Chapter 7 - Josiah
“It’s too coincidental,” I snarl, driving away from Alara’s place.
“For someone to attack the operation that was set up solely as a practice run for the operation with the West Coast alliance…especially after things have been running smoothly for so long. Someone is trying to scare them off and stop them from allying with me.”
“I don’t know, man. It’s probably just some assholes taking a chance. I don’t think you need to worry about it. We’ll go check it out, and it’ll be nothing,” Isaak says, not worried in the least.
I am not as easily convinced.
“I was just reassuring Nestor this morning that my teams are brilliant, and we very seldom have outside interference even when we run big operations,” I mutter, disappointed that this is happening now.
“But who else knows about the new alliance?” Isaak asks.
I push my foot harder against the accelerator, wanting to get there faster.
“I don’t know,” I say.
We aren’t going to the warehouse. The truck was ambushed on the way to the client, but that was too much information to share with Kayla standing right there.
Both Alara and Isaak picked up on the issue immediately. I hated leaving her and the twins like that, but there wasn’t any time to drop them home first, and there was no chance in hell I was letting them make the trip alone. Not after an attack against my name like this.
For all I know, it could be a distraction, and the real target is my children and new wife. I never take anything for granted. In this world, you expect the worst from people. In doing so, you can keep the ones you love safe by staying one step ahead of everyone who wants to take you down.
It doesn’t take us long to arrive at the scene. But it’s eerily quiet.
“Where is everyone?” I mutter, climbing out of the car.
Isaak follows me as we walk towards the truck with our guns drawn.
It’s dark, and I notice too late that there are blood stains on the road. The scene has been tidied. Bodies have been dragged away.
“Get down!” I shout to Isaak, who immediately drops as bullets skim through the air right above our heads.
Men pile out of the hijacked truck, eager to attack after waiting inside to ambush us.
Their faces are covered in black masks. They fire a steady stream of bullets at us as we duck behind my SUV. The gunfire thuds a steady stream against my bulletproof car. “We have to get back in the car!” I shout over the noise.
“Go, I’ll cover you, then you can cover me!” my brother shouts back.
I nod once, then bolt for the open driver’s door. Isaak opens fire on them, but there are so many of them, it’s impossible to distract them all.
I feel the bullet skim over my thigh, stinging across my skin. But I ignore it.
“Stay behind the car,” I shout, starting the engine and reversing at an angle that will allow my brother to get inside without having to face the onslaught of the firing range that is quickly closing in on us.
He leaps through the passenger door as soon as he gets a chance, and I slam my foot against the accelerator, reversing away from the attackers.
My heart is racing. Adrenaline pushes through my veins. The iron scent of blood fills the car as I spin to face the opposite direction and slam the car into gear again.
Isaak is breathing heavily, pressing his face into his hands. I reach out and touch his chest. “Are you hit?” I demand.
He lets out a long breath.
“Isaak! Are you hit?” I shout at him.
He drops his hands and pats them across his body. “Nah, I don’t think so. But I smell blood,” he says, scrunching his nose.
“It’s me. I caught a stray on my leg.”
“Fuck, dude. Pull over, and I’ll drive,” he says.
“No. It’s okay. Just watch the rear and make sure we aren’t being followed. I want to get back as soon as possible. For all we know, this was a distraction.”
“Alara’s security team is with them; you hired the best of the best.”
“I know, I know,” I sigh.
We drive in silence for a while before Isaak turns to look at me. “Does Kayla know who you are?”
I clench my jaw and shake my head. “No, she doesn’t.”
“So, when you broke it off with her, what did you tell her?”
“I didn’t give her a reason. Nothing would have made sense. I just…I just pushed her away,” I sigh heavily.
“Fuck. That’s brutal,” my brother says quietly. “I know how into her you were. I’d never seen you so happy before.”
“She really is something,” I mutter.
“And your twins.”
For the rest of the drive, we’re both quietly observant. No one follows us. The roads are quiet.
