Chapter 124 125

Chapter 124 125
27

Carlo

I’m running through the crowd to the security room where I know Nario is with the walkies. I want to run outside and start looking for whatever Irish motherfucker has snatched Hazel. But even though that would feel like I’m doing the right thing, it would be counterproductive. I need to mobilize the troops.

I curse myself for letting her go. I wonder how the Elephant planned this, how he knew we were going to be here. I wonder how the Irishman got past the guards.

Nario is talking calmly into the walkie when I reach the office.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I roar. “We’re under attack. Are you on the defense network? I need the troops, now.”

“No, it’s city-wide, Carlo,” he says. “Got the men on alert just in case, but—”

“Hazel is missing. We need to find her. Some Irish bastard got her.”

“That’s impossible,” Nario counters. “Not here, not tonight. Not without shooting. Are you sure she didn’t just get lost in the fray?” The lights blink back on. The security monitors hum to life. “Here we go. We’ll look for her.”

“In the meantime, get the troops …”

I trail off as my eyes stray to the monitor. At the video feed from Benjamin Sweeney’s cell. At the dead guard lying facedown—another fucking widow, Christ—and Hazel, my Hazel, standing there talking to Benjamin Sweeney like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Those doors are linked to the power,” I say numbly. “Those doors are fucking useless. Whose goddamn idea was it to link those to the power?”

“Shit,” Nario growls. He starts barking into the walkie: “All men down to Benjamin Sweeney’s cell now. Now!” He looks at me, eyebrows raised. Why is she helping him? I shake my head. I feel like punching a hole in the wall.

“I repeat, all fucking men to the cell!”

It’s an absolute clusterfuck.

We send our army of men down to the cell and Benjamin, who probably learned about the tunnels from the guard, sneaks out past them. And because we’ve sent our men to the cell, he’s able to sneak out onto the street before Nario and I can get to him. My head is pounding as my mind replays that image of Hazel and Benjamin over and over.

She helped him.

She helped the goddamn enemy.

“Bring her to my office,” I tell Nario as we walk back up the street toward the club.

“I can’t believe that fucking bastard got away,” Nario snarls. “We’re reinstalling all the doors. They need to run on separate generators.”

I laugh grimly. “It’s a bit late for that, friend.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Nario pulls open the side door, nodding for me to go ahead of him. “Why would she help him?”

I shrug. My fists are clenched so hard my nails dig into my palms, and even though my nails are short they feel like they cut deep. “I don’t know. She’s with the men, yes?”

He nods.

“Good. I want to speak to her alone.”

“Sure, Carlo, sure.”

As I ride the elevator up to my office, my foot won’t stop tapping against the floor. The cold sting of betrayal is moving through me like liquid nitrogen, freezing everything, threatening to shatter me. But I channel it all to my foot, letting my fists unclench. If I let out the rage I’m feeling, I won’t have an office left by the time I’m done.

I walk across the room and drop down behind my desk, stabbing the oak material with a silver letter opener. I imagine slitting the Elephant’s throat with it, along with a thousand other violent acts of retribution. The guard’s name was Loris and he was a good man. He had a wife and a five-year-old son. He didn’t deserve what that deranged Sweeney fuck did to him.

The elevator door beeps and slides open. Hazel stands there, shoulders back, not exactly defiant but not exactly guilty either. Is that a shock of anger I see on her face? She walks in barefoot, meeting my eyes.

Nario backs away to the elevator, eyes flitting between us. As soon as the door closes, Hazel makes as if to walk across the room. I gesture with the letter opener. “You’re fine right there.”

“So that’s how it is, now?”

“You seem angry,” I note. “Which, Hazel, seems fucking strange to me, considering you’re the one who just betrayed me.”

“You beat him, didn’t you?” she whispers.

“You mean the man who just tore out somebody’s throat with his teeth? The man who has killed little girls and boys because—well, because he is insane? Is that the man we’re talking about? Yes, Hazel, I beat him, because he is a monster who has information about other monsters. That is how this business works. Why do you care? What possible reason could you have—”

“He’s my brother, Carlo,” she says coldly.

For a long time, it’s like she hasn’t spoken. I look Hazel up and down. She’s so beautiful, even now, even when she’s done to me exactly what I feared she would. She has betrayed me, like Jasmine did, but it’s worse with Hazel because I care about her a thousand times more.

Even now, I want to wrap a blanket around her shoulders and get her some shoes. Yet I force myself to remain still.

“What did you just say?”

“Ben is my big brother. I couldn’t—when I heard him scream, I couldn’t just ignore it. I can’t explain it except to say that if you heard Emily yelling like that, what would you do?”

“Emily isn’t a killer,” I say. “Emily would die before hurting a child.”

“I know,” Hazel says. “I know.”

“Fergal’s daughter is named Colleen. She ran away when she was meant to marry a cartel don. Benjamin told us this.”

She nods. “I know. My name is Colleen Hazel Sweeney. After I climbed down from that hotel room and ran away, I started using the name Hazel Conway. I guess I kept Hazel because I wanted a part of my old self, y’know?”

“Y’know?” That little turn of phrase, with the lilt in the ending, the same way Benjamin used it. I just knew there was something suspicious about that. I told myself I was being paranoid. It turns out I wasn’t being paranoid enough.

She approaches cautiously, walking around the desk. She presses her hand against mine as she blinks back tears.

“I didn’t lie to you about the abuse,” she says. “Dad abused me every day for years, Carlo, for as long as I can remember. He beat me. He blamed me for things that could not be my fault. He took a sick pleasure in finding the most fucked-up cartel don to marry me to. Jorge ‘Guts’ Guzman. He’s crazy. They both are. But Ben’s not as bad as him.”