The one I’d put there.
A rush of emotions flooded me, and my knees buckled. Misael caught me with his good arm, but the two of us almost went down before Kace pulled me into his grip. Bishop was by my side a second later, and all three boys surrounded me completely, cutting off the outside world. All the pain, death, and ugliness that surrounded us faded a little as their warmth enveloped me.
“He’s gone, Princess,” Bishop murmured, stroking my hair. “Don’t look. You don’t have to look.”
“He woulda killed us if he’d gotten the chance.” Kace’s voice was hard as steel. “Killed you. You did good, Coralee. You did what you had to.”
Misael didn’t speak, but I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. I knew all three boys were sad and angry that I’d been the one to kill Eli. Not angry at me, but for me. They had tried to shield me from this part of their lives for so long, and tonight, I’d been dragged by the hair into the thick of it. Into the worst and most horrifying parts of it.
And the person who had dragged me there was my own father.
Those fucking notes I’d found on his computer made perfect sense now. Luke Carmine must’ve been selling his services to both Abraham Shaw and my dad, making arrangements with whoever paid him the most, playing the two men off each other for his own benefit.
My dad had been in contact with Luke before he’d gone to prison, and apparently, he’d blamed Abraham Shaw for his incarceration, not Luke Carmine himself. Or he had decided to overlook that when he needed Luke’s services again.
I clung to my three boys as thoughts crashed around in my head.
God, how could my dad be so stupid? How could he trust Luke to carry out a job for him after the man had orchestrated his arrest? Although at the moment, killing the Lost Boys seemed to align with Luke’s interests, if what Eli had said was right. So I supposed, in a way, that did make Luke trustworthy, at least for my father’s purposes.
He tried to have them killed.
Murdered.
Those words kept echoing in my mind, set off by the tangy, coppery scent of blood that filled the room.
Shock was only really setting in now, and instead of feeling more calm, my panic seemed to grow exponentially with every breath. But I fought it back as Bishop ran a thumb over my cheek.
“We gotta go, Coralee.” He shifted his gaze to the other two, his expression hardening into that of a soldier at war. “When this team doesn’t report back, they could send someone else after us. We need to get the fuck outta here before their backup arrives.”
“Yeah.” Misael nodded, then grimaced as they all stepped back from me a little.
I turned to him, my panic finding somewhere to land as I stared at his blood-smeared arm. “Fuck, Misael. You need a doctor. Your arm—”
“—is fine,” he finished, shaking his head. “The bullet hit my shoulder, but I can still use the arm, so it didn’t hit anything that important.” He gave a lopsided grin that was half grimace. “I just need to wrap it up tight, stop the bleeding. That’ll do for now. Bish is right. We gotta get someplace safe.”
As if summoned by his words, a sound echoed into the room from out in the hallway. All four of us stiffened, and Kace raised the gun he’d taken from me, moving toward the door as quietly as a cat.
“Misael?” a voice called.
I recognized it. He obviously did too, because he gave Kace a stand down motion. The broad-shouldered boy was already lowering his weapon though, and a second later, Misael raised his voice and called back.
“We’re in here! It’s clear.”
The noises in the hallway grew louder—the new arrivals no longer trying to dampen the sounds of their footsteps or hide their numbers. And it was a pretty big number, by the sound of it.
Claudio Vega stepped into the room, flanked by half a dozen men. His gaze took in the scene at a glance, and then he crossed quickly to Misael.
“What the fuck happened here? I got your text.”
“Ambush,” Misael said simply. “Luke Carmine.”
Claudio’s eyes widened, then narrowed. He swept the room again, seeming to take in every detail this time.
“Why the fuck would he do that?” he muttered.
“He was paid.” My voice didn’t shake, although it sounded thin to my ears. “By my father.”
Every time I said it, I believed it a little bit more. When Eli had told us that, there had been a part of my mind that had instantly rebelled at the idea. A part of my mind that still, despite every available piece of evidence to the contrary, hoped my father would turn out to be redeemable. But the honest truth was, some people would never change.