Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
LIAM
Tessa looks up from her laptop when I enter the suite.
“Everything’s in place,” she comments, the glow of her screen casting green and white hues across her face.
“And the docks?”
Tessa grins widely. “We’re about to make the DEA very happy,” she quips, turning her twin dimples toward Rafael. “I’ve left enough breadcrumbs that lead back to Rossi. Julio will think he’s been double-crossed.”
Rafael gives her a slight nod but otherwise remains quiet.
It irritates the shit out of me that he had her first—my Alexandria. I knew exactly what I walked in on earlier. Doesn’t matter because she’s mine. Has been mine from the moment Declan showed me a picture of her. And my obsession with her only grew once I fucked her sweet cunt. She cried out my name as I ripped her apart with my dick and had her coming all over it. My name. Not his.
Gripping the back of Tessa’s chair, I ignore him and look at what she has been up to. I may be Declan’s enforcer, but I also know my way around a computer. Seems my girl is a multi-millionaire if the banking records Tessa found are accurate.
“Who opened it?”
“Kellan Rossi.”
Rafael perks up. “What about Kellan?”
Not answering him, I ask her, “Legit?”
Tessa fills her cheeks with air and blows it out in one go. “It took a while to sort through and figure out, but from what I can deduce, the amounts transferred correspond to missing drug shipments.” She glances over her shoulder at Rafael. “If Julio Ortiz ever finds out, he’ll kill her. Doesn’t matter that it was Kellan who stole it. The fact that the cartel’s money now sits in an account with her name on it paints a target on her back.”
Rafael bends his head and roughly scrapes his hands over his face. “ Fuck . Goddamn it, Kellan.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Because Rafael’s deal with Declan for returning Andie to him was to take that motherfucker down. Julio Ortiz is about to meet the full force of the Irish mob. Ortiz may control his little pocket of Mexico, but our reach is global. Not to mention, we’re crazier and like to blow shit up.
Going back to the information on the screen, I tell Tessa, “Wipe that account so it never existed and there’s no way to connect anything to Alexan… Andie.”
She doesn’t want to be called Alexandria anymore. I need to remember that and not slip up.
“Transfer the money over to a new account in the usual place. Her name only. And double the amount.”
“On it.” Tessa bites her bottom lip, her fingers flying over the keys as she gets lost in her job.
Tessa is a cool girl who rolls with the flow and gets the job done without asking questions. Doesn’t hurt that she’s fuck-all hot with a tight, little body and gorgeous tits. But my dick doesn’t take notice because it only craves the woman two floors below us.
Declan was smart when he brought Tessa on. Any entity can only survive long-term if it continuously infuses itself with the young blood of new members. That’s something Rossi and those other New York fucks failed to realize. They are a bunch of greedy, old men who refuse to relinquish any amount of power. Always afraid. Always tightening their grip to hang on to the throne one second longer, until eventually they choke it to death, and it withers away.
“Come with me,” I tell Rafael, already walking off and not waiting to see if he follows.
With Andie now living here, Declan wants us close by, which means I have to share space with this jackass, Tessa, and a few other of our most trusted men.
I take my time walking down the hall to the back room, past the four bedrooms, two on each side, and head straight to the armory. Even though I can’t hear him, I sense Rafael right behind me. I’m not stupid enough to show him our full weapons cache. The room we enter contains my personal shit. Four walls filled with various guns, knives, and other weapons.
Overhead fluorescent lights flicker on, and Rafael actually looks impressed. He scans the weapons and his eyes land and linger on a matte-black semi-automatic handgun.
“You know which gun she prefers?” I ask him, picking up a Sig Sauer P320.
“How the fuck should I know? Jax and I only recently showed Andie how to fire a Glock.”
That has me suppressing a chuckle. Well-played, bella . They have no clue what she’s capable of. The things she can do.
“You and your two fucktwit friends really are stupid as hell,” I comment.
Rafael pushes into my space. “What does that mean?”
There are very few men who will openly challenge me. I’m kind of impressed that he’s one of them. I know all about him and his two friends, especially the knife-happy one. Him, I’m dying to meet. But the guy currently in my face is the one I need to watch out for. He’s a whole other level of crazy if the stories are true. You can’t be one of Julio Ortiz’s offspring and not come out of the womb already completely fucked up.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” I state, and reach for another gun.
Tessa ferreted out something the other day that has Declan’s hackles up because he hadn’t been aware of it. But that’s his fault for not keeping a detail on Andie’s ass after he confirmed she was his daughter. I understand that he saw she was happy at that boarding school in Switzerland and decided to leave her alone and let her have a normal life. It was a mistake. One he quickly rectified by getting her away from Rossi once he found out she had come back home. Apparently, soon after our night in Geneva, my girl called in a favor, and the McCarthys were more than eager to provide it. Andie was family after all, regardless of the fact they had disowned her bitch of a mother decades ago. But in our line of work, favors come with strings attached. And one day, the McCarthys will start tugging on that string and reeling it in.
I settle on one of the SS Legion models because it’s more compact and should be easier for Andie to handle. I grab a magazine and snap it into place, make sure the safety is engaged, then shove it in my back waistband.
“Pick one and hurry up,” I tell him.
He takes the P320 I was just holding. I toss him a magazine for it, and we walk out.
“They arrived ten minutes ago. Four-man detail, all armed. Their entourage was told to wait in the lobby. The other two just went up to her suite,” Tessa comments as I walk past her to the elevator.
“Everybody in place?” I ask her, holstering my gun.
“Yep.” She rushes in front of me. For a tiny thing, she’s as tough as they come and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. I can see why Andie trusts her as a friend. “For the record, I don’t like this one bit.”
