Page 54 of Fixed Asset

The name meant nothing to me.

But as soon as the two words left Tom’s mouth, the room went wired.

Fallon pushed off the wall. Mason was on high alert. Pete was fighting to keep his face neutral. And Berta was now very interested in what Tom had to say.

Shit. I had a feeling we weren’t heading home tonight.

Chapter Fifteen

Saint ‘Pete’ Young

Pete breathed through the fire in his lungs.

Rafael Quintero was very dead.

His sister Mia was safe in Idaho with her husband, Cole.

The man couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. But that didn’t mean the unspeakable things Rafael had threatened to do to Mia had stopped waking Pete up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

Threats that Pete couldn’t shake even after he’d ended the man making them.

Rafael was the reason Pete had pushed Mia out of the organization she’d helped build. The team still had safe houses around the world. There were still women and children occupying some of them. Women who had escaped domestic violence, who were still getting on their feet. Those houses would be available to them for as long as they needed.

But Mia going out on missions and helping the women and getting them safe—that had ended the day Rafael threatened to violate Mia in such graphic detail, Pete had thrown up after he’d slowly and meticulously carved out Rafael’s insides. And it wasn’t the disembowelment that had made him queasy.

Pete had also lied to his sister and Cole and told them he and Mason, Fallon, Aiden, Ryan, and Gavin were officially retiring and concentrating on the Dirty Plank, the bar they owned together. Not that he was under any illusion she actually believed him, it was just she was so loved up with her husband, she hadn’t called him out on it.

Pete looked across the room, caught his best friend’s gaze, and saw the same revulsion in Mason’s eyes.

Mason was the only person Pete had told what really happened in Mexico. The rest of the team knew Mia had needed an extraction when she’d caught the attention of the wrong people. They knew she’d reported Rafael had possession of a seven-year-old little girl. And they knew what that meant, and why Pete had used himself as bait to be captured. Further, they knew Pete had taken out the warlord, but they did not know how or about the threats.

“What about him?” Mason casually asked.

That calm, cool tone was deceiving. Mason adored Mia like a sister. If it hadn’t been Pete in Juárez, Mason would’ve hung the warlord by his balls and taken his time torturing him.

Tom’s gaze found Pete’s. With a lift of his brow, the man nonverbally asked a question.

“My team knows I took him out. He’s dead. Why are you bringing him up?”

“Do you know what happened to his crew after you left?”

“You mean after I rescued his prostitutes, most of whom were children?”

Tom held up his hand in surrender and, for the first time since he’d entered the room, showed emotion.

That being extreme disgust.

Maybe he wasn’t a total prick after all.

“I’m not condemning your actions. I’m asking you a question.”

“Other than checking on the safe house we have in El Paso, I haven’t been near Juárez since I left. Why?”

Tom shifted his gaze to Berta and gave her a small nod of respect.

“Rafael’s cousin, Carlos, has taken over. He knows you took out Rafael. He knows Mia was in Juárez, and why . . .” He let that hang. Undoubtedly for dramatic flair. The prick wanted a favor and bringing up Pete’s sister was a surefire way to get his attention. “Carlos has put out feelers as to her whereabouts.”

Goddamnit.