Ruthless People (40 page)

“How did this happen?”

“Patrick was the one who found the lead on Cross, the man Melody was interrogating.”
Declan stated. “He had a CS-5 jammer implanted inside of him. With that, it blocked
half of our defense codes and sensors. From there, Patrick opened the gate from the
inside. He’s been working for them for mouths. We have no idea why he betrayed us.
All they needed was a person willing to die, and Cross was that person. With the botched
surgery he had to get the jammer inside of him he did not have long anyway. It was
simple.”

“Getting into our home should never be simple,” I said, pinching the bridge of my
nose. “I want him found and I want to know how no one else knew. Then I want you to
call every Irish or Italian man in the damn country able to build our house. We aren’t
moving.”

“Liam we can stay in the summer home—”

“We are not moving!” I yelled, breathing through my nose before taking a step back.
“I will not be chased out of my home like a poverty stricken street rat. There is
plenty of house left. Pick a room and deal with it, Father.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, grinning before he nodded.

“As for Vance and Saige, take photos of Amory’s body and send it to them. When you’re
done, throw Amory’s body anywhere you fucking please. Ship him to the moon for all
I fucking care. Just make sure Vance knows those pictures are all that he will ever
have left of his son.” Part of me wished I hadn’t killed Amory outright and used him
for some leverage to bring down his father.

“When are we hitting back, boss?” Fedel asked me, and I do believe that was the first
time he had ever called me his boss.

“We start now.” I glanced over to them all. “Declan, gather every motherfucking hacker
and suck him dry. Anything you can destroy, do it. The rest of you, your orders are
the same. Shoot to kill. I don’t care if they’re in the street or their damn beds.
We’re ending this if I have to bomb all of Russia to do it.”

TWENTY-NINE

“
The family that mourns together
survives forever.”

~ J.J. McAvoy

SEDRIC

It was déjà vu. No father ever wanted to watch his son suffer as he had. Our sons
and daughters were supposed to move forward. Make new mistakes. Forge new paths and
conquer new mountains. Yet Liam was fighting my battle. I should have killed off Vance
years ago. I should have prevented all this, but I failed.

Allowing the smoke to fill my lungs, I stared up at the sky.

“Sedric.” Jumping at the sound of my wife’s voice, I looked back to find her glaring
at the joint in my hands.

“Sorry,” I whispered, preparing to throw it out, when she simply took it from my hands
and took a long drag.

Smirking, she handed it back to me. “Only tonight. After today, it should be allowed.”

“This reminds me of college.” Smoking on the roof after a long, hard day of sex. There
was some studying every once in a while also, but still.

“I was pregnant, remember? I couldn’t smoke.”

“Oh, right.” I laughed as she hit me, but I just held on to her.

“Will they be okay? Can they get through this?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. It’s only the first day.”

CORALINE

I really didn’t know how I got to the maternity ward. I was simply walking and next
thing I knew, there were babies as far as the eye could see. They were all enchanting
and peaceful. Looking at them almost made me forget that the world sometimes sucked.

“They are cute, aren’t they?” Declan whispered next to me.

“Shouldn’t you be guarding Mel?”

He smiled. “Neal, Fedel, and Monte are all standing watch.”

I said nothing, and he looked at the babies.

“I keep trying to wonder what ours will look like. Liam was so happy. He was kind
of high all time.”

Again, I said nothing.

“Cora—”

“What Declan?” I snapped. “You want me to give you the time of day because you sat
outside my door and played music? But you wouldn’t give me the time of day even after
I let you fuck me any way you pleased.”

He took my hand and kissed it before taking a step back, not speaking any longer.
When I looked through the glass, a few of the babies were crying.

“See what you did?”

DECLAN

I couldn’t help but smile at her. Even now as she cursed me out, as she should have,
I smiled. She had killed someone. She was in the east wing when the bombs went off,
and she fought her way to the safe room. A knife right in the motherfucker’s throat.
If I didn’t know better, I would say I was falling in love with her all over again.
But the truth was, I had never stopped loving her. I never could. I could wait her
out. I could take every jab as long as I got her in the end.

OLIVIA

Staring at my phone, I read Neal’s text message over again. It was all that was keeping
me together right now.

I love you and the moment I can, I will be at your side. I’m so sorry I wasn’t before.

I tried to breathe. I tried to think. But all I could feel were the hands of those
men. I almost fell out of my seat when Adriana took a seat beside me.

“You were raped once weren’t you?” she asked me, and I did, in fact, stop breathing.

“What? Why would you say—”

“Don’t insult me by lying.” She smiled sadly. “I know what a rape victim looks like,
and I also know what it feels like when Melody saves you from it. She takes you and
she makes you unstoppable. She gives you your power back. She brings you back to life.
So the next time a guy thinks he can ever lay a hand on you, you can show him what
it feels like to piss off God himself.”

With that, she left me wondering who her Harvey was and what had she done to him.

THIRTY

“I want to see your face when I kill you!
I want to see the light leave your eyes!”

~
Voldemort
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film,
J.K. Rowling

MELODY

Day 5

“Liam can be such an ass sometimes,” Coraline said as she fluffed my pillow. “You
should be resting in the summer house drinking a Sex on the Beach and watching the
Young and the Restless
. But instead, he has us all on lockdown. Can you believe that? We’re on house arrest!”

I said nothing.

Sighing, Coraline fell onto the bed next to me. “I killed someone.”

I said nothing.

