Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
KEANE
This entire situation is fucked. And wrong. I don’t know how to process how I’m feeling after finding out the man I look up to, the man who took me under his wing and taught me everything I know, the man who has been more of a father to me than my own, is a pedophile. I have no illusions about the things we do for a living. We aren’t good men. The things I’ve done and the things I’ve seen ensured that I will get a one-way express ticket to hell.
But fuck me. What Andie told us has completely gutted me. How could a father do that to his daughter? It just— motherfucker!
I punch the wall with my bare hand, sending chips of drywall crumbling to the floor and leaving a massive hole. Max isn’t going to be happy about that, but I don’t fucking care.
One of our new soldiers, Matteo, I think is his name, approaches me but I wave him away.
“I’m fine. Do another perimeter sweep of the grounds and check in with Paul.”
“Yes, sir,” he replies.
“I think you need this more than I do,” Jax states from the other side of the room, an unlit joint dangling from his lips.
I walk over and take the whiskey glass from his proffered hand and tip it back in one go. Then I grab the joint from his mouth, waiting while he lights it, and take a much-needed drag.
Blowing out a ring of smoke, I comment, “You know Max would shit a brick if he saw us smoking inside the house.”
“Fuck him.”
Fuck him indeed.
“Rafe, too,” I add.
“Fuck him more,” Jax grumbles.
Taking one last hit, I give Jax back his joint.
“I’m assuming you came to find me for a reason.”
Jax, Rafe, and I have been best friends since we were kids. Kellan was the nexus of our group, and we blindly followed him. Lately, however, I’ve felt the ties of our brotherhood loosen and slowly start to unravel without him here. Rafe getting suckered into marrying Rita should have been another warning sign. He doesn’t love her. He can barely stand her on a good day.
Then Andie came back.
And now… well, now, I’m about to start a civil war against a man I swore my allegiance, loyalty, and life to. A war that will most definitely have a damaging ripple effect, like dominoes tumbling. And for me to do what needs to be done, I need to marry the daughter of the don of the Rossi family. The idea I floated by Andie earlier wasn’t just a knee-jerk solution to her Alejandro problem. Being the only Rossi heir left, I need her to help solidify my position in the family, so I can take Max down.
“You know she has a death wish, right?” Jax says around toking his joint.
Huffing humorlessly, I reply, “Don’t we all.”
He passes the joint back to me, and I take a hit before returning it. “I meant it literally.”
I narrow my eyes at him, smoke pluming up in front of me in thin tendrils. I understand what Jax is saying. Andie doesn’t care if she dies. I think she actually wants to. And knowing that, destroys me. Jax has a way of seeing things no one else can. Andie has changed so much over the last five years since we saw her. If anyone can sense her dark thoughts, it would be Jax. I’m the only one who knows he tried to kill himself right after Andie left. I found him one night, drunk and high, playing Russian roulette with his Glock. Not even Kellan and Rafe knew what almost happened that night. How Jax begged me to end him when his stupid game of chance wouldn’t work. How he said he didn’t want to live without his angel.
Jax pinches off the end of his blunt and pockets it. “We have a snitch.”
I figured as much. Someone has to be feeding intel to Levine. There is no way in hell he would have been able to ferret out the location of Kellan’s cabin so quickly or be able to infiltrate the property without tripping the alarms unless he had inside help.
“Who?”
“Working on it,” Jax replies. “But that’s not all.”
Groaning, I drop into a nearby armchair. “Of course, it fucking isn’t.”
“Levine has a kid.”
My eyebrows raise to my hairline. “From your tone, I’m assuming this kid isn’t a kid, but an adult. How did we not know this?”
“Whoever it is, he or she is a ghost. No online presence, no pictures, nothing. Levine definitely knows how to keep his shit secret.”
Kid’s a bastard then, because Levine never married, which is odd in and of itself.
