The blood running through my veins ran cold. My heart beat painfully against my chest as my stomach twisted in knots. Just the mere thought of Maddox caused my body to fill with rage.
The bounty on my head was my biggest issue right now. It wasn’t hard to get news around in the underground world, so people knew there was money on my head. Thankfully my handler only knew me by my alias “Queen of Hearts”. Either way, I didn’t regret what I did to get the bounty; I only hated that my brother was affected by it too.
“That’s not my fiancé,” I said coldly, my words thick with malice.
“You’re a wildfire, you know that?” He licked his lips, studying me for a second. “I think you need some time to yourself.”
My eyes bucked when he turned and started to walk toward the steps. “Wait! Wait! Where’s my brother? Where’s Carson?” Panic exploded inside me. “Fuck! Nazai!”
I struggled against my restraints, still shouting at him but he ignored me. “Fuck! Fuck!” I yelled when the lights flickered off and I heard the door close.
Darkness surrounded me and my breathing was heavy. I tried to stay calm. In situations like this, I was trained to keep a level head, but my mind kept going back to my brother. While I could handle myself, he was innocent in all this. The rumors about the Tavarez family indicated they weren’t the people to mess with. There were a handful of people in Silver Stone I never wanted to beef with and they were one of them. While it wasn’t clear to most people, I knew they were well connected. My heart ached and my muscles twitched. I squeezed my eyes shut when I felt pressure built behind them.
Memories of my childhood flashed through my mind. This wasn’t the first time I’d been restrained in a dark room alone.
I didn’t cry, crying was a weakness. I had been conditioned to deal with situations like this.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, I tried to locate anything I could use to help me once my eyes became adjusted. I couldn’t hear anything going on around me or above me. My mind raced as memories I wished I could forget flooded my mind.
CHAPTER 5
NAZAI
“What did you call me over here for?” Emmet sat on the couch and pulled his laptop out of its bag. Emmet took more after my mom but had my dad’s bronze skin color. Most people thought he was a pretty boy, but he was the definition of looks could be deceiving. He kept his tight curly hair cut low. He was on the leaner side and the tallest out the four of us at six five. I had called him after finding out who Cashlynn was and demanded that he meet me here. My house was about twenty-five minutes outside the city, but the good thing about taking over was when I said come there was hardly any room for complaints or objection.
“I need you to run a name for me,” I said, sitting next to him.
Opening my phone, I checked the camera in the hall upstairs. I had Luke stationed outside the bedroom to make sure the kid didn’t come out. When he first woke up, he was confused and looked frightened seeing the three of us. He cried for his sister but he was a compliant kid and calmed down once I told him his sister would be okay as long as he listened.
“Who is it?” Emmet was a professional hacker in the family. He also owned his own P.I firm. There wasn’t a shadow someone could hide in that he couldn’t locate. He was overly intelligent when it came to computers and I hadn’t seen a firewall or security system he couldn’t hack.
“Cashlynn Cavana.” Emmet looked confused.
“Why do you need to learn about her?” His brows squished together. “Wait, isn’t she the girl with a bounty on her head? The Rhodes put a price on her head, right?”
Along with being intelligent, Emmet had a photographic memory. The little shit used to annoy the hell outta me with it too.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
Emmet shifted his attention to his computer and started tapping the keyboard. “What’s she gotta do with anything?”
“She’s hanging naked in my basement right now,” I said calmly.
Emmet sputtered and stared at me wide eyed. “What the fuck? Why is she chained up in the basement? Wait, you’re not about to try to tap into sex trafficking when you take over, are you?”
I frowned. “Don’t play with me.” I waved him off. “She broke into my house and now I need to know why. Her parents were trained assassins and rumor was they were training her to join the business.”
My dad had issues with her parents over a job. I never knew the root of their issues, but my dad loathed the family.
“The last known info about her is her parents being murdered in a robbery at their house seven months ago. It’s just her and her kid brother now.”
“That’s public knowledge. Dig deeper,” I told him, cracking my knuckles. I glanced at my phone and switched to the cameras in my basement. Thankfully I had it soundproofed so I didn’t have to hear her yells. The cameras installed had night vision so I was able to see Cashlynn. Her head was lowered and she had to be in pain since it had been a few hours that she’d been hanging. I smirked.
“A month ago, she took five thousand dollars out of the bank. After that, she went off the grid. She’s gotten deposits in her bank account but no transactions have been made on her end. It’s like she disappeared.” Emmet tapped his keyboard a couple more times.
I pulled on my beard. That sounded about right. That was around the same time the bounty on her came out if I remembered correctly.
I stood up. “Stay here. Keep digging. I want whatever you can find on her and her parents and on the Rhodes too.” Emmet looked confused again but nodded. Out of all of my brothers, he was the quietest but probably the deadliest.
