CHAPTER ELEVEN
MADDOX
After sending my good-night text to Tessa, I strut into the penthouse as if I haven’t been hiding out for hours, biding my time until Axel calmed down. Vincent Lund obviously squealed to him the second we’d hung up, causing all hell to break loose.
Ryker and Mercy came back tonight. That’s both good and bad. Ryker brings an added level of intensity with him, but they won’t yell with Remy sleeping.
The family room is empty, and I manage to make it all the way up the back staircase, but before I reach my room, a familiar hand darts out, yanking me off my path.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Cash growls once I’m fully inside his room.
Knife in hand, my arm swings out to the side with my rebuttal. “You’ve got some balls, coming at me, when you’re the one who set that shit up.”
A laugh floats from the dark corner. Jax.
They were hunkered down in here, lights off, waiting for me.
It’s so reminiscent of our teen years, when we used to sneak in and out of the penthouse and share some crazy-ass stories of the mayhem we wreaked while Axel and Ryker were sleeping or tending to things.
Growing up in a resort was a daily lesson in moderation. That we often failed.
Never one to outright admit his transgressions—wisdom—Cash brushes off my accusation. “I had nothing to do with your inability to stay focused on a goddamn call.”
The sound of Axel’s and Ryker’s voices downstairs drift up to us, and Jax jumps off the couch.
“I got this,” he whispers, ambling toward me. “I want full details later, but I’ll buy you a few minutes.”
I pat his back as he slides through the cracked-open door. “Thanks, man.”
“I called you a dozen times. What were you doing?” Concern laces Cash’s question. He knows he fucked with me at the wrong time. Otherwise, he’d be cracking jokes.
“I was on my phone, trying to do damage control, so I couldn’t answer.” I close my knife, pocket it, and plop down on his sofa, rubbing my forehead as my heart practically beats out of my chest. “I’m in trouble, Cash. Not the fun kind.”
He’s momentarily startled because he knows I wouldn’t admit that unless it was bad. “Lay it on me.”
“That call today was because Vincent Lund’s grandson is being accused of killing another Mafia don’s son.”
Leaning against the wall, he crosses his arms, probably anticipating where this is headed. “Did he do it?”
I shake my head. “No.”
His gaze never veers from mine. “How do you know?”
“Because I did it.”
“What?” he gasps, apparently not following along as well as I thought. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
Bending forward, I rest my elbows on my knees and release a tattered breath. “I caught him hurting a girl, raping her.”
“Okay, noble then.” He halts there, soaking everything in. “That’s defendable. We just need to get ahead of it. Was the girl someone we know?”
I glance away, my focal point landing on his vintage playing-card collection, a sign of what an incredible bluffer he is. “Just a terrible scene I walked in on.”
He sighs. “Which Mafia?”
I throw myself against the back of the couch, my lungs burning. “You don’t want to fucking know.”
“Which Mafia, Mad?”
Keeping my eyes fixed on the skylight in his peaked ceiling, I swallow hard. “Makarov.”
“Jesus,” he hisses. “You killed Niko Makarov?”
“Yep.”
“Fuck.” His voice is riddled with the same anxiety seeping from my pores. “When was that?”
“Two and a half years ago.”
“So much for getting ahead of it.” He’s unraveling now, which is to be expected. “They won’t stop until they have a body for restitution.”
“Right,” I say on autopilot. “Or ten.”
And because he hasn’t had time to process every angle of this, like I have, and he doesn’t have the full story, he pitches a senseless inquisition. “If he was raping a girl, why didn’t you just come clean about it back then? Axel could have—”
“I didn’t want Axel to know. Still don’t.”
“You don’t want me to know what?” Axel shoves the door open, leering at me, his ash-brown hair unusually tousled, like he’s been running his fingers through it. “Get the fuck down to the conference room.”
He turns and walks away, confident I’ll follow.
He’s going to tear into me, but from his perspective, I deserve it.
He’s the most understanding and fair man I know, and despite our seven-year age difference, he’s the only real father I’ve ever had.
So, he already senses that I’m spiraling, which means he’ll unleash his wrath, but it won’t be too brutal.
I peel myself off the couch and traipse toward the hall, but Cash holds me back.
“Why have you been escorting Tessa to and from work?”
“That’s why she agreed to it,” I mutter half to myself. I have no idea what she told him, and I don’t want him sniffing around, trying to figure things out, so I go with a partial truth. “The girl is under my skin, so I found an angle and convinced her to spend some time with me.”
