Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I reached for my phone. “Whoa! Hold right there. Stop! Don’t move, Molly!”
That was Pialto yelling at me, but I heard Sophie gasp before she dove for cover.
I looked up, still dazed, and saw both were staring at what was in my hand.
I still had the gun in my hand.
I started to drop it. “Don’t do that!” Pialto shouted.
His hands were out, and he was half-crouched as he approached me. I didn’t know when he’d stepped back from me, but it might’ve been out of a sort of life-preservation instinct. I mean, at this point, chances were high I would accidentally shoot myself.
“Molly.” His voice dropped again, low. “I need to take the gun from you.”
I was nodding before he even finished. Yes. Yes, he did, before I did any more damage.
I held it out and he took it, quickly unloading it before he backed away again. Sophie had removed the guy’s rifle so it was almost on the other side of the bar. That was good thinking on both their parts.
I slumped down on the barstool behind me, staring at the unconscious man on the floor. God, I hoped that’s the reason he wasn’t moving.
I heard the sirens a second later.
The cops had arrived.
CHAPTER TWO
ASHTON
The screaming started again.
Three hours into this interrogation, and he hadn’t given up a name.
“He doesn’t know.” Trace pushed up from where he’d been leaning against the wall and dropped his arms. He raked a hand over his head, frustration coming off him, but I understood it. I did. It’d been three months since the bodies had been pulled from the water. While Justin Worthing had been a good employee, we were here because of Justin’s woman. Kelly. She’d been best friends, roommates, coworkers, and everything to Trace’s woman, Jess.
They’d been sisters.
“How’s Jess handling everything?”
I was guarded in my approach.
Jess and I, we weren’t on friendly terms. We weren’t on any terms, and for a valid reason. I’d put her through a torture session, more psychological than physical, but it put a rift between Trace and me.
He and I had been best friends all our lives, attending the same private high school, same undergrad college. When he moved west for graduate business school, I went with him and started my first business. After that, he joined in, and we’d built our own empire separate from our families, but as much as we wanted to distance ourselves from the family business, it never quite panned out. Both of us were standing in this warehouse, watching a man being tortured because of those same family businesses we tried to get away from—the Walden and West Mafia families. That was me and him. In one night, he and I went from breaking free and taking the legal route of living, to each of us stepping into our respective roles as heads of our families.
In one move from our enemy, the Worthing Mafia family, my uncles and my grandfather had been killed. I made the decision. I stepped up and took over. Despite being put in the same situation—his uncle killed on the same night—Trace still considered not taking over and getting out.
He’d been thinking of leaving, for her. His woman.
Then one phone call changed everything.
Justin’s and Kelly’s bodies were found, two people we thought had been hidden by the 411 Network. That network was known for smuggling people and hiding them if they feared for their lives. They usually helped abuse victims, but over the last few years, they’d started hiding potential victims from the cartel and the Mafia.
Justin and Kelly hadn’t been taken by them, and we were in the process of trying to find out who’d killed them.
“What do you think?” he snapped at me.
I steeled my insides, knowing he was in pain because his woman was in pain, though that was putting it mildly.
Jess Montell had been a parole officer when we met, and then she went legit, becoming an in-demand painter. But that one call set her on a different path, and she was now helping to run the West family Mafia business alongside her man, my best friend.
He sighed, his eyes flashing, before he came to stand next to me. We were in a second-floor office, a one-way mirror acting as our window so we could oversee the torture taking place beneath us. Trace rubbed a hand over his forehead, cursing under his breath. “She’s not eating. She’s not sleeping. I don’t mind taking over the business, but Jess is acting like a vigilante on our behalf. She’s going to hate herself when she stops, when she starts thinking clearly again.”
I grunted, understanding. It’d been her intel that had given us this guy to question. Her intel was wrong. She was starting to lose it. She was pushing for information just to get information, whether it was real or not. That was bad business for everyone, dangerous business for everyone.