CHAPTER ONE #2
I take a step back, giving Billy some breathing room, but my gaze never leaves David, pretending his ass off that he doesn’t know what’s happening.
On the screen, a cloak-wearing woman in bug-eyed sunglasses anxiously enters his bar.
Tuesday, November 18th, 11 p.m. Two years ago.
I watch his reaction like a fucking bloodhound, noting every flicker of unease, every microsecond of betrayal he tries to mask.
The footage speeds up, then slows back down as patrons leave the bar, hail taxis, stroll the sidewalk, carrying on with their mundane evenings.
All except her. She doesn’t leave. A loose end vanished without a trace.
And me? I’m the sorry bastard who got ripped from the serene comfort of my job and was blessed with this irritating fucking assignment. Finding her.
“You see my dilemma, David? I’ve been searching high and low for this woman, and I keep hitting dead end after dead end.
I’ve got to tell you, I don’t appreciate it when I'm given the runaround,” I say, letting each word sink in like the threat they are.
Billy walks back to the table with the laptop, Danny hovering close, ready to breach David’s files and accounts and extract any data tied to the woman.
If they succeed, we’re out of here, and he’ll be left behind as nothing more than brain matter and dog food.
“I don’t know where she is. Fuck, I don’t even know who she is!
” He’s a terrible liar. I suppose I’ll humor him for a moment.
I already know that he’s responsible for her disappearance, so even if he’s telling the truth about not knowing where she is, that detail, his involvement, will not be overlooked.
“Seraphine Vexley, illegitimate daughter of the notorious billionaire and alleged sex offender, Charles Jensen. Her mother? His college sweetheart, Gwenneth Vexley.” I scan his face carefully, expecting his usual indifference.
Instead, resentment tightens the corners of his eyes.
The mere mention of his ex-lover and Charles Jensen in the same sentence is enough to rattle him.
Noted. Now we’re getting somewhere. David knows that I’ve got him.
He and Gwen had an affair months before her death, and I’m not even circling that rabbit hole.
Digging into the whys and whos would only piss me off.
And with this guy’s track record, it was probably his fault.
And I’m already walking the edge of my restraint with this dickhead.
“I don’t fucking know anything. Seraphine is probably living it up with the estate left behind by her dead daddy,” he spits, animosity lacing his every word.
It sounds hollow. There is no estate. All assets were frozen two years ago when The Royal, a corrupt secret society run by some of the world’s most powerful and renowned people, was exposed.
Names were revealed. Atrocities were catalogued.
Innocent lives of women and children have been destroyed for decades, if not longer, and those who’ve survived will pay the price until the day they die.
Seraphine’s biological father and his wife, Valerie, were founders.
One by one, we’ve been hunting them down—members, associates, anyone linked to The Royal.
Tying up loose ends and cleaning up the kind of colossal, festering mess most people couldn’t even imagine.
Every step, every kill, every shred of intel is to eliminate any chance of retaliation and to protect our families.
After all, it was my boss, Ezekiel, who spent years undercover, reliving traumas from his childhood and dismantling The Royal from the inside to save Titan’s daughter.
The harrowing things Ezekiel had to endure…
the horrors he had to commit. They’re unfathomable.
They left scars no one sees, and it changed him.
In turn, it changed our entire organization.
Don’t get me wrong, we still blur lines.
We still play in the shadows. But it’s all in the name of family and survival.
But we’ll be damned if we continue to turn a blind eye to the elite and their soulless, rotten depravity.
With the number of Feds and other high-ranking law enforcement agencies entangled with The Royal, we couldn’t exactly turn into massive whistleblowers.
Who would believe the Mafia? Criminals who have been painted as the most dangerous lawbreakers this world has ever seen for years by political influence and the media.
Not a single soul. Also, we didn’t and still don’t harbor the same kind of dominion as them, which would mean that a lot of stones would be kicked around, and innocent lives would be lost. Our family’s lives.
We’d be the first to pay the price before anyone moved their asses fast enough to get what needed to be done over with.
Besides…villains will always be villains if heroes tell the story.
The world wasn’t ready for it. Still isn’t. But it doesn’t matter. We’re not stopping until every last one of them is found and dealt with, and the inconveniently elusive Seraphine Vexley? She’s at the very top of my list.
“Seraphine has no inheritance. She has nothing. Not anymore. The money, the stock, the accounts, all of it. Gone. And she knew it. She didn’t have a penny to her name, which is why she came running to you that day.
Isn’t that right, David? Because she knew they’d come for her next!
” The look on his battered face is telling.
Tension. Fear. The tiniest flicker of guilt. It all confirms just how right I am.
“I d-don’t know where s-she is. I couldn’t contact h-her, even if I wanted to.
You’re barking up the wrong f-fucking tree where she’s concerned, k-kid.
I don’t have any-t-thing to do with h-her anymore,” he sputters from the sheer pain I put him through, weak from blood loss.
Still not confirming or denying his involvement with her disappearance. That’s all I care about.
“Raven. We have a meeting in an hour.”
An hour? Danny’s voice cuts through the warehouse, and I glance over. Both he and Billy are packed and ready to move. They work fast.
I check my watch. Six hours. That’s all it’s been since the call came in with David’s location, yet it feels like we’ve been at this for days.
Billy, Danny, and I wasted no time finding him and bringing him in.
If he knew nothing, why the hell was he in hiding?
They’re all the same. They think that just because I’m young, I'm a fool. That I won’t see past their carefully crafted masks.
They should know better because I don’t just dig graves.
I bury truths. Entire fucking bloodlines.
And when you’re as good at making things disappear as I am, you learn how to find what others would kill to keep hidden.
Turning back to face an unfortunate David, his body grows rigid, understanding flashing across his features as his face crumples with trepidation at what’s about to happen.
“Three,” I say, gazing at his bruised, puffy face, the whites of his eyes stained a blood red from being beaten. Still, they cut through me as they brim with tears.
“Please!” He’s screaming now, but I don’t care. David might not know Seraphine’s whereabouts, but he lied to me when he said he didn’t know her. Whoever else was at the bar that day might know something too, which means the search for her still isn’t over.
“I swear to you. I don’t know where she is,” he cries, his words breathless and panicked.
David isn’t the worst man I’ve killed by any means, though he isn’t a fucking saint, either.
The asshole beat and murdered his own wife to be with one of his many mistresses, then paid his way out of it because he could.
That’s how it is when you have friends in high places.
Although, since exposing The Royal, those friends in high places have been hiding like their lives depend on it.
“Two,” I continue, ignoring his pleas as I reach behind me and pull out my Glock tucked away in my waistline.
I rack the slide with a sharp pull that echoes throughout the warehouse, then raise my arm to aim it at the spot between David’s eyebrows.
“Don’t do this! Please! Oh God!” he begs, sweat beading across his bloodied forehead as he grovels for me to have mercy. But mercy isn’t meant for men like him.
He is corruption dressed in skin, and he’s about to meet his maker.
“One.”