Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
EMERSON
Relief and hope mingled with the fear that held me in its grip.
Every minute Ava was in their hands was a minute closer to losing her for good.
But if it was one thing I admired about my brother, it was his precision and patience.
He had gained his power by taking his time.
His enemies looked over their shoulders for months and sometimes years before he struck.
And when he struck, he was methodical and deadly.
I clutched my desk, hating that I’d dragged Ava into this mess. Hating that she was in trouble and possibly hurt, that she wasn’t here with me, that I had told her I would protect her and instead I’d let her slip through my fingers.
A knock at the door halted the bombarding thoughts.
“Enter,” I said, pulling my gun and stepping to the side of the door.
I didn’t trust anyone now. No one but Pack and the few men who had remained loyal to me since the beginning.
The ones those fools hadn’t dared approach to betray me because they would have been dead within seconds of voicing any thought of mutiny.
“It’s me,” Pack said, coming into the office. I lowered the gun as he closed the door. His muscles were tight with tension, his face lined with anger. “We flushed out another traitor.” He threw a patch of bloody skin onto my desk.
I walked over and studied the snake tattoo on it. The same that had been on the cheek of the man who took Ava. Flashes of white rage tore across my vision.
“Looks like they have their own brand,” he said. “I’ve had every man on the property stripped and searched for the tattoo. The one I found it on was kind enough to tell me they all have it, before I cut his tongue out when he failed to give me anything else of use.”
“Copying everything from us,” I mumbled. “Our moves, our strategies, our brand.”
“Looks like it.”
Rolling out the strain in my neck, I looked over at Pack. “I think it’s time we change our ways, Pack. Think you’re up for it?”
“I’ve been by your side since the beginning, Cade. I’ll be there till the end.”
“Emerson,” I said. “Emerson Tides.”
He gave me a goofy grin. “You never looked much like a Cade.”
I would have laughed, but there was too much at stake to let my guard down.
“What’s the plan, Emerson?”
“Something new and something unexpected. It’s time to take my power back and show these assholes they can’t break me.”
For the first time in months, I felt like myself.
The same, yet different. Still powerful and terrifying but changed by a spirited woman who saw below the identity I had created and into the man I’d forgotten I was.
Letting my hatred and need to show I was stronger than my brother drive me.
Now I had a new drive: Ava. And a new future that offered a remedy to the loneliness I’d covered with brutality, greed, and one-night stands.
The possibility of a woman at my side and of a reconciliation I’d never imagined I needed.
“Pull six men. Only the ones who have been with us from the early days. No one else. Breaker, included.” There was no doubt of where his loyalty was.
His cousin had been Jill’s husband. He would fight to the death by my side.
“They’re watching us, expecting me to attack, but instead, we’ll go to the safe house.
We tell every man to load into the cars.
Each car takes a different direction to the safe house in Umberg.
That way, we all head in different directions.
Ours is the only one that heads to Newpen instead. ”
Newpen was the only safe house my men didn’t know about.
Only me and Pack. It was there only for emergency.
An empty estate with twenty-four-seven security by an elite team of ex militia I had hired years ago.
They kept the house secure and stocked, ran it like it was theirs and even lived in the west wing of the house.
I hadn’t stepped into it more than twice in the last ten years that I’d owned it.
And none of my men even knew it or the team existed.
I could have called them in to help me raid the warehouse and get Ava, but I suspected those four men wouldn’t be enough in addition to the few I had left.
The house and the team were my last resort backup. If things ever went to hell and there were no options but to run, that was the place. A final stop before I slipped away and disappeared. An emergency plan that I had never used…until now.
“Got it.” He was out of the office before I could say more. He’d get everything in order, giving me time to send coordinates to Greyson.
I left the office, heading to my bedroom to grab a few things.
I didn’t know if I’d ever come back to this house.
If things didn’t work out, I never would.
Reminders of Ava were all over the room.
Her scent, her book, the lotions and beauty products she’d moved from the guest room.
The clothes she’d worn the night before strewn on the floor where I’d ripped them from her.
My eyes leaped to the bed, eyeing the wrinkled sheets shoved back.
I moved closer, seeing the syringe tossed to the side.
They had drugged her and taken her. Naked.
The ire snapped through me like the end of a whip.
They’d touched her naked body and taken her out of my home that way.
When I was through killing the others, I would torture the ones who touched her until they were pleading for death.
Starting with their hands and then their eyes.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I threw a few things in a bag.
I stared at the bed, remembering how I’d curled her body into mine and held her all night.
Wishing I had stayed in bed with her. I could almost feel her skin under my fingers, hear her steady breaths, smell the fragrance of her shampoo.
The moment left me riven until I picked my head up and remembered my purpose.
I would bring her home and bring my wrath down upon the shitheads who had dared take what was mine.
They wanted a war. Well, I was about to bring that war to their front door and trample them with the force of it.