Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ELLIOT
This room on the highest floor is reserved for the special guests of Calix’s. How unfortunate is it that his previously invited guest disappeared, decapitated somewhere in one of Michigan’s lakes?
Enyo and I took their spots in the special show that Calix gives to the people who have the most money at these events. He asks for a deposit of five-hundred thousand dollars to be in this room. My wire saw burns in my pocket, itching to wrap around Calix’s neck.
I smirk to myself as I watch my lovely bird freeze at the door. She keeps the tray balanced on her shoulder and hand. Her hair is roused in the back and not done by me, once again making the anger simmering under my skin spark to life.
Seeing her brings a sudden realization that she’s not supposed to be in here. She snuck in. Which only means one thing: Diora was almost caught. She was threatened, and that makes my blood boil.
My eyes snap to her. Her hair swings over her shoulder as she straightens her posture. Diora lands right back into character. Her eyes land on Calix first, then move over to me. I don’t move; I don’t nod. I just watch.
“You like her, Kane?” Calix’s voice grates against my ears. The name, though, reminds me of her. Of Diora and her constant battle between being good and bad. You know what can be both good and bad? A crane.
“I do,” I murmur, a smirk slipping through the cracks of my persona.
“You can have her,” Calix laughs as he puffs a cigar. “For a price, of course.”
“Ain’t that what we’re here for?” Enyo boasts. He plays this role well. Only I would catch the fire burning under his skin or the sharpness of his eyes as he stares down Calix.
He doesn’t know that Calix isn’t the actual head of this snake, and I won’t be the one to tell him.
“Yes, of course.” Calix snaps his fingers, and Diora strides forward with the tray of poisoned goods.
I swipe a cup from her tray before she can set it down.
Giving her a reason to do something wrong before Calix notices.
The girls here are trained rigorously, down to how they put the trays down, and Diora and I hadn’t used our time earlier to go over such details.
Smiling down into my cup, I see the hemlock she’s garnished each of the drinks with. Just knowing she did it makes me want to drink it.
“First one is twenty, for those who like them older, Kane?” Calix says as the first missing Stray is shoved onto the stage.
The room is set up like a private showing would be.
Two couches face each other, as the longest wall of the room is blocked with a clear plastic wall between us, the guest, and where the Strays must be.
Beyond the plastic wall is a stage and red curtains draped dramatically, as if this is a nineteenth century theater. Gold accents and trim line the entire room, and it’s all grandiose and gaudy. The room gives me a fucking headache.
“I’ve got my eyes on something better,” I snap, focusing my gaze on my little waitress. I should be focused on the Strays. The injustice here. The kids who needed protection and never got it.
But I was never a hero.
I was never the good guy.
If it came down to it, I know… I know I would choose Diora over the Strays. And that’s why it’s dangerous for her to be here.
I spent months looking for these Strays, for an opening, and now that I have it, I’m ready to throw it all away. It’s dangerous. It’s not an instinct I’m comfortable with.
“Aaron?” Calix’s voice brings my attention back to him. He is looking at Enyo, who’s going by Aaron.
Enyo wears a mask of indifference. Shrugging as he puffs on his cigar. He only smokes for show, as do I on occasion, but I feel the sudden need to be… healthier.
“Next,” Calix snaps into the walkie. Out comes a younger girl, more terrified than the last, and my heart pounds behind my chest a little harder. My skin heats, and I actively keep my features blank as each girl and boy step on the stage behind the glass.
What the actual fuck.
I knew. I fucking knew they were taking children, but seeing it… seeing it is… Fuck.
Like an ice bucket, I’m reminded why I’m here. This isn’t just about killing, it’s about saving. Kids… Kids deserve so much more. These kids deserve so much better than me as their savior.
I see myself behind that plastic wall. A little boy mad at the world and an urge to make it right. I wonder if Oliver Longstead would still be alive if he ran into the arms of an Elliot Jay back then.
I watch Calix bring his drink up to his lips, sniffing before taking a sip, and he leans back and smiles. Chuckling at something he’s failed to let the rest of us in on.
We grab our cups, too, as if we are to take a sip. I don’t watch if Enyo does, but I do. Keeping my gaze trained on Diora, whose eyes widen.
She tilts her head in confusion as I sip. I raise my brows, watching her shoulder straighten impossibly more as she moves her gaze to Calix. Does she think this will weaken me?
I’ve been consuming poison since Mother found me. When I asked Diora about poison resistance, I was wondering why the poison Mother’s been rubbing on my skin recently switched to.
Her touch burns. More so now than normal. Now she pats my bare shoulder, or lays a hand on my cheek, but as a kid… As a young boy, after training, she’d call me to her room. She’d have me sit next to her on the couch and would rub my back. I thought… I wanted to think she was being motherly.
I don’t tempt fate with another sip of this poisoned tea, but the worried look on Diora’s face is worth the burn going down my throat.
“Boys, wait,” Calix’s smooth voice rumbles as his gaze whips to Diora, who freezes. “What’s in this?”
Diora is quiet as she brings her hands behind her back, standing like the good little waitress she’s supposed to be. I feel the weight of my gun in the back of my pants and the knives decorating my holsters over my body.
“Is this hemlock?” Calix asks, raising his brows and pointing to the garnish on the top of his drink. My jaw clenches at being found out so fast. How the hell would he know that?
At least that isn’t the only plan we have in motion tonight.
Diora smiles, which throws Calix off by the dip of his smile. “You know your plants.”
“I know my poisons.” He chuckles, and it sets the hairs on my skin straight in excitement. It’s about time to get this party started.
I can practically feel the taste of tangy blood on my teeth. I try to dampen my smile at the fight to come. My tongue licks over my teeth as Calix moves to stand with his gun in Diora’s face. Nearly making contact with her skin.
