King put the phone on speaker as it rang.
“King.” The voice that answered was rough, tired. “This better be important.”
“It is,” King said. “Need to ask you about what happened when your mother died.”
There was a long pause. “What about it?”
“I need to know what happened,” King replied.
Reaper was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy. “The bitch had a kid held captive at a plantation compound in Louisiana. Armed guards, snipers, the whole nine yards. Place was a fucking fortress.”
“How’d you find out?” I asked.
“He was Matrix’s kid,” Reaper said. “Caroline kidnapped him so she could force Matrix to siphon money to her.”
Grace’s hand tightened on her belly.
“We went after the kid,” Reaper continued. “But it wasn’t just the kid we were looking for.” We waited silently, giving Reaper time to answer. “We were looking for Sandman too. Sandman had a twin sister—Kitty. They’d been separated at birth, and she’d finally gotten a lead on him. That was actually how we found Samuel.
“The Florida Chapter was closer. They were supposed to be there to back up Kitty. But when the time came—” He paused. “Toxic and his chapter never showed. We never knew why, and now the fucker is dead.”
“Who went in?” King asked.
“Everyone,” Reaper said, and something in his voice made my stomach drop.
“What happened?” Grace whispered.
Reaper’s breath was ragged. “We breached the compound. Found Samuel and got him out, then Bullseye found Caroline in the master bedroom. She pulled a weapon. Bullseye shot her—killed her. But not before she got a shot off first.”
The silence stretched.
“Bullseye took a bullet to the chest,” Reaper said, his voice breaking. “Shattered on impact. Fragments lodged in his heart. He needed an emergency transplant, or he was going to die on that operating table.”
“And Kitty?” I asked, though I already knew the answer from the weight in his voice.
“Shot in the head,” Reaper said flatly. “Brain dead. They had her on life support, but there was no brain activity. She was gone.”
Grace made a small, wounded sound.
“Kitty was an organ donor,” Reaper continued. “So I made the call. Harvested her heart for Bullseye. It was the only way to save him. The only way to make sure she didn’t die for nothing.”
“Jesus Christ,” King breathed.
“Samuel was rescued,” Reaper said. “Physically unharmed. But the psychological damage...” He trailed off. “Matrix got him out of there, got him help, but that kind of trauma doesn’t just go away.”
I looked down at Christina’s journal, at the words she’d written about making deals, about sacrificing herself to keep both children alive.
“There’s something you need to know,” I said carefully. “About why Toxic didn’t show.”
“What about him?” Reaper’s voice went hard.
“Christina was the reason he never showed,” I said.
“How the fuck was she involved?”
“Because Caroline contacted her,” I said. “She forced Christina to distract Toxic.”
“Why the hell would she do that?” Reaper demanded.
