14. Gabriel
After reassuring the women, I reluctantly leave. Reluctantly because… Audra. Fuck, that woman gets to me. Seeing her, watching her from a distance was hard enough. Having her in my penthouse? That's a whole new level of torture. Holding her in my arms without claiming her the way I want to?
It's fucking unbearable.
Every instinct I have screams to take. To keep. To make her mine in every way that matters. I don't deny myself. Never have. If I want something, I take it. That's how men like me survive. That's how we rule. But her?
She's the one thing I can't touch without breaking something I'm not ready to break. Yet.
I take a deep breath as I walk down the hallway. Because the truth is: if she looks at me the wrong way again… if she reaches for me instead of pulling away… if she gives me even the smallest reason…
Pete's death should have solved my problem. Instead, it's created a worse one.
Because now there's nothing left between me and what I want.
God help anyone who thinks they can take her from me again.
Every instinct in me wants to sit in that room.
Watch her. Make sure she breathes. But that's not what she needs right now.
Right now, I need to find out who the fuck thought they could touch what's mine.
I step out of the penthouse, and the door closes behind me with a soft, final click. The hallway is quiet. Controlled. Unlike the storm inside my head.
Six of my men stand guard. Reassuring me that nothing short of a small army could get to Audra.
Mauro falls in step beside me immediately. "Boss?"
"Send someone to their house," I order without slowing. "The mother wants her cats."
Mauro blinks once. "… cats?"
"Yeah. All of them." I jab the elevator button. "Food, litter, whatever the hell they need. And clothes. For both of them."
"What kind of clothes?"
I shoot him a look. "Comfortable. Not fucking runway."
"Yes, boss."
The elevator doors slide open, and we step inside.
"Make sure the place is swept before anyone goes in," I add. "The cops or whoever took her might be staking it out."
Mauro nods, already pulling out his phone, relaying my orders while the doors close.
I watch the numbers go down while the box makes its way to the ground floor.
Just as we reach the casino level, Mauro receives another call.
He listens before telling me, "The prisoners are secured. Both are alive. For now."
Good. Before the doors open, I catch sight of my reflection and see blood on my shirt. Her blood. From her split lip. It must have reopened when I held her. Hot simmering fury rises from my stomach, and it takes an effort to keep it down.
"Where?" I ask.
"Basement level three."
Wordlessly, I press L3 on the panel, which reads my fingerprint.
Only a few men have access to that level.
The doors close again. The ride three more stories down is quick, but the contrast couldn't be any stronger as we step into a different world.
There is no marble here. No sunlight. Just concrete.
Steel. And the smell of blood. Mingled with fear.
I roll my shoulders once as we walk. The pain in my arm is a distant thing.
Irrelevant. The thought of Audra shooting me makes me chuckle.
I wasn't lying when I said it'll be my favorite scar.
I trace the fresh bandage under my shirt with two fingers, feeling the heat of the wound she gave me, and my cock twitches again like the damn thing remembers her fire better than I do.
Another chuckle escapes me as a picture forms in my head: us someday, surrounded by people who think they understand our world.
Massimo and Jenna, spinning their tale of burying the body of the man she killed, all polished violence and wicked smiles.
And then Audra and I, calm as sinners in church, telling them how she put a bullet in me while standing over her husband's corpse.
I wonder which story would win. Theirs would be blood and betrayal.
Ours would be obsession, wrapped in silk and gunpowder. Both would taste like forever.
Then I push that emotion back down, too. It has no right to exist here.
One of my men opens the reinforced door for us without a word. Alessio is there, leaning against a metal table, cleaning his knife like he's bored, and Damiano is pacing behind him.
In the center, on two chairs, the men are tied down. What's left of them, anyway.
"You took your time," Damiano greets me lightly.
"I had business upstairs," I grunt.
Alessio smirks. "Yeah. I can only imagine. Did she thank you for being her white knight?"
I press out, "Fuck off," before my attention locks onto the prisoners. That's when the rage returns. Not the blind kind from before. This one is sharper. Colder. Controlled.
I step closer. One of the men lifts his head weakly.
Recognition flickers, followed by fear. He sobs, shakes his head from side to side.
I lock eyes with him; he'll be the easier of the two to break.
I swallow the rage down because if these men acted on orders of El Recaudador, it means that the attack on Audra and Pete wasn't random.
That it's not some cartel getting jumpy.
Then this will be mine to own. I don't give a shit about Pete.
Wrong place. Wrong time. But her? My gaze flicks, just for a second, to the blood on my shirt.
If this came down on her because I couldn't leave well enough alone…
because I watched. Because I got too close…
Darkness settles in my chest. I don't do guilt.
Never have. But this? This would be different.
This would be something I'd have to answer for. This guy will have to answer.
"Let's start simple," I murmur, crouching down in front of him, resting my forearms on my knees. "Who do you work for?"
Silence. Of course. I nod slowly. "Alright."
I stand and turn slightly. "Break his fingers."
The man's eyes widen. "No—no?—"
One of our men moves before the prisoner finishes the sentence, holding a pair of pliers.
We've been calling him Brick for so long that nobody remembers his real name.
Decades ago, he was an MMA wrestler who got in with the wrong crowd.
One of them thought it was a good idea to gouge one of Brick's eyes out when he didn't agree to throw a fight.
Rumor has it that the idiot is rotting in a basement, without teeth, eyes, arms, or legs.
Brick keeps feeding him, keeping him alive, and taking parts whenever he's in the mood.
