Finn slams his hand down on the table, causing one of the suits on the far side to jump.
"Enough!" he roars, pointing right at Cassidy. "You're a worthless son of a bitch, Cassidy."
He is a worthless son of a bitch. He's also right, goddamn him. Every single person I've ever shot has been justified, because I didn't have a fucking choice. They can open whatever inquiry they want on me, and I wouldn't even flinch. But Kincaid? If they start looking into him…well, there are three rotting skeletons in his closet we can't afford anyone to pin on him right now—the three Crips he killed after they murdered January's family. And I think Cassidy knows it. He also knows how fucking badly I want Kincaid on the taskforce. How badly we need him on the streets, keeping our gangs in line.
To keep their secret, they're willing to throw him to the wolves and let the city burn.
"You want me to find him for you, I want something in return," I say, knowing I don't have another choice. I'm the reason Kincaid is still in Los Angeles. That makes him my responsibility…and I can't let them sacrifice him to save their own asses.
Finn whips his head around to look at me, but I shake my head at him, silently telling him not to push this.
"What do you want?" Cassidy asks, wary.
"You clear Tristan Riley now and let him go home."
"Agent Gre–"
"Riley did what he had to do to protect his wife," I interrupt Randolph, my voice hard and unyielding. "Any one of you would have done the same damn thing if your wife had been kidnapped, held hostage, and beaten." Randolph and a younger guy across the table nod, their expressions darkening like the thought alone pisses them off. "The only reason you haven't cleared him yet is because he pissed in your cheerios when he quit. He found the drugs and stopped Noel. The gang war is slowly fizzling. He's done his duty. Clear him and let him go home, and I'll bring this motherfucker to you."
"And if we refuse?" The older man at the table—a silver-haired hard-ass with dark eyes and deep frown lines by the name of Benson—asks.
I flip the folder closed and slide it across to Cassidy, holding the old man's gaze the entire time. "Then you can take that folder and shove it up your ass for all I care. You made your bed; you can lay in it, Benson."
A low murmur of protest goes around the room.
Uncertainty filters through Benson's expression. He doesn't know if I'm serious or not, and that worries him.
I stare him down, silently daring him to call my bluff.
He doesn't. He gives me a brief nod instead. "You have a deal, Gregory."
"Not yet we don't," Finn growls, pinning Benson with a dirty glare. "The remaining members of the gang taskforce that work for your agency now answer to us and only us. You don't assign them anything unless it goes through us first. You don't even breathe in their fucking direction unless it goes through us."
Benson frowns, his brows pulling together.
"That includes Michael Kincaid," I add before he can protest.
"Kincaid isn't ours to hand over," Benson says. "He's still assigned to Roy Davis and Jason Ames in Seattle."
"Where he'll remain until I say otherwise," Finn barks at him, that vein in his forehead still throbbing. "You don't look at him. You don't speak to him. You don't do a goddamn thing where he's concerned unless Ames or I say so. Take it or leave it."
Benson looks around the table and then nods, his expression suddenly weary. "Agreed, but you aren't to tell Riley, Kincaid, or anyone about Pledger's connection to Noel."
"Tristan has a right to know."
"He lost that right when he quit," Randolph retorts.
"And had you not withheld this information from us when we were looking all over this fucking city for his wife, maybe he wouldn't have walked. You never said a goddamn word."
"We didn't have proof," Cassidy objects.
"You had enough," Finn snaps, glaring the smaller man down. "You damn well know you did."
Benson lays a hand on Cassidy's arm and gives him a slight head shake. Cassidy bites off a hot retort, ire flashing through his expression. I glance between the two of them and then at Randolph. Underneath, they're all sweating bullets.
"You're scared he's going to rip this fucking place apart and take you all down if he finds out," I mutter, not surprised when Benson avoids my gaze. I shake my head and chuckle without amusement. No wonder they're chasing their own tails over this shit. They've fucked him over for days, and now they're shitting their shorts that he's going to get his hands on this information and take every single one of them down for failing to mention Pledger had a kid. "Jesus fucking Christ. You're all a bunch of self-serving pussies. No wonder he wanted out of this agency so goddamn badly. Does Ames know about this yet?"
