Wicked Ever After (Wicked & Devoted 2)

Sleep hadn’t come, not with his head turning and his guts rolling.

He opted for whiskey instead.

Bottle in hand, he screwed off the cap, planted himself in front of his massive-ass TV, and flipped through the college football games. But he didn’t give a shit who won or lost.

Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d ever really give a shit about anything again except losing Brea.

On that cheerful note, he chugged a good quarter of the bottle in one long swallow. If he was going to get completely trashed, why wait?

But as he lifted the bottle to his lips again, someone began pounding on his door.

His money was on Cutter.

By now Brea had probably told her daddy-approved boyfriend that he’d been an absolute asswipe to her. Cutter would come in, full of vitriol and swinging fists.

One-Mile welcomed it, and Cutter wouldn’t hold back. With physical pain to focus on, maybe One-Mile could forget how much his breaking heart fucking hurt.

With a sigh, he lunged to his feet and headed toward the insistent knocking. “I know you came to beat the shit out of me. Don’t say anything. Just do it, okay?” He wrenched the door open and reared back. “You’re not Bryant.”

Instead, all three of his bosses stood on his porch, looking somewhere between disgusted and pissed.

Clearly, this wasn’t a social call.

Fuck.

“None of us is Bryant,” Hunter drawled. “But I’ll be more than happy to take you up on your invitation because you obviously need an ass kicking. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

So they had already heard about Montilla’s capture? Bitchin’. “Yeah, I probably am. I should have just killed that son of a bitch for what he did to me, but when I had him in his wife’s former safe house, I didn’t pull the trigger. I just turned him over like a good little citizen. I thought that would make you happy. But you’re clearly annoyed I didn’t follow orders.”

“Do you ever turn on the fucking news?” Logan challenged, looking ready to wring his neck.

Joaquin, who wasn’t much of a talker, rolled his eyes with a grunt and grabbed the remote, flipping the channel to cable news.

The top-of-the-hour headline horrified him.

Five Cops Dead, Two Injured in St. Louis Police Department Escape.

Shock poured over him like a bucket of ice. “Son of a bitch.”

“Montilla’s thugs rolled in there, shot up the place, then took off with their boss—killing two more cops as they left just for the fun of it.”

And every one of their deaths was on his head. One-Mile felt utterly sick as he sagged against the wall. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah.” Hunter swiped the bottle from his hand and slammed it on the coffee table. “So you better start giving us reasons not to kill you ourselves. Explain what the fuck you were thinking and why you didn’t clue us in.”

“And toss in a good rationale for we shouldn’t fire your insubordinate ass, too,” Logan chimed in.

Honestly, he couldn’t think of a single one.

Joaquin grabbed his arm and shoved the cuff of his long-sleeved athletic shirt past his elbow, examining the underside of his forearm. Then he turned to the others. “No new tracks.”

They thought he was still taking the drugs Montilla and his goons had addicted him to? And that it had led to his lapse in judgment?

One-Mile jerked free and exposed his other forearm. “Of course there are no fucking new tracks. But here. Examine this arm, too, so you can be really sure. But if you’d just asked me, I would have told you that once I went through detox in the hospital, I haven’t had any other cravings. I wasn’t high in St. Louis. I just fucked up.”

“You got too involved.” Joaquin turned an accusing glare on the Edgington brothers. “I told you he wasn’t ready for an assignment.”

“Bullshit,” One-Mile defended. “You asked me to relocate Valeria and her family safely. I did that.”

“Sure, then you totally ignored orders and went rogue. So don’t fucking yell. You’re lucky we’re talking to you at all. You’re a talented son of a bitch, but not irreplaceable. I wanted to kill you for this stupid-ass stunt.” Joaquin pinned him with cold hazel eyes. His low voice was like a blade down One-Mile’s spine. “I got voted down.”

“Too bad,” One-Mile quipped. That would have made everything so much easier… “Is Valeria still safe?”

Logan nodded. “No thanks to you. We’ve warned her. Thankfully, Jack Cole recommended a bodyguard in the area, who’s with her now. She’ll call if she needs us.”

Thank God for that.

“Sit,” Hunter demanded. “We’re going to talk.”

One-Mile flopped onto the sofa, grabbed his bottle, and took a long pull.

The elder Edgington grabbed the booze from his grip and sent him a narrow-eyed glare. “What the fuck? Jack Daniel’s straight up at four in the afternoon? Did you trade booze for drugs as a way of dealing with the trauma from your last mission to Mexico?”