“Right, that’s probably not a big deal to you,” she whispered. “But for me it’s a
huge deal. He came out of nowhere and I just reacted. Adriana told me to always carry
at least two knives on me at all times, so I did. I still do. And that day I just
pulled them out . . . and killed. But you know the most fucked up part?”

Again, I said nothing.

“I didn’t care,” she said. “The prick came into my home and tried to hurt me. And
when I threw the blade right into his jugular, blood went everywhere. But all I could
think was, ‘
fuck this asshole better not have AIDS
.’ That’s fucked up right? I’m a good person. I was a good person. Before, I would
be freaking out, praying over him or something, and yet all I wanted to do was kick
his ass because he might have just given me AIDS.”

Nothing. I said nothing.

“Mel, please speak to us. It’s been five days. At least say something. Anything,”
Coraline begged me, but I couldn’t.

Shifting onto my side, I tried to go back to sleep. I just wanted the darkness. I
just wanted to sleep. It was the only time I felt anything.

“We love you, Mel.” It was the last thing I heard before the darkness returned . . .
thankfully.

LIAM

“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal yelled. The prisoner he was speaking to dangled
from the ceiling in front of us as I cut into my steak.

“Go fuck yourselves,” the fool choked out.

Neal looked to me, and I simply nodded while taking a bite of the bloody beef in front
of me.

Taking the drill from Declan, Neal held the point to the man’s collarbone.

“Last chance. Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked again.

Before the fool could get out his insult, Neal drilled, ripping through skin, muscle,
tissue, and bone. He screamed like a pig on its way to the slaughterhouse . . . mostly
because he was. Neal stopped only when we could see the drill head on the other end
of the man’s body, then he pulled it out and moved to the other shoulder.

“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal shouted into his face. “I swear to God I will drill
through your penis next if you don’t start speaking.”

The fool spit up all over himself as he gasped out for air. “They’re in hiding.”

“No fucking duh!” I snapped, wiping the corners of my mouth. “I want to know where
they’re hiding. I have people burning your crops, bombing your labs, and killing your
brothers. There will be more blood. There will be retribution. It can end with your
bosses, or it can end with your whole family. Choose carefully, there are many more
of you, and we have a lot of drills.”

Handing me a glass of brandy, Antonio walked past me and held up another drill to
the man’s belly button.

“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked one last time.

All eyes in the room were on him. “I swear to God—”

“God doesn’t come to this part of the house, so swear to me,” I told him, leaning
back in my chair.

“I swear . . .”

“Kill him.” He was wasting words and didn’t know anything.

Drowning out his screams, I closed my eyes and took in the hum of the drills. They,
for some reason, relaxed me. But sadly, it ended all too soon.

Antonio checked his pulse, then turned to me splattered in the man’s blood. “He’s
gone, sir.”

I sighed. “When I said kill him, I meant do it slowly.”

It just went to show if you wanted someone killed right, you had to do it yourself.
Declan handed me a file, I looked through it quickly before rising.

“What number is he?”

“He’s the seventh we’ve lost during questioning. Weak-ass bitches,” Declan answered,
opening the door for me.

Frowning, I nodded. “Find me more. I want them all dead. I want Vance, Saige, and
all the damn Valero to know I’m coming for them.”

As I left, they dragged the fool’s body away. Neal’s forte was not torture, and neither
was Declan’s really. That had always been left to my father and me. We were good at
it, and in a sick, fucked up way, we enjoyed it. But after what happened, something
changed within them both. Neal was fueled by the rage of knowing what could have become
of his wife. Declan had lost Coraline in a way. Gone was the shopaholic woman who
never seemed to understand the world around her, and in her place was a murderer.
She had gone through that and still didn’t want to speak with him. He took her punches,
and then unleashed it on whichever poor fuck came against us. But I understood. Walking
through the construction site that was now my home, I knew what would await me when
I opened the door to my room.

Coraline looked at me shaking her head in sadness before leaving. Taking off my shirt,
I threw it next to the clothes Adriana had laid out for Melody. None of them seemed
to have been touched since this morning.

Kneeling next to her, I brushed back her hair. “Have you eaten?”

She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. Five days of this and I feared it was
just the beginning.

“Adriana, I need food. Anything Mel would like, now.” I snapped the phone shut before
sitting on the floor in front of her.

At least she’s breathing.
That was the only comfort I had. Flipping through the file in my hand, I just started
reading, I didn’t want her to feel like I was cutting her out, or that I didn’t need
her. Because I did, I needed her badly.

“Declan and Monte have been trying to get through the Valeros’ firewalls. Their system
isn’t as strong as ours, so instead they created a freakin’ hundred different firewalls.
They can hack it, but it will take time. Right now they haven’t had any luck. They
are working through the eleventh firewall now.” I waited to see if she would say anything
but again, there was nothing.

“So far we’ve spoken to seven Valero members, and they have all said the same thing.
Vance and his family have gone into hiding like some fecking caffler. The two bit
arsewipe took his manky whores . . .” I paused for a moment and groaned. “I’m so pissed
off I’m sounding like my grandfather on St. Patrick’s Day.”

MELODY

He made me smile. I didn’t know if he could see it, but he made me smile. I did wonder
why he tensed just slightly when mentioning his grandfather.

“Anyway,” he said without less of an accent. “They’re in hiding. We have all their
bank accounts being monitored. The moment we break through the firewalls, we will
drain them dry. For now, if any of them withdraw even a penny, we’ll know about it.
We’ve already burned all their known crops on both hemispheres and bombed twenty-nine
meth labs. If there are more, we will find them. They aren’t getting away from us.
They have no other choice but to die.”