Page 123 of Full Throttle

Mina grinned at him.

“We settled then?” Cain asked, his voice serious.

“Yeah,” Lee muttered.

Cain turned everyone’s attention back to the screen, moving away from me towards the laptop, and began navigating us through the layout. He explained that we’d see a lot of drug deals and trafficking. Casey jumped in then, telling us that if we saw any trafficking, to not engage.

“The objective is to get Kavi,” Collin added. "James and Roosevelt will be on stand-by."

“What if we see children?” Mina asked, her voice quiet.

Silence followed.

“Col,” Kay said, breaking the silence.

The Mafia King turned to his wife, a silent conversation happening between them. After a few moments, he turned back to us. “Fuck what I just said. You see any flesh trade of any kind, call it in.”

“Stevens—”

“Call. It. In.” His teeth were bared, his eyes dilated, and for the first time since I’d known him, I saw the monster lurking underneath his handsome features and tattoos. “They haven’t met the goddamn devil yet,” he continued. “Call it in. Drop the location, and I’ll send Xander in.”

Cain shook his head. “Xander cannot enter Devils Den. No one can protect him.”

Collin’s head ticked to the side. “He can handle himself. Trust me.”

Cain looked like he wanted to argue, but something in Collin’s voice stopped him. It was the same thing that had my stomach twisting into knots. My lover continued going through the layout, stopping when we came to a small structure in the middle of a tunnel with pathways on both sides. “This is where Kavi will be.”

“How do you know?” Jer asked Cain.

“Because that’s where the bosses hang out. They don’t bother dirtying themselves with everything else,” Cain explained, his upper lips curling.

“Where did you hangout when he sent you there?” Dontell asked.

Cain was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t hang out anywhere, D. I went in, got the job done, and left.”

Jer stepped to the front, his face clouded and jaw tight. “You guys are to do the exact same, understood?” He looked at each of us. “You call in the shit you see and then keep fucking moving. Don’t try to be the hero; let Collin and James’ men handle that.

All of us turned to the screen then as a heavy silence slithered in, this one different than the rest. This one held a dark promise as a sense of doom lingered in the air, the reality settling on our shoulders.

We either came out of Devils Den alive…or we didn’t at all.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cain

“How do you know this guy again?” I asked Dontell as we watched Leon back the last car into the plane. This plane wasn’t the same plane Xander and I came back from Russia in.

This was a military plane—a C-130.

D looked at me, his features guarded. “I don’t know him. The Langston brothers do. Denver sent him here last year, looking for Mason. Mason and he had words, and we never saw the guy again,” he explained.

Inhaling deeply through my nose, I looked over to the front of the plane where Collin, Jeremy, and the mystery man were deep in conversation. The sun would be rising within the next two hours, and after spending a good chunk of the night developing a game plan and the other chunk holding Nik, I was on edge.

Having a stranger I didn’t know showing up with the plane to transfer the cars all because Jer made a phone call was unsettling to me.

“Wait—you and Lee have only met this guy once?” I clipped, looking back to my friend.

He nodded. “Yup, and he let Mason Langston take a swing at him.”

---