Amazing grace …
CHAD
As Jhay’s body went limp in his hands, Chad gently released her. Hurting her, he hated it. Would punch himself in the face if he could. But the girl was a fearless wild wasp.
She’d been beating the useless muscles off Sambo, and Sambo was a big man.Big. Two times Chad. Frankly, he was embarrassed for the guy. No grown ass man with two sagging balls and a dick should allow themselves to get beat down like that by a woman—well, not unless they’re deliberately allowing it to happen, for amusement, entertainment. But muscle-man Sambo here had been giving it his all. And still lost.
Scooping Jhay up in his arms, her pretty head lulling to the side, her lush pink lips parted, Chad looked down at the man still sprawled flat on his back, rubbing his neck, his face bruised on both sides. Quietly, patiently, he waited for Sambo to scoop up his shit-kicked dignity and haul his pathetic ass up off the floor.
When Sambo was finally on his feet, Chad transferred Jhay over into his arms. “Get her out of here. My father is not the best with promises. If I die while she’s still here, I guarantee you he will kill herandyou.”
He heard a disapproving sound travel from his father’s direction, but he didn’t look.
Sambo stilled, as if waiting to hear Rafail refute Chad’s words. When Sambo waited long enough for a refutation that would never come, he tipped his chin, then turned and left with Chad’s heart in his arms. They might be enemies, love the same girl, and want nothing more than to see the other dead, but where Jhay was concerned, they both wanted her to come out of this alive. Not because of Org, but because they were both madly in love with her.
Sambo was the one who’d spent years scouring the earth for evidence on whether Jhay was dead or alive, as ordered by Org. He was the one who discovered she was indeed alive, living right under Org’s nose, in his domain, working for Chad’s father. Somewhere along the line, he’d gotten obsessed with Jhay. Which Chad certainly wouldn’t blame the guy for.
Jhay Byrd was a fucking stunner. A rare, colorless diamond, who had absolutely no idea of her worth, or her power. She had no idea how cock-achingly daring her walk was. How heart-arresting that part-smile, part-smirk thing she unwittingly did all the time was. How sexy her fearlessness was. How much of an escapism her eyes were.
She was aware of none of it.
But Chad was.
And apparently so was Sambo.
Chad had detected the man’s obsession the second he had met him. He’d known Sambo wanted what was his. And Chad knew well and good that when a man was set on a woman, he would go to any lengths to get her. Wary, Chad launched his own surreptitious investigation into Sambo, and he’d discovered the guy was dilly-dallying with both Org and Rafail to see which man would give him a benefiting deal that would win him Jhay in the end.
Rafail had won, of course. But that’s because Rafail studied people, searched their minds, learned their cravings, then with a serpent tongue, told them what he knew they wanted to hear, manipulated them. He made promises he would never keep. He lied, he betrayed, he killed.
Sambo was a fool.
Back on the one-way yesterday, Chad had known there wasn’t a second shoot-out. He’d known Sambo was balancing both Org’s and Rafail’s orders. Playing his cards. Testing.
They were all playing their cards.
Chadrick Niiveux normally had control within every inch of his life. It had taken some time to learn exactly how to do such an impossible thing, but as of five years ago, his life usually played out the exact way he sketched it. Like a bestselling book turning into a big screen movie, coming to life.
He’d mastered creating settings and scenes in his head, manipulating people like marionettes to dance right into his traps. Then watch it all play out to a T.
Although he’d pretended to take orders, acted oblivious to the duplicities, teased Sambo with Jhay to lure Rafail here, what Chad never sketched in his plan was Clementine’s death, or Ricardo being found. For the first time in five years, Chad’s sketching got smudged.
He’d envisioned this scene; him standing before Rafail in mock surrender, Sambo thinking he’d won with Jhay…but the setting was supposed to be at his place in Russian Hill. Not here.
Amazing how one small deviation could ruin everything. He’d never planned on sleeping in Los Altos Hills last night. He should have gone home. But he’d wanted Jhay to reconcile things with her brother and his wife.
Now, his chessboard was shambled, and things were heading way fucking south.
He failed.
He fucking failed.
“That girl never ceases to amaze me,” Rafail said, long after, when Chad was still staring broken-heartedly at the open doorway Sambo had strode through. “She was an asset—for me, of course. It is a shame she was cursed by her birth. She cannot live. But you already know this, do you not?”
For the first time since Chad entered the house, he looked at his father. And it felt like he was looking at himself. He wondered if that was the reason he’d never been able to kill him. To kill him would mean to kill himself. Or maybe he simply hated him too much.
Heavy hatred seized his wills. And he rarely ever reacted. He was one twisted, backward motherfucker who deserved the death coming to him now.
“Not happening,” Chad said, calm, easy, settling.
