Malo - Page 25

“Let me grab one from the back,” Antonio replies, rising to his feet. “We’re going to need to plan this carefully if we want to pull this off.”

“Don’t worry, I know how to handle them,” Blue adds. He’s got a grin on his face that tells me he’s already filling out the details inside his head, and I meet his gaze for a moment. I know there’s a reason Beast chose him to come with me. He knows he’s able to strategize, and that he’s not afraid to use some serious firepower should the occasion call for it.

And, right now, I know we’re going to have to use everything at our disposal to even make a dent in Las Rosas territory.

Antonio returns with a map, and lays out the locations of all three warehouses. We crowd around the table, and Blue begins to trace out a potential plan of attack that would deal with all of the warehouses in a single night.

“We’d need to start here,” he muses out loud, tapping his finger at the warehouse farthest from Los Desperados headquarters. “And work our way back down through the city. This one next, and then this one, and then pull back to the HQ to prepare to defend for a while.”

“How soon can you make this happen?” I ask Blue, and he glances up at Marquez and Antonio.

“How much firepower do you have right now?” he asks. “Guns, grenades, anything else you can make?”

“Let me show you the warehouse,” Antonio suggests, rising to his feet. “You’re clearly the expert here. You can tell us how much more we need.”

“Yeah, always better to have too much than too little in these kind of cases,” he agrees, following Antonio out of the room.

Maria lifts her head to watch them, about the most interaction she’s had with anyone since we arrived here.

My eyes linger on her for a moment, and I wonder if the other guys have noticed how nervous she seems. They’re probably wondering what she’s even doing here, given how much is riding on this mission. She glances up at me, and then looks away again quickly, as though she can tell what is going through my head—as though she can tell that I am wondering if she is up to this.

I want to pull her aside and tell her not to lose her nerve on me now, to remember everything she did to bring Rayo under our control – that she’s capable of so much more than she gives herself credit for, and she just needs to remember that, keep focused on it.

But I have to remember that she’s not part of this world by choice. She never wanted any of this. She’s only here because she thinks it’s the best way to get her father back to safety.

I follow the guys out of the room, but before I go, I plant a hand on her shoulder, just for a second, and she jumps. When she looks up at me, I give her a smile. She manages to return it, though I can tell it’s a struggle for her.

“You good?” I ask her. I need her to tell me she’s okay. Because if not, I’m going to need to put her on the next flight back to Houston before she gets us in trouble.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she replies, and I see a flash of the steel in her eyes that I’ve come to admire. I’ve known some tough sons-of-bitches in my time, but she’s got to hold a candle to a few of them. Thrown into the deep end of a world she’s never known before, and she’s ready to fight for herself and her family.

I just have to hope she’s ready for whatever comes next. And that she doesn’t let her nerve waver.

CHAPTER 20

BEAST

Iwipe the sweat from my brow, and shake out my aching fist. I’d left Rayo in the care of some of my men as soon as he came into the compound. I knew I had to play it carefully, make him sweat before I could begin my interrogation. Not that my men didn’t work him over a little given the black eye he was sporting when I walked in.

He’s the closest we’ve got to an inside track on what Las Rosas Negras are planning, and we needed all the advantages we could get. If I can force some information out of him, then we’ll have the upper hand here.

But, in reality, there’s another reason that I’m in here with him, and not leaving this interrogation to one of my men. There’s a reason I have Thor on the door, watching to make sure we’re not disturbed. Because Rayo is a name I recognized, the moment I heard it. And I want to make him pay for what he did to Bella.

I catch my breath as I take a step back, and Rayo spits out a mouthful of blood onto the floor. I know it’s not even close to the pain he let Sheriff Grimes inflict on Bella, but it’s a start. There’s some satisfaction in knowing that I can make him pay for at least some of it, though I know I’m far from done with him yet.

“You ready to talk yet?” I snarl at him, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him roughly toward me.

He grins up at me, teeth smeared with blood, and shakes his head. “I’m never going to talk,” he shoots. “You think it’s that easy to get me to betray El Serpiente?”

I let go of him again, shoving him back down into the seat. He’s tougher than the others we’ve had in here. The Las Rosas Negras we’ve picked up before have always been quick to spill everything they know. The only problem is, it’s nothing more than what we already have. But Rayo? Rayo’s further up the food chain. He’s got something we can use, I’m sure of it. And I’m not going to walk out of this room until I know we have it.

I swing another punch at his jaw, slamming my fist into him and sending his head snapping backward—but it still doesn’t wipe that fucking smile off his face. He knows he’s gotten to me, and he knows I’m still smarting over all the shit his men put my Bella through, not to mention Harley, and I’m not doing a good job of covering it up.

“Tell me what you know,” I growl, pushing my face closer to his, locking eyes with him and daring him to defy me again. Thor is right outside the door, ready to take over when I get tired, and he’s even more brutal than I am.

Rayo shrugs again, like he doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. I snarl with irritation, and turn on my heel, pacing the floor in front of him. I should have known he would be tough to crack. He’s clearly got some kind of power in the organization, and he wouldn’t have survived this long if he didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. That tattoo on the inside of his wrist, the black rose, taunts me as my mind races, trying to find some new approach to this. There must be something that he has, something he won’t lose, something he won’t risk that I can put on the line to force him to give us what we need.

“They call you Beast, right?” Rayo asks, his voice a little scratchy.