Fallen Empire (Dirty Empire Book 4) Read online

  “Move,” he barks.

  I stagger in the only direction I can—past the faded brown La-Z-Boy and television, through the kitchen that boasts ivory appliances and a 1950’s style metal-and-melamine dinette set, along a narrow corridor of faux-wood-paneled walls and closet doors. Two doors are situated at the end. The one on the right has multiple locks on the outside.

  I tense as he reaches around me to open the door to that room. With a slap against the light switch just inside, he herds me into a tiny space lit by one naked bulb and empty save for a bucket in a corner and a mattress lying on the floor. The only window in the room has been boarded up with a sheet of plywood, sealing it shut.

  Not that I hadn’t already guessed it, but this guy has prepared for me.

  Fingers dig into my forearm behind my back, and I automatically squirm against his grip.

  “Hold still or I’ll cut you,” he warns.

  I wince as he tugs on my arms, but then the tension around my wrists loosens, the binding removed. I curl my arms around my body, pulling the sides of my robe closed as I shift away from him, into the corner.

  Finally, I dare turn to face my captor for the first time since he took me.

  My breath catches. It’s not the scar running from his temple to his jaw that makes me flinch, though that injury looks like it comes with a horrific tale. Everything about his face—from his hollowed cheeks to his sunken eyes to the thin, flat line of his mouth—is cold and hostile. He’s wiry thin, his hair cropped short and graying at the temples. I’d put him in his late forties.

  In his left grip is the knife he used to free my wrists—a long, curved blade that looks primed to gut a person. Those flinty gray eyes drag over the length of me, but the usual hunger I see lingering in men’s gazes when they ogle me is absent. That almost scares me more.

  He makes no move forward.

  What does he plan on doing to me?

  I swallow against my burgeoning fear and lift my chin, feigning confidence. “If you know who Gabriel Easton is, then you know how much money he has and how much he’d pay to get me back, unharmed.” I hope that’s all this is about. Gabriel’s proven he’s willing to pay to keep me around and happy. He’s thrown obscene amounts of money at everyone—the guards at Fulcort to allow me access to my father; Jason DeHavilland, the lawyer who’s convinced he can get my father’s conviction overturned; even the drug rehab center where I work, to ensure they can afford to keep paying my salary. Surely, Gabriel will pay this guy whatever he wants.

  One corner of the man’s thin lips kicks up. “Probably not as much as his father is paying me to keep you here.”

  My eyes flash wide with surprise. This guy works for Vlad Easton? Gabriel’s father is behind my kidnapping?

  His dark chuckle fills the small, stuffy room. “Welcome to the family, darlin’. Haven’t you realized just how fucked up they all are yet?”

  “Why is Gabriel’s father paying you to keep me here?”

  “Because Vlad figured out what string to pull to get his son to do what he wants him to.”

  Realization hits me. Gabriel’s father has been pressing him to take over the family’s criminal enterprise, something both Gabriel and Caleb are desperate to get away from, if what Gabriel told me was true. “He won’t do it.”

  “For your sake, you better hope his tune changes.” The man lifts the blade in his hand and tests the curved hook at the end with the pad of his thumb. A bright spot of crimson blooms on his skin. He doesn’t so much as flinch at the self-inflicted wound. “But for my sake, I hope you’re right.”

  The grin he flashes turns my blood cold.

  “Better get comfortable. You’re in for some long days and nights.” He leaves, pulling the door shut behind him.

  I hold my breath and listen as several clicks sound, locking me in.

  This is actually happening.

  This is real.

  What does he hope to do to me?

  I scour every inch of my cell as hot tears stream down my cheeks, looking for an escape.

  3

  Gabriel

  “What the fuck do you mean, he got by you?” My anger ricochets off the penthouse’s looming ceilings. “We pay you assholes to not let guys like my father’s hitman get by you!”

  The bodyguards stand in a row, studying their shoes. They don’t have answers for me, only excuses.

  I turn to Moe, lying on a bedsheet on the marble floor, his face as pale as the white linen. “And it was definitely Bane who did this?”

