A Captive Situation (Kings of New York)

“You have my attention, Worthing. What do you want?”

“Done with the niceties?”

“You have something of mine. I want it back.”

It.

I smirked. “A nice way to think of your girl.”

“She’s mine. What the fuck do you want, Jacob?”

Fine. He was showing his cards. I would too. “I want my name and Sawyer’s off your website. I want the contract dissolved.” He was quiet on his end and I laughed over it, harshly. “Yeah. I’m fully fucking aware that you own that website and your team runs the operations. Get my name off that list, and Sawyer’s. Then we’ll talk when you get your ‘it.’”

“Sawyer’s your woman now?”

I stilled, not liking the smugness coming from him. “She’s a civilian. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She got caught up in all of this and none of this is her doing. You kill innocent people? All the hype about you and that was one thing I hadn’t heard about you, you and your fucking modern-day Robin Hood type of reputation? It’s all bullshit. That’s nice to hear. You let her go down with a bullet and I will make it my last mission in life to destroy your ass. I have a feeling there’s a whole cult following that might rethink their brainwashed beliefs about you. I won’t get through to all of them, but I’ll make a dent. I’m sure of it.”

He said her name and I went red. The rage took over.

Of course he knew her. Of course he knew her name. But Sawyer was mine.

I said briskly, “Our names are off the list with a promise to keep them off the list and I’ll hand your girl over to you. It’s as simple as that.”

“Except it’s not.”

Fuck.

He was too smooth in his retort. Too smooth. Too confident.

My hand tightened around the phone. This wasn’t going to be good, whatever he was going to say.

“I have no problem removing your Sawyer’s name from the list. In fact, it’s done. You can check yourself. I won’t add her name again, but what I’ll do instead is wipe out her family. Every single one of them. All her aunts. All her cousins. Every last person she calls family, including the new cousin she met on her romp around the city. Even the fiancé who dumped her, the best friend who married him in her place, and the child in that woman’s belly. I have a policy where innocents are left out of my business, but the second you took your woman from that police station, you brought her into this world. You made her my business. She’s your weakness and if you don’t bring Blake to me, I will burn the world down around your woman and let her live in its ashes. It’s your choice.”

I glanced at the closed door before turning away, my gut shifting.

When I spoke, I didn’t hesitate and I didn’t let emotion slip through because my cousin was a ruthless fucker.

Got it. I was too. “Do it.”

Apparently it was genetic.

He went quiet.

“You think I give a shit about her family? I don’t. Her or them, it’s her. Kill every single one of them. I’ll give you the address where Tristian West is hiding three of those family members. I’ll give them on a platter to you, but here’s my counteroffer. You wipe out her family, you think of putting her name back on that list, and I will butcher your woman. I will cut her up into pieces and ship every single piece to you, one by one. Gift-wrapped.”

He was breathing hard on his end.

I added, “You fucked up, Lane. You think you know me? You have no fucking clue who I actually am. I’m not the rest of our pathetic family and I am done taking orders. I am done taking threats. I care about two people in my life and one of them is dead. I’m not a good guy. I’ve never been a good guy. So go ahead and wipe out Sawyer’s family. I don’t give one fuck about them. You want your woman? You do what I say and only what I say because I think at the end of this negotiation, your obsession with Blake Green is more than whatever feelings you think I have about my woman’s family. Call me when you’re done, because if you do what you’re threatening, you can put your toy back together by connecting all her body parts.”

I ended the call, my heart fucking racing.

Goddamn.

Goddamn.

A choked sob had me whirling around.

My heart splintered.

Sawyer was in the doorway.

She’d opened it a crack. Now pale. Horror in her eyes. Her bottom lip was trembling. She was pressing a hand to her mouth. It curled into a fist and she kept pressing it harder and harder.

Fuck.

“Sawyer.” I took a step toward her.

She jumped back as if I’d slapped her, holding out a hand. “No.”

Her voice cracked, sounding like a wounded animal.

I flinched. Shit.

“No.” She said it again, savagely, a wildness coming over her. Her eyes grew panicked. Her mouth strained at the ends. She began looking around her, a desperate frenzy seeping into the air.

“It’s not what you think,” I grated out. Low. Rough. I’d messed up. I thought the door was closed. “I didn’t mean what you heard—”

“You said it!” she raged at me, her motion reversing. She flew at me instead, one arm in the air as if to strike me.

I braced, my hands lifting to catch her, but my phone rang. It stopped everything.

She froze, a choked gurgle slipping out as she saw Creighton’s name on the screen. Her eyes closed. Her body wavered on her feet.

Grim, so fucking grim, I accepted the call and put him on speaker. “Did you make a decision?”

His tone was like ice. “Your names have been removed from the list. Bring Blake to the coordinates I send in one hour and your names will remain off that list.”

No emotion. I couldn’t think anything. I couldn’t feel anything. This was how this fucking world worked. Collateral. Trades. Negotiations. Deals. These types of cruel arrangements. It was a dirty business, but it’s what I’d endured all my life. I survived it, walking the line between two sides of the same coin. Law and crime. I walked away from a bloodbath only needing to keep returning to one, over and over again.

This was it. This was the end.

I was done after this.

Sawyer was watching me, a plea in her eyes. There was a softness in her, one I couldn’t indulge and one I shouldn’t be around. I’d make it worse.

I made her like me.

She had a light in her. It’d been there, only dulled, when I met her on that subway train. Every day it grew, no matter the threat against her. It was still there. Getting bigger. Bolder. Healthier. Life had come back to her cheeks, giving her color. It made her glow until she overheard this call. I’d snuffed it out so easily.

It’d been a bluff, but it didn’t matter because if he called my bluff, I would be the reason her world shattered.

Me. I did that.

I was a curse to her.

I said swiftly, coldly, “Deal.”

Sawyer flinched this time, her face wincing, and she took a step away from me.

It wasn’t a good move, that I was letting him choose the location and time of the meeting, but a part of me stopped caring. As long as Sawyer was alive. As long as my son remained hidden from all of this.

It would soon be done.noveldrama

“You can’t do this.”

She hated me. I saw it in her, the loathing of me. I shut down. She could return to Montana because she didn’t belong in this world.

But she’d be alive.

She’d be alive.

I turned my back to her, grabbed my gun, and shoved it in my holster. “We leave in ten.”

The door shut behind me. I faltered now, slipping to sit on the edge of the bed, my blood roaring in my ears.

I’d give her ten minutes.