighed as she moved through the house, grabbing a jacket and her keys.
“A shipment?” I questioned.
“Yeah, a shipment. I’m sure Kai has filled you in on my role in The Collector hierarchy,” she snapped.
“Not yet.”
“I’ll explain later. For now, you’ll have to settle for the cliff notes,” she stopped in front of us, breathless. “I sell his drugs to high-end buyers at my place of employment.”
I studied her face, evaluating her for any signs of deception or fear, but she remained stoic and tapped her foot impatiently.
This girl was a spitfire.
“If you don’t want to use me, that’s fine. If you need more time to think, so be it. But you need to go. And I need to go. He doesn’t like it when I’m late,” she urged us toward the front door, following closely behind and locking it as we stepped out. “Listen, when you make a decision, Kai knows where to find me.” She hurried down the hallway and disappeared into the elevator.
Once the elevator doors had closed, I asked, “Jesus Christ, Kai. Is she the best option?”
“I like her,” Theo chuckled.
“She’s our only option,” Kai replied.