I acknowledge her concern. Andie wants to run her own show. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going to crash the party. But first, I have something else to deal with.
Rafael makes a scoffing sound through his nose. “This cryptic shit is annoying. You gonna fill me in anytime soon? If it involves Andie, I need to know.”
Instead of taking the elevator, I head for the stairs. To answer his question, I say, “Ready for a little family reunion?”
His countenance turns hard. “My father is here?”
A huge smile spreads across my face. “Something better.”
Our bootsteps echo in the stairwell as we go up. Declan has men assigned to guard the stairwell exits on each of the top five floors, and more men are stationed on the levels below at every tenth floor. I bump fists with the guards as we ascend and stop at the thirty-fourth level when I spot Pearson waiting for us.
The man is one scary-looking badass. Scarred face, bald head, tatted-up from scalp to ankle. He’s a hell-beast wearing a thousand-dollar suit. With a name like Pearson, you’d assume he was some prissy English butler. His real name is Nikolai Volkov, and he’s ex-Bratva. He’s also Declan’s lover. The two of them have been together for as long as I’ve known Declan. It’s not a secret. Everyone knows. Declan swings both ways, so it’s not uncommon for them to share women. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.
Pearson stares down Rafael as we approach. It takes a while for him to warm up to new people, but I doubt that’s the reason why he’s watching Rafael. Pearson is also very protective of Declan, and by association, Andie now as well. Being Declan’s daughter, he would take a bullet to the head for her, and she hasn’t even met the man yet.
I pause in front of the hulking Russian. “Heard you have a present for me.”
Pearson grunts and we follow him inside. This floor of the building is set up for business, and not the nine-to-five desk job variety. Rafael halts in his tracks when he sees the dark-haired woman bound and gagged on the floor. When she notices him, she starts screaming and yanking on her restraints.
“Why the fuck is she here?” he says with alarm.
Mickey, one of our men, nudges her leg with his shoe until she takes the hint and sits up. She’s crying so hard now, snot is bubbling out of her nose. She may have been a beautiful woman, but I don’t see the allure.
Rafael’s stoic mask slips a notch, and I can see the brief flare of panic. “Where’s Sarah? Is she okay?”
I jerk my chin to Mickey, and he bends down over the woman and rips the duct tape off her mouth.
“Fucking nasty,” he sneers in disgust when a string of mucus trails a line from her face to the tape. He tosses the whole lot in her lap and wipes his hands off on his blue jeans while grumbling curses under his breath.
“Rafe, please. Please . Help me. Please ,” the woman, Meribella, uselessly begs. She’s not making it out of here alive and she knows it.
Rafael jerks his eyes away from the pleading woman. “She’s Sarah’s nanny. She’s harmless.”
I almost laugh in his face. Even the tiniest kitten isn’t harmless. It still has claws and sharp, pointy teeth.
“She’s Maximillian Rossi’s mistress. Or was,” I helpfully add for her benefit and wink at her.
She cries even harder when she realizes what I mean. Fake tears that don’t fool me one damn bit. This woman is a viper in disguise. A whore who will spread her legs for anyone that will help her live a life of luxury. Jewelry, cars, a rent-free room in a luxurious mansion, a weekly allowance. Not a care in the world. The only jobs she had to do were to suck Rossi’s dick and babysit.
As if seeing her for the first time, Rafael crouches down in front of her and grabs her chin. He twists her face left, then right.
With trembling lips, Meribella stutters something in garbled Spanish about him being the only man she cared about. That screwing Rossi didn’t mean anything. That she and Rafael could run away together. Live off the money Rossi gave her.
I keep my hand on my gun just in case Rafael decides to grow a conscience. Luckily, he doesn’t. He pushes her face away and stands back up. The mood in the room shifts as anger rolls off him, so thick you can taste it.
Switching back to English, Meribella continues her pathetic begging. “Please, Rafe. Tell them to let me go. I promise not to say anything. You won’t see me again. I swear.”
It’s hilarious, the look of hope in her red, tear-swollen eyes.
“If you think because I fucked you a few times, you mean anything to me, you value your worth on this earth way too much. The only woman I care about is Andie.”
Rafael’s disgust is apparent. I would be too if I found out I had stuck my dick in one of Rossi’s fucktoys.
As Meribella continues trying to convince him to let her go, I find it funny how she hasn’t, not once, asked about the little girl she was in charge of caring for.
“Where’s Sarah?” Rafael demands to know.
“You’ll need to speak with Andie about that.”
Declan will defer to whatever Andie wants to do regarding the girl.
“Will you shut the hell up?” I say to the woman on the floor. Her shrieks and screaming wails are giving me a headache, and I can’t hear myself think.
Just as I raise my gun to silence her, Rafael kicks her in the head, the crack of bone loud in the open room. The bitch’s eyes roll until only the whites show, and she collapses sideways onto the floor. I’m greeted with blessed silence.
Rafael doesn’t stop there. Mickey, Pearson, and I stand back and watch as he brings his boot down on her head, over and over, until her skull cracks open. It’s a gory mess. Thank God Pearson covered the floor with a tarp.
With heaving breaths and blood splattered up his legs, Rafael rakes a hand through his hair and looks over at me. This is the savage animal I’d heard stories about.
“I think you’re going to fit right in,” I tell him.
“Fuck you,” he replies, then spits on Meribella’s mangled corpse. “Once my father and Alejandro are dead, I’m done and taking Andie?—”
He shuts up and stalks off to the stainless-steel sink, splashing some water over his face.
Andie isn’t going anywhere. If he thinks otherwise, he’ll be sharing a grave alongside the rest of his worthless family.