Chapter 6
Chapter Six
KEANE
I wait until I hear the shower turn on before I leave the room and take the elevator back upstairs. Since I know Andie won’t be able to access the elevator or find a way to escape, I don’t worry about leaving her alone.
My temper has been on a hair-trigger since finding her in the warehouse strapped to that fucking chair. Eating up the distance to the office, I notice it’s cracked open, and when I step inside, I’m not surprised to see my two best friends waiting. Jax has one leg thrown over the arm of the leather armchair, but I can literally feel the tension radiating off him. Rafe stops his pacing in front of the desk and charges me as soon as I come in.
“Did you know?” he accuses, grabbing my T-shirt and fisting it.
I don’t react because he’s just spoiling for a fight, and I’m a safer outlet for his frustration than Jax. Rafe and I know if we ever went up against him, we would lose. Badly. Jax may be our best friend, but he’s also a little crazy. Jax has lived years of being one of the top enforcers for the Rossi syndicate, where his job is to torture people and find ways to inflict as much pain as possible to weasel out information. After a while, he started liking it.
“Did you know it was her in there?” Rafe’s fist tightens on my shirt, a vein throbbing in his neck as he struggles to rein himself in.
Andie has always been his hot button. The guy was obsessed with her when we were teenagers. We all were, if I was being honest. But Rafe claimed her first. I look at Jax who just quirks an eyebrow up at me and continues to clean the blood from underneath his fingernails with the tip of his knife.
I carefully remove Rafe’s death grip on my shirt, finger by finger, and walk around the desk to sit down in the executive chair.
“You want to rephrase that?” I ask him, leaning back and crossing my arms in front of me.
Rafe takes orders from me, not the other way around. He may be my friend and I may consider him a brother, but there’s a hierarchy we adhere to, and Rafe is at the bottom of that power pyramid.
“They beat the shit out of her,” Rafe spits, slamming his palms flat on the desk.
In my peripheral, I notice Jax sitting up, ready to intervene if things get ugly. Rafe may look easy-going and quick with a flirty smile, but he’s one scary motherfucker when he gives in to his rage. He may not want to be like his father, Julio, but honestly, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I’ve seen Rafe come unhinged twice since I’ve known him, and neither time was pretty. Let’s just say that when Rafe lets his beast out, blood flows on the streets.
“The question we all should be asking is how Max knew she was there, and why he kept that bit of information to himself and sent us in blind,” Jax states, his fingers flying over the screen of his tablet. “I don’t appreciate being taken by surprise.”
Rafe’s tenuous thread holding him together starts to unravel. “Who gives a shit what he did or didn’t tell us. Fuck that. I want to know who took her and how soon they’re going to die. It looks like they broke her goddamn face.”
Seeing Andie tied to that chair, blood dripping down from the various cuts on her forehead and lips—I wanted to resurrect all those fuckers just so I could kill them again. The last time I saw Alexandria was five years ago. The rambunctious, annoying little girl I used to tease is not a girl anymore. Even with a swollen lip and bruised cheek, I knew it was her the second her lavender-colored eyes locked onto mine.
I swivel the chair to face Jax. “You know what to do.”
Jax pushes his glasses up his nose with his middle finger before picking up his tablet. Cocky asshole.
I don’t even look at Rafe when I ask, “Should I expect there to be a problem with her here?”
A beat of silence, then, “No.”
But I don’t believe him. I have a feeling that Andie is going to be a big fucking problem for all of us.
Rafe sighs heavily and falls back against the wall, raking his hand through his jet-black hair. “Are we going to tell her about?—”
I’m up and out of the chair before he can finish. “Shut the fuck up.”
Rafe scoffs at me, and I’m three seconds away from knocking him on his ass.
Looking bored at our standoff, Jax yawns. “You need to report in,” he tells me, getting up and walking out of the room.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I say to Rafe.
He sends me one last glower and leaves as well.
I scrub my hands over my face in weariness. Taking out my phone, I dial Domenico’s number.
“Keane,” he answers after one ring.
Domenico is Max’s underboss and one of his closest confidants, besides Lorenzo, Max’s consigliere. But when it comes to business, friends and family don’t matter much in our world. That may seem how things are in television shows, but in real life, money and power trump family loyalties and bonds of friendship.
“Tell Mr. Rossi we have the package.”
“Good,” Domenico wheezes. Old age and decades of smoking cigars are catching up to him.
“Did you know it was her?” I ask him the same thing Rafe asked me.
Domenico has always been straight with me. He’s been helping me navigate things in Kellan’s absence. Absence . What a fucking stupid word to use to say someone is dead.
“Not until an hour ago. How is she?” He almost sounds concerned. I keep forgetting that he’s her and Kellan’s great-uncle.
“Not good.”
Domenico coughs several times, the sound like bones rattling inside a tin can.
“Did you take her to one of the safehouses?”
I pull the curtain at the window to the side so I can look out at the thick forest across the way. Tall pines and giant live oaks line the perimeter of the property.
“We drove a couple hours north to Kellan’s cabin near Baskersfield. I didn’t want to take any chances being too close to the city since that’s where she was being held. Until we know more, I’m reluctant to bring her back to the house. Jax will be in touch soon.”
Dom grunts and hangs up. I guess we’ll be parking our asses here until we get further orders.
But I have other things to worry about. Like Alexandria’s sudden reappearance after all this time, and who the hell took her.