Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
K aine watched his mate leave the abandoned ballroom.
His tiger rose with every step she took away from him.
The darkness within him rising to meet the moment.
There was no argument with the animal about following their mate to be sure she was safe.
He trusted his men implicitly, despite this new betrayal.
Hakeem had been fully vetted, so the beast knew Lucky would be safe with him.
It also knew there was a job to be done, and by the time he turned his gaze back to the old man, the tiger had completely taken over his mind.
With a bit of provocation, it would take over his body as well.
“Please, Ezra, let my wife go. You know what her death will do to the girls.”
“Did you give a fuck what Grandfather’s death would do to us?!” his brother shouted, shooting at Charlotte’s feet.
She screamed and passed out. Easy let her hit the floor.
“Please, Kaine, she didn’t have anything to do with this. You know the guild code. Spouses are off-limits.”
Kaine scoffed. “So, you want me to believe that high-ranking members of this guild didn’t orchestrate my grandmother’s death to weaken my grandfather?”
He and Josiah had finally gotten through the tangle of shell companies that had paid off the human to take the fall for Henry’s death.
Within those payments was another set, just as St. Claire had said—three years ago, to a pilot, and a private airstrip.
The one his grandmother used when she visited her family in Arizona.
They’d put the pieces together that the same person had ordered both hits.
Until Eve’s discovery tonight, Kaine would’ve never believed Kenneth capable of either.
How wrong he’d been.
Kenneth’s eyes went wide and Kaine’s heart broke at the confirmation.
His tiger thrashed against him. His brother let off three shots next to Charlotte’s body as grief transformed his face.
Kaine didn’t bother turning to see if Easy had hit the woman, knowing his brother strictly followed the code the triplets had amongst themselves about innocent people.
Kaine was glad that their sister was still outside; Eve wouldn’t have shown restraint.
Besides his personal rules, the Aces had a code as Kenneth had tried to remind him. Spouses were off-limits. Which made what they did to his grandmother even more fucked up.
“Who ordered the hit on my grandmother?” No way Kenneth was in it alone. He was a King, and Henry’s advisor. An Ace had to have ordered the hit.
The old man’s eyes went to the door as Kaine’s security dragged in the head of the Moore household. Behind him were the male’s sons.
“What is going on?” the eldest Moore male asked.
Guilt was all over Jacob Moore’s face, but there was no remorse.
There had been beef between their families long before Kaine was born, beginning and ending with Jacob.
Kaine’s tiger noted it all. Through another door, the rest of Moore’s family was brought in.
A younger son and his mate, still in her evening wear, though it was dirty in spots.
In the midst of it all, Kaine sat calmly as Eve’s plan played out before him.
He held up his hand to cut through the theatrics of the screaming and protests. “Just a little while longer,” he promised the waiting members.
As they waited on Eve’s return, Easy changed the song on the DJ’s laptop, bopping along to it. He could only shake his head at his little brother.
“I found him, brother,” Eve reported into his earpiece. She must have replaced hers with a backup.
Perfect. Now everything was coming together.
“Explain yourself now!” Jacob demanded.
His outrage marked him as one of the Aces. Who else would try and order the newly crowned Ace of Spades?
“Who the fuck you think you talking to?” Easy asked, shooting one of Moore’s sons.
The tiger hit the ground with a curse. “The fuck, Easy!” Will called out, holding onto his bleeding leg.
Eve busted through the closed doors, security dragging Benjamin Perretti between them. Griff came up behind them, his suit tattered, looking like he’d taken the brunt of the chaos that had happened earlier.
“Look what I found for you, brother. He was trying to sneak away,” Eve announced.
“Kaine,” Kenneth wheezed out. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, you’re ready to talk now that your wound is healing?” Kaine turned his attention to the old man.
Along with the shell companies he and Josiah had found, they’d discovered that a lot of the money had come through Perretti’s company.
It seemed Kaine had figured out two of the other Aces in the room.
There was still a third to find, to weed out all of the traitors.
He refused to believe the three were not involved together.
To approve a hit on one of the Aces without approval from the other was an instant death sentence.
No amount of negotiating would negate that.