  “Yes,” he pushes through gritted teeth, as the doctor willing to fix and not ask questions yanks a bullet out of his shoulder with his medical tweezers.

  Blowing up our plane a few nights ago, now kidnapping my girlfriend right out of our hotel bedroom? Bane’s been busy.

  “He came in through the service elevator,” Farley confirms.

  “Well, no shit, what gave it away? The dead body in front of it?” Caleb snaps, throwing an arm toward where Ross lies in a pool of blood, his throat slashed from ear to ear. He was livid when I dragged him away from the poker game prematurely and with a royal flush in his mitt, but thankfully his focus has shifted to what’s important. “How long ago was Bane here?”

  “An hour, tops. He must have slipped in just after the last check-in.”

  It was Michelle who answered Moe’s phone in a panic when Farley called, screaming that Moe was unconscious and bleeding. Farley raced up to find Ross dead and Moe with a bullet in his shoulder, a used needle for whatever sedative Bane injected him with lying nearby.

  “Is there anyone who doesn’t know about that elevator? It’s a goddamn parade entrance into this place!” An odd mixture of rage and fear claws at my chest, the latter being the most potent and raw. The most foreign to me. “And let me guess, the cameras didn’t catch anything.”

  Farley’s eyes flash to his guys before confirming my assumption with a head shake. “They’re still down from last night.”

  From when we had to sneak three bodies out and cover up a triple murder. Not that having surveillance video would make any difference in this situation. Mercy is gone and we know who took her.

  And I know why.

  I pick up an empty tumbler from the counter and throw it across the room, hoping the simple act will release some of this overwhelming tension. The glass shatters against the far wall. None of Farley’s men flinch—they know better than to react. The doctor’s eyes flicker to me but he quickly shifts back to his patient.

  “Calm down,” Caleb warns.

  It only stirs my ire. “Don’t tell me to calm down! We were downstairs, playing a stupid game of cat and mouse with Cohen when we should have been up here.” I should have come straight back to the penthouse after receiving that call from Stanley, knowing my father was up to something.

  I should never have left her.

  “Which is why Bane hit when he did. He knew where we were,” Caleb counters evenly. “If he hadn’t taken her this morning, he would have got to her some other way.”

  He’s right, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Was Bane sitting in the lobby, watching? He couldn’t have been. It’s impossible to miss that face. “You know what that psychopath is capable of.” The guy takes the task of dragging answers out of people too literally. My gut clenches at the thought of his sadistic hands on Mercy’s body.

  But it’s guilt that is quickly taking root, readying to fester. Mercy is in danger because of me. Because I’m a selfish prick who forced an innocent woman into our blood-drenched life and plied her with money and charm and promises of a better life. I should have known there was only one way this was ever going to go—badly, for her. I should have known, when our father started asking about the inmate I’ve been paying to protect—Mercy’s father—that he’d find a way to use her, that she’d be his ticket to getting me to do anything he wants.

  Caleb’s jaw tenses. He shifts his attention to the bleeding bodyguard on the floor. “Doc?”

  The
stout man’s fingers move quickly with needle and thread. “Flesh wound. A deep one, but he should be fine with rest. Nothing vital was hit.”

  “Lucky son of a bitch,” one of the idiot guards murmurs.

  “It has nothing to do with luck. Moe’s gonna be fine because Bane allowed it,” I hiss, pacing around the vast common room. They have no clue who they’re dealing with. Hell, we probably don’t know everything about who we’re dealing with. Bane—as he goes by—has revealed little over the years to my father. We dug up a few details from his time in the military, namely that he was dishonorably discharged for using “questionable” tactics to interrogate the enemy about their operations, a dirty secret that was buried to avoid sullying senior officers who knew but looked the other way. The guy was trained to hunt and to survive. He can slip through any net or trap. Drop him in a deadly jungle with no supplies and when you go back to pick him up in a month, he’ll be waiting for you, ten pounds heavier and no worse for wear.

