An Eye For An Eye (The Club #11) (7 page)

Twelve

LORAND

If I’d known last night what I knew today, I wouldn’t have let him leave the club after touching Jude. He disgusted me in every way possible. A part of me wanted to eviscerate him limb from limb while the other part wants to Prince Humperdinck his ass and leave just his ears so the people who pass by him can stare and scream at his ugliness inside out.

I continued to watch him eat and lick his greasy fingertips, my stomach churned in disdain for his very existence. My phone beeped and vibrated with a text message, but I ignore it. I’m in the moment
working
and can’t afford a distraction right now. I let him finish eating because this will be his last meal as far as I’m concerned. I’m an assassin and this is what I do. I make the choice of when things end and how. I took my gun from the glove compartment and slide the silencer into place. The total sum of all parts clicked together and washes over me in my ritual of preparing for the end. It’s a large gun that feels comfortable in my hands like an extension of my body, lethal and dangerous. I become the weapon, the complete package.

My Range Rover is parked across the street from him with a clear view to take the kill shot. I looked around eyes narrowed. A park with children sitting on swings is nearby. Their mothers pushing them without a care in the world and decided this won’t do at all. I can’t kill him in broad daylight like this with witnesses, but more importantly with children around who could be forever changed by my careless actions. I’m a bad man through and through, but I’m not a fucking idiot when it comes to killing my marks. I take out the people who deserve it. The scum of the earth, I am the judge and jury casting final judgement on the depraved. Nobody needs to clean up a careless kill.

Junior gets up to walk down the street and I elected to follow him and wait for my opportunity. Slipping the gun inside my holster under my jacket I felt complete in the moment. The years of Sorenson’s training and guidance soothes me through the task as I get out of the vehicle.

Standing from my vantage overlooking the Tumbleweed Café I saw a dark luxury vehicle pull up into the handicap spot. The back of my neck tingles as Sorenson gets out and opens the door. He’s probably the only man in Texas who wears a three piece suit and a fedora year round. I looked back and forth between my mentor and my mark.

Fuck.

He’s playing with me.

I don’t have many options here and even less when the door opens and pale legs exit the passenger side of the car. My stomach bottoms out to see Jude come out of the car, a smile on her lips and Sorenson handing her a pair of large oversized sunglasses to wear.

“What the hell kind of game are you playing here, Sorenson?”
I muttered to myself knowing what I had to do. As if he could hear me over the busy street he turned and gave me a nod of his head tipping his hat off to me regally. The man has a lot of balls. I’m screwed, royally screwed. I was supposed to protect her, not fuck her and now he knows something is up. Sorenson always seems to know. I take off on foot to catch Kenneth Halstad and leave Jude with a wolf in sheep’s clothing I’ll have to deal with later.  

I pursued the mark, no longer a human living thing in my mind, down the main street thoroughfare. Compartmentalizing each kill kept me sane and was necessary.

He ducked down an alley disappearing from sight for a second. I turned down the alley expecting to surprise him. Instead he jumps me with a metal bar swinging at my head. I flew back instinctively pissed I wasn’t more aware that he might have spotted me. Thinking of Jude kept me off kilter.

“Fuck!”

“You’re following me!”

“Observant.” I grunted dodging another attempted blow which sparks when the metal bar hits the metal drainpipe coming off the brick building’s façade.

Clang!

Clang!

The vibrations intensified as he gets closer to me. I taunt him to the left and he countered. “What do you want? I barely touched that whore last night! How was I to know you claimed her as your sub?”

Roaring with anger barely contained under the surface, I charged him. I grabbed the bar and pull swinging it in a wide arc to clatter against the asphalt.

“She’s not my sub.” Growling I spit the words out.

“Pity, she’d make a good one with the right hand.”

“It’s your heavy hand that’s going to pay first.” I aimed the gun at his left hand and fired discharging the bullet into bone and flesh.

“Ahhhh!” He fell against the wall clutching the damaged hand against his chest. “You’re fucking crazy!”

“And you’ll be dead soon anyway.” The blood seeped down darkening the color of his shirt and the smell of the gun discharging turned the acid in my stomach. I should have eaten breakfast before I followed him this morning. I should have stayed in bed and made love to Jude in several positions until my dick was limp. Kills on an empty stomach and unsatisfied desires were never a good idea.

“She’s still a whore,” and this guy just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I didn’t think I had it in me to make this look like much of an accident after all.

“And you’re a fucking pervert breaking the club’s rules.” I stepped closer to him and he scooted back with nowhere left to go. Fear left his eyes wild and urine stained his pants. He was disgusting.

“So fucking what? She asked for it coming with my stupid little twat.” He spits in my direction and I decide death might be too good a punishment for him.

Pissed I grabbed his face with my gloved hand taking him off guard as I picked him up bodily and slammed him into the building.

“You don’t get to speak about her. You will never touch her, utter a word to her, or look at her again. This is about what your father did years ago at the Karim Academy.” His eyes lit up like wildfire and recognition bloomed.

“I don’t–”

“Yeah, don’t. We both know you knew what he was doing, the sex trafficking, telling lies that those poor girls dropped out to take nanny jobs or transferred to another school. All of it lies.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“But you’re tainted just the same with his sick DNA and preying on young women vulnerable to get your rocks off.”

“Like you don’t?”

“Any woman I take to my bed consents, not like I need to explain the difference to shit like you.”

“Who sent you? Someone who knows all about my father surely knows he wasn’t alone.”

