Page 40 of Brutal Collateral

“Aw, fuck. Basement,” he whispers.

“It’s okay.” I squeeze his shoulder. “Come on. This is it. He was here this morning. No one’s left the building.”

“Is there another way out of this basement?” Connor asks Shane, gripping his arm.

“I don’t know,” he deadpans.

We all stare at each other knowing we might as well be walking into a gladiator pit.

Fuck, for a second, I waver. Is it worth it? It was never supposed to come to this.

Then I hear a sound that stops my heart. A female screams at a blood-curdling pitch. It charges me up like fucking jumper cables.

Ava.Mine.

“Go, go, go!” I yell, this time out of instinct.

The screaming rattles my nerves, and I kick open the basement door. Helmets on, guns raised, scopes looking for targets, we walk down each rickety wooden step one at a time. I take up the rear once again.

We’ll use whatever the hell is happening as a diversion, sneak up on the motherfucker who is hurting...

Hurting my wife.

Pure adrenaline mainlines through me like never before. Someone is touching what’s mine. The woman who’s been promised to me.

The screaming gets louder and more desperate with each passing second.

Rage and fury blinding me, I push my brothers aside to rescue Ava.

The keenly unique sounds of flesh being ripped apart and a knife hitting bone make my legs weak.

Oh, fucking fuck. He’s killing her.

Brutal sadness wrecks me.

We backed Brandon into this corner and now he’s killing her.

He’s killing my fucking wife.

Ares is going to murder me for this.

At the bottom of the stairs, my brain struggles to process what the fuck I’m looking at. Four guys in suits lay dead in different places in this basement with a stone floor and studs for walls against cinderblock.

The guards are dead. What the fuck?

Against the back wall I see...a human-size cage.

That motherfucker kept Ava in a cage down here. That’s why we never saw her. I’m going to kill Brandon Keller and fucking enjoy it.

The sound of Ava being stabbed eats away at me. I’ve done this long enough. My brain prepares me to see her mutilated body on the ground. My precious Ava. A woman I despised an hour ago. But she didn’t ask to be kept in a cage and then brutally murdered.

I turn the corner, clenching my stomach, the scope on my rifle locked in on Keller’s body heat. The only reason I don’t turn the corner spraying bullets is because I want Brandon Keller to know it’s me.

I shove off my helmet and let it fall to the ground, the clanging noise ringing through the silence.

The sound of stabbing stops.

I turn the corner and hiss out in a low, gritty voice, “Don’t fucking move.”

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