Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ANDIE
Cold water hits my face.
“Damn it, Keane!” I splutter, blinking my eyes open. But it’s not Keane holding a bucket of water over my head to wake me up like he did at Kellan’s cabin.
“Ah, yes, the man you said was your husband. I despise liars, mi mascota .”
Alejandro’s black, soulless eyes glitter when I look up at him. He tosses the empty water bottle to the side and squats down in front of me. I try to move, but my hands and feet are zip tied. Figures.
Alejandro’s scarred face gapes open with a smile, that stupid diamond in his front tooth winking at me. We both lurch to the side at the same time. He catches himself with an outstretched arm, but I’m not so fortunate. I go rolling and smash into hard metal. We’re in a moving van.
He angrily shouts something in Spanish to the driver. With his attention distracted, I take those few precious seconds to regroup. The explosion came from the second SUV. I don’t know if Z, Seamus, or the other men are okay. Liam .
I get my answer when I hear a grunt next to me. The relief I feel that he’s alive is indescribable. The back of the van is dimly lit from the light coming in through the windshield. Liam’s tall, prone form is lying across from me on the other side of the van. Like me, he’s also bound. Unlike me, he’s gagged and can’t talk.
A headache pounds inside my skull and my ears keep ringing off and on. That’s all I need is yet another concussion. I don’t think anything in my body is newly broken, but then again, I can’t feel anything other than the pure, unadulterated, murderous rage that is currently consuming me. A charred, smokey smell wafts up from my shirt and wrinkles my nose. God willing, I hope Liam and I were far enough away from the explosion to avoid being burned. Shrapnel is a different story.
I don’t have time to prepare for the kick to the stomach before a hand grabs my shirt and pulls me upright. I suck in a sharp breath at the flare of pain, then cough as I try to hold back the vomit that wants to come. Liam thrashes, trying to escape his bindings, and another man suddenly appears like a wraith from behind Alejandro. He smashes his fist in Liam’s face a few times to subdue him, but that only makes Liam fight against his tethers more.
“For fuck’s sake,” Alejandro says in clipped English. “The money I would get for your useless head isn’t worth it.” I hear the click of a gun.
“What money?” I ask, wiggling like an earthworm on a hot sidewalk. Keep him talking. Make sure his focus is on me and not on Liam. Anything to buy us more time.
“Levine would pay a pretty penny for El Arma del Diablo .”
I give him a droll look. “You know I don’t understand,” I tell him. However, that’s a lie. He called Liam the Devil’s Weapon. My Spanish may be sparse, but I do know a few words.
The van makes another turn, and I’m able to stay sitting up this time.
“Your father would be ashamed how easily you switched sides to the enemy, mi mascota peque?a .”
I tamp down my grin. He doesn’t know Declan is my father, not Max. He and Julio must think I left with Rafe and changed allegiances. I’m a woman, so naturally, I would seek the protection and help of the top alpha male in the city since Max was dead. Keane would be hurt knowing Alejandro doesn’t view him as a threat. I can’t wait for him to find out how wrong he is.
As discreetly as I can, I twist the Levin ring around on my finger to hide the family crest. If Alejandro had seen it, I’m sure it’d be missing and I’d have another broken finger.
Liam’s swollen eyes are locked on Alejandro and murdering him a thousand different ways. Other than the two shiners he’s sporting from the beating he just took, he looks better than I expected.
Alejandro slides his gun into his front waistband. I beg for the powers of karma to have it discharge and shoot his dick off.
I don’t know how much time I have before the cavalry arrives, because they will most definitely be arriving. Tessa would’ve told the guys about the tracker I had her implant under my arm. I hope the car bomb or me flying through the air like a popped helium balloon didn’t damage it. Shit. What if it did?
“What did you mean about Kellan?”
His last text insinuated something I don’t want to think about, because it would be utterly impossible for it to be true. Kellan can’t be alive. Alejandro must’ve meant something else.
Liam stills his struggles. He’s as interested in hearing the answer as much as I am. I wonder if he still has that extra gun on him that he said was under his shirt.
Alejandro makes a tsk sound. “I’m not going to share all my secrets, Alexandria.”
God, I hate hearing that fucking name being spoken from his lips.
I wiggle around some more to give me time to think. Then it comes to me.
I’m able to bend my knees and awkwardly bring my bound feet up to my chest. My wrists are thankfully zip tied in front of me. I discreetly feel around my right ankle for my knife. My thumb catches on the outline of the top of the handle. Alejandro will never learn.
“How about I share a few of mine?” I reply. “Like how Kellan stole five million dollars from you along with a shit-ton of drugs, and you and your asshole of a father never even noticed.”
I enjoy the constipated look on Alejandro’s face as he works out if what I said was the truth.
“ Mentirosa ,” he spits, anger flushing his face and mottling it red.
Whatever he said, I don’t think it was anything nice, but I plaster a smug smirk on my lips and wait. Alejandro is so easy to bait.
His black gaze bores into me. For once, I’m not lying, so it’s easy to meet his stare and hold it.
“Where is my money?” he finally demands.
