Page 114 of Toxic

“Your men are dead,” I told him. It was obvious, but he seemed to still be a little shocked that Billie wasn’t being dragged before him by his hired help. The fact that he was fine with not only intimidating a woman, but trying to actively hurt her and destroy her life, erased any sense of pity for the dickhead standing in front of me.

He shook his head. “No. You’re dead.”

“Really?” So he did know who I was. Considering he’d managed to stay out of our grasp for over a month, I figured he’d done his damn research. But obviously not well enough or he’d have realized I wasn’t a man to mess with. Neither were my brothers. Or our club. Once we stepped in, if he was smart, he’d have given up his plot to take Cholla Summit Ranch from Billie. Instead, here we were.

The shots surrounding us didn’t worry me in the least. My brothers had my back. They wouldn’t let one of these fuckers get a lucky shot off at me.

Brently’s mouth dropped open and all the color left his face as we watched an ax whiz through the air and imbed itself into the chest of a man who’d started to line his sights up on me. He fell with a groan of pain. Butcher strolled by, winking at Brently before going to the man, planting his foot on the guy’s face and yanking the ax out of his chest.

“You fucked up,” I said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Came after my old lady.” It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been mine at the start of this. She was now. “You tried to fucking kill her.”

“No,” he said, panic creeping into his tone. “If I killed her then she couldn’t sign over the deed to the land.”

My eyes narrowed and he looked even more nervous. “As if that’s better?” I asked. “As if those assholes wouldn’t have killed her and then said it was an accident.”

He shook his head, starting to back up. There was nowhere for him to go. The gunfire was dying down. Men were lying on the desert sand, their blood soaking into it. None of them were my brothers.

“I won’t come after her again,” he said, his voice turning into an irritating whine.

“You’re right,” I said, walking forward as he backpedaled. “You won’t.”

“I’ll leave. You’ll never hear from me again.”

“Right again,” I said, tone cheerful because I knew what was about to happen.

“You can’t do this.”

I chuckled. “The fuck I can’t. I’d say that hopefully you’ll learn your lesson about pulling shit like this on people, but you’re not going to learn a damn thing.”

“That’s because you’re going to be dead,” Butcher said from nearby.

We both looked over at him and he shrugged. “Just helping.”

The others were busy dragging bodies into a pile, but Lock met my gaze, then tapped his watch. Didn’t matter that we were out in the desert, I didn’t have enough time to play with my food. I needed to get this done so we could bury these fuckers and get the hell out of here before somehow we were spotted.

There wasn’t likely to be a lot of people out in this remote area at this time of evening, but you never knew. I wasn’t about to go to prison now that I’d found Billie. I focused back on Brently.

“Have you been working with anyone else?” I asked. It’s not like we could fully trust whatever Brently had to say, but it would give Rip somewhere to start as we wrapped all this up.

“Only people I hired,” he insisted.

“The rest of your board doesn’t know about this? Either board?” He frowned when I said that. “Not Heliaz Relay or Fission Solutions?”

His jaw dropped. “How do you know about-”

“We know a lot about you, Jonathan,” I said, walking to the side so that I’d be shooting away from where my brothers were busy consolidating all the bodies into one area.

“N-no one knew,” he said, his voice cracking.

“How many other ranchers have you run off their land?” I growled.

“No one. Really, this is the first time. She’s sitting on a fucking gold mine,” he insisted. “And she doesn’t even fucking know it. She’s raising cows like it’s fucking nothing, and all of that Uranium is under her feet.”

“And she’s going to keep raising cattle,” I told him, voice low, “while that Uranium stays put.”

“I’ll pay you,” he offered, his last ditch attempt to avoid the death he was seeing in my gaze.

I snorted and raised my gun. He didn’t even have one, that was how much he trusted his guards to protect him. “No thanks,” I told him, pulling the trigger. I watched as the bullets ripped through his body and he crumpled down to the ground. He wasn’t dead yet when I walked over and dragged him through the dirt.

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