Arjen had gone straight into investigation mode as soon as the idea of killing me no longer appealed to him. He had turned his staff away when they had approached, wanting to clean up the mess we had made. The remnants of our rage crunched under Tywin’s feet as he walked across the floor.
A teasing smirk creased his face after he was done scanning mine and Arjen’s battered and bruised bodies. “Arjen. Khane,” he spoke, stepping over a pile of glass as the smirk he held never dropped from his face. We acknowledged him with subtle head gestures in reply.
Tywin didn’t speak a word in response to what he saw as he set up his laptop next to mine and pulled up a chair he’d had to prop up with a stack of books. He had already warned me that this would be the outcome of me entertaining my feelings for Desiree, so when he gave me the I-told-you-so-look and shook his head at me, I didn’t comment.
We had contacts around the city and surrounding towns, who provided us alerts, whether it was in person, over the phone, or with their surveillance equipment. Tywin had the digital footprint of nearly every eye around the area.
“If you two are back to speaking to each other, I think I know who the crew is that may have your girl,” he stated, keeping his gaze aimed at the laptop as he typed. The way he had said your girl in a teasing tone, not pinpointing exactly who Desiree belonged to, wasn’t missed.
Like me, Tywin appeared to be muscle. The kind of muscle that fought and did nothing but workout. However, he was only muscle when we needed him to be because he was also one of the smartest men we knew.
He’d started out nerdy, tall and skinny, and always getting picked on. Obtaining degrees and certs came easy for him, his brain a network of well put together circuits. His physical transition started to take shape when he was attacked in college and taken for ransom.
His father, my Uncle Leelyn Vallin, possessed power in the syndicate as well. He was the money man who had the ability to clean money so fast and efficiently that he handled several high-profile clients inside and outside the organization.
Our family situation had put Tywin’s life on the line, same as Desiree’s family life had gotten her thrown to the wolves a few times. Instead of complaining about being beaten nearly to death before the exchange for him was made, he had asked Arjen and me to help him learn how to protect himself.
Four years ago, a new Tywin was born: a bigger, meaner, scarier one. His transition sharpened his confidence as he became as much of a beast mentally as he was physically. I taught him how to handle weapons, to fight and track, and how to enforce death when an order was put in. In return and ignoring my protests, he taught me about computers, money, and investing.
He handled some of our family’s finances along with Arjen, but he was who we went to when we needed a digital spy. He dealt exclusively with high-level tech people who pulled off impressive jobs in the digital world that could lead to serious prison time if executed by the wrong person.
His planning and efforts allowed us to have eyes in the back of our heads, so to speak. If someone we didn’t know entered our town, we would know about it.
He was the first to be notified of the two that had been spying on Desiree and Mecca. It was how I knew how to get into their car without being discovered until it was too late.
Despite his ability to get us eyes, Tywin hadn’t found a trace of Desiree’s car inside our viewing zones. He, along with his team, had been working on finding her for the past few hours. I’d gone out with my brother’s guards and scoured the local area, but hadn’t found a trace of her anywhere.
Tywin pointed at the screen. He had downloaded the recordings of the cameras at the spa, replaying footage of me killing the five men that were crazy enough to think they were taking Desiree.
“The savagery,” he whispered under his breath when he viewed the brutality of the killings I had unleashed. After seeing Desiree get slapped, it had spiked my rage and turned me into the animal they liked calling me.
Since most of the world was being recorded in some way or form, it was usually Tywin that kept us from a prison cell by working with his spy network to sanitize our digital pathways, clearing them of the blood and bodies we had to drop from time to time.
“You see that crest?” He froze the frame and pointed at the arm of the man who I had stabbed twelve times. It was hard to believe Desiree had been able to look me in the face after she witnessed a second glimpse into my darkness.
The spa owners were in our network, so they hadn’t called the cops and had willingly given us the footage from their cameras, not that we wouldn’t have gotten it anyway. They would be compensated well for damages and any mental anguish they might have suffered.
I drew closer to the screen at the sight of the crest when Tywin sharpened the view. Arjen’s dark presence appeared at our backs. We had gotten over beating the shit out of each other, and it appeared he had finally finished taking out his aggression on his men.
“That’s the fucking Fallen Angel’s crest,” he stated, squinting at the screen. “We’ve never had beef with them. Why the fuck would they start shit with us? Why the hell would they take Desiree?” Arjen was spitting out the same questions circling like a pack of ravenous vultures in my mind.
“There is only one place they are taking her,” I added, glancing back at my brother. “To their boss’s big compound that no one is supposed to know about.”
“They will see us coming a mile away. They will be expecting us,” Arjen continued, pacing and thinking, his fingers tapping the side of his head. We remained silent, attempting to piece together the reason for such an uncharacteristic move by the FA.
Nothing made sense. What the hell could Angel Ramirez, the head of one of the most notorious cartels in Mexico, want with Desiree?