Page 44 of Hendrix

My foot hit the bottom step, and I snarled, “Shut the fuck up, Iceman.” My sneakers squeaked on the hard tile floor as I stomped past my brother and headed back into the kitchen, sliding my knife from its holder as I went.

My insides shook, and my chest felt as if it were on fire. All I could see in my mind was the bruising across the top of Anna’s back and her nape. He must have punched her hard for it to bruise so badly and from behind too. How the fuck could a man walk up behind a woman and sucker punch her, and when she was carrying his fucking kid, too? What kind of weak-assed, pathetic excuse for a man would hurt the woman he’d promised to love and protect before God?

The hard set of my jaw ticked as I approached the brothers still on their knees with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

The second Antoni Lis saw my face, he knew. I’d warned him what would happen if he screwed Anna over.

All color drained from his face, and he opened his mouth to protest, but I didn’t give him a chance to get a word out. The knife in my hand glinted in the overhead light, and with a snarl, I thrust it into the side of his neck and twisted.

A whimper left his throat, followed by a loud, gargling sound. Lis’s eyes rounded as he stared up at me in pure shock. Blood oozed down the butt of the knife and onto my gloves, and I dug the blade in harder. I leaned down to ensure he could hear me. “I warned you,” I rasped, satisfaction coursing through me as I stood and stared Anna’s fuckhead husband straight in the eyes while he suffocated on his own blood.

When his stare turned vacant, I tugged the knife from his neck, allowing him to drop to the floor. Then I stooped down to the dead body, tugged up one of Lis’s hands, and sliced it clean off.

A pained, animalistic wail from Leon Lis filled the room, and he began to struggle against Picasso’s hold. “I’ll fucking hunt you down,” he screamed, his accented voice almost impossible to understand through his rage. “I won’t stop until I find you and that bitch whore and?—”

I nodded at Picasso, who lifted his gun to the asshole’s temple and pulled the trigger. A muffled pop from the silenced weapon sounded, and Leon’s body fell sideways to the floor, landing with a thud.

“Shall I take his hand?” Picasso asked.

“Leave it,” I replied. “Antoni is the money man so it’s more likely he’d be the one skimming. Taking Leon’s would be overkill.” My lips twitched. “Excuse the pun.”

Gambit snickered.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” I muttered, throwing Lis’s hand onto his dead body. I tapped my earpiece to open comms. “We’re done here, Colt.”

“Good timing,” he fired back. “Philly PD just received a call from Lis’s neighbor reporting a disturbance. They’re sending a unit out to check on things. We need to get you the fuck outta here, then get back to head up the investigation. PPD shouldn’t get involved—they know this is a Federal case—but I wanna be one of the first on the scene in case they start nosing around.”

“We’ll be out in three,” I muttered, closing comms and turning toward Gambit. “Did you find any evidence?”

He opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by a soft voice coming from the door.

“There’s a safe in a small basement below the garage. If you walk to the back, you’ll see a cart of tools. It’s underneath there. Toni keeps—I mean... Toni, umm kept his important papers there with his ledgers. I took pictures of everything on an old phone and posted it to Tristan about six weeks ago, just in case anything happened to me.”

My face swiveled toward Anna, who stood at the open door alongside Breaker.

“I needed leverage,” she continued, her eyes glued to the body of her dead husband. “Something I could use to protect me and the baby. I didn’t want his money; I just wanted my life back. I don’t suppose that matters now though...” Anna’s voice trailed off, and she let out a loud snort before she began to laugh.

My eyes narrowed on her, taking in her uncontrolled giggles. Her emotional state seemed almost manic, and it hit me that she was going into shock. But to be fair, her husband was lying dead on her expensive kitchen tile in a pool of his own blood with his hand cut off. Not exactly an everyday occurrence for anybody, especially Anna.

“What did you let her in here for?” I demanded.

“She heard everything when she walked downstairs,” Breaker retorted, his golden eyes flashing. “You weren’t exactly discrete about it. If you didn’t want her privy to the shit you do, maybe you should’ve waited until I got her ass outta here.”

“For real,” Iceman muttered.

My stare slashed toward him. “Get your ass into the garage with Gambit. Get what we need, then get the fuck out. We haven’t got time to fuck around; PPD are on their way.”

Ice nodded and made for the door leading to the attached garage with Gambit trailing him.

I turned back to Anna, noticing her maniacal laughter had stopped. She stood, staring down at her husband, her eyes glued to his face and her throat working as if she’d forgotten how to speak.

She’d lose it soon if I didn’t bring her out of it.

“Anna,” I called.

She ignored me.

“Anna,” I called louder.

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