My smirk widens to a grin. See? So fucking easy.
“Where is my heroin?” he barks, spittle flying from his lips.
“How about we ask Kellan?” I continue to bait him, partly to keep him talking and to waste time, but also because I’m desperate for an answer to the riddle he texted me.
Alejandro’s shouts and curses in Spanish boom inside the small confines of the back of the van. He leans over and yanks me up by my hair. I’m thrown against the side of the van with such force, the large vehicle rocks on its tires as it drives down the road. Liam growls through his gag and renews his efforts to break free from the zip ties.
“I want my money.”
“Tell me where Kellan is,” I demand, not backing down.
Alejandro backhands me across the face. He wants me to cower and beg for my life, tell him whatever he wants to know so he doesn’t hurt me. He wants to get off on my tears and my whimpers for mercy. My life has been full of men like him. I’ve survived men like him. And I’ve killed men like him.
“I’m going to break you, just like I broke your fucking hermano . You’ll be begging me to end your suffering, just like he did.”
That can’t be right. He’s lying. Isn’t he? Kellan died in an alleyway after being shot. I heard it. I heard everything.
Swiping up to accept the call, I answer, “Hey, Kel.” But instead of hearing him say hi back, I’m met with a muffled, scraping sound, then loud bangs that sound like firecrackers exploding. Are they gunshots? What the hell is going on?
“Kellan, answer me. Kellan!” I yell into the phone.
Several voices are shouting over one another, the cacophony a mess to understand. My heart is thundering in my chest and tears fill my eyes and spill over as I hear Kellan brokenly say my name, the sound garbled like he’s choking.
“I’m so sorry, Tinker Bell,” he rasps quietly.
“Kellan, can you hear me? Please! Please tell me what’s going on. Where are you?”
I hear him wheeze a stuttered breath.
“Kellan!”
Pounding footsteps can be heard over the line, and then a voice I recognize.
“Fuck!” the voice shouts as more gunfire explodes in a staccato rhythm. The voice belongs to Rafe.
Wailing sirens punch through the line from far off in the distance. With a trembling hand, I press the phone closer to my ear, trying to hear everything I can.
“Goddamnit!” That’s Keane’s voice.
More pounding footsteps. Some grunts of pain. People yelling. And gunfire that never seems to end. Then nothing. A whimper escapes me as I’m frozen in place. Where’s my brother?
“I love you, Andie.” The sound, so soft now, I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t had the phone plastered to my ear. Relief spreads through me. He’s alive. Whatever just happened, my brother is alive.
“Kellan? Thank God,” I breathe. The guys will get him out of there.
“I’m so sorry,” he garbles again.
Those are the last words my brother said to me. I listened to Kellan take his final breath. I listened to my brother die and was helpless to do anything. I listened as police officers showed up ten minutes later, one saying what I already knew. Kellan was gone.
Then my memories flash to what Jax told me as we lay in bed and listened to the rain.
“We were under heavy fire. We circled around and were coming back when we were told Kellan had been extracted and was being taken to Hollis,” Jax says.
Now it’s my turn to look confused. Because that’s not what happened.
“Who told you that?”
Jax’s full lips thin to a grim line. “Your father.”
Like pieces of a mangled jigsaw puzzle made from years of lies and deceit, I finally put together what happened. The police that showed up that night must have been men on the Rossi payroll. Max handed Kellan over to the Ortiz cartel. Punishment for his betrayal and blackmail—Kellan’s plans that he wrote in his journal are still fresh in my mind.
Max had to keep his hands clean and make Kellan’s shooting look like a job gone bad. If the guys found out Max arranged for Kellan’s murder, they would have retaliated. Keane, Jax, and Rafe may have worked for my not-father, but he knew their loyalties would always remain with Kellan.
Max used Rafe to open talks with Julio. Under the table deals are made all the time between crime families. You take care of this problem for me, and I’ll do a favor for you. The Ortizes took care of Max’s problem, and in return, Max gave Julio exclusivity to run his drugs through Rossi-controlled ports and territory.
But Alejandro was making his own moves to push Julio out and take over. After that happened, I was added to the original deal. Alejandro decided he wanted me, and Max was more than happy to hand me over to keep the deal intact. Which means Kellan might still be alive.
An icy cold settles over me, and my voice is deadly when I say, “Where’s my brother?”
The driver shouts something just as the van swerves. There’s an explosion of sound like a tire blowing out, and he slams on the brakes, sending Alejandro and me crashing together in a forward momentum that flings us between the driver and passenger seats. Luckily, I land on top of him, and he takes the brunt of the collision with the center console. A bullet pierces the left side of the windshield, spider-webbing the glass and leaving a circular hole in its wake. Brain matter and blood splatter over the headrest of the seat, and the driver falls forward onto the horn.
Fight, Tinker Bell! Move. Now. The voice talking to me isn’t Kellan’s. Somehow, it’s Keane’s.
I smash my forehead into Alejandro’s thick skull, momentarily dazing both of us. Motherfucker , that hurt. Not doing that ever again.
