Page 75 of Dirty Heirs

“What do you mean he’s gone?” I bit out, the blood boiling in my veins.

“They fucking took him!” Cole sounded frantic, barely able to catch his breath. “Drake initiated Battle King protocol. It put all of his homes and offices on lockdown. He told me if he ever had to activate it, he was probably dead or would be soon.”

Drake was the most intelligent person I’d ever known. We were the same age but didn’t spend much time together until after he graduated college. Drake was already at MIT when I was still in high school. He was a certified genius with a 189 IQ and a brain the size of a supercomputer.

Cole and Drake were cousins on their mother’s side of the family. And now that Cole was working at Battle Industries, he had insider knowledge we would need to find Drake.

“Motherfuckers!” I rushed out of the container, slamming the door behind me. “I found Cian Doyle’s daughter in one of my shipping containers. It’s pretty fucking convenient timing, don’t you think?”

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. The AK-47s I’m supposed to hand over to my uncle are gone. I got her instead.”

“Jesus.” He blew air into the receiver. “Look, we’ll deal with the girl and the guns later. We have to find Drake before The Lucaya Group kills him and Tate.”

Tate Maxwell was Drake’s head of security and best friend. If they got Tate, they were fucked until we found them. But would they be alive? A knife twisted in my gut at the thought.

Drake was like a brother to Marcello and me. The three of us took classes together until second grade. After the teachers realized he was a genius, Drake went to a gifted school and graduated college at nineteen.

I held onto the hope his brilliant mind would find a solution. Drake was usually our eyes and ears. Thankfully, he’d been teaching Marcello how to hack for years. I needed Marcello back on U.S. soil to help me track him.

I could make anyone or anything disappear. Using my shipping knowledge and shady tactics, I got guns past customs for the Knights’ less legitimate customers. But finding people was not my specialty. It wasn’t Cole’s either. He was an engineer. If we needed to build something, he was our guy.

“Can you call Luca and let him know?” Cole asked since he hated dealing with Luca and his mood swings.

The Salvatore brothers and Alex were in Italy for a delayed honeymoon. With all the shit we’d been dealing with over the past two years, the five of them hadn’t had a chance to celebrate their nuptials.

Luca instructed the Knights not to call him unless someone died. Well, Drake’s kidnapping sure as fuck qualified.

“I’ll call him,” I told Cole.

“Thanks, man.” He let out a sigh of relief. “Grace just delivered Hale. I need to focus on my wife and son until I leave with Alpha Command to look for Drake.”

The women in our lives understood being a Knight would always come first. We swore an oath and bled for each other. But blood didn’t have to unite us because we had a code. This was a brotherhood.

What binds us will destroy us, and what will destroy us unites us. That was the motto of The Devil’s Knights, which we took seriously. Losing one of our own, especially Drake, would destroy all of us, but we would always be united.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “And congrats, man. I can’t believe you’re a father before me.”

He laughed. “I didn’t plan to be a dad this young. But you know, shit happens. I didn’t see Grace coming. She fucking snuck up on me and never let go.”

After all the shit Cole had been through in the past year with Grace, they deserved to be happy. He’d lost his mom and nearly lost Grace to another man.

“Spend time with your wife and son. I’ll handle everything on my end.”

I hung up and pulled open the door to the container. As I did, a whirl of long, dirty blonde hair smacked my cheek. Ella shoved her palms into my chest, almost knocking me over as she darted across the cargo ship. I stood and waited, hands on my hips, pushing my suit jacket to the side. She ran until she hit the end of the ship, which was packed with nothing but containers full of cargo and a few vehicles.

I laughed. “Where are you going, El?”

My family owned Mac Corp, one of the largest shipping companies in the world. Most of the shit on the vessel was legit. That made it easier to sneak in a few containers full of illegal shit once a month.

She gave me the finger. “Fuck you, Sonny.”

“Aww, baby. You already did that.” I raised my hand and beckoned her. “Get over here.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re going to kill me.”

“What makes you think that?” I walked toward her, still a good fifteen feet apart. “Hmmm? Tell me, my little slut, what did you do this time?”

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