Truths That Saints Believe (The Klutch Duet 2)

Jay swallowed acid.

“I appreciate you coming, but I don’t need help,” Jay balked tightly. He needed Polly to leave. The woman may be a certain kind of magic, but there was a limit to that. A limit to how long Jay could control himself.

Polly cocked her head and observed him. “Though I can’t understand what you’re going through, I know a man who does.” Polly paused to look at her husband, Jay hating what passed between them because he’d had it once, and he was facing the prospect of never having it again.

“I know you’d tear down the walls of this city with your bare hands if that’s what it took. Ripping them apart, bloodying them. I’m asking you to try it another way.” Though Polly was nothing like Zoe—she wasn’t wearing the same hatred in her gaze that the other woman had—she was just as determined. A worthy adversary. She would not leave his office without getting what she came for, without giving him what she came for.

Help.

So Jay relented.

And Greenstone Security joined the search for Stella. Jay hoped that the heroes and the villains were able to create some kind of magic.

But then Jay remembered who he was.

There was no fucking magic here.

Only ruin.

Jay wondered when he was supposed to call Richard, to tell him his daughter had been kidnapped. While carrying his grandchild.

No, he didn’t call him to tell him she’d been kidnapped. He either called him when she had been returned safely with news of his grandchild or he called him when he found her, with news of his daughter’s death.

One Hour Later

He had five men lined up on their knees. They had been rounded up by his own men and were now bound. Each of them had connections to the Russian mob, two were ‘Vors’—the equivalent of made men, the title only given to men who worked for it, proved their loyalty. Those two were at the end of the line farthest from Jay, chins tilted upward, stoic and accepting of their fate. The other three were in various degrees of panic. Sweating, shaking, pleading.

Jay didn’t waste time with words. He moved his gun to the forehead of the first man, fired then moved on to the next before the first hit the ground. He killed three in as many seconds.

Now the Vors were looking a little uncomfortable.

“I understand that you’re accustomed to a certain kind of protection, given your position,” Jay told them. “That there is a code, even between us villains, regarding who can and cannot be touched. Who deserves respect because they’ve earned it.” Jay pressed the barrel of his gun to the forehead of the first Vor. “But there is no code here. Not now. Because you have touched who should never have been fucking gazed upon. I have no code. I will have no mercy. Your deaths will not burden me. Not in the slightest.”

He pulled the trigger.

“So,” he paused, moving the gun to the one remaining man. “Will you tell me something, or will you die?”

Chapter 18

Stella

No one had hurt me.

At least not yet.

Well, the one called Dimitri with the square jaw and cruel eyes had backhanded me when I told him to go and fuck himself.

There was an older man with him, one with the same eyes as Dimitri only slightly less cruel. He had white hair, what I suspected was a square jaw underneath his gray beard and an air about him that told me he was in charge. He’d grabbed Dimitri’s wrist when Dimitri raised his hand to hit me again.

“You do not touch her, moy syn,” he hissed. He had an accent. Russian, of course, since I’d gathered that the Russian Mafia were the ones who had kidnapped me. I’d realized this without a calm, detached mind, with the fear that most likely should be paralyzing me right now.

Maybe I was in shock. I’d just seen my friend shot in the face. I’d brushed parts of his brain off my shirt. I didn’t even vomit, I’d started doing that the past few days. That scared me. What if something was wrong with the baby? What if the shock had done something? I kept moving in my seat, looking for any kind of wetness in my underwear or stain on my pants.

Nothing.

Yet.

Dimitri’s eyes flared. “Why the fuck not? Was that not why we brought her here? To punish that mudak?”

The man’s eyes were even and calm in his son’s fury. “She is here as our guest, to persuade Mr. Helmick in to accepting our partnership. If he cannot be persuaded then she shall be dispatched. With civility.”

I tasted bile at the firmness of his words. The finality. There was no threat there. He did not need to threaten me. I was a pawn in all of this. This was the Russian fucking Mafia. If I didn’t serve my purpose, they’d kill me. That was for certain.