Chapter 36
CONNOR
The fight was over far too fucking easily.
One minute my brother and I were back-to-back, kicking Crusade losers’ asses all over the clearing and kind of having a great time in the process.
The next, our opponents were all running away with their tails tucked like they’d collectively decided they’d had enough.
That should have been our first clue, but stupidly neither of us questioned it until we got back to the house and found Haze kicking the crap out of his motorbike’s flat tire, then we realized we’d been played. We’d been distracted, and now it was too late.
Eve was gone.
“I don’t care if you have to call in the National Guard, Mom,” Andrew shouted at his phone, pacing the living room, his face red from anger and frustration, “you’re the president! If anyone has the means to find her, it’s you!”
Her voice crackled over the speaker so we could all hear.
“And as the president, I cannot use the country's resources and connections to track down a known criminal’s daughter simply because my son is in love. I’m sorry, Andrew, but maybe when you’re older you will understand the level of responsibility on my shoulders and realize that acting for personal gain is vehemently against everything I stand for.
” President Knightsbridge was patient but firm in her devastating response.
“I love you, Andrew, but I cannot help you with this.”
“You can,” he growled, “but you won’t. If anything happens to Evie, I will hold you personally responsible.”
She sighed, her breath gusting through the line. “You and everyone else, darling. I hope she turns up okay. Abraham will fix it. I have no doubt.”
The call ended and Andrew hurled his phone across the room, smashing it against the wall in a burst of anger that I think all of us felt along with him.
“Forget it, we don’t need her,” Haze snapped, not taking his bloodshot eyes off his laptop as his fingers flew across the keys.
He’d seen our girl get taken and was silently beating himself up ten times worse than the rest of us for not saving her.
“We need Abraham. He got her into this, he can get her out.”
A cold dread trickled through me. “We’re sure this is about him and not us?” I gestured to Ethan, who was so pale with worry he was practically gray. “Our family is—”
“We’re not sure of anything until we find her,” Haze cut me off, his voice anguished, “but I’m following my gut on this and guessing that the price on her head inspired your friends in the Crusades to make a risky move in kidnapping her.”
“Not my fucking friends,” I snapped, my anger lashing out as I punched a hole in the wall. Fuck. I needed to get a grip, because taking it out on the drywall wasn’t helping find my brat. My love.
I ran a shaking hand through my hair, sick with the knowledge that I’d led her into a trap. If I’d simply ignored the threat from Elijah and left Vinnie to deal with it…but no, I’d been so desperate to prove my worth so he wouldn’t hurt Ethan, I’d played directly into their greasy hands.
Fuck, this was all my fault, despite the fact that Haze thought it was his—for sleeping through the message initially—and Ethan blamed himself for sending Eve home alone.
Brodie and Andrew were just as racked with guilt for simply missing the whole thing until hearing the screeching of tires and Haze’s frantic screams. Haze was taking it the hardest though.
The guy barely ever slept deeply, and the one time he does, this happens?
“I’m going to see what Vinnie knows anyway,” I muttered, already leaving the room to put in a cautious call to my father. The last thing I wanted was to offer him any leverage, but if he knew where Elijah might have taken her…it was worth trying.
To my surprise, my father answered my call on the first ring.
“We had a run-in with Elijah’s crew tonight,” I told him in lieu of a greeting. “Do you know anything about it?”
“I was unaware,” Vinnie replied slowly, thoughtfully. “I imagine you had it handled, though. You’ve kept that scrappy little gang in check for years now.”
I gritted my teeth together hard, trying not to lose my shit no matter how panicked I was inside. Vinnie thrived off getting under people’s skin, and I refused to let him twist this to his advantage.
“I handled them, yes, but they took something that belongs to me and I want it back. Do you have any suggestions where I might find them holed up?”
Vinnie clicked his tongue. “How important was this…thing they stole from you?”
