“How much, Ambrose?” He kept his voice smooth and low, almost difficult to hear over the pulse of the music of the Torrid club. The fingers of his right hand tightened into a fist and he deliberately kept his left hand resting on the manila folder on the desk in front of him. If the kid tried anything, he’d be dead long before negotiations ever even started. And if they really went badly, he might even wish he was.
No one stole from Marcus without being made an example of.
Especially a fucking weasel.
Ambrose stepped forward. “Two million, five.” Jaw clenched, and eerily calm, his enforcer remained fully prepared to tear the kid a new asshole if Marcus so much as gave a nod. Older and an experienced ex-cop, Ambrose knew how to handle himself when things got rough.
Held in the room outside, the punk’s friends were being retained to use as collateral in case the little twerp needed an immediate push toward cooperating. Marcus also had his suspicions the kid wasn’t alone in this venture.
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow and moved his head only slightly. The hacker twitched, a green tint beginning to spread across his features. God, he couldn’t have been more than about fifteen.
He was scared. At least that was something. The stench of his fear made Marcus' animal smile. He wondered briefly what the young man would do if he shifted into his wolf. Would he do the same? Weasel against black wolf wasn’t exactly fair, but his give a fuck had already gotten up and left for the afternoon.
Fucking kids. Too much time on their hands and this was what they got into. Not that he could really talk. By the time Marcus was twenty, he was running his father’s business and had taken over the pack.
He narrowed his eyes and pressed my lips into a thin line. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his hand on the dark wood. A leather couch against one wall, the desk, and two chairs made up the entire contents of the room. His people swept it before he entered but he couldn’t have cared less. He would get back what was his and if the cops were listening, let them take fucking notes. Marcus Lupin was not going to be played by a teenager with a knack for breaking into other people’s bank accounts.
“If you’re going to puke, I’ll kill you.” Nice wasn’t going to work. Not with a little piece of shit like that.
Marcus was ready to strangle the life out of him. All the people he’d hired to keep his accounts untraceable and this...this suburban white bread punk thought to play him like there were no consequences for his actions. How wrong he was. And Marcus had a feeling he wasn’t the only one.
His gaze never left the prick in front of him, not even when the little shit pissed himself, as evidenced by the pungent odor that wafted through the stale air.
It had taken his people a week to track him down, to make the seemingly unseen come to light. But they had. Ambrose and his army of invisible assets had ferreted each of them out and now here they were. But this one, the one they called The Crunch, was the one who had done it and he was going to pay.
They found him, a man-boy thrashing around the club like the tweaker he was, high as hell and about as coherent as a pet rock. Now, hours later with sweat covering all visible skin, the junkie stared at him with wide eyes, the hunted look of the downed weasel he was across his face.
Ambrose grabbed him by the shirt, his voice deepened by his beast. “Where did you put the money?”
“I...” His gaze darted all over the room, anywhere but at the man holding him or Marcus.
The kid had to be working for Lopez. No one else would dare fuck with Marcus. Not even Guevarra, the D.A. He stood abruptly and made his way over to the window. They knew he was the force behind his father’s brittle exterior. Since that fateful day when he’d caught him doing what he’d always suspected.
Houston pulsed with life. Cars streamed by, people living their small lives. He’d been on the way to a show downtown in the Museum District, but instead had to put his plans on hold to deal with this. With him. His date sent away with hardly a second glance. None of them mattered. Not really. Because they weren’t her.
Astrid.
The fox who got away. It made him laugh, really. He could have had her the night he rescued her from his father but he was too busy trying not to kill the son of a bitch and keep her from falling apart. She was there, in his arms for a second and he couldn’t even keep her. The fucking irony killed him every time he thought about it.
Marcus knew she was meant for him the second he saw her. His wolf wanted to mark and mate her right then but the timing couldn’t have been worse.
She wasn’t of age. And he wasn’t his father.
For her own sake, he dropped her with a phone number in her phone and a promise of protection if she ever needed it. He hadn’t heard from her since.
One kindness Marcus lived to regret every day of his life. What else could he have done? Dating her would be a permanent sentence of always looking over her shoulder, waiting for his father to add her to the long list of underage girls he fucked and discarded like yesterday’s trash.
Not her.
Not ever. To save her, he would protect her, even from himself and the wolves that constituted the world he lived in.
But now my father was dead. Everyone believed he killed him. Only Ambrose and he knew the truth. The old bastard had one too many benders and drowned in a pool of his own drug induced vomit.
Of course, he might have had a little help.
Part of him wanted to rip the bastard’s throat out but going out that way?
