8. Dax
DAX
Having no idea where I was going, I charged down the hall away from the office toward the far end of the hall.
I shouldn’t have fucking trusted Tommaso to do this the right way. He’s had years to set up for taking over, but no one plans for when they actually have the damn role.
When creating the Hidden Empire, I never set out for it to be as big as it is.
My mission was to take out the Blackjax then call it quits, but to do that, I had to take over the drug ring that Devin turned to in jail.
Of course, I changed the direction of the drug ring to smuggling everything under the sun but people instead of just drugs.
That was necessary to get the weapons and supplies we needed to take out an established MC like the Blackjax.
Once I took out the MC, what was left behind were their clients, providers, and supplies that I just added to my network.
Before I knew it, I was running the West Coast to the Canadian border.
That happened simply because I had a plan for what I would do once I had the power to keep it, not just how to acquire it.
Tommaso had spent so long trying to figure out how to take back what was his birthright and thought he had people in place to manage it once he took over, but this operation was far more massive than even I imagined.
“Spitfire,” Picasso said as I entered an office at the end of the hall. “Did you need to take his head completely off like that?”
The lights for the office turned on as we entered, automatically making me whip out my gun, thinking someone was in here with us. “I fucking hate this floor. Everything about it is too fucking smart.”
Arms wrapped around me, securing my arms to my side, and Picasso pulled me to his chest. “Spitfire, take a breath. You’re wound so tight, the next thing will make you snap. We need that brilliant brain working full speed, and right now, it’s being reactive.”
His lips caressed my neck until he got to my pulse point and nipped at it roughly.
I gasped at the sudden attack then sighed as he locked his mouth around it and sucked like he was trying to suck my blood or give me a hickey.
What I didn’t pick up at first was that he was using his mouth to give me something to focus on that helped me match my breathing which slowed my heart rate.
Shifting my gun to my other hand, I lifted my hand to run my fingers through his hair.
“God, why does that feel so fucking good?” I murmured.
With a lingering lick of his tongue, he released me only to turn my face so he could kiss the hell out of me. We devoured each other as our teeth scraped lips and tongues alike. When he let me go, I was a little dazed, the chaos inside me had cooled, and I was far more in control of myself.
“There you are,” Picasso whispered across my lips. “I know you had to go dark mode for the torture, but believe it or not, Dax sees the whole plot better than Tricks does.”
“I missed it,” I stated, knowing deep in my gut he was right. I might have caught it much sooner if I’d given myself a chance to talk to him before starting with the torture.
“Don’t, don’t do that,” Picasso scolded.
“There was no way to know how this would go down. That man is a professional, and you had to act on the information you had before you. That told you he was your main priority. What happened in there took all of a half hour, at most. Whatever plans they had in play, we don’t even know if the other guy knew about us figuring out he wasn’t who he claimed to be. ”
Gritting my teeth, I wanted to believe him, but I also knew how fast this could go sideways. Wes was one of the best, but if they have been leading him down a rabbit hole too, then this could already be over.
“Fuck,” I swore and bolted out of the room, down the hall, yelling as I went. “Wes, it’s a trap.”
Sprocket’s head popped out of the first office where I assumed Wes was working. “What?” he questioned.
“Tell Wes to stop what he’s doing right now. It’s all a trap,” I shouted, grabbing the door jam and propelling myself into the room.
Wes had his hands up in the air to show me he’d stopped, but his expression told me he was utterly confused. Taking a second to catch my breath, I walked over to him and straddled his lap, grabbing his face.
“Listen, don’t talk,” I warned him. He nodded as his hands gripped my hips, holding me steady.
“Your code… it’s a trap. They left backdoors in the program so they knew if it was you or not doing the hacking.
Milen told us that Marco’s been watching us for years.
I have no doubt that he’d look into your past since it’s not as scrubbed as mine is.
Plus, there’s Kimber in the mix as well to rat us out.
There’s no second person running around this building trying to destroy it… the second person is you.”
Realization dawned on his face as his eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open.
