Tate (Mountain Men 3)

Here. Realization dawns on me as I think it over. They’re here. They baited us. They knew we’d find them, and they knew we’d come for them.

“Where?” I ask.

Real fear shines in his eyes. I let him go and reach for the woman. She cringes, but she isn’t fast enough for me. I reach for her, and in one swift motion fist the knot at the back of her head and yank it back. I don’t bloody care who I hurt to get to Fran and my sisters, I’ll find them.

My instincts have been right thus far, the girls are nearby and they’re in bloody fucking danger. The Welsh mob isn’t right in their fucking heads, I don’t know what they’re capable of or what they’ll do next.

“Let her go!” he shouts, on his feet.

“Tell me where they are.”

“Our warehouse!” he says, slumping to the desk when I release her. “They took them to our warehouse, we have evidence they did.”

So this is how the Welsh want to play. They think we’re fair game, that we can play along with them.

We’ll see how that works for them.

I call Keenan, tell him to send protection for these two as I promised.

But I’ll go to the warehouse alone.

Chapter 18

Fran

I stifle a cry as I see his name on my phone before it’s whisked away.

Tate.

The last time I messaged him, I broke up with him. He has no idea where I am or what I’ve done, and it makes me sick inside. But I had to do what it takes to not put my friends in any more danger.

Ever. Again.

I went where I was instructed. I followed every command to the letter.

I broke Tate’s heart.

I cancelled every contract with my publisher. All books had already been pulled from publication, I found out, but there’s no hope of any of them coming to print again.

This fills me with both relief and a terrible, abiding sadness I can’t even process yet.

My stomach twists with nausea as I see my friend, tied up in this book-filled warehouse. Poetic injustice, one might say. Whoever they know, they’ve managed to vacate this place so now it’s just the three of us and the lot of them.

I can barely distinguish between them as they stand in front of us, all masked.

“You son of a bitch,” Islan mutters. “You used me. You tricked me. You brought me here just so you could take advantage of my family.”

This is the one, then. The one she’s been secretly seeing in private, so her brothers didn’t lose their collective minds. I hate that she’s been taken advantage of. The arse.

My heart breaks for her. She deserves so much more than betrayal and threats. I wonder idly if she slept with him. Has he taken his betrayal that far?

A tall, muscular bloke with thick dark brown hair kneels on one knee beside her and lifts her chin between his fingers. “You were such an easy target, love. Didn’t your father ever tell you not to trust the mob?” He laughs mirthlessly. “Ah, that’s right. Your family is the mob. You likely think they’re safe, then, don’t you?”

She spits at him, and I want to tell her to stop, not to provoke him, but he only wipes his cheek and grins. He shakes his head.

Though his face is mostly covered by a mask, I don’t miss the way he stares at her, his eyes unencumbered by a shield.

“You know I love your kinky side, Izzy. Be careful what you do with that mouth of yours, darlin’, before I put it to much better use.”

Izzy? He dares to call her a nickname? I will castrate him myself, the motherfucker.

There’s something strange about the whole exchange, though. I observe both of them closely. She doesn’t seem as upset as I would have expected.

Why?

And I wonder if it’s my imagination, but his accent’s a bit off.

He rises and comes to me. “Now, here’s our little writer who started it all, hmm?” He paces in front of me. “By now, I’d think your boyfriend—no, wait, husband—has made it to your publisher. That was our plan, anyway. He’s a smart chap, isn’t he? But not so smart that he didn’t know enough not to fall for the likes of you, eh?”

He shakes his head. “Poor unsuspecting bloke.” He releases a breath. “Should’ve known better, but I suppose sometimes the fame gets to their head, doesn’t it?”

“He isn’t famous,” I whisper. “And you’re crazy. Those books are fiction. You all fancy yourselves the heroes but we only write the books because there are no real-life heroes.” It’s a flimsy excuse, and I know it, but I want to distract him.

He grins and shakes his head. “No, lassie. We know you painted us the villains.”

“What do you want from me?”

He leans back against a large box and lights up a smoke. I look around us, large “no smoking” signs plastered on every wall. It’s dangerous as fuck, in a warehouse of books.