Page 14 of Wicked Revenge

After a year, we made our move. We packed up while he was away. Jewels, the nanny, grabbed all of Emma’s things and was supposed to meet us. She never showed up at our place. When we arrived back at the mansion, we found Jewels on the floor in the living room, her throat slit, and King sitting in his leather chair, sipping his whiskey. Emma was gone.

He was furious, but he said if we stayed in line and continued our roles in his family and organization, no harm would come to Emma. We’ve been searching for her since. We created an organization of our own.

They call us the Shadows.

We’ve recruited our own men, to not only search for Em, but to help us protect the innocents in Shadow Forest. However, wherever King has her, we’ve had no luck finding her.

***

Half of the basement functions as a training facility, while the other half is where we track down Em and plan for our targets. As I come down the stairs, I hear Royal wailing on the punching bag. He struggles the most out of all of us because he is the oldest, the leader. He thinks he has to shoulder the burden all on his own.

“Hey man.” I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to bring his attention to me, but it just startles him out of his self-destructive trance.

Even though I have a good 100 lbs of muscle on him, he can put me on my ass if he wants to. I’m laid out on the mat with his hand on my throat before I can even register the “hmph” that leaves my lungs.

“Fuck, Alek. I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head and letting me breathe. He falls to his ass and hangs his head between his knees.

“Look man, this isn’t just your fight. You don’t have to protect us anymore. You’ve got to let us take the burden off your back brother. Everything isn’t all on you. We’ve got you.”

I sit next to him, grabbing the back of his neck and squeezing. He looks up at me and nods. While it wasn't a complete agreement, I’ll take it for now.

Maddox walks in as we sit there on the mats and try to process the fresh hell we’ll be walking into tonight. I have no idea why he would call an emergency meeting. I doubt it has anything to do with the Shadows. We’ve been too careful in keeping our identities a secret. Even the people we recruit have never seen our faces.

Maddox sits across from us, crisscrossing his legs like a child, and fidgeting with his blade, unable to stay still for even a second.

“Do we know what he wants?” He asks, drawing a line down his arm with his blade, not deep enough to hurt, but enough to have red beads of blood pooling on the cut. He has always been obsessed with blood. He started cutting not long after we moved in with Kingston. He doesn’t cut to hurt himself. He cuts because he likes to see the blood. It calms him.

“No, the message just said emergency meeting at nine,” Royal responds, watching the blood beads forming. “Stop that! One day you're going to really hurt yourself.”

“I like pain, remember?” Maddox winks at him.

“Okay, enough. We don’t have an update on Em, so we go to this meeting and pretend to be his little lap dogs, like always. Maybe we’ll luck out and get some intel on where he’s keeping her,” I remind them. They will bicker all day if I don’t bring the focus back to the problem at hand.

“I still say you let me skin him alive, peel his skin off in layers until he is a bloody lump of exposed muscle. Ooooh, or, let me roast him with the torch, only stopping when he passes out, and starting again when he wakes. Or…” he says, rubbing his chin like he is thinking of every possible way to take out King that would have the biggest impact.

“No! You know the deal. We can’t make our move yet, not until we get Em back,” Royal says, even though we all already know this.

“Fine, but if I accidentally kill one of his men at the meeting, just know, I tripped and my blade slipped,” Maddox responds, pulling himself up and walking towards the stairs. “I’m going to get some coffee, and then we can see where we are with our men and Em’s location. If the men we have can’t find her, we might need to find more or call in other help.”

He isn’t wrong. We might have to recruit more Shadows who have different skills that could aid in finding her. I heard about a group up north in White Harbor that is notorious for hunting and tracking people, but they were too dangerous to get involved with. We might need to take the risk and see if they can help us.

Royal and I make our way to the table and investigation board we have along the back wall. The trail is all but ice-cold now. We haven’t had a solid lead in months. Somethings gotta give. The longer she is away, the greater the chance of Kingston doing something to hurt her, especially if he finds out what we are doing behind his back.

Chapter 7

The warehouse we meet at is located on the outskirts of town, sitting off in the forest woods and down a long driveway. You would miss it from the main road unless you are looking for it, but that's what makes it the perfect place for the Kingsmen. It is used for everything from packaging to torturing, and sometimes holding emergency meetings.

I pull the blacked-out SUV into the warehouse parking lot, and we sit for a minute since we are early. Our bikes are for Shadow business only. I drove us here in our standard-issued Kingsman vehicle. It's bulletproof, built to withstand just about anything, and the last thing we need is someone to see us on our bikes and blow our covers.

The drive over was quiet, each of us mentally preparing for the shit show this meeting will be. It always is with King. He can never just tell us what he wants over the phone. He has to call us in, making a spectacle of his prized ponies. I don’t understand his reasons for keeping us around. He is just a cruel man who preys on the weakness of those he claims to be helping.

Sitting here now in silence, I have a moment to just breathe. The burden to protect my family from Kingston weighs heavy on me. I have spent my entire life taking care of others- my brothers since we met in the system, but before that, I had to take care of my drug-addict mother and my baby sister.

They both died when I was eight. I thought my mothers house was bad, but the foster home they sent me to was worse. The only good thing to come out of it was Maddox and Alek. They are my brothers in all the ways that count, even if we don’t share the same blood.

Now, our little sister is missing. Just the thought of King doing to her what he’s done to me, what I’ve witnessed him do to others, sickens me. Bile rises in my throat.

I’d like to say she’s safe because she’s still so young, but with King being here in Shadow Forest, I have no idea who is taking care of her. Is she safe? Hurt? Does she even remember us?I shove my thoughts and impending nausea down as I see the first vehicle since we arrived pull up to the warehouse doors.

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