And I still hadn’t done that yet.
Now we sat beside each other like strangers.
With a ridiculous Jean-Paul in the back, dazed and confused.
While my brother was with his godfather, safe but facing an uncertain future.
And I had a mere matter of minutes to figure it all out.
BULL
As I drove, my mind scrambled to put it all together.
A hitman.
A hired gun.
The woman I was in love with was a goddamn assassin.
I had so many unanswered questions, but I couldn’t articulate them, so instead of talking to her, a weird, uneasy calm settled between us.
I told myself to focus. To forget about the heartbreak. The betrayal. And focus on getting Noah back.
Emerald Lake, where the lake house was located, was an hour’s drive out of town, but ten minutes over the county line we were intercepted by Ruger and Cade.
We pulled over on a quiet stretch of road, and bracing myself, I rolled down my window as they walked over.
“What the fuck is going on?” Ruger asked. He glanced over at Taylor, then back to me. “I see you found her.”
“How did you know where to find us?”
He held up his phone. “The app on your phone. The one you made us all download the last time you had a hit on you. After your phone call, I knew something wasn’t right. So now that we’re here, how about you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
The four of us drove to a deserted parcel of land, well-hidden from the road, where I explained everything. It didn’t go down well. There was yelling. There was tension. There was distrust. And there was a moment where I defended the very person I felt betrayed by, just so my brothers would step back and let us do what we needed to do in order to get Noah back safely.
“I’m not asking you as your president. But we could use your help.”
“And what happens to her when this is all done?” Ruger asked, looking at Taylor.
She looked at him, her face tight. “You won’t ever see me again.”
Ruger’s eyes shot to mine. “And you’re okay with that?”
No, I wasn’t fucking okay with it.
I was far from fucking okay with it.
“When we get her brother back, she’s free to leave,” I said, my voice hard.
Ruger thought for a moment, weighing it all up in his head. Finally, he nodded and said, “Okay, what’s the fucking plan?”
Taylor’s godfather was holed up in a palatial lake house on a sprawling five-acre block. The plan was for Ruger and Cade to take care of whatever muscle Alex might have on the property, while Taylor and I went to look for Noah. We didn’t know what we were walking into, but we weren’t going in completely blind. Taylor had lived with him for years. She knew how he operated. What security he would have and what they’d be strapping.
“Alex is crazy private, he won’t have too many bodyguards,” Taylor explained. “Two, maybe three, max.”
“He’ll have CCTV. It’ll be a problem,” Cade said.
“There’s a blind spot coming up from the lake. I was here last night and again this morning, that’s where I was when you came to my apartment. And there’s probably more blind spots. This isn’t his home. It’s a rental. It doesn’t appear to have the type of CCTV system he would usually have.”
“That works in our favor,” Cade said.
“He’s more exposed here than anywhere,” Taylor added. “He won’t be expecting us.”
Ruger and Cade nodded.
“But before we do this…there’s something else we need to take care of?” I walked over to her Honda and opened the trunk.
Jean-Paul was awake and protesting about being restrained. But the gag in his mouth muffled it.
“This is Gimmel Martel’s son,” I said.
“Fucking great,” Cade said, shaking his head.
“What the fuck?” Ruger looked at Taylor. “Boy, you’re just full of surprises.”
I saw Taylor’s temper snap. Saw her eyes sharpen. Felt her anger rise above anything else she was feeling.
Ignoring my brothers, she walked over to the trunk of the car and punched Jean-Paul in the face, breaking his nose. “That’s for putting your hands on me,” she growled. Pain rattled through her knuckles and she shook them. But then she punched him again, this time knocking him out. “And that’s for Jacob, you evil fuck!”
A dumb silence fell over all of us.
When she swung around, she looked unapologetic. “You have to believe me when I say he deserved it,” she said.
I didn’t doubt it. And I hoped one day, I’d find out why.
We dragged the unconscious Jean-Paul and dumped him in one of the gardens surrounding the property. Now that we had Ruger and Cade with us, trading him for Noah seemed like the harder option. The time for negotiations were over. We weren’t going to ask for Noah back. We were going to take him.