King's Reign (Sydney Storm MC #6)(43)

“No, you fucking weren’t. You were fucking tiptoeing around trying not to fucking upset anyone. Fuck that shit when your cousin is at risk.”

“You wanna know what you managed to do by sticking your nose in? You alerted the Vinzanis to the connection between Don and Storm. They did a little digging and discovered Kree works for you, discovering, in the fucking process, that she now lives in Sydney. They didn’t fucking know that before, King.” He jabbed his finger at me. “That shit is on you.”

His words became a jumbled mess as they each made their way into my brain.

What the hell had I done? I’d been so fucking sure of what we needed to do to fix this shit.

“What’s Don’s tie to them?” I asked as I tried to shake the anger out of my system. Problem was, the anger was now directed at myself for fucking this up. And that was a whole lot fucking harder to shake than any anger I ever felt towards someone else.

He continued glaring at me, his chest pumping furiously with his own anger. “He got tied up running a dog fighting ring for them when he was trying to make some cash to pay off his gambling debts. I paid off his debts in exchange for him leaving Kree alone, but it turned out he had information about those dogfights stashed on a hard drive somewhere that the Vinzanis want. He took off after I covered the debts, and they couldn’t find him, so they’ve been threatening his family and friends in an effort to draw him out.”

“So you have no idea where he is?”

“I said they couldn’t find him; I found the asshole yesterday and put a fucking bullet in his head like you wanted me to do. I then delivered the hard drive to the Vinzanis and told them to leave Kree out of this shit.” He paused for a moment before adding with another jab of his finger, “But you put her at risk for a while there, King, and you need to learn to take a fucking step back when I tell you I have shit handled. Or else you and I are gonna have some big fucking problems going forward.”

I scowled at him. “Perhaps in fucking future you could give me the whole fucking story.”

He shook his head at me. “Don’t twist this to suit your-fucking-self, King.”

We stood glaring at each other, neither wanting to back down, when Hyde stepped into the argument. “Let’s call this shit a day,” he said, glancing between us. “No one’s in the wrong, it’s just a fucked-up mess. However, we’re all on the same fucking side, so let’s walk away and mark it as handled.”

Neither Zane nor I budged until eventually he blew out a long breath and ground out, “Yeah,” before stalking away from us.

As he left, Devil came striding down the hallway towards us, a look of determination on his face. When he reached us, he said, “You know how I spoke to Lily’s neighbours and none of them had seen anyone suspicious the day her sister was shot?”

I nodded, not liking where this was going. “Yeah.”

“Well, turns out one of the neighbour’s sons has been away and just returned home, so she asked him if he’d seen anything. He did, and the description he gave me matches Brant.”

The anger Zane had stirred exploded like a fucking volcano spewing lava. I turned to Hyde. “We heard anything more from Winter today?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Fuck,” I roared, my chest tight with fury. “We need to get down there.” I looked at Devil again. “And I want two guys at Lily’s place within the next half hour. Keep eyes on her and the kids until we have Brant.”

He nodded his agreement and left us.

“Fucking hell,” Hyde said. “How the hell did we fuck shit up so badly with Brant?”

“At this point, I don’t fucking care how. All I care is that you and I find him and rip him the fuck apart so he can’t get at anyone else.”

“Yeah, brother. Agreed.”

“I’m gonna head over to Lily’s and give her a rundown of what’s going on. I’ll be back so we can leave at ten. I need you and Axe to figure out how the fuck we can shake these feds so we don’t have a fucking fan club follow us to Melbourne.”

“Will do.”



“Zara! Have you seen my necklace?”

I rested my ass against the kitchen counter in Lily’s kitchen and watched silently as she tried to make dinner while she also attempted to load the dishwasher, clear old shit out of the fridge, and search in weird fucking places for the necklace. I’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, and she’d been going on about it from the moment I stepped foot inside the house. She was worked up over losing it, and Zara was ignoring her each time she called out about it. Those two had a fucking fiery relationship, completely different to the one she had with Holly. Some days I thought Lily would completely lose her mind over the shit Zara did.

“Fucking hell,” she muttered, rifling through her handbag. “I could have sworn I put it in here.”

I pushed off from the counter and moved to her. Attempting to take the bag from her, I said, “I’ll look for it. You finish the casserole.”

She clutched the bag, refusing to let it go. “You don’t know what it looks like.”

“Fuck, Lily, it’s a fucking necklace. I know what they look like.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t you take that tone with me.”

Jesus fuck. I’d had a headache before I got here, and it was only getting worse. “Pass the fucking bag.”