AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s been more than a week. Ten days of ongoing hell.
“Maybe. Do you know where my sister is?” I try to keep my voice easy, but the strain is evident in my last words.
“No. Do you know where my little brother is?” Konnor’s voice echoes the plaintive note in my own.
I hadn’t just lost one woman, I lost two. The last two female members of my family I actually care about.
“Who do we have to kill to get our lives back?” I murmur.
Konnor laughs. “Looks like we had the rug ripped out from under us. But I can think of a few ways to cut off the snake’s head without hurting anyone.”
“Yeah,” I ask warily, pouring myself a glass of whiskey.
“The docks.”
I pause with my glass halfway to my mouth. “No.”
“It’s a brilliant plan.” Konnor shifts on his end of the line, leather squeaking as I imagine him leaning forward. “We take control of the docks. You and me, the giants. Cut off the income, the outgoings. A little power play, but more like herding cats into an alley and setting the ground alight.”
“You sound positively gleeful.”
“I always love a good plan with an element of surprise.”
How long before he then rips that rug out from under my feet?
But then, we are rivals for a reason. I’d be a fool to underestimate him, even before I get my people back.
“My answer is no. That won’t win me my wife.”
“How so?” Konnor snaps. “She’ll have no income, no way to move product. We take her drugs, we take her transport, we corner her. Problem solved.”
“Your problem solved, not mine,” I counter. Konnor’s silence speaks volumes. “My wife took those accounts and gave me what I have of the docks. There’s trusts and contracts and a slice for her brother…”—shit, I shouldn’t have said that—“and if I fuck with that, I lose her. Guaranteed. This is about her claiming a slice for herself, Konnor. If I take that from her…” I kiss my fingers, blowing our future away with a puff of breath, even though he can’t see it.
“Fair enough,” Konnor grumbles. “But it was a good plan.”
“It was a great plan,” I agree. “We could take out the Korean faction for shits and giggles? Give ourselves an early Christmas present, perhaps?” Keeping Konnor happy comes secondary to my wife, and only her. If she runs to him again … there are enough unfriendlies in his household I might lose her or Regina forever.
Or the baby.
Regina, I knew, was pregnant. Willow and I…
I squeeze the phone in my hand so hard the glass cracks.
“I know you’re worried about her,” Konnor says softly. “Rafe, I have another call. I will talk to you later.”
He hangs up, leaving me with an empty room, and no more idea what to do about my wife than before. Because in this game, it’s not my move anymore. It’s hers.
****
Which is how I end up across the road from the Hernandez house, lying on my stomach with a pair of binoculars pinned to my face trained on the door. One phone call, my wife to my healer, and we came running like so many well-trained dogs. Or feral ones.
Dom lies next to me, breathing softly. Even that sound irritates the shit out of me.
“Can you be quieter?” I ask. “I don’t remember you forgetting how to scope a place out.”
“That’s because he’s deaf in one ear,” Thalia pipes up from her place curled along Dom’s other side, lying on her back, and studying the sky.
Bringing a healer with me seemed like a good idea, right up until now.
