WYATT
TWENTY-SIX
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Nino Ferraro for what felt like the hundredth time, and he—for the hundredth time—turned to me with his stiff expression and pierced me with his gaze.
I put my hands up in surrender, and he took a step backwards.
“Trust me. He wants to meet me as much as you want to take him down. This will be quick and easy,” he said.
I somehow doubted the quick—and the easy—but I didn’t say anything. He might’ve been thirty years younger than me, but he’d grown up in a criminal family, so I was sure he knew how criminals operated better than I did.
“Okay, okay,” King said beside me and shook his joined fingers in front of his mouth. “Run through this once again for me.”
Nino rolled his eyes and stood closer to his brother long enough to pat his shoulder. “Would you relax? Both of you? I know what I’m doing. You sit back and wait to reap the rewards.”
He was far too confident for my liking, but what other options did we have? We had no way to bring Salieri down. Nothing I could think of, anyway. Maybe taking him out the old-fashioned way was the cowardly way to do it, but if it got us the end result we wanted, did it matter?
Besides, getting him arrested and in prison wouldn’t achieve anything. He could still control things from behind bars. He wouldn’t be the first or last one to do it. And if we didn’t get all the proof we needed, he’d be out before long anyway.
No, this was the only way out of this mess. With him dead, and if it got Nino in trouble, well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. One less crime lord out there was always a good thing, even if he was “family.”
“Okay. Fine. But please, be careful,” King said, and I nodded beside him.
Nino straightened his black suit jacket that probably cost more than my car, and he walked to his group of men—an agreed three from both sides—and got into a black SUV.
They didn’t go very far. Just a couple of minutes down the road to one of the many abandoned farmhouses in Hummingbird County, while we stayed back in my car, waiting.
“Testing, testing.” The speakers placed on my dashboard buzzed to life, and Nino came through.
“All clear,” answered King on the walkie-talkie.
For the next few minutes, we heard nothing but the car engine, then boots on the ground.
At some point Nino asked one of his men for the time, and the man wearing the bug answered him.
King clicked the walkie-talkie a couple of times to confirm we could still hear them, and the bodyguard gave him the wrong time before correcting himself.
So far so good. Everything was going like clockwork.
For a moment I felt like I was back in the field, back on a perfectly planned mission to take down another serious threat.
But then I looked out into the endless slumbering fields and the starry sky above it and I shook myself back to reality.
The threat wasn’t in a foreign land anymore, but in our very own territory.
My own turf, making it so much more dangerous.
“Here we go,” Nino said, and we heard another engine approach.
Every second until it came to a stop felt like an eternity. The second hand on my watch slowed down to a halt. Wheels screeched as the car braked, and I held my breath, waiting, bracing.
Could it really be this easy? Was it going to end so anticlimactically after what he’d put us through?
I started biting my lip and turned to look at King. He pressed the record button on the tape, and we waited to hear his voice.
If things went south, we could at least use a tape of him involved in illegal dealings. The question was whether he’d turn up at all or whether he’d hold up his end of the bargain.
“My father told me you were always on tim—” Nino started.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The thunderous sound emitted through the radio and thrummed through my very veins. My heart pounded louder in my chest with each shot, kicking my body into action as King jolted and tried to get out of the car.
I wrapped my hands around him and held him into place. He was strong, but I was stronger, and I wasn’t going to let him put himself in danger too. Not when he had a daughter to think of. A whole family that needed him.
What a fucking mess.
I shouldn’t have listened to Nino. I shouldn’t have trusted that he alone could take care of someone a whole fucking team couldn’t. I’d sent him out to the wolves to be eaten alive.
“Let me go.” King jolted from side to side, trying to break free. “Let me…go.”
I didn’t.
I looked at the radio where only static came through, a silence deadlier than most.
I closed my eyes, tightened my hold, and waited. And waited and waited. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for, but instinct had taken over, and I knew King running into the thick of it was going to be even more disastrous.
We were well hidden, and him coming out of the car and our hiding spot and onto the road—a road they may drive down on—was dangerous. And I’d already screwed up enough.
After a while, King realized I was stronger than him, and instead of struggling in my arms, he started crying. His tears broke something in me. If there was anything left that wasn’t broken.
Why couldn’t I stop making bad decision after bad decision? What was wrong with me? How on earth did I think a simple meeting would solve all our problems.
Minutes passed like hours, but when enough time had passed, I pulled away from King and started the engine. The closer to the meeting location we got, the harder my heart pounded until it was physically hurting me, and I had to place my hand on my chest to help ease the pain.
It didn’t do shit when I turned a corner and found four bloody bodies slumped on the ground. Salieri, or let’s not fool ourselves, his men—because he wouldn’t be caught dead in the middle of a shootout—were long gone, the only sign of their presence here the tire tracks and the dead bodies.
King jumped out of the car before I even braked, and he dropped over his brother’s body, letting out an inhuman wail that chilled me to the bone.
I brought the car to a stop, and as I ran to him, to them both, he was holding his brother’s head with one hand and opening his jacket with the other.
The tear-stricken face turned serious, and he shouted at me. “He’s alive. He’s still alive. Help me out,” he said.
I closed the distance between us and dropped to my knees to find a barely conscious Nino doing his best to smile.
“See?” he croaked. “Told you…be easy.”
King shushed him, but Nino’s words thrummed in my head, making me feel light all of a sudden.
I fell back on my ass as my breathing got out of control, and I focused on King while I tried to bring it back under control.
Come on, Wyatt. You’ve been in worse situations, and you didn’t lose your composure. You can do it. They need you. They need you.
I tried to invoke the strength and fortitude that had gotten me through warzones, but all that echoed in my head was how badly I’d screwed up. How my desperation, my hubris, my arrogance, had led to this moment.
“Wyatt! Please, do something!” King begged, and I snapped my gaze back to him.
He needed me. His brother needed me. I needed to stop moping and act.
Fucking do it, Goodman!
I gritted my teeth and checked Nino’s wounds.
He had been wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his suit, but Salieri’s men had probably already known that, which was probably why everyone else had been shot in the head.
Nino, on the other hand, had been shot in the chest above the collarbone.
I didn’t know how he was still breathing, let alone how he was still alive.
“Hang in there, son. Hang in there,” I whispered to him and reached for my phone in my back pocket.
I’d done this. I’d wished for this. Gosh, I was a horrible human being, and yet even when I thought of Nino getting in trouble, I’d never thought of this. Of death.
That was why I had to help him. I had to make sure he lived. And I could only think of one person who could help me do that right now. Ari.
I hesitated for a single moment before I dialed his number. His words on the other end of line tasted bitter in my mouth. Yet another person I was dragging into this hell without their consent.
What was wrong with me?
“Ari,” I said. “I…I need you. I need you now.”
I closed my eyes and slouched back, feeling more defeated than I’d ever been.
I’d caused this mess. All of this mess, and now three men were dead and a fourth was hanging on by a thread.
I’d screwed up so bad, but I had to stop him—Wilson, Salieri, whatever name he wanted to go by—he had to be stopped. Before he hurt anyone else.
Before he hurt Ari.
I didn’t know if I could live with myself if anything happened to him.