You Distract Me

King

"Careful," I warned.

He raised his hands in surrender. "Just saying. What could they possibly want with her alive? It's obvious they know she's important to you. Trying to hurt her in order to weaken you would be the only thing to gain from this."

"You're right," I said begrudgingly. "Whoever took her knows the impact of their actions. But instead of weakening me, these fuckers would only make me dedicated to skinning them alive."

The blinding rage came whooshing back in, but it went away just as quickly when Laura's phone rang. Hope, sweet hope replaced the anger. Hope that there was information on Olivia or her captors.

"It's Byron," she said, before getting up and answering the call.

Drew patted my shoulder. "You should consider letting her go while some of us are still here."

For a moment, I thought I misheard him, but then a dangerous thought occurred right then.

I shoved his hand away. "How far would you go to exclude her from our lives?"

"What?" He had the audacity to look injured.

"You're not her biggest fan, you've made that pretty clear from the start. So I'll ask you again. How far would you go to exclude her from our lives?"

He let out a humorless chuckle. "This motherfucker."

"Answer the fucking question!"

"I'll let you cool off, Shay." He stood from his seat.

I stood just as quick, pulling him back by his shoulder only to have him turn with an oncoming swing at me. Upon contact with my face, his punch threw me off-balance and I fell back on the table behind me.

"You idiot! For as long as you've known me, do you think I would sacrifice all our friends just to get rid of some girl you're in love with?" he screamed at me. "Ever since she came along, everyone else has just been sacrificial lambs to you. You probably don't even care that Freya and Joshua are in the ICU right now! I ain't gon' lie about how I feel towards your girlfriend, she's nothing more than a distraction in my eyes. But I'll have to cut off my right ear before I'd ever put the family in harm's way."

I was too stunned to move, still taken aback by the punch. But now more so by the outburst. A quick look at the stares around us and it was clear that I was the big bad wolf at the moment. They craved to be in Drew's place.

"I need some air," Drew said, walking out the diner.

Avoiding the eyes trained on me, I got off the table and went to the bar to pour myself another glass of scotch, dabbing at the cut on my lip.

Laura came to stand beside me.

"I'm not interested in your comments," I said, downing a shot.

She kissed her teeth. "Neither am I interested in voicing them. I believe Drew has done everyone's job. I just wanted to tell you that Byron says both Freya and Joshua are already being transferred to a recovery room. No permanent damage."

Genuinely relieved, I poured myself another glass. "Thank God."

"It just sucks that we all can't be there with them, because lying low seems like a coward's way out when we're not all together. I'm gonna go check on Drew." She stood but paused for a moment, leaning in. "For what it's worth, I'm grateful that you were able to save as many of us as you could. If you hadn't gone back to lead everyone through the tunnels, we'd be in a very different situation right now. And I'm pretty sure everyone else feels the same, just give it some time."

I gave her a lopsided smile, barely convinced but appreciating her nonetheless. "I guess so. Go check on the big guy."

She gave me a tight smile and placed a kiss on my temple.

My phone beeped a moment after she left.

It was Lucile. "How are you holding up?"

I wasn't holding up shit. I was going crazy not being able to do anything at the moment. Unless those fuckers who took Olivia made contact, I'd be flying blind if I tried anything.

"I'm more worried about what's left of my family and the woman currently in possession of my heart. What did you find out?"

"Well, according to my sources, Oran Demir had nothing to do with what happened. And I must say, my sources are solid."

"Are you sure about that?"

"I wouldn't have told you if I wasn't. And in my opinion, Demir doesn't seem like the type to be messy. A man like him will keep any and everything under the radar. Nukes don't exactly scream under the radar."

"Then we're still in the dark. Even though he might not be responsible, there're tons of rival mafias spanning throughout the entire western hemisphere. They might not be from this continent. Hell, they might not even be mafia. On top of that I'm not even so sure these pussies took her to lure me. For all I know, all that shit might have had nothing to do with me."

Which only meant that whoever took her won't make contact and I might never see her again. The thought made the backs of my eyes burn.

"I wouldn't exactly say that."

I immediately sat straighter. "What do you mean?"

"You sure you wanna know?"

"No, I suggest you keep it to yourself. Of course I wanna know dammit!"

"Since you asked so nicely. One of my sources was able to trace the serial code on the scraps from one of the missiles to a warehouse in England. It wasn't easy but he managed to locate the name under the deeds to the warehouse. It belongs to a Charlie Ashford."

I was up my seat. "Send me his address, I'll deal with him with my bare hands."

"Hold up, that's not it. Charlie Ashford is a hitman. His latest contact hired him to take the hit on your base."

"Who's the contact?"

For a moment there was silence on the other side of the line, as if he were contemplating telling me.

"It's Sasha King."

Next update will be very soon.
And a happy pride month to you all.

note: You can go to these chapters if you can't recall who Sasha is[GREEN EYED BRUNETTE/NERVOUS WRECK/COME WITH ME/SAWYER] or you could just read the book again.