It was a fitting end. And now it was Marcus’ empire, the lid of the coffin barely closed. Nothing had changed. A mere ripple in the pond, really. He had held the reins for years. It was just official. But that meant dealing with punks like this and that he knew only too well. Marcus opened a drawer and took out his Glock, setting it on the desk. It was time the kid understood Marcus' sense of humor had long since evaporated. Their eyes met and held and he let his animal show.
Marcus traded in information and payment was due.
“It wasn’t my idea.”
No shit.
“Then whose was it?”
He paused a little too long and Marcus stared at him. “5603 Glenford.”
The light dawned and the kid started to shake. Most did when confronted with their address and what his wolves could do with a small pack of weasels.
“Charlie.” The kid swallowed, his voice coming out all squeaky. “He said he owed you for screwing up his family. That he’d show you he could take back what you owed him.”
Shit. Was that a whisker?
“What I owed him?”
That was absolutely the funniest thing he’d heard today. But when the laugh escaped his lips, it was more like a growl.
A fine sheen of fur spread over the kid’s arms and face.
Much longer and he’d be trying to wrangle the little shit out of Ambrose’s jaws.
“Don’t shift on me.”
Charlie. Of course. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d kept track of Astrid and her family since that night and when he was able to help her, he did. The rehab for her mother, and then nursing school. The money had to come from somewhere. Her father had left them with nothing. Astrid’s scholarship to college. She was still taking online classes but she was close to her degree. And Charlie. Worthless, and trouble any way you looked at it.
“No. I mean, no sir. Charlie said something about his dad going missing after working for yours and the lousy way your dad treated his sister.”
Oh. So that was how he was playing it, was he?
“Did he happen to mention he knew exactly what the treatment was going to be for his sister but he let her father take her to be sold to pay off his gambling debts?” Marcus countered. Fucking little fuck. He never told Astrid what kind of loser her brother was. There didn’t seem much point. The only thing he could do was help her from afar. Let her think her father had a plan in place to provide for the family.
Instead, a month after the altercation
at the house, he shows up for a meeting with Marcus father with a gun. Alligator bait.
Charlie was the drug addicted son of the man who tried to murder his father and ended up in a gator’s stomach somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana. It was one of the only things Marcus father got right. Asshole deserved everything he had coming to him. The pack tore him to pieces and he'd watched.
Astrid had stood at the makeshift funeral, stoic and staring, barely able to meet Marcus eyes from across the barren patch of earth. It sat between them like an open wound. Just like the man who stood at his side. No doubt he played a starring role in a few of her nightmares.
His only consolation was he got to star in a few of his.
But no more. Some monsters need to stay buried in the dark. It helped to see the casket close on his face and see it buried six feet under. Astrid didn’t get that option.
That would have just added to the horrors she’d already had to endure and Marcus would save her from that if he could.
He clenched his teeth and tried not to give in to the desire to plant his fist in the kid’s face or worse.
“Get him out of here, Ambrose. Bring me Charlie, please.”
“The others?”
“Find out who they are for future endeavors, then make them scarce.”
He might have to turn Lopez’s little pets on him someday. It was all about information and he needed to find out what else the alpha of the local coyote pack had been up to. He’d only met two coyotes in his life that were actually worth something. The rest were the scum of the earth.
“God. Don’t kill me. Please...” The sound of blubbering filled the space and Marcus rubbed his temples in frustration.
His wolf licked his lips, spoiling for a fight.
So, Charlie thought he would carve a little piece out of him, did he?
“You want to stay not dead?” He met the gaze of the terrified hacker. “Get the fuck out of my business and stay that way. Anything else you learned, forget it. Talk it up to your friends and you’re done.”
He let the wolf shine in his eyes, his teeth sharpen. Let him think about that late at night and wonder what kind of drugs let him hallucinate that.
Fucking weasel.
He screamed and tried to scramble backwards off the chair, mumbling insensible nonsense.
The other man nodded, hoisting the kid out of the chair and hauling him unceremoniously from the room, the odor of piss and weasel following him out like a pungent cloud. Ambrose would handle things the way he always had, even when it was the two of them trying to protect the family’s holdings from his father’s asinine business decisions and later, his out of control drug use.
The door opened moments later and Ambrose led a familiar looking young man inside. The years hadn’t been kind.
Charlie glared at him, his lips pressed tight, an expression of contempt on his face. Instead of the teenage asshole Marcus remembered from the club, he was met with the haggard and sallow face of someone who hadn’t seen the light of day much at all. Nor was there much in the way of personal hygiene.
Hmmm.
