“It’s not your business.” Just as I’m about to demand she answer, the car rolls to a stop in my garage, and Skye is throwing the door open and jumping out of the car.
This only pisses me off more. If I find out she did anything with Bernard, I’ll kill him. I was always planning on killing him, but this will be different. This will be slow.
Who am I kidding? It was always going to be torture.
Stepping out of the car, I also head up to my office. Skye has a head start, but I’m quickly on pace. We are almost to the second floor when I catch up with her. If she thinks I’m letting this attitude go on another minute, she’s wrong. I step past her and use my frame to block her.
“Not so fast.”
Skye takes a step to the left to maneuver out of my path, but I cut her off. She moves to the right, and again, no go.
“Not happening.”
“Move out of the way.”
“No.” I step in. This time, she steps back. The stairs might be open, but there is still a railing. A railing she is now pushed up against with my arms bracketing her in place.
“What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the moment I saw you.”
I move in a step until my body presses against her. The space between us is almost gone.
“We can’t.” She breathes out.
“We can,” I respond.
“I’m your lawyer.”
Flimsy answer. “That can be fixed.”
“So, you drag me around for a month, and now you want to fuck me, so you fire me? That’s a sexual harassment lawsuit in the making.”
“See, there I go doing something illegal. That’s why I need you with me all the time.”
“Tobias . . .” she trails off as I move my hand and run my finger over her jaw until it rests on the hollow of her neck. Her eyes are wide, her pupils dilated. Despite what she says, desire is clear on her face. I close the distance, lowering my head, and I’m about to kiss her when Gideon’s voice rings through the air.
“T—”
I pull back and look toward him as he sprints across the room to the stairwell where we are.
“What’s going on?” I can tell right away something is wrong.
“Problem with the shipment.” While, technically, Gideon is taking over, the transition isn’t final. I need to go.
Turning back to Skye, I say, “We’ll finish this later.” I don’t wait for her to respond and instead head toward Gideon to sort out whatever the fuck happened.
My temper flares to an inferno. “Talk.”
“It never made it to Lorenzo.”
“What the fuck!”
Someone will die for this. Now the question is who. The shipment came in from Holland, five thousand pounds of MDMA, packaged as pencils.
“It landed, got in the trucks, but before Lorenzo received it, it was lifted.”
“I want to know what happened, now!” My voice bellows through the space. “Who was behind this attack?”
It seems targeted, happening before I transition out. This feels personal, and I can think of only one person who would benefit from me losing that many pills.
Felix.
This is fucking war.
I’m done waiting for confirmation of my father’s death. Regardless of that, Felix needs to disappear, and I’m going to make that happen. It’s time to put this to rest already. Time to end the war that started twenty years ago.
There is one more thing I need to do. I need to talk to Skye. She needs to know everything, and it’s time I tell her. First, I need to talk to my boys.
An hour later, I’m at Lorenzo’s, but I’m not alone. Gideon is with me. The next two people who show up are Cyrus Reed and Jaxson Price.
Jaxson Price is a renowned billionaire, but most don’t know he is also a hacker. And not just any hacker, but the best in the country. This man can bring down a country for fun and make it look so easy you’d think he was shopping online.
“Lorenzo said your shipment was hijacked,” Jaxson says.
War was here, and I was happy to have this man by my side. I step forward.
“It was, and I need to know how.”
I take great precautions to make sure this never happens, which means this is somehow tied to Emil.
“What the fuck happened?” Lorenzo steps forward to shake my hand. Regardless of the gesture, I can tell he is pissed by the way his nostrils flare.
“I’m going to find out,” I answer.
His lips thin with anger. “Tobias—”
“Lorenzo, you will have your merchandise.”
If I were anyone else, there would already be blood on the floor. He’s a kick the crap out of you first, ask questions later type of guy. Lorenzo is hotheaded on a good day, but the reason he isn’t now is because he trusts me. Despite my efforts to keep my distance and walls up, this man is my friend and would die for me. Plus, he knows I will get him the pills he needs. No matter what. No matter the consequences.
Gideon, however, is a different story. Whether Lorenzo can trust Gideon or not is a different question.
“This will be handled,” Gideon responds. Stepping forward, back straight, he exudes power, and it’s the right move. Lorenzo needs to see this side of him.
“Guess you haven’t retired yet,” Lorenzo jokes, back to his normal self. That’s the crazy thing about Lorenzo. He can go from serial killer to boy next door at the drop of a hat.
“I was so damn close.”
That’s the truth. I knew I wouldn’t hand over the reins until the Felix business was over, but still, I’m not happy that this happened. However, this incident speeds up the final step.
“How do we handle this?” Lorenzo’s right-hand man, Roberto, asks.
“We strike and hit hard,” I say before Lorenzo cuts in, voice stern and forceful.
“We gut the little bitch.”
Given the opportunity, that’s exactly what he would do, but as hungry as I am for blood, we need more intel before we strike.
We need to figure out where it was hit, and for that, I turn to Jaxson.
“What do you need from us?” I ask him.
“I need to know everything about the shipment. What is your objective here, other than to”—he looks at Lorenzo—“gut the little bitch.”
“I want my drugs back.” I have enough money and pills to get Lorenzo his shipment on time, but it will set me back, so I prefer to recover the original one.
Jaxson nods at my request. “Let’s work backward. Find the interception point. I can track the shipment from there, and hopefully, we are in time to make sure they aren’t distributed again from your opponent’s side. Sound like a good plan?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good. Tell me the flight number and send me the tracker for the truck you were using for transport, and I’ll figure out who took it.”
“This shipment was five thousand pounds of ecstasy, packaged as pencils. It made it to the trucks.”
“I’m going to hack the airport surveillance as well, then. Maybe the leak originated there.”
“That makes sense.”
“Who knew about the shipment?” Jaxson’s question has me looking around the room and then back at him.