I say rumor, because I haven't asked him. Some things are better left unspoken.
Brick's nose and left ear have seen better times, too. His nose has been broken so many times, it looks like a turnip, and that ear has been crushed into a thick, misshapen slab of cartilage—cauliflower ear from years of violence.
He doesn't need the pliers. He could break the prisoner's ulna with his hands without much effort. The pliers are more of a psychological effect. A crack echoes through the room. A scream follows.
I wait a moment.
"Let's try again," I try again calmly. "Who do you work for?"
The man sobs, shaking his head. I sigh. Disappointed. This is going to take longer than I want it to. It's frustrating because we all know he's going to break. It's just a matter of time. I glance at Brick.
He grins. "Want me to get creative?"
"Not yet." I step closer again. Lower my voice. "You see… I was under the impression this was something else." I tilt my head. "Something bigger."
He's staring at me with a shitload of questions running through his mind. The biggest one is whether this is good or bad for him. I can see it in his eyes. He's wondering, Is it a chance to get out of here alive?
"Someone who's been… irritating me lately. El Recaudador."
I watch him carefully. This time it lands. His entire body goes still. Whatever color he had left drains from his face. His breathing stutters.
"No…" he shakes his head frantically. "No, no, no—I have nothing to do with him."
"Keep your fucking mouth shut," the other guy pipes up.
Before I even have a chance to look at him, Brick has already pulled half of his ear off.
My guy's voice cracks. The fear in his eyes is replaced with something else. Terror. Not the kind I've been pulling out of him. This is different. Deeper. Instinctive. He'd rather face me than be associated with that name. Interesting.
Very fucking interesting. I grab his chin and force him to look at me. "So I'm going to ask you one more time." My voice drops. "Who do you work for?"
"I'll tell you!" he blurts out immediately. "I'll tell you everything—just—just don't say that name again—please?—"
Behind me, Alessio shifts, and Damiano goes still.
I don't look at them. But I know they caught it, too.
Massimo mentioned a similar reaction from a man he dropped out of a plane somewhere over Arizona.
Whatever El Recaudador is building, it's not just power.
Its reputation. The kind that makes grown men choose death over being tied to him.
I loosen my grip slightly as curiosity gets the better of me.
"Start talking." I lock my hands behind my back at the thought of what these bastards did to Audra. "Who sent you after the woman?"
The other guy decides to make some sounds again. "Shut up, Emmanuel, shut up."
Emmanuel decides to do the opposite. "It wasn't about the woman. She's just… collateral. We—We didn't?—"
My eyes narrow. "What?"
"It was the husband!" he cries. "The husband!"
The room stills. Behind me, the other men listen on with interest.
My grip tightens. "Explain."
"He was looking into accounts—" the man gasps. "Asking questions—too many questions?—"
My jaw locks. "So you kidnapped him."
"Yes—yes?—"
"And her?"
"The bastard wouldn't talk, so… the boss told us to get the wife."
Fucking hell. Talk about what? Pete was a lowlife bank accountant for shit's sake.
I run a hand through my hair and look at Mauro, who shakes his head, as clueless as I am.
He's been in Phoenix and doesn't know much about Pete and Audra.
I kept it on the down-low even when he was home, but as my second, he knows more than the others.
Whatever Pete stumbled into, it must have been coincidental.
He wasn't the hero type. Neither was he the type to resist torture.
After losing one finger, he would have spilled his guts.
Hell at the sight of the pliers, he would have.
I nearly laugh, but the sound chokes in my throat when I think of Audra.
My hand clamps around Emmanuel's throat. "You fucking idiots. Amateurs. He didn't know anything. That's why he wasn't fucking talking."
Emmanuel stares at me with wide eyes. The other guy chuckles, but it's choked too, as he realizes the irony. He and his friend are going to die. For nothing.
Emmanuel hasn't caught up with that news yet. "We thought if we brought his wife, he would talk."
Of course they did. It's the oldest play in the playbook. Bring in someone the prisoner cares about. It's not like I've never… my vision sharpens. My focus narrows, and my hand clamps tighter around Emmanuel's throat until he turns purple and makes choking sounds.
It wasn't the Collector. Not a grand move against us. Me. Just… some fucking lowlife cartel. I thought I'd feel relieved when I found out, but instead, dread still churns my stomach. Because of this, Audra lost everything.
"You killed the wrong person." With effort, I loosen my grip around his throat. "Who is your boss?"
Emmanuel can't talk right now; he's too busy gasping for air. The other guy spits out, "Fuck you."
I roll up my sleeves. Look to Damiano and Alessio. "You're welcome to stay, but I think I've got it from here."
Alessio's eyes flick around the room. He shrugs. "If you don't need me, I do have dinner plans."
"I'm good. Thanks for being there."
"Of course, bro." He looks to Damiano. "You coming?"
Damiano has that glint in his eyes. Alessio groans. "Fucking bloody sadist."
I chuckle. Damiano was born into an old-money family. He had everything he could possibly want, but that was never enough for him. He lives solely for the thrill. Watching someone die is as close as he gets to his fucked-up version of heaven. He's a first-class sociopath.
Sociopath or not, between him and Brick, we have the two losers talking a few hours later. They work for the Los Hijos del Desierto Cartel. Led by a man named Javier Salazar, who decided to buddy up with the Black Canyon Reapers. The MC gang has grown lately and has come into our orbit.
After we got what they knew, I put a few finishing touches on them for daring to hurt Audra. Nobody gets to put their hands on her or cause her pain and live.