Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
I hadn’t forgotten the feeling I’d gotten when we went to retrieve Perry. Someone had tipped off the enemy back then, and it sure as hell looked like someone had tipped them off again tonight.
No one stood out so far because they hadn’t slipped up enough for us to focus on them. Yet.
Then there was Jared, that asshole. He was still here in the Compound. Still setting off every goddamn alarm in my head. I couldn’t say that he was the one leaking our information or if he was just acting off, but there was something about him I didn’t trust.
I clenched my jaw and kept moving. Inside Church, the doors shut behind us with a finality that made my skin itch.
It was just me, Kyle, Preacher, Duke, and Data. What the fuck was going on?
I could feel Jagger’s anger. It had been simmering all night, creeping up my spine, and growing hotter with every second we spent in that room. That was one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted him there in the first place. Jagger didn’t understand the way these people operated—the way they watched, but I did.
I knew their power plays, the way they pushed and tested boundaries, the silent threats disguised as casual conversation. But what I hadn’t accounted for was Cristóbal Santino being there. He was supposed to be in El Salvador, tied up with a massive drug shipment. Not at that party. Not staring me down like a predator who just spotted his prey.
The moment he figured out who I was, I’d felt it. Roughly twenty minutes after we first met, I’d caught him looking at me—his posture still, his expression unchanged—but I’d still seen it. The exact second it clicked. His gaze had darkened, and his lips twitched in realization.
But I never reacted, not once. I’d just smiled at him like I hadn’t noticed a damn thing.
And now, sitting in this room, I was trying to figure out what the fuck to do next.
JAGGER
The silence was suffocating.
“Santino was tipped off.” Data’s voice was flat. Factual.
And I snapped. I shot up from my chair, rage detonating inside me like a goddamn bomb. The chair exploded against the wall, slamming into the dent that Noah had put there before, making the hole even bigger, making the room shake with the force of it.
“Sit down, son,” Duke ordered, his voice dropping into that no-bullshit tone.
“Fuck that!” I roared.
My hands clenched into fists as I turned, stalking toward him, fury radiating off me in waves. “You said she’d be safe!”
I got up in his space. I had never seen anyone challenge Duke head-on, and a small part of my brain told me I was making a dangerous fucking mistake, but I didn’t care. Kyle could have been killed tonight because someone had set her up.
Duke’s jaw flexed, his body coiled, his patience thin as razor wire. “She would have been,” he ground out, his voice just as lethal as mine.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, Preacher. His arms were crossed, but his eyes were locked on Kyle. His face was a mix of anger and something else—something I wasn’t used to seeing from him.
Concern.
Duke’s next words hit hard. “Santino got a text at twenty-one-hundred hours.” Silence. “It was a photo of Kyle along with her name, sent from an untraceable number.” He exhaled slowly, his nostrils flaring. “The only message attached was… ‘this is who you’re looking at.’”
My vision reddened at this information, and Kyle stiffened.
Her fingers curled into her lap, tight enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Now that just pisses me off,” she muttered, her voice cold.
My blood was still boiling, still rushing too fast, but I forced myself to step back, muscles thrumming like a live wire. Kyle was in danger, and we definitely had a rat in the Compound.
“What do we do now?” she asked, voice clipped.
Duke’s nostrils flared again, his composure cracking for half a second. “I don’t know right now,” he snapped, the frustration thick in his voice.
I felt my breath slow, my mind sharpening past the anger, into something else. Strategy. Duke didn’t say “I don’t know” often. Ever. But this wasn’t just a bad situation, it was a fucking mess.
I shifted, stepping behind Kyle, resting a hand on her shoulder, needing her to know I was there.
Duke exhaled sharply. “But as soon as I do,” he growled, voice like crushed glass, “we’re going to fucking end this shit once and for all.”
Silence, the kind that was louder than any explosion. Then, Kyle’s lips twitched. It wasn’t a smile, it was something sharper. Deadlier.
“Good,” she said, her voice razor-edged.
Because whoever had done this was going to fucking regret it.
Chapter 10
Kyle
It had been a week since the gathering. A week of waiting, and nothing else had happened.
Well, yet.
But the silence felt wrong.