Traded (Blood Ties Book 5)

I winced and lifted my gaze from the cell. The clean-up crew would be here in thirty minutes, which meant we had that long to get what we wanted and get the hell out of here. “You ready for this?”

I lifted my gaze to Colt, who just stood there staring down at the bodies in the sitting room. He didn’t say a word. His gaze was focused on the men who’d crowded around her on that desk. I knew what he pictured. I knew how much he hurt.

“Colt.”

He lifted his head and turned toward me. Rage darkened his blue eyes. Rage and an unquenchable need for revenge, as I said, “They’re dead.”

“Are they?” That was all he said.

Two goddamn words. Are they? I looked away, finding the unfocused stare of the asshole in front of me. I lifted my foot, cocked my leg and kicked the fucker in the face. His head snapped backwards with a crunch and there it stayed. Blood oozing, life non-existent.

Then we started tearing the place apart, just like London wanted.

I strode around the desk, staring at the dislodged green leather desk pad.

They’d tried to rape her…

I stared at the mat and the pristine lacquered wood, then I dropped my hand, drew my gun, and emptied the fucking clip into the thing. Crack. Crack. Crack crack crackcrackcrack! The gun kicked in my hands and the sharp stench of gunpowder filled my nose. I squeezed the trigger until there was only the empty click left.

Bullet holes peppered the wood.

The mat was a shredded mess.

“THERE!” I turned my head and snapped at my brother, my cheeks blazing. “Better now?”

Hard, consuming breaths punched through my chest. I met his gaze until I couldn’t look at him anymore and turned away. To appease the need for revenge, I wanted to scream at him…at all of them. I thought it was because it was her. The woman my brother and London craved.

Only it wasn’t compassion that tore through me like wildfire. It was worse. The emotion I didn’t battle. Because I wasn’t weak and needy…like them.

My face burned even hotter when I turned back to that ruined desk and its ugly damn mat.

“They fucking took her. Carven, they took her. They took her, and she’s ours.”

Jesus…

I winced at the emptiness in his tone. There was nothing in there. Nothing but hate. Nothing but that ten-year-old fucking kid almost beaten to death. I bent, yanked open the draw and started destroying the place.

Drawer after drawer.

Bookcase after bookcase.

I decimated the goddamn room.

There was nothing there.

Nothing anywhere.

Nothing—

Goosebumps raced along my arms. My senses sharpened, honed like a fucking blade. I cocked my head, listening.

“What?”

I sank all the way down into the dark pit where my past waited. The terror we’d tried to leave behind rippled, echoing until it reached into the present. I knew this feeling. It was the same gut-clenching feeling I’d had last night when I’d driven out to the ruins of the orphanage. The feeling that whispered another of us was stalking me.

He’d waited for me then, lingering in the shadows outside the decrepit remnant of our past, waiting for the moment to step outside the shadows. I tried to think, to replay everything about last night.

Do you hunt alone? My own words came back to me now.

No, he’d answered behind me. I hadn’t turned around then, hadn’t looked him in the eye. If I had, would I be standing here now? I wasn’t so sure.

Are you looking for someone in particular? I’d asked the Son.

A daughter, Clair Murdoch. He warned. You’re to stay away if you find her, do you understand me?

I had stayed away, hadn’t made so much as an inquiry about the daughter, so then why the fuck was he here? I turned and headed for the study door, leaving Colt to snarl. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I answered.

But it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t nothing at all. I left the bodies and the carnage behind and made my way out of the house, where the tire marks from London’s car were still fresh. The frigid December air stung as I inhaled deep. I tasted the faint tang of smoke as I looked around, scanning the front of the house. We weren’t far from that foul fucking cunt’s mansion. The one we’d tried to burn to the ground. Figures. All those vile fucks gravitated to each other.

But I wasn’t here for her…I was here for them.

The ones I knew were watching me right now.

The sons.

I waited for them to show, to tell me what they fucking wanted. But there was no movement from the shadows, no voice in the dark. There was just the white of my breath billowing out in front of me, until finally I turned and made my way inside and found Colt upstairs, destroying a bedroom.

Only it wasn’t just a bedroom…they’d designed it for hell.

Crack! He unleashed his fury, driving his boot down on the end of a bed in silent rage. He never screamed, never howled his fury, just bent and grabbed the foot of the bed, fitted with shackles and an extender bar, designed to keep her legs spread far apart, and hurled it across the room to smash against the wall before he straightened, gulping in harsh breaths.

