“I get it. No need to count our kills. So tell me why you need to meet with me. I doubt you want to take up my offer of joining my team.” Dom raised one of his eyebrows at Warner in challenge.
“Not for me. In fact, after this last situation gets resolved I plan on retiring.”
“Retiring? You? Tell me it isn’t so.”
Warner smirked.
“Ahh, who is she?”
Warner felt on the defensive and instantly wanted to protect Mercedes from everyone and everything.
“Okay. I get it. Good for you. Now, talk to me.”
Warner began to explain about the business of selling abducted women.
“You mean R.J.S. International?” he asked, and Warner felt like cheering. He had a feeling Dom would know them.
“You know of them?”
“I have associates who are in the process of buying shares.”
“You mean buying out the company?”
Dom held his gaze.
“What is going on?”
“Your buddies are about to get screwed and screw you over big time. Randall, the owner of the company, has gained the attention of a friend of yours. He’s being watched, perhaps brought in for questioning right now. He’ll talk to get off. He frigged up a sale of a very high-priced woman and promised your friends that she would be delivered and they would get over two million. He planned on being long gone out of here. But the problem is, he’s already selling the company to this other individual.”
“Why are you sharing this with me? I have no interest in their business.”
“That’s not what I heard. But then again, maybe you decided to step down and allow Nicolai Vollup to gain more power and finally knock you out of the black market deals that made you into the multimillionaire you are today.”
Dom sat forward in his chair, his face becoming red in an instant.
“Are you telling me the truth?” he asked.
Warner handed over the thumb drive. On it contained enough evidence to make Dom want to eliminate his competition and destroy the man who had been diligently working behind his back to discredit him and destroy Dom’s enterprise. All gathered and very quickly by Gemini and his friends who insisted upon helping Warner.
“What is on it?”
“What you need to know to come to an informed business decision. But remember, I was never here. I don’t know a thing, and you don’t know where you got that thumb drive. Got it?”
Dom smirked. “Take care, my friend. Enjoy retirement.”
Warner nodded hi
s head and exited the room, hoping that Dom trusted him enough to look at the thumb drive and connect the dots. Randall and the others were going down and they would all be destroyed. Now he had to wait to make sure that Nicolai was eliminated once and for all.
* * * *
Mercedes was in the supermarket along with Taylor. As he grabbed some cereal, she walked down the aisle to where the flowers were. She thought about Warner. It had been a week since he left and she was getting more and more worried about him. She looked at them and even their beauty didn’t make her smile. She loved being with Kurt and Taylor, but it felt different not having Warner there, too. He completed them. They needed to be together all four of them.
As she headed back around the aisle, she saw a man walking toward her just as she saw Taylor come, too.
Their eyes locked and something came over her. She went to scream. The man grabbed her and Taylor yelled out, “Let go of her.
She watched as the man turned while Taylor rushed to her in uniform and the man pulled a gun and shot him.