"Ames knows what he needs to know," Benson says.
"So he doesn't know either." I shake my head in disgust. To save their own asses, they're leaving their own in the dark. Ames has worked for the DEA for well over a decade. Tristan was with them almost as long. They deserve to know why Remi went rogue. No wonder Finn wants the taskforce guys out from under their leadership. There's not a chance in hell he'd leave Luke or the others under their care when they're willing to sacrifice their own.
"You guys are un-fucking-believable," I mutter.
"We'll find your little dirty secret and bring him home," Finn growls, scowling around the table as I push myself to my feet to stand beside him, leaving their folder on the table. "And Roman and I will keep our goddamn mouths shut. We done here?"
Cassidy nods.
Finn looks at Randolph, rage turning his eyes dark and stormy. "Don't ever ask me for another fucking thing," he growls at his longtime friend, severing the ties of that relationship without hesitation or remorse. "You're a fucking disgrace. Every last one of you is a disgrace."
With that, Finn turns on his heel and stomps out. I don't give them an opportunity to say anything further before I follow him out without a backward glance.
"Who pissed in your pool?" Kincaid asks several hours later, watching me warily when I toss a book halfway across the room, growling under my breath.
"Your bosses at the local field office," I snap, snatching another book off Remi's bookshelf and shaking it out. Like the rest of the books on the shelf, it's empty. I toss it aside and grab another, repeating the same process. My temper hasn't cooled at all since I walked out of that bullshit meeting. "They're slimy motherfuckers."
"Word," Kincaid says. There's no love lost between him and DEA administration here. He blames them for Remi getting his hands on Lillian. He may be more right about that than he knows. I wish like hell I could tell him that he's out from under their thumb, but I can't. "At least they finally fucking cleared T. It's about goddamn time."
I snort instead of responding. He deserves to know the truth just as much as Tristan and Ames do, but I gave my word to Finn that I'd honor our agreement with those motherfuckers. Too much is at stake if I don't. We need Kincaid, and we need Luke Santiago and the rest of their agents on the gang taskforce out from under their control, now more than ever. I'll keep my word even if it fucking kills me.
"This is a waste of time, man," Kincaid says, kicking one of the books out of the way. "Cops have already turned this place upside down twice. If there was anything to find, we would have found it by now."
"Cops miss shit."
"Yeah, but I don't. And neither do you. Don't even act like you haven't already torn this place apart."
I shrug a shoulder, not denying it. I broke in shortly after Remi kidnapped Lillian, looking for any hint of what he was doing or where he might have gone. Guess I should have been checking with Remi's bosses at the DEA instead of assuming they were as clueless as the rest of us. There wasn't shit here then and there isn't shit here now. But I need something to do to burn off excess energy or I'm going to end up putting my fist through a wall.
What I need is to be balls deep in Mila, her scratch marks down my back. She's the only thing that calms me down when I get like this. She's a f
ucking warrior and gives as good as she gets when I'm inside her, but she's pregnant, and I don't want to hurt her.
"There's nothing here, Roman."
I toss another book and then admit defeat, driving my fist into the shelf. It shakes and then caves in, a row of books toppling to the floor. I kick my way free of them, storm out of the room, and then out the front door. Once I'm on the porch, I lean my head back against the side of the house, staring out at the neighborhood. Lights burn in houses all up and down the block. It's a cookie-cutter neighborhood, nice and clean.
So is Remi's house. Ironic considering nothing about that motherfucker is nice and clean. He's worse than a rat, rotten to the core. So why the hell does it burn like a son of a bitch to know the man who helped Francisco and Guerrero tear my world apart is Remi's son?
