Page 12 of Ruthless Enforcer

The silence stretches. I can hear him breathing, can feel the weight of everything he's not saying. "Don't make me regret this," he finally says.

The line goes dead.

Fuck.

I hold my phone up and find Mandy’s contact. Not difficult. She’s called me six times tonight.

She answers before the first ring finishes. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Nice to hear your voice too,” I reply. Mandy Reed is the only person in the world other than Alessandro who treats me like this. Ten years ago, I pulled her out of the trafficking hell Turner had her in, and she’s been giving me shit ever since.

“Your phone went dark." She says it like an accusation. "You were supposed to find Clara and call me, not disappear for the entire fucking night. What have you been doing? And if you say you got sidetracked by a woman, I'm going to tell Alessandro about Bogotá.”

I go still. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

She totally would. “Then I won't tell you that the woman I got sidetracked by is named Clara Whitlock.”

There's a beat silence. “You have her?”

“Sitting right next to me.”

Mandy exhales hard enough that I hear it through the phone. “Is she okay?”

I glance at Clara. My sweatshirt. Bare legs. Someone else’s blood still faintly staining her jaw. “Define okay.”

“Gabriel.”

“She’s not hurt.”

Another breath. “Okay. Good. That’s good. Because we have a fucking problem.”

Thinking of Turner, I shake my head. “We already have several.”

“Add another one. We took out Ashford tonight, but beforehand, he told me it was a setup. They planned to steal Clara and frame your family for it. Ashford and Turner wanted to start a war between James Whitlock and Alessandro using Clara as bait.”

Jesus fucking Christ. My hand tightens around the wheel. I don’t need Mandy to spell it out for me. I walked right into the trap.

12

COLE

Iescaped.

That doesn’t mean I’m free.

As long as Gabriel Reyes is alive and hunting me, I will never be free. There will always be a locked room, or a shallow grave, waiting for me.

Which leaves me only one course of action.

Gabriel Reyes has to die.

13

CLARA

The steady, low-frequency hum of the SUV vibrates straight through my spine.