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“Why’d you come here?” I asked him.
He was confused, his head cocking to the side slightly as if he wondered why I wasn’t shooting.
I didn’t want him to blow his brain up trying to figure it out, he wasn’t the smartest tool in the shed after all, so I took out my gun and shot into the sand next to his hand. The heat must have sizzled his fingertips because he pulled the hand up quickly to check I hadn’t shot him.
“Tyler’s going to kill you.”
“Not today he’s not,” I said. “Now get up and go back to your master.”
I turned my back on Grayson, knowing full well he could easily attack me but it had been too close to the gun battle and the sheriff being upset to do anything about it. I got back to the boardwalk and headed toward the car Grayson had just screwed with. My mechanic could easily get the dent out, that’s not what the issue was, it was the disrespect and the fact he thought he could easily walk over to this side of the city without issue.
“Oh shit,” I heard Bennett say as pushed off the side of his car and looked behind me. Gunnar had a smirk on his face which meant it could only mean one thing.
Tyler.
Everyone who had been enjoying their day out was now shutting themselves away in shops or hiding behind buildings. They knew the drill.
I turned around to see Tyler getting out of his car. His silk button down shirt trying to prove to me he came from wealth, when in actuality, it was my father’s empire that had more money. We just had a little better fashion sense.
“I heard you had attacked one of my men, Moreno.”
“Well, Caldwell, he had the audacity to be on the wrong side of the city.”
Tyler’s smug smirk had my fists balling at my sides. Instantly, I knew showing him how much he was getting to me would be bad so I forced them back open.
“Why’d you come all this way to protect your little friend?” Gunnar asked him. “Are your men not capable of holding their own?”
Tyler shot him an icy glare, his smirk all but gone now. “My fight is not with you, Escalet.”
“Oh, addressing me by my last name,” Gunnar said, sliding off his chair by the cafe and coming over to us. “Now that’s a power play. You’ve been taking lessons from your uncle, I see.”
Tyler knew getting into a fight with Gunnar wouldn’t help his family. The sheriff would probably side with us and then the Caldwell’s were toast. Tyler was nothing if not dutiful to his family.
“You and me,” Tyler aimed toward me. “One on one, no friends, no associates. Just us. We’ll settle this the old way.”
He backed up, not showing me his back because he feared I would pull my gun but I wasn’t a Caldwell. I wasn’t a pussy.
I’d never shoot a man in the back.
“This isn’t over,” Tyler shot at me as he got into his car and sped off back to the safety of his side of the city.
“Relax,” Gunnar said once he was gone. “Ignore the little shit. I wanted you to come down today because I have the most prestigious invite of the year and I’m bringing y’all with me.”
“What are you on about?” Bennett asked, sitting down at the table Gunnar had just gotten up from and knocking on the window to let the patrons know it was safe to come out now. The doors to the cafe opened and innocent bystanders toppled out, running back to their houses in case it escalated once more. I was still seething that Tyler and Grayson had been so damn bold in the first place. I sat down with Gunnar and Bennett and tried to keep my calm demeanor about me but I was still too disturbed by the fact Tyler had been here and he’d come alone.
That fucker never did anything alone.
“Well, my father has been getting a lot of calls and invites lately to the Caldwell side of the city. It appears all is not well on that side and they’re needing help dealing with delinquents. To appease him, they’ve invited him to their annual celebration at their house.”
“And?”
“And, the invite specifies he can bring whoever he chooses. He chose to invite me, and I’ve decided I’m not showing up alone.”
“That’s crazy,” Bennett said. “We’ll never get past the guards.”
“Au contraire, mon cher,” Gunnar grinned like the Cheshire cat. “It is a masquerade party.”
The ultimate revenge. Not only could I come over to the side of the city I had been banned from but I could get my revenge on Tyler and confront Rose myself.
