Page 64 of Ricochet
Tristan looked between the two of us, chewing on his lower lip.
“A big fucking problem, brothers.”
* * *
I was goingto kill them. No, oh no, I was going to torture them, and then I was going to kill them and send the pieces of their miserable bodies to their families.
“Fuck!” I threw the glass across the table, shattering it against the wall. “How in the ever-loving fuck did this happen?”
I focused my attention on Tristan, who kept walking back and forth with his hands wrapped behind his neck.
“I swear to god, Brother, if you don’t stop pacing, I will tie you to the chair.”
“I don’t know how the fuck it happened,” he threw back at me. “I don’t know. It was supposed to be a smooth operation. Get the shipment from the bay, drive here and that’s it.”
“Then how is it possible, that Sons-of-fucking-Hades are currently holding the whole shipment of cocaine, our fucking shipment, if it was supposed to be as smooth as you’re claiming it to be?”
I could already see his brain working overtime, trying to figure out how it happened. The focused look on his face, his eyes zeroed in on the papers in front of him, the map of the West Coast.
“I don’t know. I think—”
“How?” I screamed. “Nobody knew, nobody but us. How is it possible that such sealed information could get to them, huh?”
He dropped down into the chair behind him, a look of disbelief on his face.
“We have a traitor in our midst.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I pulled out another glass from the cabinet, pouring myself another two fingers of whiskey, and sat down, propping my legs on the table. “We would’ve known.”
“Would we?”
Would we really? He was right, somebody was selling us out, but who? The men working for us here were our most trusted allies, each and every one of them handpicked by us.
Then it dawned on me. “What if Nikolai knows?”
“What do you mean?” My brother straightened up; a rare sight of fear visible in his eyes. Man, even saying his name out loud was like calling for the Devil.
“What if he knows about Ophelia?”
“Even if he knew about that, there is no way in hell that he could possibly know about routes we are taking for our shipments,” he argued. “Besides, we don’t even know if the two of them are still in contact.”
“But think about it.” I took the papers from him, lowering my legs down. “She would’ve been dead by now if he wanted her dead. Nobody walks away from Syndicate, not even family members. So why is she still alive?”
He kept quiet for a moment, tapping his fingers on the surface of the table. The map in front of me, the route they were supposed to take, it was all there. They weren’t supposed to be anywhere close to the Hades territory. Why the fuck did they go through Santa Monica, when they weren’t supposed to?
“Are you sure they had the same instructions?”
“Of course, they did,” he exclaimed. “I handed these same maps and documents personally to Damien.”
“Where were they intercepted?” They were supposed to take the shipment from the previous truck at Redondo Beach, and drive to Las Vegas, then through Utah and Colorado. Where the fuck did it all go wrong?
“They were almost out of Los Angeles when they got to them.”
“So, they took the same route you mapped out for them?”
“Apparently so.”
Fucking hell. I refused to believe it, but Tristan was right. Somebody betrayed us, and once I found out who that was, they would wish they were never born.
