restraint you did. That fuck would’ve hurt you. He could’ve—”
“So what? I should’ve killed him!” I belt out, pulling at a loose strand of my hair with one hand. “I had the chance. I should’ve chased him down and kept shooting until I ran out of bullets. Who knows, maybe I would’ve gone to jail or gotten Dad in hot water but...we wouldn’t have to run for our lives. We wouldn’t have dragged you into this. I wasn’t thinking about others. I was just thinking of myself.”
“Thank God you were.” Ridge grabs my shoulders, digging his thumbs in softly. “You could’ve gone to jail. His uncle and his spiderweb of connections would’ve made damn sure of it to protect his own ass. The Old Town Boys are an entire machine, and even if you tore off the head, there’s no telling how it might keep going.”
“But I could’ve ended it for Dad. He could’ve lived in peace. I made it worse.”
“How? He came back that soon?”
“No, his goons did. We kept the gate locked, but that didn’t stop them. We had to board up our windows the last few months we lived there...we never knew when they’d come to throw things at them or fire a few shots just to shake us up. I expected them to break in, come after me, but they made it a game. Clay kept backing off to drive us insane.”
“You were under siege,” Ridge growls, more to himself than me.
But the white-hot anger I see clouding his gorgeous features is entirely mine.
“Even the neighbors called the police a few times...but the police acted like it was our fault. Didn’t do anything to stop it, especially when Dad always tried to downplay things. I think I knew then, even before his cough took a turn for the worse, that we had to leave.”
If I’d just killed Clay that night, so many things might’ve been different.
And I wish I had, even if I can’t say with any confidence whether it would’ve turned out better or worse.
At least the psycho, the scum, the would-be kidnapper who doused me in my own mom’s ashes would be in hell, where he belongs.
“There’s another way, darlin’. Don’t think he’s gotten off the hook,” Ridge tells me, his voice as cool as the calm before a storm.
I peel back, my eyes shifting back and forth, studying his face which catches the shadows in the room like gunmetal.
“That plan I mentioned before...we’re awfully close to finalized. Leave ending Clay Grendal and his machine to me.”
Oh, the things I want to say, to protest, to beg him not to do when this isn’t his fight.
Not even when he’s staked a clear, unmoving claim to it.
But one more look at his face tells me I’d have more success talking a mountain into moving than pulling Ridge Barnet back from the brink of all-out war.
20
No Calm Before Storms (Ridge)
The fury boiling inside me flares to a level I haven’t felt since I poisoned Linus Hammond.
Hammond was a selfish, murdering piece of shit, but Clay Grendal?
A warped little pissant who deserves to die.
If I knew where he was right now...I might not wait for Faulk and the guys.
I glance up the stairway where I left Grace in her room to rest.
She blames herself for everything.
I’m not sure I convinced her otherwise.
Everything that’s happened isn’t her fault. It’s not Nelson’s either, despite his mistakes.
Grendal, the inquisitor fuck who’s tortured them a hundred different ways, is the only one responsible.
We’ve waited weeks for him to make his move. Yet no one’s contacted Bebe with new threats. No one sketchy has shown up, riling up the townspeople.
There’s nothing.
I’m sick of this waiting game.
Storming into my office, I close the door. Rather than emailing Faulkner, I call him.
“Ridge, what’s the word?” he answers.
“This motherfucker needs to go down. Right now. We’re not wasting more time on the logistics.”
“I agree. The more I’ve dug into him, the dirtier he is, but here’s the problem: he doesn’t get his hands dirty. The man hires everything out to his army of goons. However, I think we’ve found his lab. Turns out, the Old Town Boys directly manufacture some of their drugs. It’s a smaller pharma company based in downtown Milwaukee, not too far from the railyards. They make several run-of-the-mill prescription fillers during the day and illegal substances by night. Get this—the company claims research grants every year from the city and the State of Wisconsin. Grendal himself even sits on the board.”