Page 23 of Ruthless Crown
Fuck!She’s getting under my skin, and I don’t like it. Yes, I bathed her and washed her hair. I tried to tell myself that it was to assist my house staff who wouldn’t possess the physical strength to support her body weight while doing these tasks. Yet a twinge of empathy presented itself when I saw her flow of tears. I’ve never kept a woman around long enough to experience such bullshite. There’s no place in my life for feelings. Empathy gets you killed. I can’t afford to let my thoughts linger on Aurora or the fucked-up cards she’s been dealt. I dress in all black as my phone rings a little earlier than expected.
“It’s time,” Kai says on the other end of the line.
“Where?”
“Pier 6. I got the heat ready to go in my trunk.”
“Good. See you in thirty.”
I welcome the distraction, and it’s just in time. This is what I do. Kill motherfuckers. Kai and I knew Lachlan would not go to the Italians without first gathering with the other rogue clan. They wish to overthrow me, and now they must die. This makes our job to reduce our clan numbers easy. I only want the most loyal by our side for what’s to come. Rian alerted me that Lachlan reached out to him and some of the others for an off-the-books meeting. He didn’t know the reason but knew it hadn’t been cleared through me. Our clan knows all meetings must be arranged or approved by the Clan Chief. Anyone attending Lachlan’s meeting is a traitor and must pay with their life. I thanked Rian for coming forward and told him not to speak of it to anyone else and not to attend. From that directive, I’m sure he could conclude how that meeting would end.
I hop into my McLaren, letting the hum of speed fuel my adrenaline. They question my competence or my ruthlessness. I chuckle to myself as I switch lanes. I will send a message to the rest of the clan today to extinguish any doubts. Their families will be next. I will spare the children, but that is as far as my mercy can extend. My current penance won’t be enough for the massacre I’m about to initiate. By today’s end, there will be no salvaging my humanity.
I pull up next to my brother’s Bugatti, far enough from the docks to be heard.
“Are you ready to do this?” I question as he leans against his trunk.
“More than you fucking know,” he confirms. “I can’t believe that motherfucker was plotting to kill us. Anyone in that marina deserves whatever they have coming to them.”
He pops his trunk and pulls out two fully automatic M60 machine guns. Damn!
“Holy shite. You didn’t come to play, brother. You brought the pigs.” The M60s get its pig name from the grunting sound it makes. It has a cyclic rate of fire of about 600 rounds per minute. They won’t stand a chance. We’re going to spray the whole room.
“Not one body will be left standing,” he promises.
We’re familiar with the meeting room within the marina that they have chosen, so we quickly organize our plan of attack. We plan to storm in from two separate entry points and open fire, not allowing them to draw their weapons. Kai has staked this place out ahead of time and has counted twenty-one rogue clan members. That’s more than half of our clan, but so be it. Between us both, we will take out ten to eleven each. They will never know what hit them.
We run stealthily toward our destined operation, our special forces training giving us the advantage that no sane person should ever take on. From this point on, hand signals are our only form of communication. Kai disappears around the corner to breach the marina office from the other side. Our watches are synced to tee minus two minutes to give us time to listen on the other side of the doors and assess. The second the timer reaches zero, I kick the door in and begin to fire—zero hesitation. The members in the room have no time to react. Kai and I spray the room with exact precision, executing our targets in less than a minute. Blood covers the room like a horror film, not a single life spared. Some of the fallen men are a surprise … those that I would never expect to betray us.
“We've got to go, Lennon,” Kai says, bringing me back to the here and now.
I nod, and we sprint out the same door I entered. We throw our firearms back into his trunk and peel off before the cops respond. We already made prior arrangements to meet at the warehouse that nobody else knows about.
My adrenaline is still pumping when I arrive. My brother has managed to beat me here. We took different routes.
“Wooo,” he says as he exits his car. “That was so fucking exhilarating!”
I walk up to him and shake that mane of curls of his like I used to do when we were just kids. “Glad to have you by my side, brother,” I admit.
“Fucking, same!” he says. “The world is not ready for the havoc we’re about to wreak. They were probably just a tad better off with Dad.” He chuckles.
“Too bad he never got to see this callous side of you.”
“Yeah. I must admit I never wanted to be a part of this world before now. But to learn that someone has murdered both of our parents … that lit a fire under me.”
I do worry about what this could do to his mental state. I repent— not as much to save my soul since I gave up on that a long time ago, but to keep that bitch karma at bay. If there’s a slim opportunity to save my soul through my penance, then that’s a bonus.
You have to have an outlet— a pathway for self-redemption or this world will consume you.
“Now what?” Kai asks. “We’ve lost more than half of our men. Excluding our brothers, we only have thirteen men remaining. Once the Russians and Italians hear of this, nothing stops them from sniffing us out. Our numbers are of no consequence to the Italians if they want to sever ties.”
“I’ve considered this, but it needed to be done. I’d rather ride with thirteen loyal soldiers than have to constantly watch my back with thirty-four,” I assure. “Now I will use this to add doubt with the Italians about our involvement in taking Aurora. I will go to Matteo, knowing that it will get to him anyway. I will spin it that we’ve been attacked. This will help to clear any suspicion that it was us who took his daughter. He will think that someone is out to get us both.”
“What if Lachlan or another one of those rogue clan members already tipped him or his family off?”
“Although we can never be too presumptuous, they’d have to be total idiots to make that their first move to overthrow me. Matteo is not a man of mercy. If that were true, he’d decimate our entire clan for the betrayal. No, they would have needed more time to figure out a way to come out of this with their hands clean. They wouldn’t have risked it.”
“That’s true. And I like your idea of using their betrayal in our favor.”
