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Gracie answers, “Arm, skimmed, superficial. Shoulder. That’s the worst one. There’s going to be some muscle damage, but it won’t kill him. The last one in his hip is barely bleeding. He’ll make the plane ride back.”
“Hip bone,” Victor moans. “Oh. I need that thing.” His head lolls back and forth against the tile. “I really need it.”
I pat him on the shoulder. “You’re going to live. And fuck. And samba.”
“Samba?” Victor says, raising an eyebrow. “Racist much?”
He closes his eyes and passes out.
Gracie and I continue to work to make him comfortable and stop the bleeding.
From his place in the doorway, Dusty says, “Looks like the grounds are clearing out, which means we need to get moving. I’m going to go look for a vehicle.”
He leaves, and Gracie stands up, staring at the doorway where he’d stood. “I don’t trust him. I should go with him.”
Justice reaches into her pocket and tosses a key at Gracie. “Land Rover. Behind the stables.”
She catches the key but shakes her head. “It’s not big enough.”
“It is,” Justice says, keeping her weapon on Tony. “He’s not going with us.”
Nodding, avoiding any eye contact with her brother, Gracie leaves the room.
When she’s gone, Tony’s head falls forward. He lets out a breath. “I’m so sorry, J.”
I’m pretty suresorryisn’t what Justice is looking for.
60
JUSTICE
“Sorry?” I repeat Tony’s apology with disdain.Sure, no problem, consider it forgotten. “I don’t give a shit how sorry you are. You didn’t spill a drink on my shirt, youbetrayedour family, The Guild, me, and Momma. You betrayed the woman who rescued you from the gutter.”
“No.” He shakes his head and lifts his eyes to mine for the first time. “She took me from the streets and made me kill people. That’s not saving me.”
“So, you decided to join forces with a human trafficker to teach her a lesson?”
“No. No, J. I wanted to keep you safe. Take out these fucks in a way that was smart and controlled. You weren’t listening. And you kept fucking up.” He closes his eyes, opens them. “Momma… I told her you were too emotionally involved to execute the operation. She ignored my letter, ignored the truth staring her in the face—that you wouldn’t walk away when you needed to.”
That letter sounds like a fucking manifesto. “Thanks to you, we’ll never know how it would’ve worked out if I’d had my team behind me.”
“Bullshit. We know. Amal proved it. If you’d left her, left that room, both brothers would be dead now.”
“I couldn’t fucking leave her, you ass.”
“You could. Should have. You could’ve gotten her later, after the brothers were taken out. Just like Cee. Don’t you get it? You were too close to this. That’s why I had to take it on myself to stop your reckless ass. It seemed so simple—get them to Jordan so you can’t touch ’em, and force the family to my plan, the safer plan, the makes-sense plan. Our team goes into Mexico while the A-team gets Aamir. Understand?”
I do and I don’t like it. This was alwaysmymission.Myduty. “You warned the Brothers Grim about the threat, sent them to Jordan to keep my plan from moving forward so we’d do yours instead?”
He nods. “I complained to Bridge. She thought my plan was less risky, too. She came up with the idea of warning the Brothers. We came up with the plan on how to warn them together.”
My stomach rolls. In all my calculations, I’d never suspected it could’ve been the two of them. Never. “When that didn’t work, you sent the drones so Momma would become afraid, feel boxed in, and let you move forward with your plan?”
Again, he nods and adds, “Not Bridget. I went behind her back.”
Backstabber. He also let her take the fall.
“And when that didn’t work, when Momma planned to let me go to Mexico with Sandesh as my backup, you gave Walid to Sandesh.”
