Whoa.
If ever there was an ice bucket on your sex drive, the words 'kidnapped,' and 'raped' were it.
He knew someone who was kidnapped and raped?
Cassie?
She knew Kenzi was the name of his sister, but was she okay? Was she almost kidnapped or something?
"Yeah, no. I'm on my way, Gina. Right now, I promise, G. Yeah. Okay. I will. Don't worry. You know I'll take care of them."
"What the fuck just happened?" she asked, unable to keep it in even as he ended the call.
"That's what the fuck I want to know," he said, every inch of his massive frame seeming coiled, tight, unmoving. She wasn't sure he had even been breathing until his chest finally slowly expanded then depressed as he exhaled. "I got to go back to Navesink Bank and see about taking care of my sisters."
"Of course," she said, nodding. "Go. What are you waiting for?"
"Xand..."
"I'll tell Xander. If he has questions, I'll tell him to call you himself."
"The case..."
"Enzo, fucking go," she demanded, making the decision for him.
He nodded, reaching out to touch her chin, then slamming his lips down on hers for a long moment.
"This isn't done," he informed her, then reached the door, and was gone.
No.
She had a feeling that was way, way too accurate.
It wasn't done.
It was just getting started.
SEVEN
Enzo
Maybe it wouldn't seem like it was the case because he had been somewhat estranged from them for such a long time, and had only just started to reconnect over the past few months, but nothing in the world meant more to him than his extended family. Especially since he lost his own mother.
And those girls?
Kenzi and Reese?
They were the fucking world.
No one could convince him they weren't the sole reasons the sun rose every morning.
They were special to him in as unique of ways as the women themselves were.
Reese was the littler one, the sweeter one, the one still soft, still not hardened by the world. True, this might have mostly been due to the fact that she spent almost all her time in the fictional worlds of the books she loved so much, but it was true nonetheless. She was somewhat standoffish, timid, and too fucking good to exist in such an ugly world.
She brought out the protector in him, the need to be strong, to be a shoulder, to be a listening ear on the rare occasion she felt the need to vent, to maybe perhaps try to drag her out with him on occasion so she didn't spend every Friday night of the year in her apartment with a book boyfriend.
Kenzi was the polar opposite of Reese in almost every way.
Kenzi was confident, outspoken, driven, balls-to-the-wall, filter-free, and stubborn. When she was younger, this meant she got into trouble fucking constantly. She was always rebelling because her mother, Gina, came down hard on her and her sister when Paine was out on the streets. She didn't want to lose another kid to the side effects of crippling poverty. Reese, nose buried in a book, didn't even notice any difference. Kenzi, however, was resentful for being punished for something she didn't do.
Then set out to prove that Gina was right by keeping a tight leash on her girls.
Eventually, and it was a slow process that involved a gun to the back of Enzo's head, she did grow out of the rebelliousness. Instead, she harnessed all her energy into getting her business on its feet. And it was. On its feet, that is. Luxe was a unique, one-of-a-kind boutique clothing shop that was Kenzi's pride and joy, her whole life.
And she ran Luxe along with her old troublemaking buddy, Cassie.
Cassie who had been fucking... kidnapped, raped, and murdered.
He hit the parkway, resisting the urge to push eighty. It was the middle of the fucking night. Even the truck drivers were taking the opportunity to curl up in their cabs at rest areas to avoid the upcoming rush hour traffic. The sun was just swirling yellows and oranges across the sky. So him in his very conspicuous car that already got him pulled over more than most would be prime trooper-bait. So, knuckles going white he was clutching the wheel so tightly, forcing himself to keep it under sixty, knowing that getting pulled over was only going to make him even later.
But the silence of his car did nothing but scratch at his already frayed nerves.
And under the anger, was just a tad bit of resentment.
They didn't tell him... why?
Because he was too fucking fragile or some shit like that?
Because they thought he couldn't handle it?
They thought he didn't need the stress on top of starting his life over?
