Page 7 of Entangled By Him

CHAPTER 7

Anna

It’s going on dinner time as I walk back and forth in front of the basement door. Jax, Colt and Mason have been down there for hours. They took a few of their most trustworthy guards, the ones they know that won’t fuck them over. But, does anybody really ever know who’s good and who’s bad.

Mason is really good at getting a read-on people. Better than Jax is, which is why he’s mainly in charge of hiring all the guards and dealing with face-to-face meetings. It feels like to me that Jax is slowly pulling him back in the family business and away from what he loves to do. Even though we all know he loves being out in the field. He loves this shit just as much as he does his investments, and so does his fiancé, Lee.

I tried to go down there. I never thought they would be this long. I’d really like information on the guy that screwed over my family. My brothers instantly blocked me, not because they don’t think I can handle myself, just because my emotions would get in the way.

I was stupid to think that they haven’t been watching me that closely for the past month. They’ve been able to see my more depressed state and my distracted mood. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s wrong with me. It should make me feel bad that I’m thinking of a guy that threatened to kill my family, but it’s something I can’t help.

I continue to pace as I see someone come up to my side.

“You’re gonna leave a permanent mark on the floor girl if you don’t stop.” Ray leans against the doorway heading to the kitchen.

That gives me an idea, “you should go down there and figure out what’s going on.”

He pushes himself off the wall and walks towards me, “no can do. They hand-picked a few guys and the brothers don’t want anyone else down there.” Ray actually seems irritated by his response. I wonder if this has offended him that he’s not in the trustworthy group.

Ray walks over and puts his arm around me, this is something he’s always done. “Come on, let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make you dinner. You need to get away from the damage you’re doing to the floor before they have to replace the whole thing.” I look down thinking what damage, as Ray starts to laugh.

The flirty banter between us is great, I just wish Colt was up here with us. These two can take my mind off any crap that I’m dealing with.

“Lasagna?” Ray asks me as he heads over to the fridge and I nod. He opens the freezer and pulls out one of those premade lasagnas that you just need to heat up. I start to laugh.

“I thought you were making me dinner, not heating something up.” I blurt out as he sets the oven to preheat.

“You honestly can’t remember my cooking? It hasn’t been that long.” His comment makes me think back, and yeah, his cooking was shit.

“Lasagna it is.” I say as I can’t help myself from chuckling. I do feel bad for the guy, but I really hope he never has to cook for his wife or his children one day.

Ray and I just talk for the forty-five minutes that it takes dinner to get done. He tells me about a girl he was dating but not seeing any more. She was one of those crazy stalker types.

“She showed up at my house and waited for me in my bed, naked.” I shake my head, “the problem was that my parents were visiting, and they were sleeping in my damn room. They got a huge surprise that night. I haven’t talked to the girl since she left there in tears.”

I laugh hard, it takes me a few minutes to stop. I don’t really have anything to tell him about my dating life because I don’t date. It’s fun just to sit here and talk and relax.

Ray gets up about five minutes before the timer goes off on the lasagna. He decided he also wanted salad and bread sticks. I guess you can’t have lasagna or even Italian food without garlic bread or as he calls it, breadsticks.

As he finishes throwing everything together and starts making us each a plate, the doorbell goes off.

The door to the basement opens quickly as the three guards that were downstairs head towards it. No one comes in as I walk closer. I want to get a better look of the men outside.

I can tell by their wife beaters, darker skin and multiple tattoos that they’re with the Mexican Mafia. Why are they here?

A scuffle is made over by the kitchen behind me. Ray and I both turn and look in that direction. We can see a beaten and bruised Jason being dragged towards the front door.

The blood on his face is streaked from what could’ve only been tears. They must’ve really worked him over downstairs. Hopefully they at least were able to get something out of him.

Mason and Jax continue to escort Jason to the front door. No words are said as they just hand the man into the greedy arms of one of our clients.

We haven’t done an enormous amount of work for them, but we have done several cases and not all of them were legal. With the higher ups we need to keep on our game face, keeping that communication open. It pays well for them and us.

Jax closes the door as him and Mason start to walk towards the kitchen. Ray and I just look at each other and follow. Colt is already in there digging into the lasagna, which makes me smile. Ray’s gonna give him shit.

It won’t happen today, though, as soon as we walked in Jax asked Ray to reconvene with him tomorrow. It was his polite way of dismissing him for the day. They really are being careful of who they trust.

Ray nods in understanding as he quickly runs over to the counter and grabs his already made plate. I don’t blame the guy, he cooked it so he should enjoy it.

We all take a seat at the island on the barstools, all of us are eating. I’m not even sure if my brothers ate the lunch that I made earlier. I just had the guards come up and take a bunch of it down.

Jax’s demeanor is one of anger still. I pretty much know what happened down there already by just looking at him. He wears his emotions on his sleeve. If they got what they wanted, he would be in a very good mood.

When we’re all finished eating, Colt grabs our plates and takes them over to the sink. They still don’t get washed. I bite my tongue again, I guess this is my job.

Jax clears his throat, “just like we suspected, Jason is working for Maxim.” I nod, I already figured that. “After hours of trying to get through to him, we were able to figure out that he doesn’t know much.”

Mason continues for Jax, “Jason was supposed to report back to Maxim what he saw and what we were supposedly working on. This includes any tips we might’ve received from the people that Jax reached out to. And the most important is if we found anything or we were getting close.”

Jax decides to finish the story. “We believe that it was just a coincidence that we did find that warehouse. Jason was able to get a hold of Maxim and let him know what we located. They were able to get security surveillance up really fast. If that fucker would’ve just told us what was going on, we could’ve been there waiting for them. This nightmare would be over.”

Mason is quiet for a minute, seeing if Jax wants to continue, but when he doesn’t, Mason does. “The guy was also able to take a lot of photos. He must’ve done it with his camera phone because all of the guards usually have their phones out when walking the grounds. It keeps them alert to any problems that might arise. His main focus was getting a bunch of pictures of you. He also had a notebook that he carried around.”

“What are the Mexicans going to do with him?” I wonder.

Jax answers before Mason gets a chance to, “we don’t know. It’s not up to us to decide, it falls into Cruz’s territory. I imagine the guard that works for Cruz will face retaliation to.”

“The most important thing, though, is we still don’t know the end game. What is he planning?” Mason says as Colt brings us all a bottle of beer.

I occasionally drink, it’s usually just after dinner but I really don’t care for beer. I start to sip mine as my brothers gulped theirs down. We always buy from a local brewery. It’s good, so why not.

My brothers start to talk about what happened down there. They just talk amongst themselves. Basically, things they can change for next time or things that they might want to try. We’re not really big on the torturing people area. We’re more on finding them and saving lives.

My phone beeps in my pocket. I squeal when I notice a text message from Finn. My brothers are all looking at me as I mumble out, “it’s Finn, I’ve been worried about him.”

They all nod and Colt smiles. I know he was a little bit worried, too. I get up and make my way outside. I want to be able to talk to him and not listen to my brothers or the guards that are walking around the house.

The air is crisp tonight and the sun is starting to go down, blanketing the landscape in numerous different colors, exactly like my bruises.

I sit down on the patio furniture that we have in the little backyard area. We’re lucky being in this part of New York by Central Park where we were able to actually get a little private yard space.

My phone is pulled out quickly as I start to hit the call button. Before I get a chance to do that, the message from Finn pops up. This makes me look at the message before I’m actually able to call my brother.

I’ll never be able to erase this from my memory.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com