Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
COAST
"I said I've got this." I adjusted the phone against my ear while pulling my keys out of my pocket and pushing one into the lock. "I can handle myself."
Aidan's dry tone came down the line. "I'm sure you can. All I'm saying is watch your back. And be careful with Sinclair Rooney. If anything happens to her, I'll have to have you killed at Elenna's insistence."
I laughed, but he probably wasn't joking. Elenna looked sweet, but she was very protective of her best friends. Only an idiot messed around with people like that.
They say a lot about me, but no one ever calls Coast Riggs an idiot. Not to my face anyway. Not unless they want to choke on their own tongue. After I rip it out.
"Don't worry about Sinclair, she's in good hands." I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Something was off. I glanced around, but nothing looked out of place.
Boxes were still stacked everywhere, waiting to be unpacked.
After fire fucked up my last home, I'd barely moved in here.
Something held me back from making it comfortable.
Possibly the fact people wanted me dead.
Unpacking wasn't top of my list of priorities.
"She better be," Aidan said. "Just remember you can still play hockey without a cock."
"That's debatable," I said distractedly. "I need all my body parts intact."
"What is it?" He clearly picked up on my unease.
"Nothing to worry about, Mum," I said as lightly as I could. "I'd never forget your birthday."
"Do you need help?" He sounded worried now. That was a quick change from threatening me to giving a shit. Then again, the threats were lighthearted, sort of, and the worry wasn't necessarily misplaced.
I laughed. "I don't know, Mum. I'm sure I'll sort something out. You know me, I'm a last-minute kind of guy." I stepped inside my apartment, all my senses turned on high.
"I'm sending someone over," Aidan said.
"All right, Mum, I'll talk to you later. Bye." I ended the call and shoved my phone into my pocket.
A couple of men stepped out of my bedroom. I didn't recognise either of them, but it didn't take a genius to guess who they were and why they were here.
One of them clicked his tongue. "Don't you know you're supposed to tell your mother you love her before you end the call? You never know when it might be the last time she hears your voice."
I shrugged like I wasn't concerned about the guns in their hands. "My mother knows how I feel about her. I don't need to tell her every time. Did you want something? You know breaking and entering is illegal, right?"
"So is murder," he said.
"Great." I swung my bag off my shoulder and lowered it to the floor. "That means you're not here to kill me."
"There's a fine line between murder and justifiable homicide," he said. "My boss sees this as the latter."
Fucking awesome.
"Before you kill me, you want to loop me in as to who your boss is? If I had to guess, there's a few I could go for. Narrow it down for me." I held my hands out, palms, raised. "Nicholas, Celine or Sawyer? There's a couple more, but those are off the top of my head."
"You seem to have made a habit of pissing people off," he remarked.
I grinned. "You have no idea. Every time my team wins, the list gets longer." Hockey team and Brantley family, they were one and the same to me. Caleb Brantley was my boss in legal and illegal activities.
He huffed. "I have some idea. You're a popular guy. So popular we almost drew straws to decide who was going to come here and take care of you."
I pressed a hand to my chest just over my heart. "That's so sweet of you. I guess you lost."
I lunged at the one who hadn't spoken yet, throwing myself at his torso in a tackle my rugby coach would have been proud of. He let out a grunt of air before he slammed back into the wall.
The impact sent a jolt through me, but I gritted my teeth and made a grab for his gun. While I wrestled him for it, I turned us both around, using him as a shield.
He elbowed me in the stomach. I grunted, but didn't let go of the gun or his wrist.
In a classic badass move I learned from my sister, I raised my foot and stomped down hard on his toes.
He let out a short cry of pain and loosened his grip on the gun enough for me to point it down and squeeze the trigger. The recoil jolted us both, but the bullet slammed it straight into his other foot.
This time his cry was longer and more pained.
"Son of a bitch!" He shoved back harder, trying desperately to cling on to the firearm.
I had to give him credit, because getting shot in the foot looked painful as fuck.
He tried to elbow me away again, but I forced the gun up and pulled the trigger again. I was trying for the left side of the other man's chest, but I'd take the shot in the right.
Sharing a gun like this was difficult at the best of times.
The bullet tore through the man's chest and out the back before embedding in the wall behind him.
"Fuck, I just had that painted." Trying my sister's tactic again, I stomped down, this time on the foot with the bullet in it.
The scream of pain was almost deafening, but he lost his grip on the gun and I grabbed it before it fell.
I turned and shot him point-blank in the centre of his forehead.
I ducked out of the way before he fell. He landed heavily, blood seeping, pooling around him. Shit, he'd leave a bloodstain on my hardwood floors. Brand-new floors, but exactly the reason I got rid of the carpet.
