Devil You Know (The Diavolo Crime Family 2)

Of course, he follows me to the car and climbs into the driver’s seat as I take the passenger side. “Where are we going?”

I take a swig of the liquor, letting it burn a path of angry fire down my throat. “To the house. If you can’t get answers from his movements, we are going to see if we can get some information from his bedroom. And if that doesn’t work, I know at least one safe house he keeps in the city for when he’s drug running.”

Soo pulls away from the warehouse after a quick text to some of his men to clean up the space and lock everything down.

I stare out the window, cradling the bottle in my lap, but I don’t drink any more, no matter how tempting it might be. The drive is the longest twenty minutes of my life, and I spend the majority of the time with my thoughts circling around if Celia is dead.

Could I kill my brother? Would I? When we get to the house, I leave the bottle on the side table. If—when—we find Celia, I can’t be drunk off my ass. Especially as I rip my little brother to pieces for taking what’s mine.

I march down the long hallway to his room, where the door is cracked open. Using my foot, I send the heavy cedar door back against the wall and survey the room. It’s clean, which is strange considering how unkempt the man usually is. Soo dives right in, digging through drawers and under his mattress. Not all that surprising. The entire place is spotless, like he barely even lives here, and I guess in a way he doesn’t. My hands clench into tight fists involuntarily. The rage simmers low in my veins. No, this isn’t where he would keep something he doesn’t want me to find.

I walk out of the room, and it only takes a couple of seconds for Soo to be on my heels. We head down to the garage, and I make a straight shot to the motorcycle he loves more than anything else in the world. Soo gets there before I do, maybe to ensure I don’t destroy it.

“Check the seat. He’s probably got something we can use in there. If he wanted to hide something, it would be in there or at one of his safe houses.”

Soo nods and riffles through the seat compartment. After a few seconds, he draws out a bedraggled stack of papers, scans them, and hands them to me. “This might help. It seems your brother has become quite the real estate entrepreneur.”

Each of the five pages is a layout of an apartment in town. The addresses printed neatly in the corners. None of them is the one I know of him having, which means there are six locations we need to check.

I crumple the pages in my hand, and a red-hot haze engulfs me. We’ll never get to them all tonight, which gives him more time to enact his plan, whatever the fuck that might be. “Who do we have out there? Start texting your sources. Get them monitoring these addresses until we find out which one is in use.”

Soo closes the motorcycle seat and drags his phone from his pocket. I hand over the papers, and in under three minutes, he has men out watching all the listed addresses. “Do you think he would prefer one over any other?” he asks.

I snap. “How the fuck should I know? Apparently, I don’t know a thing about the asshole,” I yell, my voice echoing through the garage.

The rational part of my brain knows Soo is helping me, that this isn’t his fault, and yet he’s the only safe outlet to this anger consuming me right now. But it’s not just anger, it’s fear, and I hate it. I hate it so much. Fear has zero place in my life, and somehow the idea of something happening to Celia sends it into overdrive.

“I highly doubt he’ll hurt her, at least until he gets what he wants,” Soo announces, his voice calm and even.

I advance on him. “And what if hurting her is what he wants? He’s just as much a monster as I am. As you are,” I spit. “What stops him from putting a bullet in her head? He has no control. All it takes is her saying one stupid thing.”

A chill settles over my shoulders. What if she’s already dead, and I don’t get to—? No, I can’t even consider it. Or a lot of people are going to die tonight, starting with Lucas.

With Soo out of the way, I stalk to the motorcycle, sitting in the corner of the garage, and kick it hard enough to knock it over. It scrapes against the concrete, and Soo lets out a huff behind me. He’s always loved Lucas’s motorcycle, and this one is my brother’s pride and joy. I can’t get to him at this moment. I can’t rip his fucking head off his body, so I’ll take it out on the closest thing he loves, this fucking bike.