Chapter 29
KIM
Itraced my fingers along the bar as I walked toward the hallway. Beasty had only been in there for two minutes. If that.
"Shouldn't we hear talking?" I asked, my skin prickling.
The outdated heater in this place was loud, but we should still be able to hear them, especially with the office door cracked. Silence grew behind me.
When I glanced back, Lake tensed, then took off down the hallway. I followed right on his heels, sliding into the room. My stomach dropped as Lake ran through a second door to the outside, the cool air blowing in and letting the heat out.
There was no Beasty. Only a woman strapped to a chair.
A bottled blonde who'd dyed her hair so much, it was brittle. Cheap, black mascara painted her face like a clown.
Where the hell was Beasty?
Oh, God. I...That meant...
Sharp pain bloomed in my chest as I stood there, staring at the woman pleading with me to untie her. She was shouting but none of her words made any sense.
Joaquin knocked into my back as he scrambled after Lake, screaming into the empty parking lot.
Atlas struggled with what to do before turning back and untying the woman. Linda. This had to be Linda.
"Kim!" Lake shook me. I met his eyes. His were wide, and his pupils dilated as if he was high on some kind of stimulant. But it was the pinched the skin at the corners of his eyes, the brackets around his mouth that only appeared when he was stressed, that knocked me out of my episode.
Lake was afraid. I couldn't fall apart when the best of us was broken too.
I had to be stronger.
Like a band snapped, noise rushed back in. The woman was crying into her hands, the ropes lying around her waist.
"Where is she?" Atlas barked into her face. The woman didn't even twitch.
"I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I didn't want to do it." She sounded old. She was broken too.
"What happened?" I demanded, walking to the desk, slamming my hands on the top. She jumped, peeking at me through her fingers.
I flashed hot and cold, watching her. Each second passing was a second too long.
"Where is she!" My voice was loud, cracking, devastated.
"Two men. They tied me up. Said this might be their only chance." She sucked in a deep breath before hacking up a lung. "When she came in, they took her."
"No. She would have fought. We would have heard." Joaquin pulled at his hair as he stood half in the office and half-outside like he wasn't sure where he should be.
Lake was on the phone, mumbling to someone in the doorway to the parking lot.
"They had guns. Said they'd shoot me if she made a sound. That's how they took her. She let them, to save my life. And hers." She looked up at me. Her irises clouded at the edges from age. Her gaze begged me to understand. "They would have shot her if she'd yelled for you."
She was right. They would have, I knew they would.
Because they were angry over Storm when that was their own fucking fault. I curled my fingers into my palms on the desk, forcing them against the hardwood as I tuned her out.
A calm settled over me.
They wouldn't kill her yet. They'd want us to suffer. If we were lucky, they wouldn't kill her at all and simply use her for bait to draw us out, like they'd wanted to do with the Pescis.
It was so fucking ironic. They were so unoriginal.
We'd get her back.
"Her GPS says the parking lot." Atlas fled the office and we chased after him.
But he didn't get far. About fifteen feet from the office door, her phone lay on the ground, cracked and dusty.
He picked it up and glared at it like he could will it to her.
If only...
A car zipped around the corner, one side lifting so it turned in on two tires. Books jumped out.
"Where is she? Tell me you're joking and they didn't fucking take her!"
A black SUV rolled in next. Parker rolled down the window. "Please tell me you did not let your girl out of your sight with Gio and Adrian on a tear?" His face was stern, all traces of the shit-stirring man gone.
"We fucked up," Joaquin said, his words strangled. "We fucked up." He pulled at his hair and Atlas wrapped him up in a hug, murmuring in his ear.
"Books," I said and he turned to me. "Do Gio and Adrian have any places in this town? Residences, associates, friends?"
Books furrowed his brow. "I don't know. I was focused on the Pescis, not them."
An idea occurred to me. Lake was going to hate it, but he looked like he hated everything right then anyway. The world itself was his enemy.
"What about the leftover men? Would they know?" Time was of the essence and it seemed to be slipping through my fingers. How much time had already passed? Two minutes? Ten? They couldn't be far.
We should be running after them, but there were three roads close to here. They could have gone in any of those directions.
Parker twisted his mouth to the side and he turned to Grey. "What do you think? You think they're trustworthy?"
