“Sorry.” Xan frowned.
“Did you catch the guy who set off the flashbang?” Valentin asked.
“Not yet. We can check out the footage later, but the dance floor was crowded. It’ll be hard to figure out who dropped it.”
Valentin nodded.
“I wish Bergam would just make his big move. This death by a thousand paper cuts bullshit is wearing thin,” Xan complained.
“For real. It just keeps adding up—”
“VALENTIN!”
The shout came from a side exit. A broad-chested alpha with long, thinning blond hair strode into the main room, shoving a silver handgun into the side of one of Xan’s men.
Wes knew instantly that the alpha was Bergam.
“Sorry, boss,” the captured guard said to Xan. “He jumped me outside when I was checking the dumpsters.”
Smoke swirled above them. Bergam coughed, then narrowed his eyes.
“I didn’t want an audience,” he hissed at Valentin, his unfocused gaze bouncing around the room. “I was being a nice guy saving the customers from seeing me blow your head off. But I don’t give a shit what your guards think.”
Valentin stepped forward. “Let him go, Bergam.” Assa grabbed at his shirt, but Valentin continued. “It’s me you want. You don’t have problems with anyone else.”
“You’re right,” Bergam said, digging the gun into the guard’s side until he yelped. “But collateral damage is a thing, right? My father never had vision, but some of his people could see that there was real money to be made here. And not on beer and cover charges. And it was bad when those guys got locked up.My guys. But the true collateral damage wasn’t that they went to prison. It was that they met you there. And told you about this place. You’ve been a fucking cockroach invading my house ever since.”
Valentin inched forward. “C’mon, Bergam. Let him go.”
“Do you even care? About what you took from me?”
Another inch. “I cared about Ang.”
Bergam bared his teeth with an unhinged grin. “But now you care about other things.”
Wes’s blood ran cold when Bergam glanced at Assa.
“Are you fucking threatening my family?” Valentin asked, low and menacing.
Bergam shrugged. “You got between me and my father. Why shouldn’t you get a taste of it?”
With those words, he pushed the security guard away and raised the gun. But not at Assa.
At Wes.
“No!”
Valentin lunged into Bergam as the gun exploded. It happened so fast, but not fast enough. Pain zipped through Wes’s shoulder as the bullet penetrated his flesh.
He fell, clutching his arm.
Valentin had Bergam pinned to the ground, trying to subdue him. But his efforts were weak. The crazed alpha got off two more unfocused shots before Xan clambered over and wrested the gun from his hands.
Pulling zip ties from his back pocket, Xan immobilized Bergam’s wrists behind his back.
Sirens roared outside. It had taken the cops way too long to get there. More of Bergam’s fuckery, Wes assumed.
That was when he noticed Valentin lying on the ground. Blood pooled beneath him, seeping out onto the dance floor.