I grab whiskey and drink it straight from the bottle. Classy, I know. My old man was a closet alcoholic. I guess I should consider myself lucky that he was never a mean drunk. Unfortunately, his addiction got him killed because he made some very bad choices. One of them was trying to make a deal with the FBI. That earned him a literal cement casket. I should know. I was the one who buried him alive in it. The mob is all about family. Until it isn’t. What a twisted, double meaning that has. There are no second chances for traitors, even if that person is your own flesh and blood.
Jax takes the bottle from me and finishes it off. “I think I know exactly who we should ask about it.”
Yeah, I do too.
I get up and walk down the hall, through the foyer, and then head to the back of the house where there is a secret door leading down to a basement that doesn’t exist on the architectural blueprints. Jax silently follows me.
When Andie described the cage and the room Max would lock her in, I knew exactly what she was talking about. That’s how I knew she wasn’t lying.
Taking the steps at a slow clip, I steel myself for what needs to be done. The first time I tortured a man, I puked my guts up for days afterward. The second time wasn’t as bad. And then it became easy. Something where I could shut my brain off and just go through the motions. Like riding a bike or tying your shoes.
But the stench still gets to me. The smell of stale urine, flop sweat, blood, and rancid feces is a cocktail only the devil himself would enjoy.
I roll up my sleeves as I walk over to the man chained to the wall. The room is no better. All gray concrete, no windows, no air circulating, dim lighting, and a water hose and a drain in the center of the room that helps with cleanup.
Kicking the man awake, I lower to a squat. Jax has already done a number on him based on his face and the knife marks on his neck and upper chest.
“I have a question for you.”
The man groans as he shifts position on the floor, dragging his back against the wall to sit up straighter. This is one of the men who stormed the cabin. One of the guys who tried to take Andie. For that alone, he’s going to suffer.
Dom’s men found him underneath a pile of smoldering rubble. His legs have third-degree burns, and the bullet wound where he was shot in the shoulder is still oozing.
He mumbles something, but his face is so swollen and bruised, he can barely move his lips.
“What’s that?”
“I said, kiss my ass, motherfucker,” he slurs, not able to keep his head up.
“Jax?”
I hold out my hand, and Jax places a cigar cutter in it. You don’t even want to know all the shit we have in here that we use. Everyone has their limit with how much pain they can endure before they either sing like a canary and tell us what we want, or they pass out from the pain, never to wake up again. This guy looks like he’ll be one of the tougher ones.
Making snipping sounds with the cutter, I tell him, “Let’s try this one more time. When I say I have a question for you, you’re supposed to reply, ‘Yes sir, how can I help?’”
He tries to spit at me, but the blob of blood-tinged saliva falls down his chin instead, dribbling onto his sweat-soaked chest.
“Guess we’re going to do this the hard way.”
I grab his hand and without a second’s hesitation, cut off his right pinkie finger. The guy screams until he gags, and I decide to get out of the way in case he starts to vomit as well.
I kick at his leg. “Levine has a kid and I want to know who he is.”
The man goes into a paroxysm of coughing and choking. He lulls his head from side to side. “I’m already dead,” the man wheezes. “I ain’t telling you shit.”
I believe him. He knows he’s not getting out of here alive. Why give up good intel?
Standing over him, I inform him, “I’ll let Levine know what a good little soldier you were, right before I slice him from navel to neck. He chose to come after the wrong girl. Andie belongs to us, and we don’t like it when someone tries to take what’s ours.”
He garbles out a low chuckle. “You’re so fucking stupid. You have no clue what’s really going on. Your boss does, though,” he taunts.
It enrages me that he claims to know something I don’t. How many secrets has Max been keeping from us? He knew exactly where Andie was being held at the warehouse and sent us in blind. He promised Andie to Alejandro Ortiz without even consulting Dom, me, his capos, or Lorenzo, his consigliere. He raped and abused his daughter right under everyone’s noses for over a decade. Kellan knew. Kellan never told you. He didn’t stop it.
Fed up with all of it, I motion to Jax. “Take out the trash. Make sure he’s awake when you pull out his beating heart. I’ll send Ansel down to clean up the mess.”
With that, I exit and take the stairs back up to the main floor. It’s going to take at least six showers before I feel clean again.