Maybe because part of me wanted to believe I'd hunt him down and he'd have some rational explanation for what he did. He'd say he was working a case deep undercover, that he didn't actually tell Guerrero about Mila and Talia, that he only helped Noel take Lillian to keep his cover. Some foolish part of me hoped he wasn't the bad guy in all this…that one of my own teammates wasn't the reason I still have nightmares about holding Mila's limp body in my arms.
How the fuck am I supposed to keep her safe when my own brothers are the threat?
How am I supposed to protect her when I don't even know who the hell I can trust anymore? When the men giving the orders are the ones willing to watch the entire goddamn city burn to keep the mud off their faces?
Kincaid steps out onto the porch, pulling the front door closed. He leans up against the house beside me, not speaking. He doesn't even look in my direction.
"I feel like I'm failing her," I mutter, scrubbing a hand down my face. "My own teammate was responsible for what happened to her. For all this bullshit. And they're manipulating me to bring the son of a bitch in instead of putting him down like the rabid dog he is."
"Failure burns like a motherfucker," Kincaid grunts, turning his head to shoot me a look that tells me he gets it. Maybe better than I do. "But that shit isn't on you. It's on Remi Pledger and his handlers. It's not a crime to have trusted the man you worked beside for years."
"I should have known."
Kincaid snorts, shaking his head. "Word of advice, man? Don't set yourself spinning down that path. It ends in blood and pain and I'm thinking you've seen enough of both already. You didn't know he was dirty, but now that you do, you're doing something about it. At the end of the day, that's all that fucking matters."
"Is that why you do this shit?" I ask him, genuinely curious how he turned into the man he is. He was a gangbanger, a smart kid from the hood, doing his best to keep himself and his girl safe. He failed, and her family paid the price. He's been fighting this battle ever since, moving heaven and hell to keep himself alive to fight another day when most would have given up a long damn time ago.
"It's the only fucking thing I can do," he says, his pain-filled voice soft. "I can't undo the past. I can't bring back her family for her or unbreak her heart. All I can do is what I've been doing every day since…making sure it doesn't happen to someone else."
I jerk my chin in a nod, not surprised by his answer. For a lot of guys like him, like Tristan, Luke, and even Octavio, this job is a sort of penance, something they do now because when it was their families in the crosshairs, when it was their families bleeding…they had no one to fight for them.
What would Kincaid say if he knew the men pulling the strings were just as dirty as Remi?
I can't ask. I can't say anything.
"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you bring him in like they want or if you kill him," Kincaid says, clearing his throat. "Whatever trust he shattered, your team will rebuild. I don't pretend to know you, but I know enough to know you'll make sure that happens. I'm guessing Bethel will too. As for Lillian and T, this shit is over and done with for them. I'm guessing it's over for your girl too. They're safe because you helped make it happen. Pledger may be dirty, but he's not a fucking idiot. He knows going for your girl now will end with his head on a pike and his body in a ditch."
"What are you getting at?" I ask.
"I'm just saying…you did what you had to do to ensure the people who needed closure had an opportunity to find it. Whether Pledger lives or dies won't change things for them now."
"I thought you wanted him dead."
Kincaid shoots me a feral grin, those steely blue-gray eyes of his flashing deadly fire. This is the man who sends gangs fleeing, the one they're terrified to cross. The one we need on the streets with his boot to the neck of every fucking gang we've got. "I want the motherfucker howling for mercy," he growls, heat in his voice. "But who ever said we can't have both? If they want him brought in, bring him in. He'll get what's coming for him one way or another, I promise you that."
"Yeah." I scrub a hand down my face. Maybe he's right. About all of it. Fuck if I know. But I made my choice, and I won't back out now. Because there's no goddamn way we're leaving any of our guys to the tender mercies of Benson, Cassidy, and Randolph for a fucking second longer. I'll swallow my own tongue before I let that happen.
I drag my phone out of my pocket to glance at the time before looking back to Kincaid. It's almost nine. I've been at work for well over twelve hours at this point. The need to see Mila, to hold her in my arms and remind myself that she's safe and she's mine, gnaws at me, whispering like the compelling verse of Siren song for me to go to her. Now. Before I can even say anything to Kincaid, he waves me off.
