Page 54 of Revenge

“Where are you going?”

“To make this right, for both of us.” He spins on his heels and storms out the door.

“Wait!” I move to chase after him, but the cold air hitting my naked body stops me. In record time, I’m dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, and my bare feet are slapping down the stairs, but it’s too late. The second I make it out the door I see the taillights of the truck disappearing through the trees and three figures sitting inside the cab.

“Damn it!” I’m left standing there alone, wondering what the hell he’s going to do.

Movement from the shadows next to me catches my eye and I turn in time to make contact with a fist. The force of it knocks me to the ground. Pain explodes along the side of my head as my vision swims in and out of focus.

“Missed you,Chiquita,” is all I hear before my eyes close and everything goes black.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Asher

It killed me to see Charlee running after me in the rearview mirror, but I know she’s safer at the house than anywhere else. I can’t risk anything happening to her. She’s become too important for me to risk.

“What did Carl say?” Axel fidgets next to me. Both, he and Zane are nervous as fuck since I told them we needed to go without much of an explanation.

“That he found something—something that was too important to say over the phone.” I flick the ash of my cigarette out the window and keep a steady grip on the steering wheel with my other hand. For a brief second, I toy with keeping the information Charlee shared to myself, but I know better. My brothers are as knee deep in this shit as I am. “Charlee said something earlier, something that has put a serious fucking wrench in our plans.”

“What did she say?” Zane’s attention turns from the window and onto me.

I play with the butt of my cigarette a few times before I manage to get the words out. “The hit wasn’t ordered by Diego.”

“Then who the hell was it?” I see Axel grind his teeth out of the corner of my eyes.

“Marco.” The second I say his name, the air in the cab becomes thick with tension.

“Are you fucking serious?” Zane’s voice deepens as he puts together the same thing I did the second Charlee told me. “This means Marco has to have another partner because there’s no way he’d be able to keep it from Diego on his own.”

“It does.” I take my eyes off the road for a quick second to nod in his direction.

“Fuck me.” Axel runs a hand down his face. “This is bad. This is really fucking bad. What are we gonna do?”

“Let’s see what Carl says first and go from there.” I shrug off his concern, but inside, I’m a ball of chaos. I’m not sure what the hell this all means, and I have a bad feeling things are about to get worse before they get better.

The rest of the thirty-minute drive is done in silence. We’re each left to stew in our own thoughts. Things are fucked up, but we’ve come too far to quit now. A few minutes later we pull up to Carl’s house and a strange sense of unease hits me the second I park in the driveway. I feel it down to my bones. It’s a feeling that never failed to keep my ass safe in prison.

“What’s wrong?” Zane asks the second I kill the ignition.

“Something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?” Axel glances around the front yard looking for anything to back up my words.

“I don’t know. I just feel it in my gut. We need to watch our asses. Zane, you cover the rear and Axel, you keep your eyes open.” I exit the truck but leave the door open. The last thing we want to do is attract any more attention if we can help it.

Both of my brothers nod and slowly creep out of the truck, careful not to make a sound. They pull out their guns and flank me the whole way up the front porch. When we reach the door, my jaw clenches. It’s slightly open and the wood of the doorjamb is splintered. A vein throbs in my temple as a flashback of the night Lauren was killed threatens to break free, but I do my best to breathe through it and stay focused. I can’t afford any mistakes. Not right now.

The toe of my boot nudges the door open and we slip through without making a sound. Nothing appears to be out of place in the living room, so we ease our way farther inside to the back of the house where the kitchen is. The second we round the corner, everything turns to shit.

Glass and broken dishes litter the dingy linoleum floor. Cupboards are broken and blood is splattered across the white cabinets. Carl’s body is lying limp in the middle of his kitchen. Blood is all over him and pooling on the floor around his body.

I rush over to him and kneel down to check his pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there nonetheless. “Carl? Who the fuck did this?” My hands roam over his body, assessing his injuries. He has several knife wounds to his abdomen and chest. Whoever did this carved him up like a fucking turkey.

“Ash…I’m…so..rr..y…” he wheezes out as blood spews out of his mouth and down the side of his face.

“Hang on, brother.” I rip off my shirt and use it to stop some of the blood flow. Zane and Axel rush to my side and do their best to help me.

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