Reign of Wrath (Dirty Broken Savages #3)(81)

“Oh, perfect,” Ash says. He pulls out a little black speaker looking device. “Now we can hear the rest of his breakdown.”

He presses a button and we listen as the call connects. Before the person on the other end of the call can even say anything, Julian is already yelling.

“I need you to get down here and bring me a car now!” he snaps.

“Sir?” the man on the line says. “What happened to the—”

“I don’t pay you to ask fucking questions!” Julian bellows, pissed and taking it out on this guy. “I pay you to do what the fuck I say. Bring me a goddamn car!”

The man just sighs and says he’ll be there as soon as he can. There’s a resignation to his voice that makes it pretty clear that Julian treats everyone below him like shit, and this is a regular thing when he gets pissed off.

Probably they haven’t seen him this mad before though.

It takes about twenty or so minutes for the man and the car to show up, pulling up to the front of the house. Julian gets in and slams the door so hard we hear it from where we’re parked. They don’t linger, driving away in a hurry.

Knox starts the car we’re in, and we follow them. While Knox drives, I change shoes, leaving my dress on but swapping the heels for shoes I can actually move in for this next phase of our plan. Gage pulls a bag out from under his seat and passes it around, giving us all ski masks to wear as well.

We tug on the masks and stay at a safe distance, listening through the little device as Julian calls Natalie to tell her what happened.

“What the fuck do you mean they all saw it?” she asks, her voice going high and shrill.

“Just what I said!” Julian snaps. “It was playing on the TV there, and everyone was just standing around watching it.”

“But how did they find out? How did they get that footage?”

“I don’t fucking know!” he explodes. “I don’t know. But it’s fucked. It’s bad, Nat. That fucking bitch said she told the FBI about the accounts. They’re going to be poking around, trying to find that money.”

I’m not even mad about him talking about me like that. It’s just too good to hear him losing his shit.

“Shit,” Natalie swears. “Fucking goddammit, Julian. We have to do something. We have to move the money before they can find it. If this all comes crashing down, that’s all we’ll have left.”

“I know. I fucking know, okay? I’ll handle it. I’ll take care of it.”

“You’d better!”

He hangs up with her, and then calls someone else, making a quick and almost frantic demand to have the money moved out of the offshore account it’s been in.

“Which account do you want to move it from?” the woman on the other end asks in an almost robotic voice.

“Oh shit,” Ash whispers, even though there’s no way they can hear us. “This is it. Someone get this.”

Priest already has his phone out with the notes app open, ready to take down the numbers as they’re read out.

This is what we’ve been waiting for. Julian starts to read out the account numbers and Priest takes them down. As soon as we have them, he sends a message to Harv, who will use the account numbers to intercept the money and reroute it to a different account—one set up in my name.

Instead of Julian sheltering his money, we’ll steal it all.

Savage joy and pleasure fills me when Priest’s phone buzzes and he looks down at it and then over at me.

“It’s done,” he says. “We got it.”

That was the last thing we needed Julian for. He had to be alive to be the one to initiate the transfer so we could steal all of his money.

Now that that’s done, there’s no reason for him to be alive anymore.

This is the part I’ve especially been waiting for. The part where I get to make Julian fucking Maduro feel all the pain and suffering that he’s inflicted. Where I get to look him in the eye as I kill him and make sure he knows that he brought this on himself and that he deserves every single fucking thing that’s happened to him.

“Knox,” Gage says, his voice serious. “Step on it. Let’s take this fucker down.”





34





Knox





That’s all I need to hear.

Something in me leaps with savage joy as I punch the gas harder and send the car speeding down the highway. I’m in my element right now, and this is the kind of shit I live for. The chase, the fight. Knowing at the end of it I get to help River bring Julian down for good.

Unlike the last time with the drug runner, we don’t have to worry about making it look like an accident or covering our tracks as much. So we can do whatever the fuck we want here to make this work.

“Take out the tires,” I tell the others, knowing they’ll know what to do.

Gage rolls the window down and Priest and Ash do the same thing on their sides in the backseat. They draw their guns and aim for the tires and the windows of the car in front of us. Glass explodes from the windows when there’s a hit, and the car jerks and swerves a little when the driver realizes they’re under attack.

Someone manages to hit one of the tires, and it starts to go flat, making the car lose speed. I yank the wheel to the side a little, and when Julian’s car drops back so it’s almost side by side with us, Gage aims for the driver’s side and blows the window out.