Page 89 of Ours to Keep

Jax lets out a heavy breath and then shakes the doctor’s hand.

“Thank you.”

She nods and then leaves us alone in the room with Gabriel.

“I need to go make a call,”Gabriel says, moving towards the door. I grab his elbow before his hand meets the door handle.

“Wait. Can you find out about Elliot for me, please,”I say, my voice cracking at the last word.

He nods. “Of course, I’ll also send Mason in.”

I forgot he was even here.

A few minutes later, Mason appears, his hair wet and he’s in fresh clothes.

He hands me a holdall. “Here, there’s a change of clothes, you can wash up and change in the bathroom,”he says, pointing behind me as he passes it over.

I glance down, noting how bloody and dirty I am from the fallout of what happened on the yacht.

“Go on, I don’t want Mia coming around and seeing you like that.”

He’s right. Inod and turn towards the small bathroom. “I’ll be quick.”

The sooner I clean up and change, the closer we should be to getting an update on Elliot.

Chapter Forty-Two

JAX

As soon as the door clicks closed behind River, I turn to face Mason and tilt my head to the chairs by the window.

“So, you going to tell me what’s going on?”

I know there’s more to this than Louis and Gabriel just being friends of his.

“Louis and Gabe work for Interpol, but we go way back. I sent them the images of that guy scoping out the yacht. Louis’s team got a hit and identified him as a member of an organised crime syndicate, one they’ve been after for years. I literally only received the intel while you were en route. Hence them getting involved.”

I hold up my hand. “Wait, are you telling me they used Richard as bait?”

He nods. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“And you didn’t think to fucking tell me,” I seethe, my eyes roaming to Mia and then back to Mason.

His face hardens. “I couldn’t. And no, I would never have put her at risk,” he says. “It was for recon purposes only, and after you got what you needed, they wanted a chance to interrogate Richard. What we weren’t expecting was company.I knew they would eventually try to use him to lure them out, but it turns out they didn’t need to. They were already coming.”

Knowing he didn’t intentionally put Mia at risk allows my anger to deflate somewhat, but not by much.

“How did my boy get shot?” I ask, still needing to know what happened other than the obvious.

“The moment they boarded, they were already wired, trigger-happy, and fired some warning shots.” He sighs, running his hand through his damp hair. “That weasel Richard tried to bullshit his way out, said he was working for you, that he was the middle-man.”

I nod because I heard that part.

“Then he tried to buy them off.” Of course, he fucking did. “That offended them even more, seeing how he already owes them a substantial amount of money, and their boss has a reputation to uphold. They signalled for one of their guys to go below deck, and when he didn’t check back in fast enough, they got restless. Richard tried to make a run for it, not sure where the fuck he thought he was going. River tried to stop someone when they made a break to go below deck. Shots were fired. You saw the state of the place, things escalated very fucking quickly. Talk about trigger-happy. Two of their guys were injured. The other two managed to knock Richard out, it was hardly a feat, and then they dragged himout of there.”

They probably knew with that amount of gunfire, it was only a matter of time before law enforcement arrived.

Mason looks over towards Mia.

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