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I’ve never once doubted her love for me, but I don’t think she really tried hard enough to leave him. No amount of begging and pleading on my part could change her mind. My friends told me to just let her go, because she’d clearly made her choice, but I couldn’t just leave her like that. How could you leave someone defenseless against a monster like my father?
I shake the unpleasant thought away and sigh with relief when I finally reach the wrought-iron gates of my home. I press my code into the speaker box and wait as the gates creak open. If the drive to the mansion usually takes five minutes, then walking takes at least ten, depending on how fast you are.
It takes me almost twenty minutes. I’m so tired from the night’s events that I have no more energy. By the time I reach the front door, I’m joined by Dante and Lee.
“Would either of you happen to have your keys on you?” I ask sardonically, knowing damn well they don’t.
Lee chuckles. “Sorry, brother.”
I heave out a breath and try to wrack my brain for where I could have left the spare. I don’t usually keep spares, because I don’t want to risk someone finding them and entering my home, but Lee and Jay convinced me it was a wise decision in cases like this, where we might have to come back home on foot. Our cars are all at Jeremiah’s home, but since we have a closet full of plates, they’ll never find us.
We have plenty of money; we’ll just buy more cars. But now we’ll have to change all the locks again.
“Found it,” Lee says, pulling the key from under a potted plant and unlocking the front door.
Thank fuck. I can’t wait to take a shower.
When we get to the conference room, I take my place at the head of the table and lean back, stretching my arms high over my head to loosen the knots that have started to form in my upper back and shoulders.
The entire room fills with all of my men, and as soon as Benji closes the door, we look at each other with shit-eating grins.
“That was fucking fun,” Lee says, his Southern drawl strong as he takes a butcher knife out of the waistband of his pants and starts twirling it around in his hand.
“It’ll only get better from here on out,” I tell everyone. “We’ll do whatever needs to be done to make sure everyone knows that Eastlake belongs to us. No one comes above us, and everyone bows before us.”
They all nod in agreement.
“I’ve built this empire to what it is, and I won’t let anyone take it from me. Every part of this machination functions with each and every one of you. I want you to remember how valuable you are to me and my empire. We’re more than just a syndicate. We’re a brotherhood forged from the sweat of our determination and the blood of our enemies. Nothing andno onewill stop us.”
CHAPTERTWENTY
MAYA
Five days go by,and I’m starting to lose my fucking mind.
Ezra’s kept me trapped in this room for four days, and I swear I’ll throw a lamp at his head the next time I see him.
Not only was the night we shared together a reminder that everyone around him is completely at his mercy, but it was also punishment for leaving him.
I’ll kick him in his balls for drugging me. It took over three days for the ketamine to leave my system. I’m finally starting to eat solid food again and hold it down, and the dizziness I was feeling is long gone.
I go to sit in the chair by the window. All I’m able to do in here is think. Think about all the choices in my life that have led me to this moment.
Think about where I would be if I hadn’t met Ezra, or if I’d listened to my mother when she told me to leave him at the start of our relationship.
“Don’t bother calling me when you’re lying half dead in a ditch in the middle of nowhere,” she’d told me after I tried to leave him the first time and go back home. “I’ll just tell you I told you so.”
Her words still sting over a year later. The sound of the call ending still rings in my ears, a reminder that I’d chosen Ezra over my family.
Both of my parents completely cut off contact with me when it was clear I would just keep falling into Ezra’s trap to keep me with him. If I’m being honest, I think being with him was the excuse they needed to never see me again.
Someone knocks sharply on the door, and before I have a chance to ask who it is, Benji strolls in.
“Sure, just let yourself in,” I say sarcastically. “Doesn’t matter that I could have been naked in here.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The sunlight glints off his black shark bites.
“I hate you,” I say, glowering. “What do you want, anyway?”