“I don’t know shit about computers or code, but it’s all you talk about, so I’ve absorbed things over the years, like it or not.
Tell me if I’m crazy or not, but the purpose of your code was to control a smart safe house to back up the security since people can always be bought, killed, or manipulated.
This whole floor is like a safe house, the lights go on when you walk into a room, the glass fogs so you can’t see in, that’s all shit you talked about one day being able to do with this,” I pointed out.
Wes nodded again, brows furrowing. “They took what I did and improved it. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Tell me, my shadow, what was the perfect fail-safe you put in the program that won you the competition?” I asked, begging him to remember more than I did.
When building this program, he used to go on and on about it for hours, talking about every possibility that could be created from the foundation he was using.
There was a night he told me when he figured out what the crowning feature would be, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.
I’d been working on finishing an art piece for class and wasn’t really listening.
“No, no, no, no, no, no,” Wes blurted, heaving me off his lap and setting me on the desk. “Fucking goddamn shit on a motherfucking stick. Tell me I didn’t fall for my own trap. I can’t fucking believe I didn’t see it.”
Weston’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he worked furiously to undo or fix whatever he’d been about to do.
Every one of my guys were now in the room, and I hoped that meant Tommaso was getting people out of the building.
There was no way to tell if Wes caught it in time or if he could undo whatever was going on.
Then there was the fact I still couldn’t remember what it was the trap was supposed to do once you fell into it.
A cell started to ring, and when I looked over, Cam answered it and stepped out of the room.
That would have only happened if it was the FBI or someone of equal importance.
That was another snag in the situation we needed to figure out.
One thing at a time—right now, we needed to survive whatever was happening with Wes.
“Yes, okay, now we’re talking,” he muttered, leaning closer to the screen. “Where are you? Come on, I know I put it in here. You’d have to know just where to find it to remove it, and I don’t think you’re that smart.”
Looking at the screen, nothing about what he was doing seemed to make any rhyme or reason, but things certainly sounded more promising.
“Dax.”
My head whipped around at the sound of Magnus’s voice, and standing in the doorway was the rest of the crew. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, sliding off the desk and marching over to them.
“I asked them to bring me over,” Harper said in their defense. “I didn’t like that Ghost was here on his own without the other two, and they wouldn’t leave me alone at the house.”
Glaring at Ghost for a moment, I turned to my best friend. “You should have called before coming over. Things here have been a little intense and not going our way.”
“Stop it,” Harper snapped. “This is the life you live, and so do they. I know I freaked out last night and this morning, but seriously, I need to figure out how to survive in this world. Besides, if it turned out to be dangerous, he…” Harper paused to point at Ghost, “… was supposed to leave and come home. Clearly, that was never going to happen, so I came to him. The four of us are committed for life till death do us part and all that shit.”
Frowning, I looked at the other three. “I’m sorry, did you three officially get married without me knowing?”
“No, pretty sure I’d remember that moment,” Jaxson said with a dopey look as he stared down at Harper.
“That’s not what she meant,” Magnus pointed out. “She just means we’re all in this together, no one left behind, which includes you, by the way.”
“Yes,” Wes shouted from inside the office. “Fucker thought he could use my own code against me.”
Harper gazed curiously at the room and the man who was cheering himself on behind the computer. “What’s got him all excited?”
“Oh, you know, just stopped the building from getting blown up with all of us in it,” I answered with a deadpan voice.
“What?” Harper shrieked.
I raised a brow. “Didn’t you say we’d all go down together?”
“I was expecting to say that and then be Jack out in the ocean giving up the raft to save Rose. Give a woman a chance to adjust, would yah,” Harper ranted.
“Then it’s a good thing Wes saved the day now, isn’t it?
When I told you that you should have called, I wasn’t trying to cut you out of all of this for no good reason.
Just figured there was no sense in both of us dying.
Maybe this will teach you to at least send a text letting me know so if I’m going down with the ship, I can save you the trouble of jumping out of the lifeboat,” I pointed out.
Magnus’s face was all scrunched up in confusion. “Are we still using Titanic references?”