“I will burn this whole fucking city down until they return it,” I said flatly, my hand shaking where I held the phone to my ear.
My father hummed knowingly. “In that case, it sounds like you need my help.”
“Just tell me where those assholes would be hiding and I’ll handle it myself,” I snapped, resisting the urge to break things like Andrew had been doing since the moment we got back without Eve. The entire kitchen was trashed thanks to him, and I understood perfectly.
“I have a few ideas,” Vinnie commented. “I’ll have my guys check them out to see if anything unusual is going on and then let you know what we come up with.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing at the bridge of my nose while trying to maintain composure. “If you could just give me the locations, then—”
“No, we do things my way. You’re not in charge of this organization yet, son, and it’d serve you well to remember that.” Vinnie ended the call on that ominous threat, and my stomach churned with anxiety.
Had I just made this situation ten times worse by involving him?
I had to do something though. It’d been almost half an hour since Eve was taken and—
“I’ve got something!” Haze bellowed through the house, making me take off running in the direction of his voice before I could even finish my thought. “I set up keyword alerts weeks ago, so I’d be notified if any information about Abraham hit the internet.”
“Okay…so what is it?” Brodie pushed, hovering over Haze’s shoulder while the screen displayed strings of code that none of us could understand.
Haze shot him an irritated glance. “It’s a keyword alert from the dark web, dickhead. It takes a minute to get onto the right server and then access whatever website triggered the alert. It’s not like Google.”
Brodie just shrugged, not taking offense. “Okay. So…do the thing faster? Our girl could be—”
His words cut off with the bloodcurdling sound of a woman’s agonized scream ripping through the room, and my whole world collapsed around me as the video feed loaded. That was no random woman’s scream. It was hers. My Eve.
“Holy fuck,” Andrew exclaimed in a horrified whisper. “They’re…”
“They’re torturing her,” Haze finished for him when his voice dried up. “To find Abraham. If he doesn’t show up, then—”
“Don’t!” Brodie snapped, making a cutting motion with his hand. “Don’t say it.”
“Haze, can you find where they’re holding her?
” I asked through the bile rising in my throat.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the image of Evelyn strapped to a chair, hooked to electrodes.
The desperate, agonized arch of her back and the way her neck veins bulged as the current ran through her, then the hysterical sobs that followed…
it would haunt my dreams for a very long time to come.
Even after we got her back safely…because we would.
Haze’s response was the rapid-fire of his fingers across the keys, then the string of code he’d typed transformed into a satellite map with a building pinned with a red flag.
“Got it,” he announced, printing the location as he pushed back from his chair. “Grab your shit, I’m going to finish changing the tire on Eth’s car.” Elijah’s crew had made sure all our vehicles were disabled to prevent anyone following when they made their snatch and grab.
“I’ve already done it,” Andrew snapped. That made us all pause.
My gaze shot to his hands, which were dirty, and the knees of his sweatpants showed evidence of dirt and grease.
He’d been gone for ten minutes or so right when Eth and I had got back and I hadn’t given it a second thought, assuming he was just processing his shock in private. “Let’s go.”
It only took minutes for us all to load up on weapons and climb into Ethan’s Escalade, Haze depositing a hard-sided case into the trunk with a grunt.
“What?” he asked when I quirked a brow in question. “It’s a grenade launcher. I figured once we get our girl out, we can blow the whole damn place to smithereens.”
Well, fuck, that was an idea I could get behind.
“So long as Evie is safe first,” Brodie said quietly, “you can explode anything and anyone you like.”
I liked the sound of that, but personally I wanted to deal with Elijah.
Him…then Abraham. That son of a bitch needed to pay for all the hurt he’d rained down on his innocent daughter and the five of us were just the men for the job.
He might think he was walking into the Crusades’ trap—if he even showed up—but it would be us to pull the trigger and end it for good.
Brat just needed to be okay. If she wasn’t…
No. She would be. There was no other option.