Chapter 14 Asher #2
“What the fuck happened?” Robert growls at his team. “Why didn’t you guys get here as soon as I called?”
“Sorry, boss. We tried,” Sorenson rasps, out of breath. “All the elevators were shut down and the stairwells were barricaded.”
“They clearly planned this well,” I say to Robert with a sigh. “They hit us when they knew the rest of the team wouldn’t be in the room.”
“How long were we out?” Robert asks.
“It’s only been fifteen minutes since you were gassed,” Sorenson answers.
“We got your message and tried to get up here, but as I said, Yegor’s team shut down the elevators and stairwells.
We had to get hotel security and maintenance to break down the stairwell doors.
And the elevators just became operational as Yegor’s men fled with him. ”
“Call a doctor,” I order Sorenson through a pained sigh. “Both Robert and I need medical attention, and I’m not about to head out to a hospital.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And someone call Jenkins. I don’t know where my phone has ended up, but Ella needs to be put on another lockdown.”
“Yes, sir,” the other security officers say, almost in unison.
The suite door beeps, and everyone tenses as it opens again. But we all relax when we see it’s just Matthew.
“Holy Mother of God,” he says, his eyes wide as he takes in the scene. Like Robert, he makes his way toward me and gives me stiff hug. “What the fuck happened? The hotel security is freaking out downstairs, and people are yelling, saying a bomb went off.”
I sigh. “I had to use my watch.”
His eyes nearly burst out of his head, and I settle onto the couch and recount the last fifteen minutes, suddenly grateful that I sent Matthew out on a small errand after dinner so that he wasn’t here when all the shit went down.
I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Matthew.
Or Robert for that matter. After my family and Ella, they’re the two people in the world I’m closest to.
“Call the pilot,” I order Matthew. “I want to leave as soon as possible. I’m done with this fucking city and this fucking trip.
” And I need to get home to Ella. “Then call and cancel my meeting for tomorrow. But don’t divulge to anyone what happened.
No one can know.” I sigh as I look at the half-destroyed bedroom of the suite.
“Let’s pack up and leave before the police get here.
I’m not in the mood to deal with them. And let the front desk know you’ll be in touch for the damages. ”
My hands shake as I scramble to pack, and I soon become useless at it as the enormity of the situation hits me. I sit on the half-destroyed bed, reeling in my thoughts.
That was too close.
Too motherfucking close.
Yegor and Sergei have gone too far, and this situation has now shifted to life or death.
I run my hands through my hair as a heaviness washes over me and I make my peace with what needs to be done. Because I know in my gut that to beat Yegor and Sergei, I’ll have to go just as far as they’re willing to go.
Despite my acceptance of it, the thought sobers me.
Because I’ve been there before.
My hands, unfortunately, are not bloodless. Three times I’ve watched the life drain from someone’s eyes because I stole it.
The first time, I was in college when one of my mother’s stalkers somehow breeched our home’s walls and made it into my parents’ bedroom. My father was gone on business, and I happened to be home for the weekend.
I can still hear my mother’s scream.
Declan and I raced into the room. Declan pulled the man off her before he did anything, but the scene snapped something inside me. A rage I’ve never known existed swept over me, and Declan and I went rabid. We beat the stalker to literal death in what must have been less than two minutes.
The second time was only a couple of years later.
Sterling was eighteen, but still in high school, when the idiot decided to sleep with one of his teachers.
Her husband caught them in bed and attacked Sterling.
Being caught so off guard and not as big or bulky as he is now, Sterling didn’t defend himself well.
When the man finished, he dumped Sterling in the woods near the boarding school’s grounds and left him for dead.
Sterling had paid his security officer to fuck off for the night so he could sleep with the teacher, and the son-of-a-bitch accepted the bribe, so Sterling was left defenseless.
His saving grace was the fact that he managed to send me an alert on his watch before he passed out.
I called Declan, and we raced to the school, traced the GPS tracker on his watch, and found him sprawled naked on the forest floor, battered and bloody and barely breathing.
We could have called the police. But we were not about to let our little brother be pulled into a scandal that would have caused irreparable damage. Instead, we handled it ourselves.
We tracked down the husband and the security guard who decided a couple thousand dollars was worth risking our brother’s life, and we took them out into the woods.
Robert helped to make sure no one would ever find the bodies.
After it was over, I promised myself I would never do anything like that again.
But now it looks like I’m going to have to break that promise to myself. Now, I need to fulfill the promise I made to Katrina. I warned her that I would come for her family if they came for mine. I warned her that if her father pushed me to the edge, I wouldn’t go quietly.
Yegor and Sergei think I’m above getting my hands dirty. But that’s because they don’t know what I’m capable of when the people I love are on the line. So, if Yegor and Sergei are only going to listen to violence, then that is exactly what I’ll give them.
I’ll burn them and their lives to the ground.
And I’ll smile while I do it.