Page 73 of The Piece You Stole

He nods. “Yep.”

I pin Leandro with a stare. “You said you wanted to help, and this is how you’re going to do it. You’re going to call Rylan Treveiler and tell him your estranged brother and his pack of three have decided to go to war with him. If he fails to turn up at precisely eight o’clock tonight, he’ll be left with a very expensive bit of scorched earth.”

Leandro gapes at me. “Youwantme to tell him you’re going to be outnumbered? You’re insane. All of you are insane.”

“Call him.” Kade makes his voice hard. “Tell him how you can never really own something unless it’s in your hand. Things like long lines of numbers can be there one minute and gone the next. If he doesn’t believe you, tell him we know about Bruce, Iran, and Cuba. If he doesn’t know how to handle his money, then we can make sure it goes to a new home. Acleanerhome.”

Leandro shakes his head. “You don’t fuck around with a guy like Rylan. And threatening to steal his money?” He laughs. “He’ll rip out your intestines and eat them. While you watch.”

“He stole someone from us.” Aden’s voice is colder than I’ve ever heard it before. “Someone he never treated like anything but a possession. A possession he abused. A guy like that doesn’t deserve Saige. A guy like that needs to die.”

“She’s ours.” There’s no hungry anticipation for a looming fight filling Kade’s eyes. No, this is just pure determination to do what it takes to free her.Whateverit takes. It means death to anyone who crosses his path tonight. “He put his hands on her. Scarred her.” His eyes turn liquid silver, the fury in his wolf stare like an electric charge in the room. “Tonight, the fucker dies.”

It’s not up to him to decide that. He isn’t alpha here, and yet…

Kade and Aden turn to me, waiting for my piece, I guess.

Is she mine? I don’t know.

But she’s changed something here. Not just in Kade, who was happy to soak himself in liquor and his dick in a woman’s pussy. But in Aden as well. And me? Who knows.

I turn to Aden because we all have our strengths, and as alpha, it’s my job to know what they are. “How much do you know about bombs?”

Since Kade and I pulled Aden off the streets, he’s taken every opportunity to learn. He has a brain like a sponge, always eager to soak up knowledge.

Despite his tiredness I see that same knowledge reflected back at me, that same hunger to grow, which has never dimmed. If anything, it’s grown over the years.

Aden lifts his chin. “Enough to convince someone I know how to put one together. Who am I calling? The local FBI office or the cops?”

I smile. “Oh, the cops. Most definitely the cops. We need them to panic in a way no FBI would.” The two cops in the station unknowingly baiting Kade come to mind. “Call the eighty-fifth precinct. You’re looking for two detectives. Bradley and Ferdinand. They seem like the type who would dance if you wave a red flag in their face. Especially if we let them know Rylan Treveiler has pissed off enough people that they’re willing to blow up a building to get to him.”

Kade chuckles his amusement, but Aden merely nods, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Accented French, or did you have another language in mind? German? My Spanish is weaker, but if you need it, I can do it.”

Thank fuck for Aden’s constant thirst for knowledge.

“French. Not so heavy that they have to work to understand you. We want to make it easy for them, but not so easy that it makes them suspicious. They already have an axe to grind with Rylan, so they’ll eat whatever shit you shovel in their laps—within reason. And we need a burner phone.” I pause. “No. We need two. One for the bomb threat and the other for Rylan. Take Leandro and use cash.”

Ignoring Leandro’s grumbling, I turn to Kade. My eyes dip to the bucket on the counter beside him. “How long do you need to get a fire started big enough to show Rylan we mean it?”

“Thirty minutes. I can have that land positively volcanic.”

“You realize we’re going to be hunting them through that land?” I remind him, my voice dry. “So how about dialing it back from volcanic by a couple of degrees?”

Kade shrugs. “I’ll do what I can,” he says, with a look in his eyes that promises volcanic.

I could push the issue, but I don’t. If Kade excels at one thing, it’s causing carnage, and right now, that’s what we need, so I return my focus to Aden, who's rising from the dining table. “Get to the mall and grab the cell phones. Grab food as well. Kade’s going to pull those addresses and numbers, and then we’re going to do some reconnaissance. You’ll get back to the house before us, and while we’re out, I want you sleeping.”

His lips part.

I pierce him with a hard glare. “None of us can move until tonight, so you need to sleep. Weallneed to sleep, and we’re all going to get it because how sharp we are tonight is going to make the difference between this plan coming together or falling apart.”

Aden’s expression turns mulish. “I should get to the range, do some target practice.”

I raise my eyebrow. “So, you’ve forgotten how to shoot?”

A frown creases his brow. “Well, no, but—”

If Aden is being this resistant, then I don’t even want to think about the fight I’m going to have on my hands with Kade. “We’re going into this severely outnumbered. Saige’s life depends on us being at the top of our game. Do you understand me?”

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