Page 113 of Chad's Chase
“Oh, but it must, Chadrick,” his father returned, still sitting relaxed. Rafail pronounced his name in its right form, how it’s pronounced back home:Kah-had-reek. “You know if I die, you will supplant me. And if her father dies, she will supplant him. She will rule over you. But since I will be ending you in a minute, my position will still be mine. Then, with Sambo’s help, I will be killing her father next. Do you think I will let her supplant him and rule over me?”
Power.
Money.
Notoriety.
That’s all it has ever been about for Rafail Niiveux. Failing to see that Chad couldn’t care less about power. Care less about who will rule over who in The Organization. He didn’t even want to inherit his father’s seat. He never asked for it. But his father had named him as his inheritor without his permission.
“Have your way, kill me. But Jhay’ll not die, father,” Chad said, taking a step towards the devil, “or I swear to God—”
“What?!” Rafail exploded, shooting up from the couch, taking his gun out and aiming it at me. “What will you do, myson? Do you think you can save her like you did that ninny over there?”
Faster than Chad could react, Rafail swung his gun to Ricardo and popped a shot through his friend’s leg. Ricardo’s eyes instantly overflowed with tears, his cries locked in by the tape over his mouth. Body detained and restricted.
“You will not be able to save him again. You will not be able to save her. And you will not be able to save yourself!”
Anger. Rafail was a slave to it. For as long as Chad could remember, every irrational thing his father had ever done, he’d done it out of rage. He didn’t possess Chad’s skills, the ability to remain calm and unaffected even in the worst of times. Chad got angry, of course, he was a human, after all, but he’d trained himself never to drink his tea while it still had steam billowing from the top.
That kind of control was what kept him alive.
So, even though he felt every bit of Ricardo’s pain, Chad merely threw him and his bleeding leg a bored glance, as though it mattered not at all to him whether Ricardo lived or died.
He took another calculating step to his father, and at the movement, Rafail re-aimed his gun at him. Chad also didn’t miss the man’s slight move backward, his calves hitting the couch behind him, giving the poltroon nowhere to go.
Rafail was utterly afraid of Chad. Chad knew he was the man’s worst nightmare. But the irony there was that Chad had never, ever threatened to kill him.
Three times since he fled Russia, his father had called upon him for help. When he went behind The Organization’s back and broke the rules, became exposed and was endangered, Chad was the one he always called. And a cretinous Chad always went.
Lost all respect for him yet?
He had no idea why he did it. Because he hated the man with every breath he had within him. But inexplicably, Rafail Niiveux, his biggest enemy, was the only person Chad didn’t have the guts to kill.
There was a remedy for that now, however.
And that was the reason why Rafail was standing in front of him right now.
Chad had been ahead of everyone’s plans before they made it. Both Org and Rafail. Powerful as they were, he was smarter. He didn’t have their wealth and he didn’t have their influence, but he had game.
He was a field man. Hands-on. They were men in suits who gave orders from their expensive wingback chairs. Never pulling the trigger themselves.
The dead man behind the couch, Sambo’s partner, Chad had kidnapped his fiancée and two sons, used them as leverage to gain additional information on what was happening on both sides.
He’d known Rafail was coming, but had decided to keep that bit from Jhay. He’d been prepared for everything except Clementine’s death.
And that changed everything.
Calm as a silent river on a summer’s day, Chad locked eyes with his father, and he saw the second the man realized this wouldn’t be ending the way he thought it would.
Even though it was just him now, against five, possibly six. None of those men were in sight, but Chad knew they were there. It was an old trick meant to encourage bravery, only to be taken down by a hidden bullet. These men also were not from The Organization, and if Chad was lucky, they were as amateur as the shooters from the day before. Everything Rafail was doing was of his own accord. Personal shit. So he didn’t have the luxury of using assassins from The Organization.
This house, Chad bought it, so he knew it, every nook and cranny, all the possible columns and walls men could be hiding behind.
The idle cars Chad had passed on the way here were not men of Rafail’s. They were of Org’s. And they’d been ordered, by Chad, to keep tail on Sambo the minute he left with Jhay.
Rafail wouldn’t have come there by car, because he was a fool who thought of himself bigger than he really was. Always drawing attention to himself. Chad knew without a doubt there was a helicopter out the back, pitched on the acres of land surrounding this house. Which explained how they got inside the residence without a code to the front gates.
Weapon in the back of his waist, Chad eyed the gun in his father’s hand, then all the areas he suspected the other men were. Two thick logs serving as decorative columns, parallel to each other. Hiding spot. A bookshelf on the far wall behind his father. Hiding spot. A storage room to the left of him. Hiding spot. An indoor tree plant to the right. Hiding spot…Chad kept eying them all.
