Page 19 of Wicked Vengeance

“I know.” I sigh. We all need her. We need each other, Em, and her. That’s it. Nothing else in the world matters but that. “We will bring her home.”

We stay like this for a little while, catching our breaths and processing everything that went down between us. Maddox eventually climbs from my lap, sitting between Royal and me, interlacing our fingers together so we don’t lose the connection we’ve formed between us. There are no more words exchanged. Just a silent understanding that things will be different now, and we are all okay with it.

My phone rings on the desk, pulling us out of our thoughts as I get up and jog over to answer it. The second I see who it is, hope ignites within me. This is who I’ve been waiting to hear from. Swiping the screen, I put the phone to my ear.

“Tell me you have an update.”

“Better. I have a location on your missing man.” His deep baritone vibrates through the line. If I didn’t know his personality, I’d think there might be a smile on his face right now. But that’s not him. He doesn’t smile. He just gets shit done– usually with fire, but he’s good at getting information no one else can, too.

“Where?”

I jot down the address as he tells me, fury filling my vision when I realize this was no misunderstanding. We have a traitor in the Shadows.

“Do you want me to deal with him?” He offers, with no emotion in his voice to detect whether or not killing a man is something that would bother him. While I know more about his brothers, the guys running our security now, and I’ve met him in the Shadows a few times, I don’t know much about him– he rarely leaves their home in Gilded Valley except for the unsavory jobs he takes under the cover of night.

“No. We’ll handle it. Thanks, Stryker. Let me know if you hear anything about our girl.” I say, hanging up when he grunts his response. Royal and Maddox are standing behind me when I spin around.

“Looks like we’ve got a traitor to see.”

Chapter 14

Maddox

The traitor hangs from the ceiling as I slowly drag my blade down his back, the blood dripping in a line down his spine. I haven’t hurt him too badly…yet. But that will change rather quickly if this motherfucker doesn’t open his mouth and explain what the fuck happened to Raena. And even then…he’s not leaving my playroom alive.

We already know he’s defected. We found him at one of King's safehouses. Stryker let us know his location yesterday. After talking it over, everyone agreed with King out for us now, the safest option was to let Ronan and Dax collect the traitor, and they were more than happy to oblige.

He’s lucky I didn’t kill him on sight when they told us they found him sleeping like he didn’t have a care in the world under King’s protection before they tranquilized him in his sleep. It’s late afternoon now, and he is starting to come around, hanging from the hooks in the playroom like a slab of meat, waiting for me to carve out my pound of flesh for his transgressions.

Ronan and Dax are now upstairs with Snow, checking on our little hideaways in White Harbor and giving me room to work. Royal and Alek are here, watching from the shadows. They won’t disturb my interrogation unless they have to step in– if I lose it and go too far before I get the information we need.

“Wh-what the fuck? Where am I?” he asks, the lingering drugs in his system making him groggy as his restrained hands rattle the chains above him.

“There you are,” I say, smiling like a lunatic– and let’s be honest, I am.

“Who are you?” He asks, blinking his eyes like he will suddenly know my face even though he’s never seen me without my mask. “I didn’t do anything. Let me go.”

“Ah-ah-ah. See, that’s where you're wrong. You’ve done plenty, Aaron,” I say mockingly. He might not know my name, but the Shadows make it their business to know who we have working for us. They are all vetted, so I don’t know why this idiot would side with King. I know what happened to his family at King's command. Unless he has something else on him?

“What could have possibly possessed you to betray the Shadows and side with King?” I snap at him through gritted teeth, pressing my knife into his throat as I move into his space.

“I... ah... Wait. Okay! Stop.”

“I won’t ask again.” My blade pierces his delicate skin, and he goes still, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows slowly. Blood trickles down the column of his exposed throat, a line straight down his bare chest. It’s not enough. I need more– more blood, more answers.

“Okay. I- uh- I needed the money, man. I fucked up,” he sputters, taking a deep breath when I release the knife at his throat and let the tip follow the blood trail down his body, smearing it as I cock my head to the side, mesmerized.

“Fucked up, how?” I ask, keeping my gaze on his bloody chest.

“I was getting close to the Kingsmen to gather intel for the Shadows. But I got in too deep. Lost a lot of money at a couple of their poker games. He was going to kill me, man.”

“And how did owing him money turn into you helping him kidnap our girl?” My blade digs into his chest, starting above his left pectoral muscle and moving across in a straight line to the right one. The blood runs down in rivulets like ribbons.

“I didn’t know anything was going down when you called me in for protection detail. When they showed up, they saw me and assumed King had sent me. I didn’t know what to do. They would have killed me on the spot if I didn’t go along with them.”

“And you decided– what? You needed King's protection more than ours?” In the center of the first line I cut, I drag my blade down to his navel, branding him what he truly is– a traitor.

His anguished cries infiltrate my ears, bouncing around the playroom like a classical symphony, but I ignore them as he tries to plead for his pathetic life.

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