And the band has snapped.
Both Enyo’s and my guns are pointed, safety’s off.
“I’m glad you fucking hesitated, Calix. If you’d have shot, we’d do worse than shoot you.” My sense of urgency is fierce as the danger to Diora becomes real. My pulse thrums in my ears as my finger dances with the trigger. This is why I didn’t want her here. I’d almost lost control.
It’s not fair to hold her back just because my stupid soul needs her, but it is what it is.
“Who the hell are you?” Calix spits, panic slowly filling his brows. Is he not the head of operations?
“Better question is, who the hell are you?” Enyo asks back with a damning smirk on his face.
I answer for Calix. “Calix Smith, forty-two years old, never married, public stock market trader, undercover human trafficker and pedo.” I ramble off the facts I’d pull from his profile, watching as his face drops.
“How-How?”
“You’re not as private as you think, and when your staff is forced to work for you, for free, under the use of fear, well, money talks,” I say with a shrug, as if it was easy to find this fucker.
It wouldn’t be for the average killer, but I’m not average, am I?
He’s well-connected. His family is pretty powerful in the political scene, which means he has access to making evidence disappear.
But unfortunately for him, I can access deleted records.
Anything that has ever been documented on technology can never be completely erased.
With Calix’s attention on me, Diora takes this chance to slip out of the path of his gun. She moves to duck behind the couches behind Enyo and me.
“Don’t you fucking move—” Calix’s words are cut off by my bullet entering his armed arm. He drops the gun and hugs his arm.
“You point that gun at what’s mine again and you’ll wish I put a bullet between your eyes.”
“Are you fucking kidding?” Calix can hardly get his words out through the pain. I need my message to be painfully clear: Diora is off limits.
“Absolutely not,” I murmur, moving to stand in front of Diora. Seeing that gun pointed at her, being in a real situation where she could get hurt, it all becomes more real.
If she got shot, if she got shot, I’d… I couldn’t, fuck, I couldn’t let the world go on if she wasn’t here. Why the fuck did I let her come? I furrow my brow as I turn back to face her.
She raises her brows in amusement. I know she doesn’t need my protection. She knows the risks of doing what we do, yet… I wanna keep her here, with me, in my sight. She has a mission, and I have mine. She’s supposed to go off and attack the buyers now that we have Calix at our mercy.
She nods a single time before she turns to leave, and I can’t help my traitorous voice.
“Wait,” I selfishly ask. Calix’s pleas to be let go drown out behind me as I stare at Diora in her sexy ass dress and tights.
Her eyes peer into mine, and I love her attention.
It lights my skin with a need to rush to her.
To touch her skin and consume her entirely, but I don’t.
I just let my ask hang in the air as she contemplates.
She gives me a single nod as she gracefully sits on the couch. Patiently waiting for Enyo and me to wrap this up.
What a good fucking girl.
“Who are you working for?” Enyo asks, his gun itching to shoot, I’m sure. “Cause ain’t no way you running this operation.”
“Help me, please help me.”
A hit in the head keeps the dumb shit away. Calix’s head snaps to the left as Enyo whips the butt of his gun across his face. Blood drips on the animal skin rug, and the fire lights brighter under the smell of fresh oozing blood.
“Don’t make us ask again.” His blood drips on the leather of my shoes, and I can smell the copper of blood filling the room. He’s bleeding like crazy now. One deep inhale after the next, and a crazed smile covers my lips as I bend down to meet Calix’s face.
“Boss?” I ask, despite knowing who the boss is. I know I’ll have to kill him before he spills the truth to Enyo. I almost contemplate letting Calix be the one to break the news, but Enyo deserves better than that.
“She’ll kill me,” Calix whimpers.
“Hell yeah, she’ll kill you. You’re cracking and we’ve barely fucking started,” Enyo laughs.
She.
She means Mrs. Jay, which also means she’s not a distant player, which we knew, but hearing it makes it… real.
I glance toward Diora, and she’s already staring at me. She doesn’t give anything away. She doesn’t tell me her opinion on whether I should let the beans spill or keep them between us. She doesn’t tell me what to do.
“A name, Calix,” Diora asks, though she, too, knows the answer. Her smooth voice fills the room, like a nice violin. I lean my head back, reminiscing in the sound of her voice. I am so fucked. She’s following my lead, and that makes me hard as hell.
“It’s Mrs—” Calix tries to spit out.
My gaze shoots to Diora, and before Calix can get the whole name out, I pull my trigger, putting a bullet between Calix’s eyes.
Enyo can’t know. Not yet. Not until I know how he’ll react. Enyo is anything but weak, but I can’t risk hurting him. Mother means everything to him, more than even he knows.
This kind of information marks a betrayal of their relationship. Finding out the person you hold closest to is capable of trafficking kids is a line we would never think that would be crossed.
“Elliot, what the fuck?” Enyo shouts, waving his hands about. “We could’ve—”
“Could’ve done nothing. He doesn’t know shit. Let’s save these kids,” I say, heading for the door. I can hear the boots pounding down the hall; they must have heard the shots and come running.
“The guards,” Diora says as the sound of heavy boots and cursing from down the hall gets louder.
“Crane, get the Strays and have them follow us as we make it out of this damned house,” I say, pulling my knife out. I’m hoping to see some pain before death.
Death is far too easy for the nasty fuckers here.
Enyo doesn’t argue, but his silence is worse than his questions. He’s too emotionally connected for the truth, and I can’t do that to him.
We’re not here for the truth. We’re here to save these Strays.
I’ll tell him. I have to be the one to tell him, but I can’t help but feel like, if I tell him… I’ll lose him.