Whatever the excuse, there was none good enough.
If Cassie was kidnapped, raped, and murdered, Kenzi needed him.
If Kenzi needed him, he should have been there.
Days ago.
New life be damned.
No job was worth not being there for his family when they needed him.
If it weren't for Gina not being able to be there because she was taking her sister to a doctor in upstate Jersey, and couldn't get in touch with Paine, he likely wouldn't have found out this shit for another week.
That was un-fucking-acceptable.
He was going to make that shit clear.
As soon as he checked in on Kenz.
As he parked out front then moved into the private investigator's office, he found a shitton of people inside.
Some he recognized. Anyone who was anyone in town knew Sawyer and his team of investigators - Brock and Tig. Tig had actually worked with Xander back in the day when he was in the city. There was also Barrett, the owner of the office, and Sawyer's little brother. They seemed to have a bit of a business rivalry going on since they couldn't seem to work together when they had tried.
Aside from them, he saw a couple hackers he knew by reputation only - a black-haired, blue-eyed, tatted slip of a woman known as either Janie or Jstorm, depending on the company. There was also Alex, a tall, leggy brunette who was Paine's friend Breaker's woman. And finally, some dude named L who worked at Hailstorm, the paramilitary organization up on the hill.
There was some other dude in a black hoodie with white hood pulls that he had seen around town a few times, but didn't know dick about.
"How the fucking hell is my goddamn sister involved with a stalker, kidnapper, rapist, and mother fucking murderer and no one thought to pick up the goddamn phone and call me?" He asked the room at large, not caring who answered him, but wanting some answers.
"Did Paine call you?" That came from Sawyer, someone Enzo had known a bit growing up.
His jaw set on edge, his teeth clamped so tight that there was a shooting pain up his temples. "Paine knew?" he demanded, his anger only intensifying.
Of all people, Paine should have known better, loving the girls the same as he did.
"Shit," Sawyer said, shaking his head. "Who the hell told you then?"
"Gina called, said she got a call from Reese and that I needed to get my ass back down to Navesink Bank because she couldn't get a hold of Paine, and she was taking one of her sisters to a doctor up in Basking Ridge and wouldn't be able to get here soon enough."
"She probably couldn't get Paine because he was on the way here," Tig supplied, drawing Enzo's attention to the huge, hulking man. Sure, Paine and Enzo were huge men in their own right, but Tig had them beat if not much on height, definitely on width. The man looked like he needed to turn sideways to move through a doorway. "He and Reese are with Kenz in the bathroom. She's..."
At that, Enzo's heart seized in his chest. "She's a strong fucking kid, but when she breaks, she splinters," he explained. It didn't happen often, but once every blue fucking moon, she finally had enough of stiff-upper-lipping, had enough of being strong, had enough ranting and raging. Sometimes, she finally let go. And she always seemed like she was completely falling apart.
He looked around at the group, finding
a mix of horrified looks. "Don't bother," Brock, Sawyer's ex-military buddy and current employee said, reading him. "It's all IPs and coin mixers and noise isolating..."
Enzo's hand rose to rub at his brow, feeling useless. He didn't even know what the fuck he meant by coin mixing. He really needed to amp up his studies if he was going to keep his head above water in this industry.
With that realization, he gave the group a nod, turned, and moved toward the only other door in the room. He assumed, the bathroom.
Even as he got close, he could hear the sound of sniffling from inside. Taking a deep breath, he reached for the handle, moving in without pausing.
The space was small, even by bathroom standards, and Paine was in there, every bit as tall and wide as Enzo himself. In fact, the two didn't look like half-anything. They looked like they could actually be twins. Scars and tats aside, they were nearly identical.
Paine's head whipped up as the door closed, taking in his brother with a small amount of surprise, but no small amount of relief. Because Kenzi was against his chest, sobbing uncontrollably, almost alarmingly.