"Go be with your girl," he says. "At least one of us should be."
I open my mouth to say something and then snap it closed again when pain flares in his eyes and then parades across his face before he schools his expression into that devil-may-care gangbanger mask he wears like armor, making it clear he doesn't want to talk about his shit yet. I briefly consider pushing him, and then decide against it. When he's ready to talk, he will.
"See you tomorrow?" he asks.
"Yeah, I'll be there." I hesitate. "I'm bringing Mila with me. She wants to meet Lillian."
Kincaid jerks his chin in a nod and then grins at me though it doesn't meet his eyes. "I want to meet her."
I narrow my eyes on him.
He holds his hands up, giving me an innocent look that's so full of bullshit it's not even funny.
"I will shiv you," I mutter to him before jogging down the steps toward my truck.
He laughs softly from behind me.
The fucker.
Chapter Eight
Roman
When I get home less than an hour later, Mila's cuddled up on the chaise in one of my t-shirts and a pair of leggings, a book on her lap even though her eyes are locked on the soccer game Luke has playing on the television. Faith is nowhere to be found, though I'm guessing that's because Octavio has her at home. His SUV was in his driveway when I pulled in.
The second my eyes land on Mila, all thoughts of Faith and Octavio vanish from my mind and I know all my attempts to calm down were fruitless. Need comes roaring back to life, consuming me alive as I watch her green eyes track back and forth across the screen with obvious interest, a little smile dancing on her full lips. Her long hair is up in a messy bun, damp pieces waving wildly about her face. She's so goddamn beautiful.
My cock turns to steel in my pants, desire coursing through me with each heavy beat of my heart. My entire body throbs in response, humming with electric energy. I need to be inside her now.
"Roman," Luke greets me with a jerk of his chin.
I grunt wordlessly and bypass him, heading straight for Mila.
She glances up at me, those beautiful eyes beaming up at me. "Hi, handsome," she says sweetly.
I slide her book off her lap and place it carefully on the table beside her.
She must see the look on my face because she bites her lip, desire flaring to life in her eyes. Before she can say a word, I pluck her up from the chaise and tuck her a
gainst my chest, breathing hard.
"Lock up when you leave," I mutter to Luke, not even looking at him. I can't tear my eyes away from the woman in my arms long enough to look at him. I can't tear my mind away from her long enough to thank him for keeping her safe for me today.
"Will do," he says with a chuckle. The television shuts off a second later.
Mila buries her face in my throat as if to hide it. At least that's what I think until I feel her bite my neck.
I growl and palm her ass, striding toward the hallway without a backward glance.
"Roman," she moans softly.
"No one else hears you," I remind her, swatting her lightly on the ass as I stride down the hallway. "Those greedy little sounds are just for me, baby."
"Every part of me is just for you."
Fuck, I love her.
"How are you feeling?" I ask her, stumbling when I feel her tongue against the shell of my ear.
"Good."
"Yeah?"
"Mmhmm," she hums before she nips at my earlobe.
"Good because I'm tying you to the bed and fucking you until you beg me to stop," I growl at her, carrying her over the threshold to the master bedroom and then kicking the door closed. Like our bedroom in Santa Cruz, this one is all deep, bold colors. A massive king-sized bed dominates the room, the headboard a slate gray to match the rest of the furniture.
Mila moans loudly and wriggles in my arms.
I lay her on the bed, claiming her mouth in a bruising kiss. She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back just as furiously, her tongue dueling with mine for dominance before she submits with a whimper. My tongue slips inside her mouth, stroking against hers in a heated promised before I draw back to nip at her lips.
"I don't know if I can be gentle," I murmur, half an apology and half a warning.
"Good," she practically purrs, wrapping one leg around my hip and grinding that hot little body on my dick. "I don't want gentle."
"No? What do you want, Mila?"
"I want you to fuck me like you mean it, Mr. Gregory."
Desire Me (Her Best Friend's Father Book 4) Page 11
