It didn’t surprise me in the least when Cruz stepped in front of me. I might have put him on edge, but he was a stubborn shit… he always had been. He’d needed to be to survive our father.
“He’s not in there,” Cruz said, his voice cold. “I already looked.”
I straightened at that. “You did what?” I growled.
“It’s a gay bar, asshole. The back door might as well be a revolving one with all the guys who sneak out to the alley to fuck.”
I’d already scoped out the building, so I’d known the back had an exit, but I’d been forced to choose only one door to watch and my gut had told me Bishop would use the front one to leave, whether he hooked up with someone or not. After all, the man needed privacy for the things he liked to do to his partners.
“Even if I hadn’t seen Bishop, he sure as shit would have noticed me,” Cruz added.
I was in the process of reaching for Cruz when I caught myself. I fisted my hand instead.
Cruz noticed.
But instead of moving away from me, he stepped forward. “You’re not Dad, Matias.” His gaze dropped briefly to my fist. “But you’re not you, either. Please, stop this. Just stop.”
He might as well have asked me to stop breathing. “I can’t,” I whispered. I hated the rage that burned within me. I’d always hated it. And I didn’t believe for a second that I wasn’t like our father. I was just better at not taking my fury out on the people I cared about.
Not people… person. There was only one person I truly cared about and he was standing in front of me.
Are you sure?
I told my inner voice to shut the fuck up even as an image of Sam popped in my head.
Four days… four days since Sam had come apart in my arms and I could still remember every single detail of the encounter. It made no goddamn sense. I couldn’t remember the face of pretty much any of the guys I’d fucked in the past twenty-some-odd years, but it was like every detail of Sam was imprinted on my brain.
“Then at least come home. Ronan’s jet is waiting for us at the airport.”
I sighed. I wasn’t exactly thrilled that the man who was the closest thing I had to a boss knew I’d skipped town to deal with personal business.
I still had no idea how Ronan Grisham had found me and Cruz in the year following the attack on Cruz. My brother had still been recovering while I’d been using every connection in my arsenal to track Bishop. The former-surgeon-turned-vigilante had shown up one day and made us two simple offers.
The first had been jobs where we could use our unique skill sets to help others get the justice they deserved.
The second was information.
It had turned out that Ronan himself had been in the military and had been the survivor of a brutal attack that had left his lover dead. The attack had been for no other reason than Ronan and his partner’s military brethren learning the men were in a relationship. Like Cruz, Ronan had been honorably discharged after the assault.
But there hadn’t been any justice for Ronan and his partner, so he’d gotten that justice for himself.
Then he’d gone on to get it for others and slowly his team had grown. And while Ronan had returned to his roots and was once again practicing medicine as he raised a family along with his husband, Seth, he kept a finger on the pulse of the group he’d created.
Even before Cruz and I had agreed to the deal, Ronan had provided the information I’d been looking for when it came to Bishop’s location. I’d missed the fucker by a matter of minutes in Prague.
It had been game on ever since.
While I didn’t make use of Ronan’s tech guy—or girl, rather—since I still preferred to keep my movements while hunting under wraps, I’d learned enough about the dark web to track Bishop and some of his haunts. No matter where I was or what I was doing, if I got any kind of lead on the man, I dropped everything to check it out. Since I worked jobs with Cruz, it meant my brother was often left holding the bag when I took off, but he’d given up on trying to talk me out of it.
Until today.
I sighed because there was no reason to stay. The ramshackle bar in New Orleans had been a long shot.
But I wasn’t quite ready to leave just yet.
“I’ll meet you there,” I murmured to Cruz as I stepped past him.
“Where are you going?” he asked on a sigh, indicating he pretty much already knew the answer to that.
As I crossed the street and headed for the bar’s front door, I simply said, “To leave Bishop a message.”