“Sir?”
I look at Barry. “Leave. All of you.”
My assistant lingers for a second too long before he tells everyone to get back to their vehicles.
I sigh and pull the joint from behind my ear, amazed that it managed to survive the gunfight. “Thinking you could hit me and get away with it was an error, but your worst mistake was looking in her direction.”
Crawley scoffs as he clutches at his thigh, blood seeping between his fingers. “Your whore?”
My jaw strains as I stare at him, my patience worn to the point of snapping. “She is not my whore.” I light my smoke and inhale, hoping it’ll calm my temper, because I’m not in the mood to torture this guy. “Have you been in contact with my boss since I left?”
“Why would I have contacted Mrs Sawyer?” he asks, confused as he grips his wounded leg tighter and stumbles into the wall, sliding down it until he’s on his ass. “Was the girl her daughter?”
I grimace and exhale. “No. Cassie is even more insufferable.”
“Is that why you are here? Because of your whore?” He laughs. “Sharing is caring, Nāve.”
I roll my eyes. “Stop calling me that. My name…” I grab his jaw in a painful grip that has him thrashing. I press the bright, hot end of my smoke to his cheek as I say, “My name is not fucking Nāve.”
He yells as his skin burns beneath the ember, tears filling his eyes.
I let go, reach behind me to grab one of the blades in my ammo belt and bring it between us. “My name is Kade. Kade Mitchell. Son of Tobias. Maybe I should carve it into your skin? Will you still call me Nāve then?”
“F-Fuck you.”
I knock his hand away as he tries to punch me, weak and slowly dying from blood loss. He must’ve been shot.
Instead of giving him a quick end by putting a bullet between his eyes, I carve each letter of my first name into his sweaty forehead in block capitals until he has spittle dripping down his chin, unmovable, nearly unconscious.
“There,” I say, admiring the four crimson letters with a smile. “Now you’ll never forget who I am.”
“You are Death,” he says in a low, slurred mumble. “Your time will come. You and your whore.”
I throw my hands out to the side, exasperated. “She’s not my fucking whore.” I lean my elbows on my knees. “In fact, she isn’t a whore at all. She’s the girl I watch, the girl I obsess over until I feel like I’m going fucking insane. I gave her my heart when I was a teenager, and do you know what she did? She shattered it. She’s a venomous snake. Wait. Do you understand a word I’m saying, Crawley?”
He’s fading, not listening anymore.
The light leaves his eyes, and I roll mine and drag the sharp side of my blade across his throat to make sure he’s actually dead. Blood pours from his neck and drenches my hand. I massage the warm liquid between my thumb and fingers before I stand.
Stacey would look wonderful covered in blood. As long as it’s not hers.
I shake off the thought. “Blow it,” I order.
“You’re still in range, sir,” Barry says through my earpiece. “You need to leave the area.”
I smirk and wipe the blood of Crawley’s men from my face – it’s already starting to dry – then glance at the elevator shaft. “I’ll be fine. Just blow it.”
There are a handful of men still down there, trapped and wounded, trying to get out. The stairway is blocked, electricity cutting off the elevator.
They’ll be entombed in the warehouse basement.
All of them stared at Stacey. All of them wanted her. But no one ever gets to have her – not even me.
I pull off my suit jacket and throw it to the side, then roll my sleeves up to my elbows with my blade still in hand. I unbutton my stained shirt as I walk through the car park and yank out the bullet lodged in my armoured vest.
That’ll leave a bruise. I already feel the sensitive skin and the ache on my side where it impacted.
I reach the car to find Barry sitting in the passenger seat. “I said to blow it. ”
“As immortal as you seem to think you are, I’m not going to put your life in danger, sir.”
“I gave you an order.”
He sighs. “For your safety, I chose not to follow it.”
“You and Stacey are starting to annoy me with this talking-back shit.”
He chuckles and then taps on his phone screen, bringing up the app that connects all the explosives and triggers them. The flash comes first, and then the thunderous sound of the world blowing up nearly ruptures my eardrums. The ball of flame erupts like a volcano into the skies, and I smile at the artwork we created. I would have been in pieces if he had blown it when I said.
I announce to everyone, “Nice going, team. Pack up and get some rest.”
I turn to my assistant. “I need to complete a contract. You good to clean this up, head to your hotel and wait for word?”
Barry nods and climbs out, patting the front of the car.
I look at what was once a warehouse filled with a gang, now obliterated and filled with dead, incinerated bodies.
If Bernadette finds out I eradicated an entire MC, she’ll flip. I can’t be fucked with that. I’ll need to lie and tell her we had an altercation and they threatened to out us, so I simply had to blow them up.
It was unavoidable. A travesty. A huge shame.
Maybe people will learn not to mess with my things.
21
KADE
As the sirens buzz in the distance – Barry’s clean-up team, not the emergency services – I make sure everyone has left, and then I input the location of my target, groaning when I realise it’s a security-infested manor. I follow the map, stopping at a wooded area to burn my clothes and pull on a fresh suit I had stowed in a suitcase along with the drugs I’ll use to gain entry.
Before closing the suitcase full of gear, I take two lines of coke, hating myself a little more than I did a moment ago. But I need to ease the vibrating in my bones, something that happens when I go too long without an upper. The drugs aren’t being forced into me now though; I think that stopped when I started craving the highs they offered.
I pull the suitcase from the car, slide the handle up and drag it behind me as I walk onto the driveway that leads up to electric gates. I press the buzzer and introduce myself as a distributor for Mr Lennox, and whoever it is on the other end lets me in.
I roll my eyes at the security team. How easy was it for me to walk right in here fully armed?
I’m directed to the main room, where an overweight, greasy-looking man is planted behind a desk, smoking a cigar. Gold rings flash on every finger. “What do you have for me?” he asks, coughing through his smoke.
He sits back as I throw the suitcase onto his desk and open it, showing him all the white powder inside. A grin, and he disgustingly gargles in his throat.
But Mr Lennox doesn’t have a chance to lift even one bag to inspect it before I yank my gun out from my waistband and shoot him right in the chest four times, the silencer quieting the pops.
His body slumps instantly, and I snap a picture and send it to Bernadette, demanding the rest of my pay.
I leave the suitcase behind, but I only manage to reach the main stairs before shots are fired at me.