Snubbing the fury radiating from my eyes, he rifles through the gun cabinet hidden behind paneled walls in Nikolai’s office. He does a good job of acting ignorant, but his next words reveal his worry about what the repercussions will be for disrespecting me. “Talk some sense into her,please.” His words aren’t for me; they’re for Maddox.
Maddox takes up Trey’s plea in an instant. “J—”
“No.”
He exhales deeply before trying again. “Mom has been through enough—”
It is hard for me not to clutch my chest from the devastation in his voice. “I feel for her, truly I do, but her pain isn’t even half of what I’m being pelted with right now.”
I’m not lying. Hope is the only thing stopping me from folding in two right now.
“If you go, you could get killed.” Maddox’s lack of debate reveals he understands the level of hurt I’m experiencing. “Do you understand that, J?”
I nod, aware of what I’m up against. “At least I won’t die a coward. Col stripped the life from my veins years ago. He made me hate everything I was and everything I had once hoped to be.” Tears pool in my eyes as I force out words I never want to express again. “If I lose Nikolai, I will once again lose every part of who I am. I won’t survive going through that again, Maddox. I was barely living before Nikolai came into my life, so I refuse to live a life without him in it.”
“J. . .” Maddox stops, screws up his face as he struggles to remain passive like he has the past five years, then starts again, “Dad is going to kill me.”
Once again, I nod in agreement. This goes against everything our father instilled in his sons since the day they took their first breaths—but so does my focus. Our parents taught us to chase our dreams, no matter what the consequences. That’s what I’m trying to do.
Shaking his head, either in admiration of my stubbornness or disbelief, Maddox returns his eyes to Trey. “I’ll keep her out of harm’s way.”
Trey chuckles. It’s not his happy-go-lucky laugh. “Do you truly believeyouhave what it takes to keep her safe? These men are like me: they don’t have morals.”
Maddox accepts Trey’s knock to his chin like a man, but it doesn’t sway his resolve. “Doyoutruly believe Justine would still be here if I couldn’t protect her from men like you?”
Maddox’s saying appears pompous, but it is one hundred percent authentic. He might look like a humble man, but he’s been my family’s keeper for years longer than that. Nothing can deter him when it comes to protecting the ones he loves. The five years he spent in prison proves this without a doubt.
“I took one night off, and look what happened. Men trained to keep my sister safe didn’t, yet you feel you have the right to judge me.”
Their pissing contest ends by Trey shoving a loaded gun into Maddox’s chest. “I don’t have time for this shit. If you want to walk into your death head-on, who am I to stop you?” He drops his eyes to the semi-automatic weapon Maddox is holding at an odd angle. “The safety is on the tang. If you don’t know what that is, you shouldn’t be carrying a gun.”
I take a step back when his murderous eyes shift to me. He isn’t happy about my decision, but he’s aware he either follows my orders or loses his life, he’s going with the former. “If you so much as get a scratch on you, you’re going to take Maddox’s gun, aim it at my head, then fire. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I reply, comprehending his riddle.
By letting me go with him, it isn’t just his livelihood on the line. It’s also his life.
“But I won’t need to borrow Maddox’s gun to take you down. I’ll use mine.”
The low hang of Trey’s jaw grows when I swing open the bottom drawer of Nikolai’s desk to remove a Sig Sauer P365 Nitron. He stares at me in shock when I load the 10-round magazine with bullets. I don’t know why he’s stunned. The first thing Nikolai taught me after his compound was raided by Alexei was to fire a weapon. We’ve had weekly target practice ever since.
Maddox thinks he’s keeping me far from the action, but I have news for him. A true queen doesn’t sit and watch the royalties roll in; she brings home the bacon as well.
18
Nerves takeflight in my stomach the further our fleet of SUVs travel down a dusty, bumpy road. The airstrip Maddox discovered is a few miles from the location Carmichael suggested we search, but deeper intel discovered there is an off-road track that weaves throughout dense woodlands separating the dome-like building and the airstrip.
I’m not nervous we’re heading to battle unprepared. I’m petrified about what we may unearth. Things are still hazy, but the snippets of information I uncovered the past seven hours haven’t filled me with hope. If anything, they’ve had the opposite effect.
Preliminary findings on the blood pool located near the myth only known as “killer” confirms it was Nikolai’s blood. It had shards of muscle and bone mixed in, meaning his injury shredded through his muscle and quite possibly nicked his bone. That can only mean one thing. He was shot.
With no bullet located with his DNA, either it’s still lodged in Nikolai’s body, or Maxsim’s crew combed hundreds of bullet casings to locate his.
The latter is highly unlikely.
With how heavily they came in, it would have only been a matter of minutes before stunned bystanders called the authorities. They would have left in a hurry, having no time to seek one bullet in a sea of many.
Just knowing Nikolai is injured has me twisted up in knots, but adding that to recalling Maxsim’s claim he killed Rico in front of Eli, and you have the perfect recipe for a swirling stomach.
