Page 59 of Matched into the Mob

Now I didn’t have to cry becausethiswas my destiny, not Ranger. But I’d been lucky enough to experience true happiness. And now I had to man up and show the love for my brother that transcended everything else.

Dane’s men shifted, but their boss stayed in human form. There was still no sign of the La Luna Noir shifters. My feartriggered images of Ranger and Dane setting me up. This was what they’d been planning. He wasn’t my mate, just a man greedy for money and power.

I wept. That couldn’t be. What we had was real, not that it mattered, but if I couldn’t save my brother, what was my purpose in this gods-forsaken place?

I headed to Dane, struggling to stay upright. Josh staggered toward me, sobbing, the water swirling around our ankles, the mud sucking at our feet, reminding me of glue, along with the godsawful slurping as though the earth were closing around us.

But so many things happened at once, my brain had difficulty pinpointing them all. Dane almost lost his balance as he aimed the gun at Josh and then at me. The earth had suffered so much damage it collapsed in on itself, creating a swirling mass. Josh fell, the force of the whirlpool dragging him toward it.

“Matt, help me.” He floundered, trying to grasp onto something, but the mud slid through his fingers.

I screamed and lunged for his hands as he was pulled closer to the vortex. Other than rushing water, the one sound that pierced my consciousness was Dane’s cackling, saying he’d won the lottery.

But a strong pair of hands yanked me and Josh away from the churning water as a wolf lunged at Dane, knocking the gun out of his hands and tossing his body into the air. Was that Flint?

Shots were fired from somewhere. I blinked muddy water out of my eyes as Dane, now part human, part wolf, was suspended mid-air, a primeval screech that had dread coiling in my belly.

More wolf than man, the beast lunged away from the maelstrom, and his paws gripped the edge of the chasm. But his claws raked through the mud, leaving furrowed marks, and he sank lower, the howl making the air shudder as he fell out of sight.

More wolves confronted the Obsidian beasts who were standing mute, staring at where their Alpha had been. The La Luna Noir wolves growled, and I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sounds of teeth slashing through flesh and bone.

“You’re safe.” Ranger got my brother and me to our feet. Josh didn’t appear to have witnessed the wolves’ transformation, as he’d been face down in the mud. Not that it mattered. He’d never come near another shifter. I’d make sure of it.

I held my brother close, both of us weeping. “I need to get him away from here,” I screeched.

What I didn’t say was that I had to get myself out of the mafia world.

TWENTY-THREE

MATT

I had nightmares for weeks about Dane’s death.

Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the huge sucking sound, the earth crumbling, the water overflowing the river’s banks, and the driveway parting, swallowing my former boss down into the bowels of the earth.

The image of his beast, the fur unfolding over his body, the protruding ears, the half shriek, half growl as he vanished, visited me every night when I closed my eyes.

While Dane’s death was horrifying, my brother had been dragged into my mess, and I could never forgive myself for what had happened to him. He was in shock after the incident, unable to speak for hours while I held him. Later, when he discovered I’d been working undercover as Dane’s driver, he was enraged, and he pummeled my chest when I hinted I’d sorta been involved with Ranger, the mafia guy I’d met at the speed-dating event.

The day after we returned from the cabin, Josh frantically tossed clothes and toiletries into a suitcase, telling me he needed time alone, far away from the mafia.

I’d assured him Ranger and family were the good guys, and he poured scorn on my foolishness and told me he was going to stay at a friend’s cabin in the mountains where no mafia would find him. My brother, like me, wasn’t a backwoods guy, and I worried the trauma he’d experienced would fester while he tried to figure out how to light a fire and keep the bears at bay. Or maybe wolves.

“You can’t contact me,” he’d said. “No phone reception and no wifi.”

And he took off in his car, leaving me to come to terms with my own emotional wounds.

It was two months from that day, and while despair was a constant companion, it was lagging. I was charging ahead, glancing at it occasionally over my shoulder, knowing I could outpace it. Or that was what I told myself.

The police operation was long and tedious. There were immediate arrests, but the long tentacle arms of The Obsidian Circle had burrowed into many businesses and lives, and the investigation was ongoing.

My initial series of articles were headline news, just as I’d imagined, and I’d been given police protection. My life was a whirlwind of media interviews where I was asked the same questions, and I answered, my mind spewing out the same answers. Reporters made me out to be a hero because I’d exposed the bad guy.

I’d left my job at The Daily Star and was writing a book about going undercover.

My relationship with Ranger had suffered. Or I should say it’d been crushed, stamped on, and thrown in the garbage.

Prior to that day, I was adjusting to having feelings for a mafia shifter guy. It was my fault Dane had bought Josh as a bargaining chip, but I placed some of the blame on Ranger and the Durand family. My logic was kinda fuzzy, but I figured if theyhadn’t been involved, I’d have been killed and Josh would never have been kidnapped.

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