Hobbling off him as best as I can without ‘timbering’ sideways like a damn tree, I raise my bound hands above my head, then swiftly bring them down while locking my elbows at my sides. The zip tie breaks at the head and falls off. Another trick Cillian taught me.
Alejandro snarls and grabs at me. I throw myself backward and fall to the floor, trying to get to my knife so I can cut through the ties around my ankles.
The other man trips over Liam’s outstretched legs, and Liam does a reverse donkey kick into the side of his head with such brute force, it knocks out several of his teeth. The man crumples to the floor and doesn’t move.
“Liam, hold on!” I yell, struggling to get my knife out of its ankle holster.
Alejandro pulls his gun from his front waistband and aims it at me. I freeze. Then I see a thin beam of red light refracting through the shattered windshield and focused on Alejandro’s back.
My grin is savage. “You’re not the only one who’s good at making things go boom .”
Another bullet flies through the windshield and hits Alejandro in the shoulder. His body jerks at the impact, and he stumbles forward.
Fucking finally! I don’t waste any time. Using the knife, I quickly sever through the zip tie binding my ankles together. Now to get to Liam.
“You fucking cunt,” Alejandro growls out, staggering on his feet, blood pouring down the left side of his body from his shoulder where the sniper’s bullet hit.
With my limbs untethered, I don’t wait for him to raise the gun still clutched in his right hand. I react. Pushing off the side of the van with every bit of strength I have left, I barrel into him like a linebacker. The force of our momentum smashes open the back doors, and we hit the black asphalt of the road. The jarring impact steals the air from my lungs in a violent whoosh and spots dance behind my closed eyelids. Aw, fuck.
Both moaning, Alejandro and I roll to our sides and slowly stand up, mirror images of one another. The gun must have slipped from his hand when we fell out the back of the van. But then again, so did my knife.
“It’s over,” I tell him, my abused muscles protesting as I straighten up to my full height.
My guys will be here soon. Maybe they already are, but I’m not going to look around to find out. My gaze stays focused directly on the man I’m going to enjoy kicking the shit out of. As much as I want to kill him right now, I won’t. The questions I need him to answer override my desire for revenge.
Alejandro licks the blood from his mouth. “I think I may have underestimated you.”
“Most usually do.” I get into a fighter’s stance and crook my finger at him. “Let’s see how much of a man you really are, mascota ,” I taunt him.
Taking the bait like I knew he would, Alejandro snarls at me and lunges. We meet like wrestlers, arms outstretched, hands gripping shoulders. He thinks because he’s bigger and stronger, I’ll be easy to subdue, but I know how to fight dirty.
I find the bullet hole on the back of his shoulder at his trapezius and dig my middle finger into it. He howls in pain, his grip on me loosening, and that’s all the advantage I need.
I kick at his kneecap and thrust my palm upward under his chin. The crunch of teeth and bone sound loud to my ears which are filled with a buzzing of rage. Eyes wide in stunned disbelief, his body folds in on itself like a paper accordion, and we drop to the ground. I lock my thighs on either side of his chest, curl my right hand, and punch his ugly face. I let the memories of him flood into my brain and fuel each strike of my fist. The deal Max made. Hit. The bullet hitting Rafe. Hit. Liam and I getting pushed off the road. Hit. The cage. Hit. My broken finger. Hit. Keane’s rings. Hit. The chains. Hit. Declan. Hit. The car bomb. Hit. That fucking stupid diamond on his front tooth when he smiled.
When his face looks like I took a meat cleaver to it, I grab the sides of his head, holding it steady. Alejandro isn’t moving anymore underneath me, but he’s still alive as evidenced by his eye movement and shallow breathing.
Making sure he hears my next words, I bend over to his ear. “Death is only the beginning,” I whisper.
He moans low, a hand twitching and grabbing my hip as he tries to push me off him. Can’t have that.
“Lights out, motherfucker.” I slam his head on the tarmac.
Shouts and rapid footfalls pull me back to the present. I look over my shoulder and the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen greets me.
“Took you long enough,” I say to Keane, Jax, and Rafe.
“Fucking hell, princess,” Keane says, just as Jax grabs for me, lifting me off Alejandro and crushing the ever-living shit out of me.
“You did so good, Angel.”
I slump against him and steal his warmth.
“Can someone help Liam?” I ask since Jax isn’t letting me go.
Keane clambers inside the van, and he must remove Liam’s gag first because I hear him cursing, English mixed with Gaelic.
Rafe walks over to me, and Jax stares down at an unconscious Alejandro. I can’t even imagine the tumult of emotions Rafe must be feeling right now. I reach out and touch his face. His blue eyes meet mine. Jax finally lets go, and I immediately wrap my arms around Rafe.
“It’s almost over,” I tell him, and he nods.
Something glints in the sunlight, catching my attention. I look around, my gaze finally dropping to the body at my feet. It’s then I see it. A gold chain hanging outside the collar of Alejandro’s shirt. And on it are Keane’s mother’s rings.
Bending over, I rip the necklace from Alejandro’s neck and turn around with a triumphant smile just as Keane helps Liam out of the van.
“Look what I just found.”