Kaine settled back in his chair, gun in his lap. He smiled at Kenneth, his canines touching his bottom lip. “Now, old man, you were explaining to me, the head of this guild, how you conspired with someone in upper management to take out your best friend and his mate.”
The old man looked at him with pain-filled eyes.
Kaine wanted to feel empathy, but his tiger had fully taken over.
There was no room for the human emotion.
The hunter had been activated and nothing would calm the beast until his prey was fully devoured.
Getting irritated at just the thought of a momentary lapse, Kaine shot Kenneth in the other knee.
“You were saying?”
“Kaine,” one of Moore’s sons said.
Kaine turned to him. “Are you responsible for what happened tonight? Your father and a fellow guild member tried to have me and my mate killed, are you admitting your part in it?”
Moore’s mate gasped.
“Now, Kenneth, who else are you protecting? Who has bought the loyalty that you’d given to my grandfather for all these years?” Kaine resumed his position, driving his gun into the wound on the old man’s knee so it wouldn’t heal as quickly. It wasn’t yet loaded with silver, but that was next.
“You will never get away with this!” Benjamin Perretti shouted.
“Eve,” Kaine called out to his sister.
With a smile on her face, Eve shot Benjamin. The old man howled and hit the floor, writhing in pain. Moore’s son stepped back as the lion slid close to him.
“My sister is loaded with silver, so your co-conspirator is having a harder time of it,” Kaine informed Kenneth.
“This all ends for the person who confesses first,” he said louder to the rest of the room.
“We didn’t have anything to do with this,” Jacob snapped.
Kaine chuckled. “Hear that, old man? He said you and you alone killed my grandparents.”
Eve lifted Charlotte from the floor and put a knife to her neck. The woman whimpered, tears streaming down her face.
“Don’t do this, please,” Charlotte begged.
Kaine stood over the man he’d trusted more than he trusted his own father, elevating him to the same space as his grandfather. “Last chance, Ken.”
Griff stepped up behind Kaine and the room went still as his enforcer and friend lifted his gun to Kaine’s head. Oh, shit was getting real funny now. He chuckled even while his tiger howled in betrayal.
Kaine turned to face the male he’d trusted with his family’s safety for the last year.
“I understand your loyalty to your grandfather, but are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Griff stared him in his eyes, the mask of respect falling from his face. In its place was hate the other male had obviously harbored and hid for years.
“That spot should’ve never been yours. It was always meant to be ours.”
Kaine sighed, mourning the friendship he thought he’d built. Easy pulled the trigger before Griff could even register that his own life was forfeit. His blood splattered across Kaine’s face and clothes and it took him a minute to move.
He hadn’t expected this level of betrayal.
With Griff’s death, the last piece clicked into place.
He reshuffled all the facts he thought he had, realizing that he’d been played from the beginning.
Kenneth had always moved as a King, maneuvering in the background, taking orders, the whole while orchestrating the ultimate betrayal while his grandfather’s back was turned.
Had he always coveted Henry’s position? How had he sown discord and hate between Henry and the other two Aces?
Jacob, he understood, but the Perretti family had never had issues with them.
All this fucking time.
There was no third Ace to find.
Kaine turned to Kenneth and the old man looked broken, devastated by the death of his grandson. His tiger wanted to ravage the male, tear him apart and scatter the bloody pieces, but all of sudden, exhaustion weighed on him.
“Let the choppers sing,” Kaine ordered his siblings softly as he pulled the trigger on his godfather.
Torture was beyond him at this point. He wanted it all over.
Easy and Eve each fired a single shot, killing both Jacob and Benjamin. Their mates screamed, but other than that, everything around them had gone silent.
Moore’s son stood, the wound on his leg healing as he leaned on his brother for balance. “Kaine, my brothers and I had nothing to do with this,” Will assured him. “We never agreed with our father’s beef with your family.”
Kaine nodded because he believed him. His tiger’s senses were cranked to the max; even the smallest hint of a lie would be scented out. He looked at Benjamin’s daughter.
“Is the rot only at the head, or should I take the whole body?”
Defiance lit Sidney’s eyes. “These were moves made by three men reaching for what didn’t belong to them.”
Their guild operated solely on loyalty, and if that couldn’t be counted on at the highest level, then what they had would fall like a house of cards. The room was quiet, the women’s screams now pitiful whimpers.