Page 100 of Brutal King

I turn back to Shiloh. She’s completely at ease with me. Trusting. “Please, Father. Don’t make me do this.”

“You must learn to handle the pain that comes with the choices you make. You chose to hide her from me. Now you must choose who dies.”

“Please.”

“Choose. Spare the girl, and the price will be your beloved Shiloh. But you must do it, or I will end them both.”

“Give me Sergio, and the Ramos Cartel will be yours. Simple as that.” It’s the offer I made to Jorge Ruiz several days ago when he agreed to meet with me at one of Miami’s sleaziest nightclubs. A place he knew he wouldn’t be followed.

“How do I do it?” he asked. “He’s well protected. Most of the men are loyal to him.”

“And that’s the keyword. Most. But not all.”

I shared my plan to get Sergio out of his safe space by creating the appearance of another place just as secure. Only the men loyal to Jorge would accompany them.

The lure? A treaty with Armando Esquibel, head of the Lastros Cartel in Texas. He’d be a powerful ally for Sergio, almost enough to go against me. That is, if he didn’t owe me a favor.

I’d set up a meeting for them in the neutral New Orleans club, Original Sin. Once there, Scarlet would take care of him. Jorge could go home an innocent man, retaining the loyalty of Sergio’s men, and I would finally have ended the lives of the men responsible for my father’s death.

It was supposed to be a win-win.

Except, that it isn’t. As planned, I sent Scarlet to New Orleans. Un-fucking-fortunately for me, Luca also sent Gunner.

I knew it would be a problem the moment she told me she ran into him. Said he chased her down Bourbon Street, but that she managed to lose him. I would have believed that was all there was too, if I hadn’t seen the strange tension between them with my own eyes.

Choosing to give her the benefit of the doubt, I let it go with the simple order to add him to her target list. It was an order she ignored.

Even though she confirmed Sergio’s death, the photo I received of the crime scene shows a different story.

To anyone else, it would seem she killed him. It was her knife found lodged in the side of his neck and she placed the pennies over his eyes to take the credit. However, I see past that.

Scarlet didn’t kill Sergio. He committed suicide.

My first clue is the fact that she abandoned her knife, something she’d never leave behind. Secondly, she didn’t change the position of the blade, almost as if she wanted it to be discovered it hadn’t been by her hand that he died.

She didn’t kill Sergio. However, shedidkill Jorge. Went rogue and slit his throat.

The small detail might not matter to anyone else, but it does to me. It matters when she doesn’t tell me herself what’s happened.

“I need you to follow her,” I tell Itsuki, giving him the address to her secret apartment in Brooklyn, the one she believes I don’t know about. “I want you to find out where she’s going, and who she’s with.”

“Yes, sir.”

Damn her for doing this now. I should be returning to Vegas, celebrating the death of my enemy. I should be with Sofia.

Instead, I’m in my Philadelphia penthouse, worried that Scarlet might be spiraling. That I’ve been so preoccupied with Sofia, that I’ve missed the warning signs.

It doesn’t take long for Itsuki to report back with confirmation that Scarlet has indeed lost her fucking mind.

She’s with Gunner Sinclair. Has been since New Orleans.

Left with no other option, I go to confront her. Letting myself into her apartment, which is barely secured, something that angers me further, I wait in the dark for hours.

It’s the middle of the night when she finally shows up. Her gaze instantly locks on me. “How did you know about this place?”

“Better question would be, why did you keep it from me?”

She dumps her keys on the small glass table by the door and comes to stand in front of me. “I wanted to have somewhere to go in case?—”

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