Page 64 of Forbidden Empire
She pushed off the wall and marched for the door, but halfway there she stopped, spun back around, and fixed those wild eyes on me like a pair of angry wings.
I'd faced down the worst Vegas had to offer. Men who'd buried bodies in the desert without blinking. Women who'd smile while slipping poison in your drink. But something crawled behind Rhea's eyes that made those others look like amateurs, something rabid and unhinged that hadn't been there moments before.
"When I'm finished, pretty Esme, Aidon will look at what's left of you and see a stranger."
With that, she yanked the door open and slammed it behind her hard enough to shake the frame, and then she was gone.
The silence after felt like a punch. I was left standing there, bones shaking, every nerve lit with a cold, crawling dread.
On the monitors, Aidon stalked back and forth like a caged predator, hands raking through his dark hair, muscles coiled tight enough to snap. My throat closed around his name, swallowing back the urge to cry out.
I swallowed hard and locked my eyes on his image, letting his rage feed mine, transforming my terror into something I could use. This wasn't over. Not by a long shot. Whatever nightmare Rhea had scripted for us, I was about to rewrite the ending.
Twelve
AIDON
Empty whiskey bottles littered the floor of my office. I kicked one, hard, and it clanked against the wall, rattling across the mess.
Three weeks… three weeks of searching, planning, waiting. I was so damn close. I could feel it. Any second now, I was going to find out where they’d taken Esme.
After she’d been dragged away, I’d managed to get out of Rhea’s compound in one piece. There was no way I could have taken on all her men by myself, so I slipped into the woods behind the place and called Ares’s team for backup.
While I waited, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except watch. Two of Rhea’s goons hauled Esme toward a black SUV. She fought like hell, kicking and twisting, until one of them smacked her across the face. The slap echoed in the night air. They shoved her into the backseat and sped off, taillights vanishing around the bend. My hands curled into fists. I was too far from my own car to do anything but curse and glare into the dark.
I’d been drowning in information for days and still had nothing. My office was a disaster zone: walls, desk, floor, everyinch buried under satellite images, property records, informant reports. A paper war, and I was losing. I stared until the words blurred and my eyes ached, hoping for one thread, one slip, that would unravel Rhea’s whole operation and lead me straight to Esme.
I needed that last piece in the puzzle: a name, a stray rumor, any scrap of a place that could get me to Esme and to the throats I’d have to cut to reach her.
My reflection in the window stared back at me, some stranger with bloodshot eyes, stubble crawling up his jaw, and a shirt splattered with proof of what I’d done tonight.
The skin over my knuckles was split, raw flesh peeking through clotted blood, and I’d circled my office at least a hundred damn times already.
Vegas was my calling card: bartenders with their jaws wired shut, bouncers hobbling on broken knees, informants spitting out teeth, and still, nothing.
Not a damn thing to show for it.
I’d left a trail of broken men across the city. Every single one of them swore up and down that they didn’t know where Esme was. It didn’t matter. I knew they were lying. I could tell, just by the sound of their bones snapping under my hands. There was still blood on my face, not even mine, from some guy who thought he could hold out longer than the others.
He couldn’t. None of them could.
My knuckles were wrecked, throbbing with every beat of my heart, but in truth, I liked it. It kept me sharp.
I would have set myself on fire if it meant getting Esme back. I wasn’t stopping, not for anything.
She belonged next to me. Safe. No marks on her unless I put them there.
The next idiot who got in my way, he’d find out I could do a whole lot more with a knife than just threaten. I had patience for days, and I was just getting started.
One of Rhea’s men slumped in the corner chair, wrists zip-tied, blood dripping in slow, ugly dots onto my twelve-thousand-dollar Aubusson.
Every drop, a new blemish. I couldn’t even bother caring.
His face was a mess, all shifting colors and swollen flesh, one eye sealed shut, the other a slit open. Only the spasming vein in his neck told me Ares and I hadn’t pushed him over the edge.
Not yet. Not that it mattered. He hadn’t told us a damn thing.
I pulled my attention back to the surveillance wall, screens flickering with feeds from Rhea’s properties. Estate after estate, all sterile, all quiet.