  I stab my index finger toward Moe. “You think he missed? You think he didn’t put that bullet exactly where he wanted it to go?” Avoiding the artery so Moe didn’t bleed out before he woke up from whatever Bane pumped into his vein. Bane doesn’t miss, he doesn’t make mistakes. He didn’t need to shoot Moe to incapacitate him, he chose to. But he wanted Moe alive to relay a message—that Vlad Easton was here, that he can reach us from the depths of his Fulcort prison cell, whenever he wants. Just like it wasn’t a mistake that Bane’s face was caught on surveillance footage at the explosion. Dad knew we’d use our resources to tap into whatever the feds uncover. He wanted us to figure out who was behind that.

  And now my father has me right where he wants me—willing to do anything to get Mercy back, including cementing myself in the Easton family drug empire that I’ve been so desperate to wash my hands of.

  What were his instructions to Bane? Has he given him a free pass to hurt her if I don’t comply? From what I’ve heard, Bane isn’t the type to find pleasure in a woman’s body—whether by forcing himself or with a willing participant—but that’s a small blessing considering the kinds of things he does take pleasure in.

  Caleb sighs and turns his attention to Michelle, perched on a barstool, her hands stained with Moe’s blood, a dazed look in her big blue eyes. Farley found her next to Moe, pressing a towel against his wound to stop the bleeding. Thank God she wasn’t foolish enough to call the hotel line for help. That would have made the situation a thousand times worse. “You didn’t see or hear anything?”

  She shakes her head. “Just Moe’s phone ringing for a long time. That’s why I came out of my room. I must have been in the shower when that guy was here. I didn’t hear any gunshot,” she whispers hoarsely, her damp hair proof of her claim.

  “So Bane let you live too, then.”

  The way she shrinks away from my brother’s cold gaze, no one would ever guess they were happily swapping bodily fluids less than twenty-four hours ago. Of everyone in this room, Mercy’s best friend might have had the roughest few days, what with the feds using fraud charges against her father to manipulate her into informing on us while on this trip. Thankfully, we discovered it before she was able to give them anything useful, and now that Caleb has scared her into silence over the litany of dead bodies she witnessed last night, she’s the least of our worries. She’s just another casualty of being too close to the Eastons. I almost feel sorry for her.

  But right now, I don’t give a fuck about her or a hemorrhaging Moe or anyone else. All I care about is finding Mercy.

  “Does he actually think he’ll get what he wants, pulling this shit?” Caleb slips a cigarette into his mouth and lights it.

  I haven’t enlightened him about Stanley’s earlier phone call and I can’t, yet. If my brother finds out our father was behind the plane blowing up, that Finn and Felix are dead because of our father’s little power game, he’ll be hiring an inmate to snap the old man’s neck before I can get a clue as to Mercy’s whereabouts.

  “I’m going to Fulcort,” I announce. There’s no way to deal with our father other than face-to-face.

  “You’re playing right into him, giving him what he wants—”

  “What other choice do I have?” I bellow.

  Caleb raises his hands in a sign of surrender. “Right. Of course, bro. Do what you gotta do. I get it.”

  He doesn’t though. He doesn’t have the first damn clue.

  He’s never been in love.

  When I admitted that to her last night, it came as a surprise, as much to me as I assume to her. I’ve never said those words to anyone; I sure as hell have never felt them. But I know that’s what this is, without a doubt, because I can’t think past this reality that she’s gone and I don’t want to keep breathing unless I have her back.

  Smoke permeates the air as Caleb puffs on his cigarette and scans the situation in our penthouse. “As much as I’d love to visit Daddy-O again, I’ll stay here and play like all is copacetic for our admirers. After last night, we can’t both take off abruptly. It’ll raise flags.”

  He’s right about that, too. “Farley will come with me. The rest of them stay here.”

  Farley’s head bobs once in confirmation. A throat clears somewhere in the room. We’re not used to having an audience as we work through our family issues, but the team of bodyguards, the doctor, Michelle…, none of them matter.

  “Keep people the fuck out of here,” I warn.

  “That’s a given at the moment, I’d say, bro?” Caleb gaze drifts over the penthouse, over the bloody towels and ashen-faced Moe, then toward the hall that leads to where Ross bled out.

