Wicked and True (Wicked & Devoted 4)

“I’ll holler. And if you find yourself out in crazy California, call me.”

“Are you going to be okay in LaLa Land? I mean, earthquakes, fires, mudslides, and murders. Hell of a recommendation.”

“Yeah.” Cutter sounded like he knew he needed to have his sanity checked, then he laughed. “When you put it like that…”

Zy joined in. “Holler when you’re back in town. The team will want to see you, and we’ll grab a beer.”

“I’ll be there for Brea and Walker’s wedding on Valentine’s Day—unless she comes to her senses and tells him to take a hike.”

Not likely. “When’s that baby due again?”

“Thanks for the reminder. I’ve got two words for you. They start with an F and end with an off.”

They chuckled before they hung up. Then Zy made a quick call to Kane to verify that they were still on the road and still planning to arrive tonight, probably about three a.m. That gave him just under four hours remaining to grab the keys, scope the place out, put a few groceries in it so they wouldn’t have to venture out where anyone who might be in the cartel’s pocket could see them, then hand everything over to Kane. He’d deal with Trees and his attraction to Laila later.

After he made the dreaded phone call to his father. Fuck, he’d almost rather cut off an arm. But lives were on the line, and that was way more important than all the grief he had with his dad.

Sighing, he found the contact and hit the button.

“Chase? Is it really you?”

Ugh, he hated being called by his given name. It reminded him of his childhood and all the crap he’d been through. Sad when the first-world problems of his upper-class upbringing seemed every bit as bad as life in a war zone. “Yeah. It’s me. I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, now? After you’ve declined every one of my phone calls for…what? Eleven months?”

“I had nothing to say.”

“Well, maybe I did. Starting with your juvenile stunt with the C4 in—”

“Next time, hire people on the straight and narrow. Your ‘business manager’ was actively looking for cheap, in other words substandard, products so he could keep the difference. After paying all the appropriate officials to keep his shit on the down low and sharing the extra cash with his buddies, of course. The place would have crumbled sooner rather than later, and I did you a favor by taking it down before people died inside the building. You’re welcome. But I didn’t call to hash out ancient history.”

“Fuck, how did I raise such an arrogant prick?”

I learned from the best. “Tell me I’m wrong. If you can do it with a straight face and a clean conscience, I’ll take it down a notch.”

“It wasn’t your judgment to make. You might have tried calling me first to tell me—”

“Oh, I did. But you were always just a little too busy to listen to my concerns. What was her name, by the way? I’ll bet she was younger than me.”

“Chase Phillip Garrett, shut your fucking mouth. You don’t talk to me that way.”

“Sorry, Dad. That worked when I was fourteen. Not so much anymore. Do you want to know why I called or do you just want to yell at me?”

“Your mother and I are getting divorced. We’re announcing it Monday.”

About damn time, but… “How many pretty pennies will that cost you?”

“Worried about your inheritance?”

Zy scoffed. “Nope. I’m doing just fine on my own. I’m not remotely interested in your money.”

“You don’t want to be a billionaire when I pass on? Theo does.”

“Yeah, well…I’m not willing to lick your ass for a pile of cash.”

“God, you’re so stubborn, abrasive, not at all shy about being annoying as fuck.”

It’s better than being a greedy, ass-kissing sellout. “You’re welcome.”

“This conversation is going nowhere. Let’s end it.”

“As soon as I’ve said my piece. In the course of an op, I intercepted a phone from someone in the Tierra Caliente cartel. Heard of them?”

“Not really.”

“Murderous, drug-running, lowlife criminal thugs.” Come to think of it, Dad would probably appreciate them. They shared the motto Anything for a buck…

“Why tell me this?”

“They’re using your fucking app to coordinate drug deals, abductions, and murders. You might want to put a stop to that before the press gets wind of it.”

Phillip scoffed. “I know you didn’t call me because you have any interest in saving my ass or my business.”

He was right about that. “I called because my bosses’ sister got kidnapped by these assholes, and maybe that wouldn’t have been possible if you’d stopped flapping your jaws on the financial cable shows long enough to enforce your terms of service.”

His father fell quiet. “Can you prove this?”

“I’ve got screenshots.” Trees had sent them not long after they’d hung up.

“Send them to me. I’ll deal with it.”