Cruel Seduction (Underground Kings 2)

We never ask.

He’s never told us what it is about.

We leave it alone.

If he doesn’t get caught, Jaxon doesn’t really care what Owen does. Jaxon is the man in charge, the guy who created this misfit group of innocent criminals; only we aren’t so innocent now. I guess we are more like vigilantes these days and take the law into our own hands. That is fine by me. I never really liked how the criminal justice system worked anyway. They fuck up too much.

We never fuck up.

“Owen, you have a guy coming up on your right.” I peer into my monitor and then take a swig of whiskey out of my flask. Ever since I got out of prison, there are two things I never go without.

My flask.

My whiskey.

It’s only the expensive shit that I have imported. I never knew how much I loved a good bourbon until I had to go five years without it. Now, there is only one thing I wanted more than anything when I got out of prison, and that was to finally feel a woman again, but after Gabriella left, finding someone to sleep with wasn’t important anymore. Gabriella is the priority.

I’ve looked for her. I’ve searched the dark web. I get notifications of every death in the world on my computer, filter the women within her age range, hair, and hope like hell she doesn’t appear. I have facial recognition software that alerts me

if any cameras found her.

Nothing. Nothing for a year so far. She’s gone.

Either my brother has her hidden her like he promised, or she is dead, buried or thrown in a lake to rot.

“Come here, you bastard. Let me cut you up so your mama can’t recognize you,” Owen says to the guard who has his gun aimed at Owen’s head.

I roll my eyes. He is so theatrical.

Jaxon moves stealthy behind the guard, a silver blade shining in his hand, and I lean back, getting comfortable as I watch Jaxon press the sharp metal into the back of the man’s skull. The guard falls to the ground and even from the screen, I see Owen’s jaw flex with annoyance.

“I had him! He was mine.”

“Shut up and stop playing around, Owen,” Jaxon says, stepping on the guard’s head with his boot. He wraps his hand around the blade’s handle and yanks it out. Jaxon wipes the blood on his pants, then tucks the knife back in its sheath.

“You have another three coming up on your right. They are running down the hall, and they are loaded, guys.” My brows pinch together when movement catches my attention from the other monitor. It isn’t Heaven and Grayson. There are more guards. “Fuck, guys. Forget the vault. We need to get out of here. There are more guards coming in the other direction. You’re six against two.”

Jaxon and Owen share a look, and Jaxon picks up the gun from the man he just killed and inspects it. “I think we’ll be alright; don’t you, Owen?”

“Oh, yeah.” Owen pulls his nine-millimeter from the back of his waistband and cocks it. “I love a good bloodbath.”

“You crazy bastards,” I say as they point their guns. Jaxon in one direction, Owen in the other. If Jaxon doesn’t come home from this heist, Quinn will never forgive me. She’ll kill me. My ear rings and I yank out the earpiece as the shots are fired. Gunfire lights up the computer monitor. Empty shells hit the floor, and smoke rises from each gun as the rounds are fired in rapid succession.

Then silence.

I shove the earpiece back into position and watch as Jaxon and Owen blow the smoke from the gun.

And all the guards are dead.

“Showoffs,” I tell them, and they look toward the camera in the upper left-hand corner, point, and then give each other a high-five. “Heaven, Grayson, do you copy?”

“Yessir’. We’re here and ready to open this vault. I’m fucking hungry. I miss Ingrid, guys. Those cookies were so good,” Heaven whines.

We all missed that crazy old bat. It’s a shame what happened to her. Ingrid was never supposed to exist, but Jaxon crashed Quinn’s wedding and met Ingrid there. The old woman had nowhere to go, and Jaxon had a soft spot for the elderly. He’d never admit it out loud, but he did. When we would go out to eat, he’d always sit with a lonesome old man or woman, seeing how their day was going.

Anyway, Quinn hated Jaxon because she thought Jaxon killed his sister when the man she almost married did. It took some time for Quinn to warm up to Jaxon, and when Jaxon got his revenge, in the process, Ingrid and Louis died. Louis was Jaxon’s driver, butler, pretty much everything.

It was a hard hit on all of us, and even though Ingrid was unexpected, she left an impression; that was for sure.