Page 138 of His Enforcer

He peers over at me. “Promise?”

“I promise, kitten. Everything will be fine.”

I don’t know that, but I say it anyway. I need to reassure myself and my men. And more importantly, I need Viktor to know that everything will be all right. That we’ll come out of this stronger. Better.

The two of us. Together.

“And when we’re done, when we get back from Vegas, we’ll make plans to go visit my aunt and uncle.”

He peers over at me. “You that serious about me?”

“Yeah, he is,” Jax interjects and then murmurs his apologies. “Just, you know, it’sfuckingobvious.”

I peer back at him, and he leans back, turning his gaze to the GPS.

“Jax is right. I am serious. I want you to meet my family. What’s left of it.”

He flushes and nods. “Yeah, okay. I’d love that.”

I pull his hand up and kiss it gently.

“Right up here,” Jax interrupts, leaning forward from the back middle seat. “Or at least, I think so. This is what the phone says.”

“It’s probably right,” Viktor replies as he turns off onto a bumpy dirt road and slows down slightly as dust billows up around us.

“Looks like it’s about a mile down here. Fuck, this is shitty,” Jax adds. “What a creep. Worse than the tiger.”

“Way worse,” Quincy adds. Rafe, on the other hand, is quiet, his eyes scanning the horizon. It’s getting darker with each passing minute and soon the sun will be completely behind the mountains, making this place completely dark.

Cavernous. Deathly.

My breath hitches slightly, and Viktor peers over at me, concern in his gaze.

It’s nothing. It’s all in my head. I said everything would be fine. I promised.

“Park here,” I bite out, far too harshly, but needing to center myself. “We’ll walk up. I don’t want him to see us coming.”

“If he’s even there. He’s slipperier than a damn eel. And I know. I’ve tried catching one,” Jax murmurs.

Viktor parks and turns the car off, all of us sitting in silence for a solid minute. And then we exit, our eyes moving around us, taking everything in. It’s nothing but miles of flat land before us, full of sand and dry desert shrubs.

As we get closer and closer to our destination, my adrenaline starts spiking. In the distance is a rickety shack and an old, worn RV parked next to it. If we didn’t have a little light left and those specific coordinates, we’d have missed this completely. There isnothing that would indicate this was out here, and with the darkness the desert affords, we’d have never found it.

“Careful. It could be some kind of lab. Do not enter if at all possible,” I hiss. Everyone nods, and I make sure my gaze catches Viktor’s. “You, too. You stay next to me.”

He doesn’t respond, just narrows his gaze, looking forward once more. His gun is in his hand, shoulders tight with tension. The only sounds around us are our footsteps and the occasional ragged breath.

When we approach the shack and RV, we stop abruptly, eyeing the perimeter, searching for movement, for the sound of someone, but we see and hear nothing.

It’s silent, eerily so.

As if this is just a ghost of a place.

This is never fucking good, I think as I take a step forward, all of us fanning out, including Viktor, who ignores my command for him to stay near me.

Fucking hell, I think as I turn toward him, following him as he moves toward the RV. He rolls his eyes when he sees me trailing behind him, but I refuse to let him out of my sight.

I won’t fucking lose him.

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