He narrows his eyes, aware that I’ve always been infatuated with her, but still not buying it.
Chasing after girls isn’t really my thing.
They usually do the chasing. Some would say that’s a perk of growing up with millions that were eventually turned into billions and the keys to a seedy kingdom.
But it’s actually a crash course in humility because it’s unclear whether they’re after me or my empire. La Lune Noire is what’s really special.
“And she has nothing to do with this?” he presses.
I huff with a disbelieving scowl. “Of course not.”
He knows I’m not sharing the whole story, but he won’t push it.
Not now that he realizes what I’m facing.
The two of us trudge to the conference room.
That’s how we approach things. If one goes down, we all go down.
For that reason alone, I know I could tell them what I did, and they’d stand beside me.
After a mild freak-out. But I need more information first. I can’t bear to be the one who brings the whole family down.
Ryker shoves a glass overfilled with whiskey at me when I cross the threshold. “You’re gonna fucking need this.”
I take a hefty swill, staring at him over the rim with a smart-ass glare, before clinking the crystal tumbler with the one he’s holding. “Thanks, bro. You always come through.”
“I’d usually say the same for you, Mad. What the fuck happened?”
That’s a javelin to the chest. I want him to believe I always come through. I had every intention of handling this so he knew he could step back a bit. He’s been chained to this place since he was nineteen, and unlike Axel, this was never what he wanted.
“Sit,” Axel demands from his head-of-the-table chair. He isn’t even looking at me yet. He’s spinning his roulette wheel on his Casino Tourbillon watch to keep himself calm.
“I’d rather fucking stand.” I gulp down the remainder of my drink, relishing the burn, and set the glass on the table. “Let me have it, but don’t ask me to be still while you do it.”
Jax is lounging on the other side of the room on a cushy leather love seat. He gives a slight nod, and that subtle gesture says more than any words could. Own it, but do it in a way that works for you.
When I pull my gaze away from him, I’m shocked that the yelling hasn’t begun. They seem to be scrutinizing me, so I let them. I can do this all night. But I need to move, so I tread around the perimeter of the room.
“Something’s off here,” Axel begins, “and I can’t put my finger on what that is. If you’d like to fill me in from the start, we can skip the bullshit.”
It would be a rookie move to speak before I’m certain what he’s pissed about. So, I silently pace in response.
“Fine,” he barks after a stretch of nothing. “You were asked to step up, to take one goddamn call, to move over to the more confidential side of our operation, which was a huge torch being passed on to you. And you had a girl under your desk for it. Let’s start there.”
That’s all speculation, so I maintain my stride and wait.
“Not just any girl,” Ryker breaks in, smooth and calculated. “Tessa. We checked the security cameras.”
That’s when I halt. And also when I decide to launch my next move.
To an outsider, what I’m about to do would probably seem like I’m throwing someone under the bus to save my own ass, but that’s not the case.
Because this is the kind of ammo that’s like a boomerang.
It’s going to come right back and smack me in the face. But that’s all part of the plan.
It’s a deflection stew. If you throw in enough ingredients, they all blend together, and people can’t focus on one flavor.
Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I curl my fingers around my butterfly knife and shrug. “Might want to ask Cash about that.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Axel snarls, eyes searing my little brother.
Cash, who is settled into one of the boardroom chairs, knows exactly what I’m doing and comes through like a fucking champ. “That’s a long story. We’d have to go back to the cabaret girl.”
Jax’s head falls back, lips folded tight to stifle a laugh. And Axel is about thirty seconds from combusting because he glimpses the fuckery we’re determined to lay down.
But Ryker jostles his dice in his palm and investigates. This is an example of good-cop, bad-cop reversal. Ryker is generally the one huffing and puffing, but since Axel is barely composed, Ryker seems amused when he asks Cash, “The cabaret girl who tied you up naked? You want to talk about that?”
Cash scoffs. “You want to know why she did that sh—”
“Because you ditched her,” I cut him off.
“She knew the terms, going in,” he volleys, indignant.
“Stage-five clingers are dangerous,” Jax chimes in. “That was some Fatal Attraction shit.”
“Not quite,” I argue. “She didn’t stalk all of us—”
Axel smacks the conference room table. “Why the hell are we talking about her?”
Cash wags his finger at him. “There was a point to that sidebar.”
When he leaves it at that to guzzle his drink, I feel the love.