“You kidnapped my friend,” she repeated.
Javier stared straight ahead. “Yes.”
“Trying to accomplish what exactly?”
The other kidnapper scoffed. “Because we thought you’d be happy. Weaken the enemy and gain leverage over them. Win-win.”
Rafael narrowed his eyes. “And you were doing this out of the goodness of your hearts?”
Javier’s jaw clenched as he nodded briskly.
“This is not the way to impress Manuel, Javier,” Rafael continued. “I understand you want to have a bigger role in the organization, but this was reckless and just plain stupid. There was no need for all this.” He gestured in Addy’s direction.
“Understood,” Javier ground out.
Elena exhaled, then turned slightly, her focus shifting back toward us.
“See … I think there might be a much easier way to handle the problem everyone’s been dealing with … that doesn’t involve whatever the fuck this is.” She gestured vaguely around the warehouse, the bodies, the guns, the absolute mess of it all, then added dryly, “Because clearly, leaving it to the men isn’t working.”
Kyrill huffed a quiet laugh in my ear. “I like her.”
Chapter 38
Addy
Surprisingly,ittookaridiculously short amount of time to work out that the men standing in the damp warehouse, surrounded by enough firearms to start a small civil war, were not actually arguing about territory.
Territory would have been easier.
Territory came with maps and shipping logs and coordinates and quantifiable problems, which could be solved using logistics, spreadsheets, and the occasional aggressive email.
What they were actually arguing about — though none of them would have admitted it out loud if you held a gun to their heads — waspride.
And pride, as it turned out, was dramatically worse.
The warehouse itself smelled of diesel, sea air and testosterone — a strangely potent combination causing the entire space to feel heavier than it should have. It wasas though the tension in the room had settled into the concrete floor and made itself at home.
My pulse still hadn’t settled fully. It lingered, beating too fast and too erratically. It was as if my body hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that I was no longer staring down the barrel of a gun, even though I could still feel its cold, phantom touch against my temple if I thought about it for too long.
So I didn’t.
Instead, I defaulted to what I was good at.
Sasha stood to my left like a dark sculpture carved from violence and restraint, tall and silent, his tense shoulders exuding a control making everyone around him carefully consider their movements.
Kyrill had joined us, leaning against a nearby crate with his arms folded. He looked like a man who had arrived fully prepared for bloodshed and was now experiencing the unsettling realization of the evening taking a very unexpected detour.
Rafael stood across from us, his posture rigid and his jaw locked in that particular way men do when they are determined not to give an inch, even when the ground beneath them is clearly crumbling.
Something thin, brittle and perilous stretched between the two groups of men, like a sheet of ice liable to crack if anyone spoke too loudly.
I cleared my throat and … no one reacted.
Fucking rude considering I had been kidnapped and held a fucking gunpoint. Didn’t this warrant some entitlement to at least a little conversational courtesy?
I tried again. “Quick question.”
Still nothing.