AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was responsible, win or lose, and they could not afford to lose.
“Jesus,” Mauz said. “You need to cool it.”
Logan glared at him. He had a reputation for being calm in times of crisis, but very few of the men could get away with talking to him that way.
Mauz Kouri was one of them. The other man was as hardened as any of them, and Logan had relied on his straight talk more than once in the past. Plus, he respected the hell out of the guy.
“You lost him,” Logan said. “You lost him.”
Mauz rubbed the five o’clock shadow that darkened his jaw. “All due respect, we lost him. And we lost him because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Deep down, you know that.”
The last two hours were a blur: the call from Mauz telling him Leo was missing, the cops arriving at the aquarium to talk to Leo’s distraught teacher, Logan’s mad rush to Ella’s office, the drive back to the house with her sobbing in the passenger seat, more cops at the house.
Logan paced Ella’s living room, feeling claustrophobic. He flung open the front door and walked down the front steps, his head in his hands.
“They’re going to find him,” Mauz said behind him. “Even the bratva doesn’t like hurting kids.”
Logan looked at him. “But they’ve done it.”
Mauz’s nod was slow. “And it’s brought a shitload of attention when they have. Baranov can’t afford that right now.”
Logan stopped pacing and inhaled a deep breath. He needed to get his shit together before Nathan arrived. He was going to take one hell of a beating from the other man — figuratively speaking — and he needed to be calm.
Needed to be ready to take what he had coming.
Then his gaze landed on the burgundy Expedition parked in front of a house across the street.
“Motherfuckers…” He started across the street.
“Don’t do it,” Mauz called after him. “It’ll only make things worse.”
His voice came as if from far away, barely registering in Logan’s brain around the white-hot rage coursing through his veins.
He reached the Expedition and yanked open the driver’s side door all at once, then reached inside and dragged out the man behind the wheel.
He wasn’t the same man who had been tailing Gabriella, that was the first thing Logan noticed. He was also big, both tall and fleshy, heavier than Logan had expected.
“What the fuck…?” the man said, stumbling on the asphalt. “You are making a mistake, a big mistake.”
Logan swung, his punch landing squarely on the man’s jaw.
He staggered backward and Logan lunged for him again. “You dare to come here? You dare to show your face?” Logan swept the other man’s legs, then rushed his body as he fell, slamming the man against the asphalt. “Where is he? Where is the boy, you motherfucker?” He straddled the man’s chest locking his arms at his sides as he punched again and again, relishing the satisfying crunch of bone, the river of blood gushing from the man’s mouth and nose.
Iron hands came around Logan’s arms and he felt himself being lifted off the man’s body. He clenched his thighs, trying to hold on, not ready to leave the only action that had given him an ounce of relief since he’d heard Leo had been taken.
But Mauz had the superior position. He yanked Logan off the other man and shoved him away, toward the Expedition, which now sat feet away from the beaten and bloodied man on the asphalt.
“You want to end up behind bars?” Mauz shouted at him. “Perez needs you. The kid needs you. Get it together!”
The names seeped through the curtain of fury that clouded his vision.
Ella. Leo.
Panting and suppressing a primal scream, Logan turned away from the man on the asphalt just as the two police officers who’d been questioning Gabriella came running out of the house.
26
Gabriella was dying. That was the only explanation for the crushing sensation in her chest, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe, that the blood had frozen in her veins.
