bullshit or not. I’ll keep working them.” His eyes glint darkly. “We’re just getting warmed up here.”
“You’re good to stay here tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m not leaving until I get what we need.”
Hunt’s only ties in life are to Storm. He has no family I know of and I’ve never seen him with a woman. When I call on him, he never says no. And when I need him for this kind of work, he dedicates himself for as long as it takes.
Club members start arriving, drawing my attention from Hunt’s interrogation to making sure everyone is armed well. Once everyone is ready to go, we load up the vans and head out. Twenty-five minutes later, we reach our destination. The building looks abandoned and run down, but from the intel we have, we know they’ve been using it for a couple of months.
I signal for everyone to take their positions. Our plan involves surrounding the building before Ransom and a group enter from the front. Once they’ve got the attention of whoever’s inside, I’ll lead a group from the back. We’re not here to negotiate tonight; we’re here to wipe this fucking gang off the map.
Moving to the back of the building, I wait for Ransom to let me know to enter. The signal comes through a few minutes after he’s inside, and I relay it to my men. The building is dark as we silently move through it. I note the rooms filled with coke and equipment to distribute it. I also note the other stuff they’re moving: cigarettes and electrical goods.
Drawing closer to the gunshots and fighting I can hear, we reach the front of the building where Ransom and his team are dealing with about ten guys. A gun sounds just as I duck because I locked eyes on the shooter right before he pulled the trigger.
At the same time, another guy lunges for me. I see him coming in time to weave out of his way. Turning back, I punch him, causing him to stumble. He gets back in the game fast and comes at me with a punch to my cheek. Pain radiates through me, which I welcome. It reminds me why the fuck I’m here tonight. It reminds me of all the pain these motherfuckers have caused my club. It reminds me I’ve been dragged away from Birdie for this shit.
Retaliating, I go hard, punching him with enough force to knock him down. Before he can scramble back up, I straddle him and punch his face repeatedly. The rhythm of my moves becomes trancelike as my body takes control. It craves something completely different to my mind. It wants to deliver pain and feel the ache of those who caused pain to me. My body doesn’t care about consequences; it just wants retribution. It wants to punish in the most savage way it can.
It’s not until Ransom pulls me off the guy that I realise I’ve completely disconnected. I’ve left a bloody pile of skin and bones. Not something I’ve ever done before. My usual way is to get in fast, take care of what I need to, and get out just as fast. Tonight I don’t recognise myself.
“The building’s empty,” Ransom says as I survey the dead bodies at our feet. “We’ve got everyone.”
Fuck, I need to focus. For the first time I can recall in this kind of situation, my brain struggles to detach itself from how I’m feeling.
Glancing around at my men, I finally get my shit together and bark out orders. “Search the building for anything that will give us more details on who runs this operation and how the fuck they do that.”
I spend the next ten minutes looking for paperwork and information I don’t find. When I locate Ransom again, I say, “You find anything?”
He points at Striker, who’s carrying a few laptops out to the van. “They’re locked down tight, but I figure Hunt will be able to get into them.”
“Thank fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll go through them tonight.”
I want the motherfucker who runs this gang dead and I want that tonight.
He’s stolen from us.
He’s taken men from us.
He’s intruded on my marriage.
“Burn the fucking place down,” I command. “And load as much of that coke into our vans as we can.”
Tomorrow Storm goes back to being in control of this goddam city.
I crawl into bed just before 5:00 a.m. It’s been a long night, and I’m physically and mentally exhausted.