Reese had been crushed against the sink, looking down at her feet. But her eyes shot up at seeing Enzo. They all had the same medium-light mixed-race skin, the same green eyes. But that was where the similarities stopped. Where Paine and Enzo were hulking and deeply masculine of features, the girls, while both somewhat tall, had thankfully inherited their mother's more soft, delicate, beautiful looks. There was no mistaking that, either; they were both ridiculously beautiful. Hence why Kenzi had been a handful when she was younger. And Reese, well, the poor fucking girl just never realized it about herself. It was a damn shame too.
Her eyes sought his, hers tearing up almost immediately, like she couldn't hold it together anymore.
His arm moved out, snagging her around her shoulders, and curling her into his side even as he moved forward to put a hand on Kenzi's shaking shoulder.
"Kenz, hey," he said, voice low, like you'd use with a startled dog. But she heard him. And where she might normally resent him using that tone, she was too broken to care as she turned from Paine's chest to drop against his instead, leading both Reese and Enzo to put arms around her.
He kissed her temple then looked over her head toward his brother, giving him a 'what the fuck?' look.
He mouthed to him she watched her die. At another silent look, Paine shrugged. In a video.
Fuck.
Goddamn it.
It was worse than he thought. He knew from experience that knowing bad shit went down was completely different from witnessing it. That shit marked your soul in a different, uglier, more permanent way.
He had plenty of those marks of his own.
It was an impossibly long time before Kenzi could even pull it together long enough to fully hold her own weight. Reese shuffled her over toward the sink, wetting paper towels, and blotting at Kenzi's face with it, all of them agreeing that they needed to get her out of there, get her home, get maybe some sleeping meds in her or something to let her sleep through a bit of the shock.
Paine opened the door, starting to lead Kenz out when they heard the guy in the hoodie speaking to the rest of them, all of them so apt on what he was saying that no one noticed the group reemerging.
"And that," he said, rewinding something that none of them could see. "She can't scream here. She cut out soon enough for most people to think it was real. But right here," he said, stopping the video, "the air in her lungs would push up the blood she is choking on and she would only be able to make a gurgling death noise."
There was a collective in-drawn breath, a stiffening among everyone who had heard this guy's comments from the beginning, like they all agreed, like it was, well, fucking snuff, not a real murder.
"Really, it's some good shit. Ruggero Deodato would approve." The guy looked around, seeking recognition of that name somewhere. Finding none, he explained. "Ruggero Deodato... Cannibal Holocaust... 1980 horror film. He was brought in on charges of actually killing his actors on set the gore was so realistic. Sick shit. Though, if you asked me, that mother fucker should have been charged with animal cruelty since that shit was real in that movie. But, yeah, this is right up there with that. These two could be making a mint. She's a really good actress."
And it was right then, completely devoid of the crippling pain that had been there just moments before, Kenzi's voice raised above everything else.
"Yeah, she is," she said, making Enzo shift to look at her, finding her face splotchy, her eyes red. But there were no tears left. And her jaw was clenched hard in anger. "I took a sewing class after school in high school. Mom wanted to make sure Reese and I stayed out of trouble." That was the damn truth. Both Gina and his own mother, Annie, had tried to keep them all as busy as possible, so they weren't even aware of the allure of the streets. "So she pushed me into that since I already liked making my own clothes. Reese wrote on the school newspaper and was a part of four book clubs." She had a weird, inappropriate smile pulling at one side of her lips then. "You know what Cassie was into?"
"No, honey," Tig, the giant, said, watching her very carefully.
"Drama," she declared.
Then she demanded they play her the video again. When no one would oblige, she physically pushed Barrett out of the way to do so herself, making a small smile tug at Enzo's lips. He would always prefer her fire over her waterfalls. Any goddamn day.
"That son of a bitch!"
Inappropriate as it was in the situation, he felt his lips curling. That was his Kenzi.