No, shit like this doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that I took precautions.
I clicked my tongue at the remaining guy, who was slumped against the wall. "You're making a mess."
"Fuck you." He raised his gun, but he was clearly in pain. His aim would be off.
I easily ducked aside from a bullet that would have ended up in my skull. Instead, it hit the window and lodged inside it.
Yeah, my windows have bullet-proof glass. Like I said, no one calls Coast Riggs stupid.
"It's not too late to walk out of here alive," I said. "Maybe you could take a message back to your boss to tell them to fuck off. I'm not that easy to kill." I frowned. "I guess if you took that message back to them, they'd kill you, right? You might want to think about working for someone else."
I meant what I said, he could leave if he wanted to. I could kill him, but in the scheme of things, he was nothing. Barely a blip on my radar. He was only here to kill me because he'd been told to, not because he gave a shit.
"I feel like you have three choices here," I said slowly. "You can leave now and go to hospital, you can die slowly, or you can give me an excuse to kill you quickly. If I were you, I'd take the first option."
Surprise, surprise, the fucker took the fourth option. He raised his gun and managed to get off a shot that hit the gun in my hand. It flew out of my hand and smashed into the wall.
He grunted and aimed again. Apparently he was good at working through the pain.
"Right, that's how you want to play it," I muttered. Shaking my hand out, I threw myself down on the floor and rolled. I dipped my hand into my hockey bag near the door and grabbed up the first thing my fingers closed around. My right skate.
I rolled again, dodging another bullet that splintered my new flooring.
Fucking hell. I was going to have to get that fixed too.
I jumped to my feet and threw myself at my attacker. Skate in both hands, blade out.
I jammed the blade into his throat and shoved back as hard as I could.
I pinned him to the wall while he gurgled, arms flailing, trying to dislodge me.
I had at least three inches of height on him and a fuck ton more muscle.
Not to mention a whole lot of pissed off energy for what they'd done to my apartment.
I pushed the blade in harder. Teeth gritted.
He gradually went limp, eyes bulging, face red. The gun slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the floor. Only when I was sure he was dead, did I let go and step back.
He slid down the wall all the way to the floor where he landed with a satisfying thud.
"They don't call them knife shoes for nothing," I told him. I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand and tossed the skate back into my bag.
"Looks like you have everything under control," Phoenix DiMarco drawled from the doorway.
I glanced over to see the goalie standing with his arms crossed over his chest, surveying the mess.
"You just missed the fun," I said dryly.
He stepped inside. "Actually, I got here just in time to see you kill a man with an ice skate. My only regret is that I didn't video it on my phone. That was fucking epic."
I grinned. "It was, wasn't it? The asshole had it coming." Should it have been that satisfying? Maybe not, but it was. I gave him the chance to walk away and he chose not to take it. His bad.
"I figured he wasn't a friend of yours." Phoenix stepped in further and looked over both of the dead men. "You're a dick, but you don't usually go around killing your friends. Not that I know of anyway." He glanced over at me. "By the way, Mum sent me."
I grunted a laugh and closed the door behind him, in case any of the neighbours walked past and peered in. The sound of gunshots usually didn't go unnoticed. Even in a place like this.
"I figured he had. I guess I should say thanks for showing up." I could just as easily have not managed the situation. The shot that knocked the gun out of my fingers could have hit my hand.
That would have hurt like a bitch and potentially ended my hockey career.
I enjoyed working for Caleb, but I loved playing hockey more.
The fact I had a backup plan wasn't as reassuring as anyone might think.
I didn't want to fall back on it, not anytime soon.
Or at all. When I finished playing, I wanted to coach.
Coach Coast had a ring to it. Coach Riggs sounded even better.
"Any time." Phoenix shrugged. "What else are bros for?"
Phoenix and I both grew up in Dusk Bay, we both worked for the Brantley family, but we both had bigger aspirations.
We wanted to play hockey for as long as we could and then work behind the scenes on the legal side of things.
Dabbling in the illegal once in a while.
You could take the man out of Dusk Bay, but you couldn't take Dusk Bay out of the man. The money was too hard to resist.
"No idea, bro." I gave him one of those awkward, side-on hugs before stepping back and glancing at my watch. "Any chance you want to help me clean this mess up? I'm going to be late for a date with Sinclair."
"The cute blonde in PR?" He didn't hesitate to scoop up the dropped gun and the shattered one and put them aside to help me move the bodies over closer to the door.
"That's her," I said. "Is this where you ask for an introduction so you can muscle your way in?"
He grabbed one of the dead men by the ankles and grinned up at me. "Maybe, bro. Maybe."