Pulling up to Alara’s estate, the guards look alert, and everything appears normal. I finally breathe a sigh of relief.
But when I climb out of the car, I realize I look like hell. My jeans are soaked in blood. Even my hands and arms have blood smeared over them from pressing my hand against the wound while I was driving.
“I need to get straight into the bathroom without anyone seeing me. Especially the twins. If they are awake, they cannot see this,” I say. “Do you have any spare clothes here?”
“Yes, I’ve got some clothes in the back room. I’ll bring them out for you. I’ll try distracting the girls while you sneak past.”
It was a good plan.
And luckily, the twins are fast asleep, tucked into Alara’s bed. She happened to have a pink blanket over her bed, which totally sold Kira on being comfortable sleeping there. And with Kira comfortable, Kelsey was fine, too.
But as it turned out, Kayla was not as easy to avoid.
I hadn’t even managed to close the bathroom door when she pushed it open again, glaring at me with the most intensely piercing eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Kayla,” I say, warning edging my voice.
“Don’t you dare lie to me. I need to know what’s going on. You leave me here this late at night, you disappear for over an hour, and now you come back covered in blood and trying to sneak past like you want to hide it? This isn’t normal! None of this is normal! Did you get stabbed?”
Her voice is tight with stress.
“We got mugged…uh…while we were trying to…”
But even as the lie forms around my thoughts, I can’t get myself to go along with it.
The relationship I am building with Kayla this time around is different from what it was before.
We have children. I cannot lie to her, even if I think it’s for the best. And it isn’t for the best. She is the mother of my daughters, and she is my wife.
Lying will make her angry. It will destroy any trust I’ve managed to build so far.
I gesture for her to come into the bathroom and close the door behind us, just in case one of the twins decides to come wandering past.
Sighing, I start peeling my shirt off and wrapping it around my thigh to completely stop the bleeding.
“Please, Josiah, you can’t…”
“I’m a Brava king. I own Chicago. The entire city is mine. Tonight, one of my operations was attacked, and when we went to check on it, we were shot at.”
I speak calmly and get right to the point. Kayla is a brilliant woman. She is smart. In business, she takes a no-nonsense approach, so that is what I am respecting her with now.
“Bullshit,” she scoffs, shaking her head. But her eyes are wide with shock. “It can’t be true,” she insists.
“Think about it, Kayla. Really think about everything you saw back then when we first met. And everything you’ve seen now,” I tell her.
She falls quiet, watching me closely.
“The security?” she mutters.
“Personal bodyguards at home and the office. Full security teams around the estate.”
“The random bruises…” she whispers, looking away from me.
“Yeah, I told you I started kickboxing, but even back then you knew I was lying.”
She nods. Her face has gone slack, but I can see her mind racing.
“Kayla, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk it,” I sigh. I wish I could explain how all I wanted to do was protect her, and I know how much it must have hurt her.
“So that’s why you broke up with me? Because you're some kind of mafia king?” she asks, looking up at me with wide, emotional eyes that are flooded with realization.
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“My twins,” she whispers, taking a step away from me.
“The girls are fine. I will never let anyone harm them,” I say immediately.
She nods again, but I can sense something inside her has switched off. Something has become more rigid, more closed off to me.
“Will you take us home now?” she asks quietly.
“Yes, I’m going to get changed, I’ll be five minutes.”
I watch her leave the bathroom. My heart is weighted with the truth I’ve just told her.
I had to tell her the truth. Lying to her would have hurt her. But I hate that look in her eyes. I hate the way I feel like she might see me as a monster now. Will she? Is that how she’ll see me?
The twins are fast asleep in their boosters in the back seat of the car. Kayla is silent. She hardly spoke a word while we were leaving, and she hasn’t said a single word since we got into the car.
I’ll need to give her time to process everything.
And I’ll need to have patience.
I’ve thrown her into a world she doesn’t understand, and now I need to find a way to guide her through it without losing her and my daughters. Not that I would ever let her leave.
I can’t.
I don’t care what it takes; I will make sure she stays.