“We were able to salvage your wallet with your ID from the warehouse, but I’m afraid your phone took a bullet straight in the eye.”
All this talk of bullets is making my eye twitch.
“I need to talk to Cam.”
“Can’t do that,” she singsongs.
“Do you remember when I generously offered you this gig? I specifically told you that you’d work for all of us, not just your favorite.”
“Do you have a concussion too? Camden King is hardly my favorite!”
I flinch from a spasm near my broken ribs as I try to stop myself from laughing.
Jade is full of shit.
She has no clue what’s coming for her. Cam’s going to spin her head around ten times before she realizes what’s happening, and I hope I’m lucky enough to have a front-row seat when it happens. How can someone this smart be so clueless when it comes to men?
She continues to crack a wad of gum she’s been chewing on, trying to act like a hard-ass, but I know her. The little spitfire has probably been in this hospital since they wheeled me in here, giving the nurses and doctors hell all day and night worrying about my care.
“Oh, look at this.” Her phone flashes. “You’re in luck. It’s the king himself.”
Jade jumps from the chair, standing by my bed, and holds her cell to my head.
“I can hold it,” I argue, not wanting to be treated like an invalid.
She pulls the phone back.
“You want to talk to him or not?”
“When Elizabeth gets here, I’m going to sic her on you for treating me like this.”
“Ooh, I’m shaking in my boots.”
Jade returns the cell back to my face.
“King.” I greet him by one of my many nicknames for him.
“Rome. You good in there? Heard you might have seen the white light at the end of the tunnel last night.”
Damn, does everybody know I almost died?
“Other than I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck, I’m good. I guess God wasn’t ready for me yet.”
“I guess not, homie. Did Jade tell you Elizabeth and Knox are safe?”
“They aren’t safe until I’ve got eyes on them.”
“Understood.”
“So are they Bratva?” I get straight to the point of this call.
“They’re from the Popov family in Maryland. The woman’s name is Irina and she is from the bloodline. Her son isn’t in the family business because he’s an idiot. They set him up out here with a few rentals to keep him out of the way, but Philly Bratva keeps an eye out to make sure he doesn’t get into any real trouble.”
“How did they know how to find me?”
“They frightened the girl. They threatened to kill her family in Utah and roughed her up a little, but she’s okay. She didn’t tell them much. But enough that they were able to put a tail on you. We put the girl on a plane back to Oregon, but to her credit, she tried to warn Elizabeth that the Russians were coming for you yesterday, but I guess she didn’t get the message.”
I don’t give a damn about some sort of missed warning. All I care about now is that Elizabeth and Knox are safe and stay safe. I will regret for the rest of my miserable life if something happens to them because of my missteps, especially because of how angry Elizabeth and I were with each other when she left. I said goodbye to my boy, but I should have never let her get on that train without telling her that I loved her. I will never do that shit again. I’ve learned my lesson.
“I promised that bitch a reckoning for shooting me and threatening my family. Just keep her on ice for me. I’m going to handle her personally when I get out of here.”
There is an awkward silence between us for a moment and the hair on the back of my arms rise.
“What aren’t you saying, King?” There haven’t been any lies between me and Camden since we were teenagers and he better not start now. “Spit it out.”
“I don’t have them yet.”
“What do you mean?” I look at Jade as I continue talking. “Jade said they’re alive.”
“Cutter went a little overboard with the bomb and because of the amount of smoke we couldn’t see that well. So they’re alive, but I don’t know where just yet.”
Jade lowers her eyes as if she can run from the fact that she didn’t tell me quite everything.
“So the three of you came in that warehouse like McGyver with homemade bombs and shit and didn’t nail one of them!” I exclaim.
“Stop yelling,” Jade chastises. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“The mission was to get you out of there, Rome, so it wasn’t a total loss.”
“We need to finish this. She will not stop coming for what’s mine because I manhandled her precious little boy. I saw it in her eyes, Cam.”
“I know this is easy for me to say but don’t worry. I’ve got a lead on one of them, and where I find one, I will find the others. I always do. Plus, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll even include the old man on the search and you know how I feel about him.”
“Cam, don’t fuck this up. You owe me.”
“When have I ever fucked up a fix? And let’s not forget that it was my tracker that saved your life last night. If anything, you owe me one.”
“My hand is tired,” Jade deadpans. “Can you two wrap this up?”
“Well, hand over the phone then,” I tell her. “We’re not done talking.”
“Sorry, dude, but you’re done. My phone needs charging.”
She steps away from my bedside and says something I can’t discern to Camden. I’m about to curse her out something awful when she walks back over to my bed smirking.
“Your beloved will be here in fifteen minutes, but if you don’t behave I’ll tell them not to let her in the ICU.”
“I’ll have them kick your ass out instead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Elizabeth is not your wife yet, so she has just about as much say in this place as I do. The difference between us is I’ve been here since you were rolled inside half-dead on a gurney, so I’d say the nurses who I bought a nice hoagie platter by the way are not going to throw me out—ever.”
“You’re fired.”
Jade laughs. “No one else could stomach working for you and you know it, so I’ll just chalk that up to the painkillers talking.”
Then we’re interrupted by a knock at the door.
20
CAMDEN KING
There is an unfinished basement underneath Club Lotus that is too humid and moldy for storage but great for interrogation. There are no windows and there is only one door which is bolted on one side.
I’ve successfully tracked down and have been hosting Roman’s Russian guests down here while working on their final arrangements. No one knows they’re down here besides me and my brothers because Jade probably wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret from Roman, and that crazy fucker would figure out a way to roll his half-dead body out of bed and put a bullet in each of their heads.
While that would be a satisfying solution to end this story, the Bratva is a bitch to deal with when you decide to murder someone in their family, so it’s probably best that we handle this another way.