“You play dumb pretty well, but I’m not that stupid, sweetheart.” I lean over her, our foreheads almost touching as I hiss my next and final words. “This is about taking an eye for an eye, Jaelyn. An eye for a fucking eye!” I grab the handcuffs and cuff both of her wrists again, this time together. At least she’s not being stretched apart again.
Although the cracks running through my merciful side are starting to spread, and pretty soon I’m gonna just give it all up and hang her out the window by her goddamn ankles to keep her mouth shut.
And to prove to her that I do have a plan.
To win!
CHAPTER17
JAELYN
Islam my feet into the mattress, letting out a shrill yell. Frustration and panic grip me, and I’m torn between wanting to tell Sergio the truth and keeping my mouth shut because then I’d have to tell the truth, further exposing me and Nate.
But I know that every second that passes brings Nate closer and closer to the edge. Even if the alarm bells don’t sound when he can’t get a hold of me by phone, I’m sure that seeing my car abandoned on the side of the very road he’d take to the club will put him in killing-spree mode.
I haven’t seen that version of my brother in three years, and we barely escaped within an inch of our lives when the ambush on the Bowman brothers unexpectedly went sideways on us.
I always suspected it was Eli who tipped them off that Nate and I were coming. We couldn’t stick around to prove it or to punish the jackass, but deep down, I knew it was him.
Nate forced him to patch out of his charter after that horrific night, and Eli never forgave either one of us for uprooting him and voting him out. And since he still had friends in the charter who didn’t agree with him being forced to leave, it was pretty clear how word got out about our revenge plan against the Becerra Cartel and their dipshit drug mules.
The idea was to cripple them in the most brutal way possible, and we did.
But the bullseye on our backs has just gotten bigger and bigger with each passing day.
Nate already knows the cartel leaders are here looking for us.
He won’t assume I’ve just fallen off the face of the Earth because I took a wrong turn into the desert.
He’s going to assume they’re the ones who snatched me.
And he’s going to storm the lion’s den to rescue me.
It would be a suicide mission.
They’ll never let him get out alive, not after everything he’s done to their organization.
They’ve waited too long and their hate for us runs too deep to let him slip through their grubby fingers.
I squeeze my eyes shut. If I don’t speak up now and show my hand, I risk losing my brother, the only family I have left. Sergio has made it pretty clear that he wants Nate dead, so it’s a big risk telling him what I’m certain Nate is about to do. He might just make a call to his pal Becerra with that information and kill two birds with one stone — secure his partnership with the cartel and sacrifice my brother.
“Argh! No!” I swing my arms back over my head, slamming the metal cuffs against the headboard.
Sergio flings open the door and stands there with a glass of clear liquid in his hand. “You’re giving me a goddamned headache with your screaming. If you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll slap the duct tape over that mouth of yours.”
I struggle to sit up, floundering around like a fish out of water as I try to get leverage against the soft mattress. “Listen,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I need to tell you something.”
He lifts an eyebrow and gulps down the liquid. “I hope it’s not that you have to pee again. I’ve had about enough of your knees, Jaelyn. And there are a lot of hammers in this place,” he says. “Just remember that.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine, be a badass. Whatever. Does it look like I’m afraid of you or whatever stupid ass scheme you’re trying to run using me as bait?”
His eyes flash and he slams the glass against the wall across from me, and with a loud crash, ice cubes and shards of glass fly into the air. Then he stomps toward me, closing a hand around my neck. It’s not too tight and I can still breathe, but I won’t lie. It startles me a little bit. He seems so calm and cool all the time, except in these fleeting moments when he just completely loses his shit and lashes out.
It’s a little scary.
And hot, if I’m being honest.
But I need logical Sergio right now, not psycho Sergio.