Page 23 of God of War

"What happened?"

He cuts his eyes at the employees milling at the end of the hall, secretaries and whoever the fuck else works in this building, people we employ because running an empire requires more than cocaine. "We should talk in your office."

Whatever the fuck he has to say is bound to piss me off if he wants privacy to deliver the news. Fucking wonderful.

I jerk my chin in a nod, storming that way.

Thirty seconds later, I shove my way through the door into my office, Nicolas on my heels. The door slams shut behind him as I stalk to my desk. I don't sit. I'm too keyed up, too on edge.

If Nolan snatched another fucking business out from underneath me…

I need to move, or I'm going to fucking explode.

I wheel around to face Nicolas. "What the fuck is the problem this time?"

"The shipment that was supposed to arrive this morning never made it," he says, his tone clipped. He meets my gaze, unflinching, one of few men capable of doing it. Most are too goddamn afraid it'll end with a bullet between their eyes. Not Nicolas. He fears nothing.

"What did you just say?" I ask, my voice deadly calm.

"The shipment from San Diego never made it. We lost everything." He pauses. "Including Javier and Anton."

"Goddammit!" I roar, slamming my fist into the wall as rage courses through me in a roiling black cloud. Pain radiates up my arm from my split knuckles, but I welcome it, embracing the way it fucking burns as I shake off the drops of blood.

That stupid fucking prick. Does he have any idea what he's done? Anton has a fucking daughter at home, a little girl barely old enough to walk on her own. And Javier has a mother who relies on him.

"That shipment was over two million dollars, Nicolas," I say instead of saying any of that. What purpose would it serve? Nicolas knew them better than I.

"I know, Naz," he says, striding forward to grab the first aid kit from my desk drawer. He works silently, pouring alcohol over my bleeding knuckles and then dabbing it away. The cuts aren't deep, but they burn like a motherfucker.

"The fucking cops?" I growl when he's finished, but even as I ask the question, I know the answer. It wasn't the fucking Feds who killed my men and seized my drugs. The guilty, ashamed look on Brynna's face, her conversation with her brother…well, it doesn't take a goddamn rocket scientist to put the pieces together.

I put my hands on Nolan's pretty little daughter at the gala. I challenged him in front of everyone in that fucking room. And he swiped my goddamn shipment and killed my men to remind me that he bites back.

"No, it wasn'tlos pitufos." Nicolas stares at me levelly. "I believe it was Sullivan."

As if there was any doubt.

I close my eyes, fighting the rising tide of red-hot rage threatening to swallow me. He just killed my men and stole two million dollars worth of product from me. Two. Million. Dollars.

I grip the edge of my desk until the wood creaks beneath my fingers. I welcome the pain that shoots through my still-bleeding knuckles, embracing it, letting it ground me.

I can't fucking lose control. ButCristo, do I want to. That bastard just declared open war. If he wants a fight, I'll bring him a motherfucking reckoning.

But even as I think it, all I see is Brynna's face, her pretty eyes full of regret. The quiver of her bottom lip as she hurried away. The way she clung to me as if she didn't want to go. Her plea for me to be safe.

Fuck.

She's trapped in the middle, caught between me and her family. And I'm the motherfucker who put her there. No matter what happens from here, she's the one who gets hurt. And that's exactly what I swore wouldn't happen.

"What do you want to do,príncipe?" Nicolas asks.

Rain hellfire down on Sullivan until he's choking on the ashes of everything he's ever fucking built. But I don't say that. I fucking can't.

"How the fuck did they get their hands on my shipment, Nicolas?" I growl instead. "Who the fuck fed them the information?"

Nicolas hesitates. "I'm still looking into it."

"You don't know."

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