45. CHAPTER 40
AXL
Priest didn’t ask any questions when I told him I needed him today.
I told him what I suspect David Carter has been doing to my girl, and he’s just as ready to kill him as I am.
I know I can trust him not to go to the Sinclairs with this yet.
I don’t want them trying to stop me from finding out what I need to know.
We’re both focused on David Carter’s black Mercedes three cars ahead of us, and I can see Priest’s jaw working.
“If he touched her, I’m killing him,” I say, breaking the silence. I keep my eyes on the road and my hands steady on the wheel. “I don’t give a fuck about the investigation or what the Sinclairs need from him. He’s dead.”
“I know.” Priest loudly taps his foot beside me. “No one ever needs to know about it but us.”
That’s why I brought him and didn’t want Kase and Crew with us.
They would’ve been on my side and helped, but the fewer who know about this, the better.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if my girl’s father was raping her in her bed at night, then there’s only one fucking reasonable action for me to take.
David doesn’t go to his house. He keeps heading north for another twenty minutes, leading us deeper into a wooded area. He turns onto a side road that doesn’t have a street sign and follows it through a tree line before pulling up to a house I’ve never seen before.
“Do you know this place?” I pull off the road and park far enough back that he won’t spot us through the trees.
“No.” Priest is already checking his phone. “It’s not in any of the records that we pulled on him.”
We give him five minutes inside the house, and then we move. The house is modest compared to what David Carter can afford, so it’s easy enough for him to keep off the books. We’ll look up who this house is registered to later. We come around the side, and I look through a window.
David is in the kitchen with a woman. She’s maybe in her early twenties with dark hair, wearing a tight tank top and low-rise jeans. She’s not restrained. There’s no indication that she’s here against her will. She’s leaning against the counter while he talks to her, and she’s smiling at him.
But that doesn’t mean shit. The women we’ve pulled out of fucked-up situations weren’t always chained up either. Some of them are conditioned to stay. If they’ve been raised in a life of sex work, some of them don’t know anything else. We’ve seen it all.
Priest looks through the window and then back at me. He nods, both of us in agreement that we’re going in.
I try the back door. It’s unlocked.
We don’t bother with our masks. I want David Carter to see my fucking face. I walk through the door and into the kitchen to where he’s talking to the woman. David Carter’s face goes white, and his jaw practically hits the floor.
The woman screams and drops the glass in her hand. It shatters on the tile floor, and she backs into the counter. Priest comes in behind me and positions himself between her and the doorway. Nobody’s leaving.
“Axl—what the fuck is this?” David puts his hands up and takes a step closer to the woman, positioning her behind him. “How did you find—”
I grab him by the throat and slam him into the refrigerator hard. The shit on top of it crashes to the floor. His head bounces off the stainless steel, and his hands claw at my wrist.
“What did you do to her?” I squeeze his throat and watch his face turn red. “What did you do to Saylor?”
“I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about—” He’s choking, and his eyes are bulging, and the woman behind me is screaming for me to stop.
I drag him off the fridge and throw him onto the kitchen floor. He hits the tile on his back, and I’m on top of him before he can roll over. I pin him with my knee on his chest and drive my fist into his face over and over. Blood sprays from his nose.
“She has nightmares about someone pinning her down and raping her in her bed.” I fist the front of his shirt and pull his face up to mine.
“It’s been happening for years. And you’re a fucking creep with a thing for young women.
So I’m going to ask you one more goddamn time. What did you do to your daughter?”
I leave out the part about him also being a known trafficker. I don’t want him to know everything I know unless it comes to that.
The look on David Carter’s face isn’t what I expected. His eyes go wide, and there’s a devastation in his expression that I wasn’t prepared for.
“What?” His voice cracks and blood is running from his nose into his mouth.
“She has nightmares about—No. No. Axl, I would never—” He grabs my wrist with both hands, but he’s not trying to pull me off.
He’s holding on, pleading with me to listen.
“I would never hurt my daughter. It makes me fucking sick that you would even think that.”
“You’re a fucking asshole.” I tighten my grip on his shirt, still not convinced. “You have this girl that you’re keeping here. She’s less than half your age and not your wife. Do you expect me to believe you’re above crossing the fucking line?”
“She’s not—” He looks toward the woman. She’s pressed against the wall, watching us with Priest standing beside her. “She’s here by her own choice. And, Jesus, Axl. An affair isn’t the same thing as fucking incest or rape.”
He’s not wrong about that, but I know something happened to my girl. “So you’re saying that you’ve never touched her? And you want me to believe that?”
“Listen to me.” His voice changes, and something in his eyes shifts from fear to desperation.
“I have done terrible things. Things that will come for me eventually. But I’ve never laid a hand on Saylor.
She’s my daughter, and I love her. If someone is hurting her—” His face crumbles.
“If someone has hurt my baby girl, I will fucking take care of it.”
I stare at him, and I’m looking for the lie. I’ve interrogated enough men to know what lying looks like. But with the tears in his eyes, he looks like a man who just found out his world is ending.
Fuck, I don’t think he’s lying. I only want that to be true if I’m wrong about someone hurting Saylor. But if she was abused and it wasn’t David, then I still don’t know what happened to her. Or what her trafficker father has done that made her accessible for some other sick fuck.
I let go of his shirt and stand up. He doesn’t move from the floor right away. He presses his hand against his nose and then scrambles to his feet.
“Now you listen to me, son. I appreciate that you want to protect her, and I’m going to get to the bottom of this, but you need to understand what’s going to happen.
” He’s harder than he was before. He looks up at me and wipes the blood off his chin.
“Saylor is going to marry after she’s no longer your Dove, Axl. It’s already arranged.”
“You’re damn right she is. She’s marrying me.”
David actually laughs. It’s a wet, bloody sound, and it pisses me off more than anything he’s said so far.
“You think you get to decide that? I’m the one who gets to decide my daughter’s future.
You don’t have the authority to marry anyone without Council approval, and your father has already made his decision about your match. ”
I’m so fucking tired of these fucks telling me what Saylor and I are going to fucking do. “My father can go fuck himself. And so can you.”
“Your father and I are in agreement on this.” He spits blood onto the floor and straightens his shirt. “You want to protect her? Then walk away and let me make sure she’s safe.”
“And you think you’ve done a good job of that so fucking far?”
I’m moving toward him. I’m going to kill him like I should’ve done in the first place, but Priest’s hand catches my arm, jerking me back.
“We’re done here,” Priest says to David, but then he looks at me. “Let’s go. Now.”
I shrug his hand off my arm. I look once more at David and the blood on his face from where I punched him.
“If I find out you lied to me about hurting her, you won’t see me coming when I take your ass out. And I’m marrying your daughter. So make this easy on yourself and make it fucking happen.”
I turn and walk out the way I came in. Fuck him. He’s as good as dead anyway, once the Sinclairs have what they need. I have connections too, and if anyone thinks they’re going to keep me from having what’s mine, they’re all going to learn how fast I’ll burn everything to the fucking ground.