“Funny, that’s how I was directed to find you and lucky you, you gave me even more reason to take this job and destroy you piece by piece. You’re the third and final piece of this puzzle. I’m gonna take an extended vacation after this. ”

“Three? You really think it’s just three?” He laughs choking on some joke I don’t seem to be aware of hearing. “There were more than three including my father involved.”

I shook him until I felt he was rattled enough. “What did you say to me?” I held him squirming against the bricks, dust shifting and he clawing at my arm to let go. I could snuff the life out of him this way squeezing until he stopped moving, but I needed names. Four? Five? How many were responsible? Sorenson gave me three names. Three men investigated and found guilty by our sources. We didn’t do messy, we cleaned up loose ends. Who else was on the list of suspects beside this man’s father and two others?

My burner phone rang a generic ring tone with some hip hop beat that’s not really my speed. I only had two numbers on this particular phone and I wondered if these things came with something besides annoying bells and whistles.

“Fuck.” I let Ken go pissed because I needed to do more reconnaissance before I finished him. “Hello?” I answered the phone and Ken falls to the ground crouched over and backing away slowly. I kicked my foot out at him hitting his leg to remind him I’m not finished with him and the bastard cowered.

“Hi.” That shy sexy voice filtered through the alley like a balm to my chapped senses.

“Jude.” I’d give anything to be with her right now instead of this shitty alley, doing shitty work I had no business doing anymore. How is it that one ill-fated accident made my world shift? She had power over me that made me vulnerable and yet a stronger man at the same time. 

“Hey, I wanted to hear your voice.” My paranoid instincts were rearing their ugly heads.

“Jude, where are you?” I hoped she’d tell me the truth.

“I went to lunch with my uncle, he’s in the restroom. We just sat down at the Tumbleweed Café. Have you been before?” All the small talk was making my head hurt. She had no idea the danger she was in.

Fisting my hand tightly around the gun, I punch my leg as I grit out my words to her. “Are you alright?”

“Of course I am, Lorand. Are you coming back after lunch?” Jude teases me through the phone and my mission to end this shit for brains guy ceases. Her voice calms the violent torrent within me and I almost for a moment forget why I’m here between dirty buildings with my silencer about to pop the scum of the earth.

“
Please
, be careful.” I tell her. What more could I say?

She giggles and I want to hurry this up and rush back to her, punish her for making me worry. “I promise to not get accosted between here and the house.” She tells me and a huff escaped my chest because she doesn’t have a clue how possible that scenario is right now. I’m not exactly what you would call a by the books kind of guy.

“Cute. You’re trouble later.”

“Am, I?” Coyness doesn’t suit her and I’m mad she didn’t listen to me in the first place.

“I’m going to spank that ass for leaving the house when I get back. I told you to stay put and stay naked.”

“Seriously?” She whispered into the phone and I can hear Sorenson returning in the background asking her who she’s on the phone with.

“I gotta go.” I say more sharply than I intended.

“Already?” Her voice snapped me back to reality where I’m holding a gun on an asshole in the alley. I wonder if she thinks I mean long term. I have left her in the past, but all this stuff coming to a head makes leaving her again next to impossible. Nothing, not even her uncle will keep me from her.

“Will you do something for me?” I asked her.

“Anything.” She sounded breathless over the phone and I wished for us to have another chance outside this insanity.

Halstad rolled his eyes making a face I didn’t like. I raised my gun and shot him in the leg. The silencer popping once. He deserved it. He shouted turning to his side, moaning a mess of limbs, but still intact.

“I’m a little busy, right now.”
Kind of an understatement. “
But I’ll be back soon.”

“I better let you go. My uncle is back to order lunch…and I need find something to match my naked outfit for later.” Her hushed snicker through the static makes me smile. I’m worried, but I’m smiling. None of it made sense.

“Lovely.” I drawled and I wondered if she was still smiling. “I should be back in about….” I tried to calculate what to do with Kenny boy here. “Uh, let me call you back later.” Holding the phone I look at Ken raising my gun to his bugging eyes. One bullet between the brows would be quick and efficient.

“I’ll be waiting for your call,” and with that–a strange normalcy restored our fucked up relationship and I hung up the phone staring down at my mark.

* * * * *

“Touching, but I’m bleeding out, asshole.” He spoke to me this way because he thought he didn’t have anything to lose. Wrong. You always have something to lose even when staring down the barrel of death.

I kneeled back down and got on eye level with him. “Give me a name.”

“Is it really worth killing for?”

Shrugging, I give a non-committal answer. “Is it worth dying for?” It doesn’t matter if I kill him or not, he’ll be a marked man after today. He touched my girl and that alone would end him eventually, but not until I got the final piece of the puzzle. “She’s worth it. Either way, I will find out the information I need.” It’s the last warning I’d give him.

“Mmm.” He looked pale and might actually be bleeding out, but I don’t have it in me to care.

“A name…
please
.” I smiled for effect and he must have finally sensed the gravity of the situation. Stupid man. He hesitated looking genuinely worried. He may not be able to give me what I need, but if there was a fourth or fifth player involved I needed to find them and I needed him alive for now.

“I don’t have one, nothing that would identify him, but it was someone my father knew intimately. I never met them all, but they brought the girls to the house first before shipping them off to the buyers.”

“Did you see one, dark in coloring, green eyes and a beauty mark high on her right cheek bone?” All these years of not knowing what happened to my sister killed a part of my soul. Younger half-brother or not I was her protector.

“She’s the reason why?” I nodded. He coughed wincing in pain. I shot him in places to make him suffer but not kill him outright. His hand bled leaving a pool of red in his lap and he whine, fucking pussy. I debated telling him more than I should.

“Lacy Duvall, my sister.”