I stopped in the doorway, staring at him as he met my eyes. “Find anything?” I asked.

He shook his head, concern creasing his brow before he turned to the ruined room.

“Then let’s go,” I muttered, staring at the destruction. “The cleaners can do the rest.”

He turned away from the extender bar impaled in the wall and stepped over the mess. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, couldn’t wait to scrub the filth of this place from my skin, even if it would be useless. That shit was branded in my soul, seared into my memory. But not like she was….

This…daughter.

A tremor rose as I made my way back out with my brother, knowing he’d fallen for the daughter and he’d fallen hard. My cheeks blazed as I thought about her. No one touched her, not while either of us was alive.

Headlights shone at the entrance of the driveway. Two sets of headlights. I watched as a van and a black Explorer pulled up. Four men climbed out of the van, one from the driver’s side of the four-wheel drive, leaving the engine running.

“Your ride,” the cleaner declared as he rounded the front of the vehicle before heading to the rear of the van in front of him.

I didn’t speak, just took my place behind the wheel and waited for Colt to climb into the passenger side. I’d send the crew a text where they could pick it up at a later time. After they were done with the bodies, that was.

“I want to be there when she gets home,” Colt muttered, then glanced my way. “I need to see her.”

I winced at the desperation in his tone. I should’ve expected it. The way he fucking fought for her was like nothing I’d ever seen. My heart thundered as I pulled the four-wheel drive onto the road, headed across the city toward the house, and shifted in my seat.

Because the truth was…he wasn’t the only one who’d turned savage for her. We all had, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I grabbed my phone, punched the number, and listened to it ring three times before it was answered.

“It’s me,” I started. “Is the team in place?”

I could hear the thud of heavy boots before Hunter answered. “All good on our end. I have a team of six men at the house and four more on standby. If they’re going to attack, it won’t be tonight.”

I gave a nod. “Good. We’ll be there soon.”

The rest of the ride was in silence. We both knew what kind of war waited for us. It was a war we’d been preparing for our entire lives, ever since London carried two broken and bleeding young boys from that place after having made a deal with the devil herself.

Any other time, I might’ve welcomed the war…craved it, almost. I winced, shifted gears, and glanced into the rear-view mirror for anyone following. But there was a shift inside me. A clarity that hadn’t been there before. One where I was aware I could lose everything…

Vivienne’s brown eyes rose inside my mind, and my pulse picked up in response. I tried to shove her away as I pulled the four-wheel drive into the driveway and stopped. Colt glanced my way. He didn’t say a word. One look said it all.

“I’ll be back later,” I muttered, shifting my gaze to the armed mercenaries now patrolling the grounds.

He climbed out and shoved the door closed harder than normal. He was pissed. He should be. Hell, I was pissed, and I was me.

Still, I shoved the Explorer into gear and punched the accelerator, swung the car around and headed for the warehouse. By the time I got there, my mood hadn’t improved. If anything, it’d darkened. I parked the Explorer out front and texted the cleaning crew the address. The vehicle would be gone by sunrise, as well as the bodies and the blood we’d left behind.

I made my way through the coded locks on the warehouse door and went inside. Cars, guns, walls and walls of information and a goddamn cold room, of all the fucking things. I glared at the thing, then turned and hit the overhead lights.

That icy tremble came out of nowhere, the same one I’d felt at the orphanage and the same one I’d felt tonight. I turned and scanned the space, but found every gun in its place. Still, there was something. I stepped forward, my senses screaming as I tried to find what felt wrong.

I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t get a fix on it. I couldn’t…

Reflex made me lower my hand to the knife tucked into my belt. But the moment I did, I saw it…a knife, driven hilt deep into the drywall. I didn’t put it there. I swear I didn’t put it there. But they had not impaled it for nothing. It was pinning a card to the wall.

I gripped the handle and wrenched it free. It wasn’t my blade, nor was it Colt’s. The white card dropped to the bench, its belly torn free. There was a name of a bar on one side. I caught the writing before it landed on its front…the writing on the back face up for me to see.

We want the daughter.

Sons.

We want the daughter? We want the daughter? That chilling rage swept through me as I picked up the business card and stared at the address. I knew what that cold was now, that stinging rage in the pit of my stomach when I stood at the edge of that hell last night, and I knew it now.

It was fear.