Absolution (Road Kings MC And Underworlds 1)

“Negative, Vor, there’s no child here.”

Meeting Stefan’s eyes in the rearview mirror, I did my best to hold onto my shit.

“Bruce,” Dmitri hissed into his phone. “Ask your new friends where the Fedorov Vor is. I want you to call him that because he’s next in line after his dad, so they’ll understand the weight of the title.”

“He’s also in line to lead the Road Kings at this moment, don’t forget,” Bruce clipped. “But most importantly, he’s a child who belongs to the Hamiltons and Fedorovs. Trust me, I’ll make sure I get some answers.” And then he hung up, leaving us all making plans.

“Nell’s safe in the room, Dad?”

“She’s safe, but mentally she’s a mess. The boy—”

“Walker—he has a name.”

“Mne zhal’, I apologize,” he murmured. “Walker was distressed, but he sounds like he’s settling down.”

I closed my eyes at the relief that two out of three of my world were accounted for and breathing, but the missing one was eating away at me. A beep from my watch had me glancing at it, realizing it was their feeding time.

“Tell her—” I choked. “Tell her it’s time to feed him.”

“I’ll do that.”

Before I hung up, I added, “And tell her I love her, and that she’s to stay in the room until I get there.”

Pausing, I took in a shuddering breath. “And I’ll get our son back.”

We arrived back at the house just as the detective on our staff came out of it, his lips pressed together in a grim line.

Sparing him a glance, I tapped Dmitri on the shoulder to deal with him. “Renton.”

The inside of my house was carnage. The floor of the hallway outside the second living room had a large hole in it, with debris scattered all around.

Christ, they’d used explosives to get out of the tunnel and into the property. How long had it taken them to dig it?

“How do we get into the living room?” I barked at one of my men, who pointed toward a door behind me.

After going through it and walking around the area, I made it into the living room, where Lena was finally coming round, her eyes fixed on the body of the man lying dead near her.

Hunter was crouched in front of her, murmuring something in her ear when I got to them.

“I’m fine, Jaeger. I already told you that. I just need my gun, and I’ll—”

Throwing his arms up in the air, he yelled, “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Hunter, Selena? Now, after everything that’s happened today, can you fucking give me that one thing?”

I didn’t have time for their bullshit, so I kicked over the man’s body, alerting them to my presence as I looked him over.

On his neck was the MS-13 symbol, and next to it was a passage in Spanish, pledging blood for blood. He was dressed in jeans and a dirty black t-shirt, which left his arms and the tattoos covering them bare for me to look at.

On his left forearm was the symbol I was looking for.

“He’s an escaped convict, did time in El Salvador,” I barked at Simeon as he joined me. “I’m willing to bet if you look at the other bodies, you’ll find similar ones on them. Don’t get too distracted by those, though, it’s what’s next to them that matters.”

Crouching down, I pointed at what looked like a ghostly version of the grim reaper, with Ceifador beside it.

I hadn’t been aware of the men I’d been meeting with joining us, until I heard the different curses from them as I pointed the tattoo out.

“Shite!”

“Fanculo.”

“Skatá!”

“What does it mean?” Hunter asked, and I looked up to see him standing over me with the others next to him.

“Ceifador is Portuguese for the grim reaper, but it’s also an oath that matches the one on his neck he pledged to the MS-13. Except, this one means he’d give his blood for the blood of the gang, not an eye for an eye like the first one means.”

“It’s not unlike the Japanese hara-kiri samurai code of honor,” Ben murmured, shaking his head in disbelief. “We’d heard it was possible, but none of the others had this marking on them.”

“Because they were the workers,” Nick explained, checking the arm of one of the other bodies and nodding. “These were the men who were willing to give up their blood to get the job done.”

“So they’ve been radicalized,” Hunter surmised, sneering at the thought. “You know, any form of extremism—be it religion, politics, or even in a gang—is a bad thing. But when you add into it that you don’t give a fuck if you live or die…”

He left the end hanging, but it was Raig who finished it for him. “It all becomes a bigger fucking problem.”

“Has your dad gotten any information out of the survivors yet?”