Walk Through Fire (Chaos, #4)(170)

He didn’t know that.

My body got tight too. Or tighter.

Then his mouth relaxed. “Another fail,” he stated. “And as you can see, they won’t do anything like that again.”

Another truth. A big one.

I kept my eyes off the slaughter sharing a room with me so I could keep hold on my mind.

“I mean no offense. I’m sure you know this,” I began. “But you don’t mean anything to me. Still, this plays out like I know it will, people I care about will be forced to do things they don’t wish to do. They’re good men. But this won’t stand.” I carefully indicated the floor beneath my feet. “They won’t let it and you shouldn’t underestimate them. There’s no way you can win.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

I stared at him.

He believed that.

Totally.

A chill crept over my skin and I kept trying.

“You won’t win, Valenzuela. Seriously, believe me. I’ve known them a long time. United, the brotherhood can’t be defeated.”

“Many brotherhoods felt the same and continued to do so until they fell.”

I stared into his eyes and I read everything there.

He wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to go away. He wasn’t going to stop. He was weak, with men misinterpreting his orders, facing a woman who could guarantee his time in prison when he was caught and I testified that he’d ordered the murders of two men.

He still wasn’t going to stop.

Not until it was over however that came about.

There was something scarily wrong about that. He was a man with every chip in the pot holding weak cards in his hand.

But he was acting like he had an ace up his sleeve.

“You need to be careful,” I whispered.

“Ah, Millie, your concern in touching. But don’t you worry. I’m being very careful.”

“No,” I returned. “What I mean is, you hurt him, you hurt High, you hurt any of them, I’ll hurt you.”

He found that amusing, so much so it was incredibly insulting.

While smiling big, he tipped his head to the side. “You’re threatening me while I hold a gun?”

“Wrong again,” I told him, shaking my head. “It’s insane but I’m trying to save your life. Seriously, you should get out of town.”

“I will not fall to Chaos,” he said with utter confidence.

“If you don’t leave and you also don’t fall to Chaos, you’ll still fall.”

“Chaos gash comes after me after I bring that Club low, that’s business I’ll be forced to take care of too.”

Gash.

He’d said that word before.

It wasn’t nice.

It also pissed me off.

I straightened my spine and squared my shoulders, sharing, “There’ll be only one storm mightier than the one your men unleashed today. You don’t mess with an old lady. You definitely don’t mess with an old lady’s man.”

He was still amused. “After I claim all of Denver, that’ll be an interesting challenge.”

He might hold the ace.

But his cards were still weak.

“I see your weakness,” I told him.

That amused him too. Greatly.

He lifted his brows over dancing eyes.

“I have a weakness?” he asked in disbelief.

“You don’t think gash have brains,” I shared.

“You’re not difficult to look at, Millie, but you aren’t being very smart, where you are, how you are, speaking to me the way you are.”

“You don’t think gash have brains,” I repeated. “So you can’t know we have them and we also have hearts. And if you don’t know any of that, you also don’t know we hold a mean grudge.”

“I know this,” he said in a way that made my skin tighten all over my body. “I ordered the dispatch of two of my soldiers. I did it with a witness. I did it knowing Chaos has gone *, taking their twat asses to the cops. So I know you’ll share with Mitch Lawson and Brock Lucas. And I don’t f*cking care.”

That was crazy.

My voice was rising high when I asked, “You believe you’re untouchable?”

“I believe I get Chaos out of the way, I’ll be running Denver. And if I have to put down Chaos, along with Lawson, Lucas, and Delgado to do it, then that’ll get done.”

Delgado?

Hawk Delgado?

Elvira’s boss?

What did he have to do with all this?

I didn’t ask that.

I remarked, “So you’re gonna leave me alive.”

He tipped his head to the side and asked, “What did you see?”

He knew what I saw since it happened five minutes ago and I didn’t think it was smart to remind him that I saw it but I had a feeling he had an agenda and that agenda was not further harming me, so I said, “You told your man to shoot them and he did.”

“I wasn’t anywhere near here and that man doesn’t exist.”

Both were wrong but I had a feeling he could make it so they were right.

He kept speaking.

“In fact, later today, there will be a man who will come forward, confessing to these killings. He’ll have the gun used. And he’ll share all about how he did this in retribution for what was done to you.”