Chapter 2

Two years later

I wasn’t surprisedto see that my fellow cartel lieutenants Eli Brennan and Colter Diaz had gotten here first, which made me the final member of the unholy triad left to run this ship, just as I’d planned, but not without a shit-ton of collateral damage.

I heard the shouting before I saw them, rounded the corner expecting them to be killing each other, but it was Eli doing all the shouting, and Diaz sprawled in his chair as if he didn’t give a shit. One day, those two would take each other out, and I was going to be there to watch it.

The final two.

And then, whatever shadowy figure running all of this would be mine alone to kill.

In the dimly lit back room of an abandoned warehouse, where the cartel often held its impromptu meetings, I found Eli pacing like a caged animal. The news of the arrests had reached him, and his usual easygoing demeanor was nowhere to be seen.

“Three gone!” Eli’s voice was a strained whisper, his hands running through his curly hair in agitation. The air was thick with tension and his temper.

I leaned against the cold wall; arms folded. “It’s a big hit,” I acknowledged, keeping my voice level. In this line of work, staying calm under pressure was crucial, but inside, I felt a pinch of satisfaction that my intel had gotten three of the cartel’s lieutenants off the street, along with a significant number of lower-level assholes.

Three arrested. One dead. Two more to go.

And the boss. Whoever that was.

Eli stopped pacing and turned to face me; his eyes wild. He was always the one who panicked, and how the hell he’d lasted this long in the organization, I didn’t know. He was far too quick to put a bullet between someone’s eyes when his back was against the wall. He’d take himself down one day by not thinking rationally, and it would be me who did the killing.

“Someone’s ratting us out,” he snapped. “It’s gotta be. There’s no other way the feds could’ve gotten to the others.”

The possibility that he’d think there was a rat had crossed my mind, too—a mole in the organization would spell disaster and have fingers pointing at me, and I’d had to consider all angles before jeopardizing my mission by giving Sanctuary the names and the authorities the means to get to them. “Then, we need to be fucking careful,” I snarled the rehearsed words, then pointed at him. “You’re all friendly with Charleston PD, was it you?”

Eli bristled, confronting me, shoving at my chest. I stumbled back as if I’d lost balance—best to let him think he could get the better of me.

“I’m not a narc,” Eli growled.

“Well, one of us is responsible.”

Eli’s frustration was palpable. He slammed his fist against the wall to the side of my head, and I fake-flinched. “If there was a plant, and it comes back that it was one of ours, then it’s us who’s gonna pay.”

He wasn’t wrong. Each lieutenant in this organization—the three of us who were left—had a group of foot soldiers, and yeah, some of them had the potential to be turned.

Ask me how I know.

“They even got Mason,” Eli added. “He’s not just another grunt; he’s been part of this the longest, and he knows more than any of us. If they break him, fuck, we’re dead. All of us.”

Mason was the lieutenant of the Cooper River Cartel with the most seniority and for the longest time, I considered he might be the boss, but I disproved that after fucking him like his closeted ass begged, then, digging out information before adding him to the list I gave to Sanctuary. He wasn’t the boss—he might have been the longest-serving lieutenant, used that to control some of the others, but he was lowly, like the rest of us.

The implication that Mason might talk hung in the air.

Diaz shook his head, about the only thing he added to the conversation, his ever-present Sig cradled in his lap and his cruel eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Diaz was the most dangerous lieutenant. He planned and killed with military precision and strategic thinking, cruel and vicious, he ran the gun side of the business.

If I didn’t know him better, I’d have thought his stillness implied he didn’t care that everything was crumbling around him, leaving the cartel vulnerable and bleeding and ripe for the picking. I’d seen the aftereffects of what he’d done to people who crossed him, or his boss, and it was ugly and evil, worse, he enjoyed it, and his smiles covered the actions of a sadist.

I stepped closer to Eli, lowering my voice. “We trust no one new, Eli, keep our heads down and stay off the radar. We need to reassess our vulnerabilities.” In other words, let me see deeper inside what drives the crimes here.

“Mitchell, this is really fucking bad,” Eli sighed, running a hand down his face. His usual confidence was shaken, a rare sight, and one I was going to use to my advantage.

“We’ll get through this,” I said. “We always do. All we need is some guidance from above.” I stopped short of showing I cared who pulled the strings, still a frustrating shadow I wasn’t able to connect to.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d done the right thing handing names and evidence to Ethan and his Sanctuary organization. I’d weighed up the pros and cons, but taking the lieutenants off the board meant there was less hierarchy and maybe—just maybe—the one running all of this shit would make themselves known.