"I think they hate Gio and Adrian. Those two should have been family, and instead, they started killing their men."
"We killed some of their guys, and they don't give a shit about that. What does that say about their loyalty?" Lake shouted.
Parker didn't react to his anger. "You have no allegiance to them so they don't hold it against you." He called Jorge on speakerphone.
"I'm here," Jorge said.
"Ask the men if there are any known places that Gio and Adrian would hide. They took Cressida."
Jorge cursed, and called the question to the men. They sounded like they were inside somewhere from the lack of outside noises.
Men yelled back, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. They were too far away from the phone.
Jorge came back on the line. "No." He blew out a hard breath. "They don't know where they could be. Said his mom moved away when she was pregnant, and they never put roots down here."
My stomach sank and twisted up into a fucked up knot all at once. I gripped my chest, as if physically pushing on my heart would stop it from breaking.
"We need to search for her. We can't do nothing," I rasped.
Lake nodded, the action so violent, it almost seemed like his head was going to break off. "Right. We need to search."
Joaquin's eyes were haunted while Atlas' eyes burned with determination. Beasty was taken and we weren't. This was our chance to find her. To save her. This time, we were in the position to get her back.
In a sick twisted way, I was ready. I would burn the world down for Beasty and I needed her to survive to see it.
She needed to know we would do anything to get her back.
Lake
My mind went into overdrive. All the possible routes they could have taken her, the places they could have holed up in. Every single fucking possibility was like a bullet in my brain so much that I felt shredded.
But time was ticking, and we were losing it by not doing anything except standing in this godforsaken parking lot.
I spun, making a decision that could save Beasty or very likely get her killed.
"You only brought Jorge and a few men?" I asked Parker.
He nodded, but there was a minute change in his expression that said he knew what I was thinking.
"Those fucking leftovers. We need their help." I cupped the back of my neck, stabbing my nails into my flesh until blood trickled from the cuts.
Did I trust those assholes? Absolutely not.
Did I still need as many hands on deck as possible? Hell yes.
"We need some kind of fucking leverage over those guys. Otherwise, if they find her, they'll try to hold her against us as revenge. Or to take their control back." I was talking to myself more than anyone else, yet it was all coming together.
"Half the men," Kim croaked, coming to stand closer to me. "We leave half the men here. Ask Tandy who’s related to who. But keep her hidden so nothing comes back on her. If—Damn it! That won't work."
"Call Desiree," Atlas said, holding Joaquin tight to his chest with one arm around his back and cupping the back of his head.
"Get as much information on their families, as much as she knows, and we make it known to the men that if they fuck us over, we'll burn their entire lives down around their ears, starting with their families. "
"On it." Kim placed his phone to his ear and turned away.
"Get Jorge back on the phone," I demanded of Parker, not giving a fuck if he was offended by my tone or not.
He smirked and raised his phone, but before he hit the dial button, his thumb hovering, he glanced at me. "They're going to want to know that you'll lead them." He let that bomb dangle between us.
I didn't like that. But Beasty was more important.
"Fine," I gritted out.
One corner of his mouth tugged up as he hit Call. "Jorge. Turn the camera around. Lake has something to say to the men."
Jorge agreed, and when Parker handed me the phone, I saw a room full of potential saviors or backstabbers. Their faces were tight, like they were waiting for execution.
Sucking in a breath, I laid it all out, watching their expressions on the grainy screen. "Gio and Adrian have taken Cressida. She's the love of our lives—" I didn't miss how some eyebrows jumped up—"and they will fucking die."
The man closest to the camera nodded like he longed for those cunts to die too.
"We need your help. We didn't bring enough men here to search for her. Not effectively." I swallowed and it felt like sand lodging in my throat. "Will you help us?"
The men exchanged looks and I wished like hell I was there in person to gauge their expressions and get a feel for their authenticity. It just couldn't be measured over devices like this.
"We'll help." An older man in the back called. "You'll take over then? We’ll live? And Gio and Adrian are dead?"
I gave a curt nod. "I'll be your new boss, but there will be changes." Fuck, what was I doing? I wasn't negotiating with them. We didn't have time for that. "And Gio and Adrian will more than die. They'll suffer."
"Good enough for us."
Atlas