Page 55 of Ruthless

“Oh, big difference,” Axel smarts off. “My mistake.” He waves him on with his hand. “Continue.”

Isaac’s nostrils flare. “You’re a real smart-ass, kid.”

Axel opens his mouth to snap back, but Asher gets there first. “Ax,” he barks at our little brother. Axel shuts his mouth, trapping whatever comment he wanted to say inside, and thank fuck for that. He pushes it too far sometimes and needs to be reined in before he gets his ass kicked.

Once Axel grows quiet, Isaac starts back up. “As I was saying, I know the ports and how they operate, so I use that to help them smuggle their product into the states. And the money was rolling in. Things were good.”

“Until?” My eyebrows arch as that tidbit piques my interest.

“Until they sent some new business my way. I had a gut feeling that this fucker was bad news, to begin with, and I never should have got into bed with him.”

“Bad news, how?” Asher perks up from his spot because this is news to us.

“Bad.” Isaac swallows as he runs a hand through his hair, and it’s clear that whatever it is, is a hard limit for him. He glances my way and what I see has my gut tightening. “You have to know that I had no idea, and once I did, I put a stop to it.”

The floor drops out from under me as I catch onto what he’s telling us.

“I would never willingly do that shit. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“Would y’all like to explain it to the rest of the class?” Axel glances between Isaac and me, trying to make heads or tails of this shit.

“Humans.” My voice comes out rough and raspy as I force that word out. Everything inside of me coils up tight, ready to explode.

“Not just any humans. They all had a black paw print on the side of their necks.” A muscle jerks in Isaac’s cheek as my whole body tenses, but that coincides with what Asher found.

“There’s more.” It’s a statement, not a question. Asher doesn’t dwell on the bomb Isaac dropped because he’s quick to see the bigger picture and connect the dots. It’s what made him such a good cop.

Isaac nods. “After—” He swallows down the bile that I’m sure is stuck in his throat as memories of our past surface. “You know I don’t stand for that shit. I couldn’t stop doing business with them, or else I wouldn’t be able to put an end to it. So, I did what we were trained to do.”

“You watched them.” I know because that’s exactly what I would do if the situation were reversed.

“I did.” He nods. “I started keeping tabs on them. Everydeliverythat was made, everyone that went out, and to who. I saved it all.”

“I don’t get it.” Axel pushes up off the wall and walks deeper into the room. “Then why didn’t you go to the Feds with all of it?”

“I did, but they said it wasn’t enough because I didn’t have the big fish. They wanted the top dog, and these were just throwaways.” The corner of Isaac’s lip curls back at the thought.

“And you never found out who that was?” My fingers itch to wrap my hands around the piece of shit’s throat that is responsible.

“No.” He shakes his head. “After I went to the feds, all deliveries stopped, and they went radio silent on me.”

“Of course.” Asher shakes his head as his nostrils flare. “Fucking dirty cops.” He has his own reasons why that hits too close to home, and I don’t blame him. He lost his wife and unborn son because of a dirty cop—his own partner, of all things.

“That’s why they trashed your place,” I say more to myself, but he manages to hear me.

“That and because I have this.” Isaac pulls a flash drive out of his back pocket and holds it up for us to see.

“What exactly is on there?” I tilt my chin at the small device between his fingers.

He says one word that changes the entire game. “Everything.”

“Fuck.” My heart pounds against my chest as some more of the picture comes together.

“Now, your turn.” Isaac closes his fist around the flash drive and puts it back in his pocket. He knows we want what he has and just dangled a giant fucking carrot in front of us to get his answers.

Asher opens the folder on his desk and pulls out everything that he’s managed to dig up without drawing too much attention to us. He lays all the images and printouts across his desk for Isaac to see. Including the ones of the women’s naked bodies that have been found mutilated all around the Georgia-Florida area. Each has that same fucking black paw on their neck.

“We were hired to bring you in. They said you were a traitor. Selling secrets to the enemy.” I run a hand through my hair as everything replays in my head.

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