Then, I could take everything down and die a happy man—the walls were closing in, and in this game of cat and mouse, it was just a matter of time before the next move was made.

“What next, Mitchell?” Eli asked.

“Like he fucking knows,” Diaz drawled, then stood, hooked his thumbs into his belt, and stared right at me.

I wondered what part of me he saw. It wasn’t the old August, nope, he saw Aubrey Mitchell, who amidst the relentless cycle of human trafficking, arms deals, and narcotics, had become someone else. Every day I was undercover, a small part of August Fox was destroyed. I was in a calculated story of survival, a balancing act on the edge of a knife. I was no longer Lieutenant Fox, active SEAL; I was dead to the real world, and now, I was Aubrey, just another player in their dark game.

Diaz inclined his head toward me. “Still, Mitchell, it seems to me you pretend to have all the answers.”

Diaz’s murmured words echoed in my head, stirring a whirlpool of paranoia that was becoming all too familiar. “Pretend”? Did he stress that word or was my mind playing tricks on me? Undercover work had a way of seeping into your psyche, twisting every word, every glance into a potential threat. I found myself analyzing, second-guessing every interaction for hidden meanings and signs of suspicion.

I was getting tired of this shit.

Make sure Annie is safe. Then kill them all.

Diaz took the safety off the gun and pressing it to my temple. “What are the answers, Mitchell?” There was evil in his eyes, the same evil that’d killed entire families, put guns on the streets, murdered in cold blood.

No different to me.

“If you’re going to kill me, then get on with it.”

We stared at each other, any stray ounce of humanity left in me slipped away, and then, he holstered his gun.

“Fuck you, Mitchell. I have my side; you stick to yours. After all your fuckups, there’s a target on your back.”

The fuckups, as the cartel called them—the kids in the trucks not getting to delivery—Danvers had taken the fall for that, the twisted FBI man I’d shot dead. Partly personal, and partly to maintain cover. Actually, no, it’d all been personal. But it’d gotten me noticed, elevating me from useful as shit, willing to kill on order to support the trafficking, to lieutenant with my own portfolio and small army of soldiers who just wanted money.

I confronted Diaz, who met my gaze.

“Says the man who lost an entire shipment of AK47s,” I deadpanned and braced myself for him to throw himself at me. We’d fought before—he was way too quick with his fists—volatile, out of control—but this time, the only sign I’d gotten from him was the tic of his jaw and the tension thinning his lips.

Our cell phones vibrated in unison, and it distracted Diaz enough that, if I’d wanted to, I could’ve snapped his neck.

Eli pushed between us, waggling his phone. “Amos says we’re needed at the big house.”

Adrenalin shot through me—the big house was a fenced-in part of a sprawling compound set deep in the forest, and I’d been inside on just two occasions—once the day I was hired into the cartel, the next, after I’d executed Danvers and was promoted. Was it possible my gamble on decimating the organization at my level had paid off, and I’d finally get to see the shadow behind this?

I knew Annie was there—a reminder of my failure to protect her and James. I’d seen her from a distance, a young woman with her, but I had to stay cold. She was collateral that needed to be moved from all of this.

From me and the killing spree I’d start as soon as she was away.

We took separate vehicles, a couple of my guys leaning against the SUV, armed to the teeth, staring with intent at the guys who were under Eli and Diaz. That’s how this group operated, with each team hating each other and each group trained to work independently.

It made the whole cartel as fragile as a bag of blood.

Easy to cut open and drain.

From the warehouse to the compound, it was a couple of hours’ drive, and we arrived and parked in a row. There was space for more than the three vehicles, and the empty spaces made me happy, knowing it was on me that the other lieutenants were all under arrest and detained.

Well, the ones I hadn’t taken out, anyway.

“Stay here,” I ordered the soldiers in my vehicle.

Not a single one argued—there was no loyalty in any of them.

My boots crunched on the gravel path leading through the heart of the compound. I did my usual checks, but nothing had changed since the last time. High-security fencing enclosed the site, topped with barbed wire—a reminder of the nature of the operations run here. At the top end stood a two-story building, utilitarian in design, but the epicenter of the cartel’s illicit activities. As I approached, I could feel the weight of surveillance on me, cameras covering every angle. The place was more than a hub; it was where the brains of the operation were focused, and orders were given.