"Kenz, you're gonna need to let everyone else in now," he told her, tone quiet, but firm. If he didn't use that tone, she would shoot off on some tangent, and no one would be able to get through to her.
"That's Santi!" she declared, making him stiffen slightly. He couldn't claim to know everything about Kenzi's life, especially with being so estranged for so long, but he knew enough to know that Santi, or Santino, was Cassie's longtime boyfriend who Kenzi plain didn't like.
"Santi?" Alex repeated.
"Santino. The guy in the video? That's Santino, Cassie's boyfriend. That's his bracelet. She used to bitch about it all the time, said it made him look like a wannabe mobster. Which it totally did. And he's wearing it in the fucking video. And... her vag was shaved!"
Well, okay then.
Chicks noticed the strangest shit about one another.
At everyone's obvious discomfort, she added, "She was gone a week, and she has no stubble?"
He maybe zoned out there, his gaze moving up toward Sawyer and Brock whom he knew best out of all of them, figuring that if they were there, they were there because Kenz went to them for help at some point. And they didn't think of calling him?
Sure, Paine knew apparently.
And he would deal with that shit later.
But Sawyer should have known fucking better. He knew how much his sisters meant to him. He knew shit didn't go down with them without Enzo knowing. Even when Gina didn't want him around them when they were younger, he kept eyes and ears out for them, making it clear to everyone he could that there better never be a hair out of place on their heads, or they'd pay with their fucking lives. A task he would relish.
He knew every single time a Henchmen, or one of Paine's friends, one of Sawyer's guys, anyone gave Kenzi a ride, sometimes unwilling because she was too drunk to acquiesce. He knew each time someone stood up for one of them in public if a guy was getting too pushy with his advances.
So him not calling Enzo about something that was obviously fucking serious, yeah, it meant they had a problem.
"Kenz, honey," Tig's deep voice interrupted his mental plans of threatening to make a Eunuch out of his old associates.
Honey?
Honey?
So that was the way it was.
"No fucking shit," he hissed, shaking his head, making everyone's eyes snap in his direction. "You're involved with my little sister, and you didn't think to A - tell me that, or B - tel
l me she was in danger. I can't say I'm all that fucking happy with this situation. I know Rhodes has a lot of respect for you, but I can't..."
"E," Kenz cut in, brow raised, voice steel. "Who I do or don't fuck stopped being your business when, well, I was legally of age to make those choices for myself. He didn't call you because I explicitly told him not to. Same for Paine for that matter."
Unfortunately, that didn't change shit.
Loyalty in relationships was important, so he was going to let Tig's silence slide, the rest of them? Yeah, they were not getting off that easy.
"Oh!" Reese's quiet voice squeaked, making everyone look over, like maybe they forgot she was there. Honestly, they probably had. Enzo felt a small pang inside at that, knowing that she really did like her invisibility at times because it gave her more free rein to do her own thing without being nagged, but that it also had to wear on her on occasion. And she was worth fucking noticing too. She was a great fucking kid. Well, not a kid anymore, but he was sure he would always see them, especially her, that way.
She was almost manically patting down her pockets.
"Ree, calm the fuck down," Paine demanded, tone soft, as it always was when he talked to her. "What are you looking for?"
"My phone. We have to call Mom. She's probably having a stroke."
Enzo felt a small smile pull at his lips. See? Good fucking kid.
Paine handed her his phone, and she scrolled through the contacts as she made her way outside.
Enzo moved to follow her out, not liking this whole situation, not liking one of Kenzi's own betraying her, not feeling comfortable with either of the girls being alone, even on the main street across from the police station.
Kenz had Tig now apparently.
And while he was pissed he wasn't told about that because it was just a decent thing to do, he liked that she had someone. Granted, as a whole, Kenz was a firecracker who could take care of herself. But the big brother in him was glad she was under the protection of a man such as Tig. Not only was he just intimidating to look at, but he also had a reputation. It was enough for most people to know better than to go near what was his.
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