King's Reign (Sydney Storm MC #6)(16)

His smile slipped from his face, replaced by anger. “She has ways of faking stuff.”

“Jesus, what fucking drugs did you take this morning?” I shoved my face closer to his, fury heating my cheeks. “No one can fake the blood loss she had. Not to fucking mention my own doctor treated her and confirmed the miscarriage.”

The glaze in his eyes told me he would dismiss anything I had to say about her. “I know my wife, King, and I know she’s a lying, manipulative woman. Regardless, I love her more than you ever did.”

“And yet, she left you. Says a lot about your love.”

“No, it says a lot about you and how much she wanted to ruin you.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

A satisfied smile blared from him. “You met Brant, yes?”

I clenched my jaw as I nodded.

“She manipulated him into doing her dirty work. She knew he was in love with her, and she worked that to her advantage.” He paused for a moment. “Ivy has carried a desire for revenge against you for as long as I’ve known her. I refused to humour her request to initiate an attack on you years ago, so she started in on Brant.”

“I don’t fucking believe you. You came after me using Marx. You killed my ex and her child. And besides, Brant is a psychopath, best I can figure. You’ve got shit about those two around the wrong way.”

“Brant’s a weak man. He’s not a psychopath. Where the hell did you get that from?”

“We did some digging on him. He has a history of stalking women and murdering them.”

He flinched like I’d slapped him.

I’d found something he didn’t know.

When he didn’t respond, I said, “He tell you she’s working him or did you figure that out for yourself? And don’t feel bad for screwing up on this one. We did, too.” Brant had played us for fools. I imagined he’d done the same to Romano. I’d shared that sliver of information to encourage his walls down a little.

The way he glossed over it confirmed my suspicions. “Either way, it doesn’t fucking matter. They’re concocting something up for you. Any of the shit I’ve given the feds on you will pale in comparison to whatever they do to you.”

And that right there was what I wanted. I didn’t buy into Ivy gunning for revenge, but I did buy into Romano feeding the feds shit. “Ahh, Detective Ryland’s told me about you singing to him.”

“I don’t know what you did to him, but it must have been fucking bad. The asshole can’t see straight because of you.”

I cocked my head to the side. “You hear they pulled him off the case? Seems he’s on someone’s payroll and they don’t like that.” I watched his reaction closely in an effort to judge if it was his payroll Ryland was on.

Confusion flickered briefly in his eyes. He attempted to cover it, but I had my answer. It wasn’t Romano he’d been working with. He opened his mouth to reply, but a loud crash sounded from somewhere in the house, interrupting my interrogation.

I sheathed my knife and pulled out my gun before pushing Romano towards Nitro and ordering, “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

Signalling for everyone else to search the house, I stalked in the direction the sound came from. The house wasn’t huge so it wouldn’t take us long to find whoever it was.

It didn’t.

He came charging at me as I entered the kitchen. Gun pointed at my head, he fired with one clear goal—to kill. This wasn’t the fucking feds we were dealing with. This had to be Romano’s crew.

My rage screamed to life and my demons raced from the far corners of my soul.

We’d been trained for moments like this from birth.

This asshole brought a gun to the fight.

He had no idea I was a motherfucking bomb.

Ducking the moment I saw him, I avoided his bullet and threw myself at him. My arms circled his body and with unrelenting force, I drove him backwards against the fridge. He hit with a thud, his head banging against it hard. His gun fell to the ground and I kicked it out of the way. I’d caught him off guard and he was slow to get his bearings.

Gripping his throat, I dug my fingers in hard as I aimed my gun at his foot. Pulling the trigger, I demanded, “Who the fuck are you?”

His cry of pain as the bullet went through his foot fed the beast inside me.

This was what I came here for today.

Blood and pain.

He scowled at me and spat, “Fuck you!”

I shot his other foot before striking him across the face with my gun as hard as I fucking could. With one last squeeze of his throat, I let him go, grasped his shirt and spun him around so I could slam him across the small room into the kitchen bench. He scrambled to get back in the fight, but he was no match for me. I closed the distance between us again and punched him. He grunted and took a shot at hitting me, but I evaded the jab and punched him again, my fist connecting with his jaw with a satisfying crack.

I was fucking manic.

Wired for hell.

I could keep going at him for hours, but all I had were minutes. Fuck, I didn’t even have that. Our plan had been to get in and get out fast. I’d gone and screwed that up by taking my time questioning Romano.

I needed to get back to him. This guy wasn’t going to give me answers to my questions, and I didn’t have time to drag them from him, so I struck him with my fist a few more times before putting a bullet between his eyes. A lot less satisfying than what I would have preferred to do, but it got the job done.