Page 3 of Venomous Vows

“Don’t they all.”

“Adrian,” he lightly chides while I generously pour my glass of bourbon to the brim. “This is Elena. I grew up with this girl.”

I suppress my scoff because webothgrew up with that girl.

But we’re not the same people we used to be and, I’m sure, Elena is just as judgy and haughty as she once was.

“We’re not a handout,” I rebuke coolly. “She’s obviously using our ties to get what she needs.”

“No, shit,” he drawls. “Hence the phone call.”

“Bye, Zane.”

“Well, wouldn’t you?”

“For you?” I ask simply. “No.”

“You’re an asshole,” he mutters back under his breath. “If you want to live with this shit on your conscience, go ahead. But there’s a young girl out there?—”

“Shut up and go start a GoFundMe page if you’re so worried about girls getting kidnapped. It’s got nothing to do with us?—”

“We take care of our own,” Zane inserts flatly. “That’s what Dad said.”

“She’s not yours anymore.”

“No, but she was ours.”

Elena wasnevermine. But it didn’t stop me from looking out for her.

Taking a large sip of my bourbon, I permit my curiosity to play out just this once and play along with Zane’s little game. “Where’s her father?”

“Around.”

“Did you doanyresearch before you called?”

“I did,” he returns. “Her dad has a serious gambling problem. He still owns that investment company, but it’s tanking. And it’s going down fast. He has charges pending on him for wage theft, and it looks like he might be in a Ponzi scheme in an attempt to get out of the debt he’s already buried himself in.”

That’s all I need to know right there.

Elena’s father got involved with the wrong people for whatever reason, and that’s still not our problem.

Yet, I still ask, “From whom?”

“The Disciples.”

If my interest was piqued before, it’s skyrocketed now.

The Disciples are a young gang that dabbles solely in cocaine and trafficking. A plague and problem because the attorney general is starting to get involved with their ongoing issues and mess, which brings attention to my part of town. A few of them cross the line and come into our territory and I’ve sent several warnings, but like a bunch of fucking kids, they don’t listen.

And the last thing I need is a bunch of FBI agents sniffing around and finding shit when I’ve been running an underground enterprise without any qualms. I’ve been trying to rid myself of these D-rated gangbangers for a hot second because they leave a mess behind them and the pigs to clean it up.

Hence where the issues start coming in.

“There’s more,” Zane says through my silence. “When Elena’s father, John, couldn’t pay, he got the dudes who jumped him arrested.”

Well, that’s one way to get them even more pissed.

“Then he kept borrowing money,” my brother continues. “Not surewhythey kept feeding him money when he ratted?—”

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