Page 84 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

“Yep, the blunt, slightly rusted ones,” she snapped. “Then I’m going to play tennis with their nuts before feeding them to my cat, who, I’ll remind you, is cross-eyed and unpredictable.”

Even I took a step back. That cat was fucking unnerving.

“Don’t worry, he’s got a real taste for revenge,” she muttered, grabbing a bottle of water and unscrewing it like she was prepping a weapon. “And maybe I’ll just send my dad to the hospital. He has privileges. He can get Gabby moved somewhere safer. Hell, maybe I’ll get him to do plastic surgery on her and change her face entirely.”

“No,” I growled, sharper than I meant to. “She’s perfect as she is. No one’s touching her.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow, clearly pleased by the reaction but unwilling to let me off easily. “You better hold onto that energy, Webb, because I’m calling in Malcolm and Benny.”

Every single brother in the room froze and spoke in unison.

“Oh, shit,” Jackson whined. "But they're unquestionably insane."

Sasha grinned wickedly. “Exactly.”

Marcus groaned, rubbing his face harshly with his hands. “They make us look like kindergarteners on a sugar crash.”

“They don’t play by any rules,” Jackson agreed.

“Good.” The smile on Sasha's face was sinister. “Because neither do I anymore.”

The dining roomresembled a tactical operations center combined with a tech startup’s panic room.

Phones buzzed nonstop across the table, competing with the soft clatter of keyboards as open laptops displayed GPS routes, social media tracking tools, and encrypted internal comms. Handwritten notes scribbled hastily on napkins were wedged between coffee mugs and a half-eaten plate of breakfast sausage someone had abandoned hours ago. The tension in the room was palpable and thick enough to cut with a knife.

Marcus was on one end, looping through digital traffic cameras Remy had tapped into, while Jesse barked into his phone, trying to lean on a friend in FDLE for unofficial surveillance logs. Jackson paced along the back wall, muttering strategy to himself and occasionally punching details into a shared doc we’d been updating like a living beast.

I sat at the head of the table, half-listening to Elijah and Sasha go over timelines and possible fallback points for Barris, my knee bouncing with pent-up adrenaline. My eyes flicked constantly to my phone—waiting for any call, any update about Gabby, even though Eddie had promised to text if she so much as twitched in her sleep.

Then the door blew open.

“We have chaos!” Sasha shouted, fist-pumping the air as two men strode into the house like they owned it.

Malcolm and Benny—the "legends"—were finally here.

Benny looked like he hadn’t seen a hairbrush in years and might have fought one to the death. He had tattoos crawling up both arms and a denim jacket with what I thought was dried blood on one sleeve, but I wasn’t going to ask. Next to him, Malcolm wore an old motorcycle cut with a patch on the back that read “No Chill, No Mercy.” His grin was as charming as it was unnerving.

“Gentlemen,” Malcolm greeted, clapping his hands and surveying the war table. “So, who are we hunting and can we blow them up?”

Jesse leaned in and whispered to Elijah, “I thought you were exaggerating with that story you told me.”

Elijah whispered back, “They always say that… and they’re always pussy cats. At least, so far, they have been.”

Benny dropped into the chair across from me, cracking his knuckles. “Here’s the play—we bait him.”

“Barris?” I asked, wary.

“Yeah, let’s put something onlinelike a fake update about Gabby’s recovery. Keep it just vague enough to make him twitch, to make him wonder if we’re bluffing or if she’s really talking. We need to add a location—somewhere we control the exits. Then we wait and spring the trap.” He made an exaggerated exploding sound while throwing his arms out wide, mimicking the blast of something going off.

Marcus immediately shook his head. “That could risk innocents.”

Benny shrugged. “Then put it in the middle of nowhere. Use my cousin’s junkyard—people already avoid that place because it smells like regret and motor oil.”

Malcolm jumped in. “Or we could fabricate a private jet manifest. Maddox has investors, so the moment money starts walking, he panics like all businesses do. If we show one of his biggest backers pulling out—maybe claiming they’re flying into Austin to cut ties—it could be enough to send him into a full spiral.”

Remy looked up from his laptop, blinking. “Where are you getting all this?”

“My second job is digital misinformation,” Malcolm admitted with a grin. “Totally freelance.Veryillegal. Don’t ask questions.”

---