Page 86 of Broken Daddy
She’d leave and wait. Circle back later once he was gone and get her stuff.
Then she was out of here.
She was done. Rohan was right. She didn’t owe her mom this.
Let’s see how he did without her paying the bills and rent.
Asshole.
Opening the front door, she flew through it, only to land against someone who grabbed her hard and shoved her back through the door.
She landed on the floor with a cry. Pain shot up her back as she tried to breathe through the pain.
What the heck had just happened? Was that Vega?
But as she opened her eyes, looking up through her blurred vision, she saw it wasn’t Vega.
Who it was . . . was much, much worse.
19
“What are we going to do with him?” Donovan nodded over to Stein.
They were in a dingy warehouse in the same crappy area of town. They’d arrived about twenty minutes ago and handed Freddy Mars over to the back alley doctor. Zander had arranged everything.
Hayes knew Kent wasn’t happy. This wasn’t the way he liked to operate. Sometimes they might bend the laws slightly, but not like this.
Had they even made the right call? Perhaps they should have let the cops deal with this. But from what he’d seen of the police the other day . . . yeah, he didn’t think they were equipped for this. Plus at least one of them was in Mars’ pocket.
Hayes studied Stein. “As soon as we make sure that Freddy is going to be all right and is . . . secured, Stein will be going in to make a statement about his part to play in Rohan Dawson being sent to jail for murder.”
Stein, who had one of Donovan’s socks stuck in his mouth and another one wrapped around his head, started to frantically shake his head.
Hayes sighed. “I’m too old for this fucking shit.”
Donovan winced. “What are we going to do about Mars, though? If he survives, we can’t just let him go. He could tell people, plus he’s a fucking criminal. We take him to the cops, they’re going to wonder how he got shot.”
Yeah. That was the part that they might need Zander and his team for. Luckily, they were on their way. He was just waiting for a message to say they’d arrived in the city. Hayes guessed they’d be a few hours.
Stein was making frantic noises and Hayes reached over to remove the sock from his mouth. The last thing he needed was for the guy to choke to death before he confessed to what he did.
“I can’t do that! I can’t go to the cops.”
“You’re going to the cops,” Hayes told him. “Or I’m going to make it look like you shot Freddy Mars and then I’ll hand deliver you to the Black Scorpions.”
Donovan shifted around in his seat. The younger guy probably hadn’t experienced anything like this before. Hayes got it. Once upon a time, he’d believed in right and wrong, too.
But he’d seen too much crap to truly believe that anymore.
“Do you really want me to tell the cops that Freddy Mars paid me to make sure that Rohan Dawson went to jail for a murder that Mars committed?” Stein asked.
“It was an elaborate fucking plot just to get rid of someone,” Donovan said. “Why didn’t he just kill Rohan himself?”
Stein let out a dry laugh. “Sometimes life isn’t that easy. Freddy, Marcus, and Rohan grew up together. They were like brothers . . . and like brothers they both loved each other and were highly competitive. But Freddy hated how much his old man loved Rohan and Marcus. He knew if he killed one, the other wouldn’t rest until they got revenge. He didn’t have the balls to do it himself and no one wanted to touch Lucan’s favorite enforcers.”
“So he took Marcus out and used his death to get Rohan removed. And he used you to ensure that Rohan would go away a long time,” Donovan said.
Stein shrugged. “By the time Rohan got out, Freddy would have had control of the Scorpions. He never said anything, but I figured he wanted them gone because he had plans to overthrow his father. And he knew that Rohan and Marcus wouldn’t allow that.”
