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“You look like shit,” he states with little emotion in his tone. “You’re lucky the bullet went straight through.”
“And you’re a dick,” I retort, then glance down. “How do you know?”
He points to the front and back of my thigh. “You’re bleeding from both sides. You’d know that if you took two seconds to take care of yourself.”
“I only care that all those fuckers are dead and then getting back to Olivia.” I refuse to stop until I put eyes on her. She has to be scared shitless after hearing the mayhem from up there.
His lips tighten into a flat line. “Not all of them are dead.”
He's right. There's one man that we didn't find, the one responsible for putting a target on my back—Titan Moretti. His increased bounty on Olivia drew enemies like vultures, leading to the attack on my home that we’ve only just barely survived.
The elevator stops and the doors part, but before I’ve even taken a step, all the blood rushes from my head and I have to grip the bar next to me before I pass out.
“That door is never open, Damon,” I say through gritted teeth. That means someone has been up here who shouldn’t have been, and I will fucking kill whoever it was.
There’s a hidden panel in the wall on my floor, one that leads to a stairwell and exits out into the garage. It’s something very few people have known about over the years.
Damon is already moving, gun out and surveying the area. “Your apartment door is open.”
“Fuck,” I snarl, thrusting myself forward and ignoring the stabbing pain that shoots up through my body.
And the door isn't charred from the electrical security I activated before leaving, meaning someone entered with the code.
The only people who have that are Jaxon, Damon, Markus, and Vin. I know for damn sure it wasn’t Jaxon or Damon, but Markus or Vin? Who the fuck knows, but I’m going to find out.
Walking into the living room of my apartment, there aren’t any signs of a struggle, and I don’t hear Olivia, but still, I call out her name as my heart races.
The resounding silence has my fists tightening and jaw clenching as I struggle to breathe through the rage and pain circulating inside my body. Not only that but the fear. It’s been years since I’ve had a reason to be afraid. Though, I’m not afraid for myself. It’s the rest of the world that needs to be scared if I don’t find Olivia soon.
With regret and utter disgust at myself for having left her unprotected, I say, “She’s not here. We need to check the stairs.”
“You can’t go down them like that,” Damon says, nodding at my leg. “I’m going to go ahead and see if I find anything. You take the elevator. Jaxon will meet you down there to help you across the garage.”
My chest sucks air in harshly before delivering a rough exhale that burns through my lungs with the intensity of my ire. I want to argue, but I know better.
Damon’s right, and Olivia’s life is on the line. The longer we stand here, the less likely we are to find her, which is fucking unacceptable to me.
With a curt nod, I move toward the elevator and catch Damon lift his phone to his ear before racing down the stairs.
Once I’m moving south, I reach for the pistol in my waistband and check the mag, making sure that if there are people who still need to be killed that I can be the one to provide that service. I need every motherfucker’s head on a spike to even stand a chance of quelching the fury storming through me.
I double-check the bandage around my thigh. It’s soaked with crimson all the way around but holding tight. Though, even looking down makes me dizzy, so I know I’ve lost more than enough blood. Still, the wound will have to wait.
Exiting the elevator, Jaxon is standing there and holds his arms out. “Want me to carry you?”
“I will put a bullet in your head if you so much as touch me,” I growl, my worry for Olivia making me even more irritable.
“Too soon for jokes, got it,” he titters. “But I do need to touch you or it’s going to take you too long to hobble your crippled ass over to the other side of the garage.”
He’s not wrong, so with reluctance, I lift my arm and position it over his shoulders as he holds tight around my waist, taking a lot of the weight off my leg. I hate to admit that helps, but we’re moving and almost running within seconds, so I have no problem giving him my muttered thanks once we get to where Damon is standing over a body.
“Vin is dead,” he announces. “Not sure if that’s because he was trying to save your girl or if he was the reason she’s no longer in her room.”
Seeing his body without a weapon drawn confirms what I knew the moment the elevator opened to my floor. We had a traitor within our ranks this whole time and I don’t even get the pleasure of torturing him myself. That thought serves to further enrage me.
I should have seen this coming. I should have done more to protect what’s mine.
“What about the video feed?” Jaxon asks, and I nearly strangle myself at not having thought of that the moment I saw the panel door open upstairs.
