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“Me.” Turning back to his meal, Cato avoids the eyes of every other man in the room. “You, Tim, and Felix were in Copeland. Micah’s been taken. I was the only one here with Dad.”
“You’re also a fuckin’ kid,” I snap.
Leaning my elbows on the counter and peering past Cato to Tim, I meet his hard stare and know the same rage simmers in his blood. “Achildtook that call.”
“I was never a kid,” Cato counters, his tone cold as ice. “And they sent a package yesterday.”
Reaching into his back pocket, he takes out his phone and unlocks the screen. Setting the device on the counter, he goes back to eating. Ignoring. Suppressing his emotions the way Malone men are so apt to do.
“I filmed it, since I knew you’d wanna see. But then I had one of the guards take the package away.” His skin is tan, but I see the green tinge just beneath. “Press play, then do with it what you want.”
“Jesus.”
I tap the icon for his gallery and immediately find the video he means. Pressing play, I turn the volume all the way up and watch as my little brother opens the package one-handed while he holds his phone in the other.
“Don’t know what this is…”
He slits a small box open and turns it over when he finds the slot at the bottom.
“It’s from Emilio…”he murmurs. Partially narrating, I suppose, but also talking his way through what he already knew was gonna be bad.
If his instincts weren’t screaming at him, he wouldn’t have thought to film in the first place.
“Those bastards better not have hurt him…
“Spoilers,” the Cato of now mumbles. “They hurt him.”
“What the fuck did they do?” Pushing up to lean closer, Tim studies the footage. “Cato?”
“You take what doesn’t belong to you,”Film-Cato reads from a blood-spattered card.“That’s stealing. And everyone knows what happens to a thief.”
“Fuck!” I look away when, on the video, a single finger rolls from the packaging, gruesome in its coloring, and horrifying in the jagged, fleshy edges at the top.
They hacked it off. Not with a sharp scalpel, but with a pair of pliers or something equally horrible.
“Alright. Turn it off.” I grab the phone and send the video to myself, then I delete it from Cato’s device and switch off the screen.
Setting it down with a little too much force, I look to Tim and snarl, “We’re going over there today. We’re pulling Micah out, ending thisnow, getting him medical help, and then I’m going home.”
I push up from the counter and shove Cato’s donated plate aside, then I charge through the room and toward the door that leads to the vast property at the back of the house.
A large pool slices straight through the yard, and behind it sits a poolhouse bigger than mine and Minka’s entire apartments… combined. It’s two stories, has six bedrooms, and comes with its own mini gym, electricity, and water.
It’s entirely self-sufficient, and where I eventually moved, before I bolted altogether, so I could have space away from the family I hardly wanted.
Leaving the property would never work for as long as I was a Malone in New York City. So the poolhouse was my compromise. Freedom without actual freedom. Privacy, even knowing guards would check every door and window on the hour.
“Arch!”
Tim’s voice brings my shoulders up in defense. His boots thudding against concrete have a tired groan rolling along my throat and out so even he can hear.
Turning, I stand my ground and wait for him to stop just feet away.
“Archer—”
“Malones moved in on Pastore’s turfwhilehe was dealing with the Feds.”
“Yeah, I—”