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Michelle’s voice is shaky and small, so unlike her.

  Caleb snorts. “For what?”

  She falters, taken aback. “I mean… Mercy’s been kidnapped. They’ll help us find her.”

  “Oh, you sweet girl. Still so naïve.” He tsks. “You think they have the first damn clue where to look for her? We have a better shot of finding her on our own.”

  “I just thought….”

  “The last thing we need is anyone snooping around in here, including your new best friend, Agent Lewis, downstairs. You think she cares what happens to Mercy? Only if it helps her case.” Caleb slips Michelle’s phone out of his pocket, the one he confiscated last night, and waves it in the air. “And if she gets involved, I promise you’ll never see Mercy alive again. We all know you stabbed her in the back, but is that what you want?”

  Michelle answers him with a vehement headshake, her eyes watering.

  “Well then, don’t get any ideas. You just keep playing along like life’s one big happy party then, while Gabe and I deal with this family matter.” With a heavy sigh, he slides his own phone out and mutters, “Merrick’s cleaner is quickly depleting my gambling cash.”

  I don’t care if we don’t have two coins to rub together, if it means finding Mercy. “Keep me updated.” I charge for the elevator, not waiting to confirm that Farley is following.

  “Didn’t expect to see you back here again so soon,” Donny drawls, his keys jangling against his side with each step as he leads me along the narrow, dank corridor and into an older, rarely used section of the prison.

  “Yeah, me neither,” I grumble. My visits are growing more frequent rather than less, the exact opposite of what I want. Then again, it serves as an icy cold shower to my reality. If I give my father everything he wants, I could end up behind these bars with him.

  I could end up as hateful and twisted as he is.

  “You know, these types of visits are a lot easier to arrange after hours.”

  “I don’t give a shit what’s easy,” I snap, my mood steeped in bitterness after spending the four-hour drive here playing all kinds of Saw-like horror flick scenarios about what Bane could be doing to Mercy’s flawless body in my imagination.

  I pay to have the Fulcort guard in my pocket when it’s needed for me, not when it’s convenient for him. And I
pay him a truck’s worth. Or a fully loaded GTO’s worth, to be more accurate. All of these damn guards have been well compensated several times over since Vlad Easton climbed into his orange jumpsuit. Enough that they shouldn’t be uttering a word of complaint.

  “Any news on Chops’s next match?” Donny asks, now with a touch of hesitation.

  “No.” The last thing I care about is providing these degenerates their prison fight entertainment. Not unless my father is Chops’s opponent, and I’ll want a front row seat for that.

  Donny glances over his shoulder at me but doesn’t say anything more—wise choice. If he couldn’t guess by my stony face when I arrived that I’m not doing idle chatter today, he’s figured it out by now.

  The infamous Vlad Easton is waiting for me in the small room, leaning back in his chair, his legs sprawled, his bloated belly pressing against the edge of the table. A smug look is plastered across his pockmarked face as he watches me. He’s wearing bruises from the little tussle he and Caleb got into the last time we visited, which makes sense seeing as Caleb’s eye is still a mottled blueish purple.

  “I got you ten minutes. Fifteen minutes, tops, before the supe starts—”

  “I’ll take as long as I need.” I cut off Donny’s warning and dismiss him from my attention, marching toward the table in the center of the room, willing my fists to unclench as I take in the hateful bastard who gave me life.

  The outer door clicks quietly behind me, leaving Dad and me locked in a staring contest for three beats.

  “Another private visit and so soon. I am loved by my children after all,” he says after a moment.

  He knows why I’m here, and all I want to do is reach across the table and choke the answer out of him. At the same time, I can’t ignore that twinge of hurt—of betrayal—that pricks my chest. I always knew our father was capable of being cruel, but I guess I was dumb enough to convince myself he wouldn’t do something as vicious as this to me.

  I give a cursory glance at the cameras to make sure the lights are off and then I pull out the chair opposite my father and slide into it. “Where is she, you sick son of a bitch.”