The atmosphere inside buzzed with quiet intensity. Screens lined one wall, glowing with feeds from various cameras and data streams. The air was thick with the hum of computers and the low murmur of voices. Rooms branched off from the main hall, each with locked doors I wished I could get past.

And then there was Amos, the comm for the faceless authority running this entire operation. A small, wiry, nervous man, he was always on edge, as if he expected the walls to crash down on him at any moment. Diaz had a way of getting under his skin, using his intimidating presence to make Amos even more jittery. But despite his nervous disposition, Amos was the linchpin in the distribution of assignments, and given he was the link between us and whoever ran this, no one touched him.

Diaz toyed with him, stepped up in his space, intimidated him, and if Amos wasn’t as much a part of this as the rest of them, I could almost feel sorry for him. Still, give him his due, Amos stood his ground, and finally, with a huff, Diaz took a seat.

I watched as he handed out orders, his gaze never settling, flicking to Diaz, then Eli, then always to me for the longest time. Maybe he thought I respected him, but every interaction with him was a calculated dance, a game of me giving him enough respect to get what I needed without arousing suspicion. Amos kept secrets and had knowledge about the workings of this criminal enterprise, and when everyone else had been dealt with, I would shake the information out of him. It wouldn’t take much to break a man afraid of his own shadow.

At one point, I’d managed to plant a bug in one of the key areas of this place, but it was long past viable, not feeding any intel at all, and for all I knew, it’d been destroyed or was lost. Putting it out there had been a risk, but one that had paid off, providing Sanctuary with valuable insights and more, for them to pass on and cut away at most of the hierarchy of the cartel. Eli, Diaz, and me left standing.

The way I wanted.

Brennan the worrier, who covered any deal with stress.

Diaz the loose cannon, who made me look good.

“And you, Mitchell.” Amos cleared his throat. “How do you plan to fix things?” Amos asked me, glancing up from a tablet holding all kinds of statistics.

“How about we talk to the head of this organization and strategize?”

Amos’s eyes widened. “He’d hate that,” he said.

Well, that was more than I’d had before. Head person was male.

“Seems like there isn’t much left here,” Diaz snapped. “Might be nice to know what the fuck is being done to protect us.”

Amos blinked at Diaz, took a slow step back, glanced at me, and then down to his notebook. “Um, Mitchell, back to you. We had buyers, and the twenty-one kids you lost was a big hit.”

Twenty-one children, rescued by Sanctuary with my help.

Children.

“I’ve got a couple of ideas,” I said, keeping my voice even. Inside, my mind raced, calculating the safest bet that wouldn’t blow my cover or jeopardize the mission.

“First,” I continued, “we reroute the next shipment through a different channel. I’ve got contacts in Chicago who can get us through without the heat we’ve been seeing here.” It was a risky play, suggesting a change in operations, but it was also the kind of bold move they expected from someone in my position.

Amos’s eyes widened, and he threw me a considering frown. “He’ll ask me how you can guarantee this new route won’t end the same way?”

I met his gaze, unflinching, and then, threw him a smile, which he almost returned. I caught something in his expression. Was it interest? I could work with that.

“Because the security for this won’t be down to some asshole like Danvers. I’ll personally oversee the operation. I’ll make sure it gets to where it needs to go.” It was a bold statement, but it showed initiative and willingness to take responsibility, traits this fucking nest of vipers valued.

“And the second idea?” he asked and cleared his throat.

This one was going to be harder to sell, but it sounded as if I knew my shit. “We expand our local operations,” I said. “Diversify. If we spread out our activities, it reduces the risk of another major loss. It”s about diversifying our options instead of relying on just one.” This was a more strategic play, appealing to any sense of business acumen.

Amos was silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then, he nodded. “‘Diversify’.”

“If you want, I can explain it to him direct,” I pushed, with a shrug, as if the answer didn’t matter.

“I—I’ll tell him,” Amos muttered, and scribbled something in his notebook. Only, I saw his tell—when Amos said he’d pass on the information, he’d inclined his head slightly, as if he was suggesting that person was somewhere in this huge, sprawling, protected place. Finally, I was close.

I was right.

Whoever ran this shit was here.

With Annie.

With James’s daughter.

I’d tracked the killers. I’d taken them out. I’d infiltrated the Cooper River Cartel. I’d taken down most of it, and now it was only the last head of the hydra to remove.

Get Annie somewhere safe.

Then, I could rest.