If it had been anyone else, he would have shot him or torn out his throat without compunction. Instead, he was going to take back what was his, one way or the other, and Charlie was going to pay for what he had done.
Ambrose tossed him in the same chair that had been occupied by his piss covered colleague.
Marcus knew more about the young man in front of him than he would ever care to know. If it had to do with Astrid, he made it his business to know. From the mother who worked as a nurse at the hospital in North East Houston just outside the city, while Astrid worked as a bookstore manager at a chain bookstore off one of the main through fairs in the north side of town. He would get what he was owed, one way or another. Charlie Logan was living on borrowed time and interest was compiling. Fast.
“What are you going to do to fix this?” Marcus placed his hands on the file in front of him, his eyes boring into Charlie’s. “Or do I fix it for you?” He handed him the pictures and watched awareness sink in. Pictures of his house. His mother and, of course, his sister.
Of course, he never needed to know Marcus had never stopped keeping track of Astrid.
“I...”
Ambrose went to a black bag in the corner and pulled out a small computer. “Look familiar?” He sat it on the corner of the desk and flipped it open.
Charlie paled and wiped at the sweat beading on his lip.
“I don’t hear you talking.” Ambrose tightened his hold on the other man’s collar and he winced. He threw him out of the chair and on the floor in front of the desk.
“It was Lopez,” Charlie stuttered, crawling to his feet. “They put me up to it. Said you’d never notice. That you deserved to take a hit for what you’d done to your father.”
“Really? Local coyotes want a tangle with the pack?” Marcus watched him gather whatever wits he had left and reach for the computer. He slapped the lid down, catching the young man’s fingers between the keyboard and the screen. “You picked the wrong person to fuck with. Which of you is telling the truth, Charlie? Your buddy said you planned this all yourself.”
“Mph! What do you want?” Charlie jumped back, clutching his hand to his stomach. Tears gathered in his bloodshot eyes and he defiantly blinked them away. Unbidden, Marcus mind flashed to a scene much like this one where he was the one on the other end of the table. The one who had to make the hard decisions to keep him and his family safe. He never regretted it. Not once.
Lopez was an opportunistic bastard and now that Marcus father was dead, he was testing him to see how much he could take. He hadn’t learned his father’s lessons. Marcus gave better than he got when he'd taken out his eye.
He fingered the jagged scar that edged across the top of his right hand, a gift from Lopez's father, and his eyes flickered once more to the window. There was everybody else with their little lives and then there was him. And no one took what was his. Not anymore.
“I want you to answer my question. Where is the money?”
“I don’t have it.” Charlie met his stare head on, the first flash of anger sparking behind his gaze.
Well, wasn’t that just a surprise?
“You’re treading on thin ice. No way you could spend that much, that fast, even a little dope fiend like you.” Which brought him back to the same conclusion as before. Lopez. He’d worked hard to keep the streets under his control but Lopez had been and would always be the proverbial thorn in his side. First the father, and now the son. South of the city, Marcus didn’t give a shit about. Let them have their fun. But when that prick encroached on his people and his business, then fucking heads were going to roll.
“I had debts. I...”
The little fuck was telling the truth. But what was Marcus going to do about it? The gun winked at him from the desk, and he clenched his fist.
“Boss?” Ambrose held out Charlie’s wallet. “I might have a solution.”
“Go on.”
“Put him to work. He can reverse it, can’t you kid?”
His bland disinterest must have given him away.
Nice that Ambrose tried, but it wasn’t something he was interested in. At least, not yet. One look in Charlie’s eyes told him he got that Marcus wasn’t going there. He stole. He was getting payback.
Marcus gaze lit on the picture of his sister. Long, brown hair, and a body built for sin, she had a face that made his dick hard. Those lips, so soft. So fuckable. They always had been. Even back when they were teenagers.
But he wasn’t his father and Astrid wasn’t even in the picture. He’d done everything in his power to keep her out of it.
“No.” The word was past his lips before he ever fully thought it through.
But Charlie had been watching him. A sly expression slid over his face.
“You want my sister.”
There it was, laid out in the open and he couldn’t deny it.
Charlie stared him d
own and swallowed. “Give me my phone.”
About The Author
Erzabet Bishop is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of paranormal and erotic romance. She lives in Houston, Texas and when she isn’t writing about sexy shifters or voluptuous heroines she enjoys playing in local bookstores and watching movies with her husband and furry kids.
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Kitten Around
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Tempting Her Mate: Cider Falls Shifters #1
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Craving Her Mate
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Surrendering to Her Mate
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Tormenting Her Mate
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Playing with Fire
Surrendering to Her Mate Page 10
