“Maybe Wylder should run,” Axel sneered, and glared at me. “All your running around playing hero ended up with five of our men getting arrested and a major deal going sour. How’re you going to make up for losing that ally?”
I blinked at him in honest disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? You were in charge of that deal at the airstrip, and it was one of your men who sold us out. Which we wouldn’t even know to make sure the rat doesn’t come back into the fold if Mercy hadn’t noticed how suspicious he was acting.”
“You have no proof it was—”
“Actually, we do,” Gideon piped up. “And not just circumstantial anymore. There were records of him on the Storm’s payroll in the data I was able to grab from their headquarters.”
Axel spluttered for a second before recovering himself. “And he’ll be taken care of, because I know how to do my job, unlike you.” He cut his gaze toward Mercy.
“You don’t get to tell me what my job is,” I shot back, and turned to Dad again. “You might not want to see it, but we’ve accomplished a lot, and Mercy’s been a part of it the entire way. We’ve gotten the cops off our back with their drug trafficking suspicions, we’ve gotten several of the Storm’s men arrested and killed dozens, and now we’ve compromised their headquarters. Trust me, this once. It won’t take much more to—"
Axel broke in with a rough guffaw. “Did you snort some Glory on the way here? You don’t get to make those kinds of decisions. You’ve gone fucking rogue, and you come in here accusing me of shit?”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I told him. “This is between me and Dad. You’ve never cared about the Nobles beyond pumping up your own ego.”
The vein in Axel’s temple bulged. “You’re just a stupid kid,” he spat out. “Waltzing in here like you can magically solve all the problems I’ve had to clean up after your crazy plans—”
“The only one who’s made any mess around here is you with your stupidity.”
“Maybe I haven’t made enough of a mess, then,” Axel growled with a flare of his nostrils. He whipped his gun from the waist of his jeans, clicking off the safety as he raised it.
My body reacted automatically. I couldn’t tell whether he was aiming it at me or Mercy, but my response would have been the same either way. With a hitch of my pulse, I jerked up my own gun and pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit Axel right in the middle of the forehead. Blood sputtered from the wound, flecks of it landing on my shirt. My father’s right-hand man collapsed to the floor in a heap, his glassy eyes wide open, his face caught in shock. Blood pooled beneath his head and seeped across the pristine marble floor. I lowered my hand with a weird rush of adrenaline and relief, but not a hint of regret.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dad said, raising his voice just a tad for the first time. His face was a mask of tension.
I met his gaze steadily. “What I had to do. Isn’t this who you wanted me to be, Dad? A leader who’s focused and ruthless? You wouldn’t accept any member of the Nobles making accusations and trying to undermine you—and Axel’s been doing that to me for years. This is my home too, and anyone working for the Nobles needs to be loyal to both of us. Or do you only have a problem with me getting fucked when it’s not by one of your men?”
Dad stared at me as if he’d never seen me before. His jaw worked, but he couldn’t seem to find his words. That was fine. Let it sink in.
I wasn’t totally sure what I’d do if he told me to get the fuck out, but I was done cowering. I was done blaming myself for the shit he’d thrown at me. It was time to write my own story.
Before Dad could get around to speaking, someone pounded on the door. One of the lackeys poised around the room ran to answer it.
“Delivery for Ezra Noble,” a man’s voice said. “Do you need any help bringing it in?”
“We’ll manage,” the guy said brusquely, but he motioned over another lackey. We stepped back as they dragged a large crate, waist high and equally long and wide, into the foyer.
What the hell was that? The last time we’d gotten a surprise on our doorstep, it’d ended with a man’s guts exploding all over our front lawn. A sense of foreboding washed over me.
Dad obviously hadn’t been expecting this package either. Snapping out of his shock, he marched over. “What the hell is this?”
“I don’t know,” the first lackey said. “The delivery guy didn’t say.”
We kept a few steps back as they looked it over. There was no identifying information on the outside of the wooden slats, and when they tugged on the lid, it didn’t budge.
“You’ll need a crowbar,” Kaige said.
One of the guys glanced at Dad, who nodded, his expression grim. The lackey dashed out of the house to the garage and returned quickly with a curved length of wrought-iron.
He looked at the crate with a nervous expression and then at me and Dad. “Maybe you should keep your distance.”
Right. Who knew what opening the lid might trigger? We moved to the sides of the staircase for shelter, the other lackeys pulling back too. The guy with the crowbar winced when he must have realized he’d volunteered for the dangerous job, but then he wedged the flat end under the lid and started heaving at it.
After a couple good tries, a few nails popped out. He moved to the next corner. When he heaved up the third, the whole lid flipped off and crashed to the floor.
No explosions. No monsters springing out.