I've been all sorts of pissed off and sad in my lifetime. I've been to all the dark places. Seen the good, the bad, and the all-consuming fucking ugly of what people are capable of. I have seen it and dealt it all firsthand.

That all-consuming fucking ugly, yeah, well it's about to rear its' head. Delivered by yours truly.

My feet feel like they have million-pound weights on them, heavy like the burning painful sensation in the center of my chest. I smash the call button for the elevator with my fist so hard it splinters, fragments stab my knuckles. I look at them and can't even feel them. I can't even be bothered enough to take them out.

"Brooks!" My name is a cry from behind me as the elevator doors ding open. "Brooks wait!" I don't. I enter the elevator and I turn around, catching Malyssa entering right before the doors close. She slams the stop button. "Please stop, Brooks. Don't be reckless." I grit my jaw as I look down at her, eyes still full of tears.

"You mean like your fucking son?" Arrogant. Impulsive. Controlling. Reckless. So. Fucking. Reckless. I want to tag on all of that but I don't. Not when he's likely bleeding out, lying in a pool of his own blood. Not when she's looking at me with as much pain as I am currently experiencing. "I am nothing like Torey."

Her eyes roam over me for a few long seconds. "No, no you're not like Torey. Not at all. But you understand him, truly understand him, which is why he needs you." I quirk a disbelieving brow at her. "He's going to need you after he recovers from this, Brooks."

"After he recovers?!" I bark out an incredulous angered laugh. "There is no recovering from that!" I shouted the words at her because she can't be fucking serious. I watch her blink once, twice and a few more times after that, trying to keep the tears at bay from my bluntness. 

"Yes, I am fucking serious." Her gem-like blue eyes harden and all I can see is Torey in that gaze, along with anger and determination. "Yes. When he recovers. My son is like me in a lot of ways and having been stabbed in the abdomen is one of them. He will survive because he is a fighter. He will survive just in spite of those fucks. He will survive because he will want vengeance." That last word was said vehemently.

I have to tear my eyes away from the intensity of her stare and tone. She looked like death come to life, murder itself, and malicious as her nickname. And although I wish I could believe her, wish it were enough, I know it isn't. Torey's dominant arrogance and endless stubbornness, that darkness inside of him, wasn't enough to keep him alive. I was in the marines and men don't survive from wounds like that. No matter how big and muscular you are. No matter how strong you are. It just doesn't happen. Torey is going to die and I will lose another person I care about.

"We have all the resources you're going to need to set out on whatever warpath you were about to set out on." She said after I can't find it in me to respond. Not with my previous thoughts. I won't reiterate what she already knows and is denying. She's killed enough people to know. "We can work together, like we had planned to, nothing has changed."

"Everything has changed! They have Dani! They have Wolf!" I feel her tense beside me as I shake my head in disbelief. "They took them. Who knows what that fucking monster will do to her. What they will do to her; to her son."

She reaches out and squeezes my arm with, "we will get them back. "

"If they keep her alive." I picture Dani's bloodied and bruised face after dealing with her father the last time. "You saw what that man did to his daughter, his own flesh and blood. He beat the shit out of her. He booted her in the fucking face. Imagine all the sick shit he will probably do to her now. All the ways he might tor—" I can't bring myself to say the word torture. I can't bring myself to think about what they'd do to her.  "I can't leave her with a man like that knowing what he's capable of."

"I am all too familiar with the type of man Daniela's father is, in case you've forgotten my background." No, I had not forgotten. If the stories and rumors were true about Malyssa then she's been through hell and back. She's experienced all sorts of brutality. She has also delivered it as have the two men she's married to. "We are going to slaughter all of them." That has my face whipping back in her direction. "Together. We are going to slaughter them all— together." Her hand squeezes my arm again. "And when my son gets through this, because he will get through this, we will all be there for him— together. You are not in this alone, Brooks. You have us and we have you. We have your back. You may not consider us anything of much consequence in your life but you are part of this family whether you think of yourself as part of it or not. You have protected my son, my grandson with your life. That is not something that will ever be forgotten." Her grip softens and she pats my arm affectionately. "Sometimes family isn't blood. Sometimes it's found."

Her words struck a cord in me— a very powerful, emotional one that has me swallowing uncomfortably, trying to keep the feelings from pouring out of me. Malyssa had stated such a sentiment while I was in a whiskey-induced fog.  Hearing the words now and stone-cold sober has me realizing maybe I didn't have to be alone anymore. Maybe I would never have to be again.

But what would life be without Dani... Torey... My chest aches in angered pain at the thought.

"Okay," I eventually said, once I was able to get myself in check.

"Okay?"

"I'll stay with you. So, yeah, okay." I give her a nod and, in return, she gives me a soft, sad smile before opening the elevator doors.

We walk together down the hallway at the same quickened pace and when we get into the room Denver and Luke look at me with relief. That's only short-lived though as Luke goes back to his phone call asking a million and one questions. When he finally hangs up, about five minutes later, he looks at the three of us with a grave expression.

"It's not good." Not even a little bit from what I'd heard. "Torey is in some seriously rough shape. He's been stabbed a lot and he's lost a good amount of blood. They're rushing him to the facility hospital."

"Luke, they should take him to a regular hospital! They should take him somewhere where they can—"

"He shot and killed his boss, Malyssa." Her mouth stops working after he'd spoken those words. "He killed an FBI agent. He can't go to a regular fucking hospital."

Her brows furrow, "what... what do you mean he killed his boss?"

"Yeah, what the actual fuck?" Denver reiterated.

Luke's features are set in stone, eyes shards of ice as he looks between the three of us, "it would appear the agent was complicit. He was working with the Albanians and Polat."

"How do you know that?" Malyssa's tone full of incredulousness.

"Torey shot him from the ground. He was standing across from him." Watching him die. Anger floods through me as does a blistering need for retribution. "There's only one reason Torey would shoot his boss after all this time and that's if he had been betrayed."

"And what about Dani and Wolf?" I blurted.

"They weren't at the scene which means they were taken." Taken. I feel a muscle in my jaw tighten at the confirmation of what I already knew was true. There is security footage though. They're going through that now. If they find anything they're going to call me and we'll take it from there."

"What's our next step?" Denver asked.

"Heading back to Vegas. They're already preparing the jet."

✩✩✩

  Agonizing— that is the only way to describe what the past seventy-two hours have been. Absolutely fucking agonizing. The jet ride back to Vegas went painfully slow and then the waiting that took place after was nearly unbearable.

The security footage had come back but given nothing of much consequence other than the fact that Dedaj took Wolf and Remy and Ram took Dani. I thought Luke was going to explode as he watched the footage of a screaming crying Wolf firsthand. When I saw them push Dani into the back of an unmarked van I felt like I was going to do much of the same. They've been scouring footage, trying to find out where they went, but they've found nothing yet.

Then there was Torey.

Torey had thirty-seven stab wounds in total. Thirty-fucking-seven. He wasn't supposed to make it an hour. He wasn't supposed to make it two or three, let alone seventy-two. Because Torey had survived. After hours upon hours of surgeries and numerous blood transfusions, he'd somehow miraculously survived. He's in critical condition but they had managed to miss any vital organs. So Torey still lives and breathes. Even after being brutalized, and lying on a hospital bed in a medically induced coma, hooked up to all this machinery, he's still beautiful. And I never thought I'd long for him to have the ability to say 'even I make dying look good'.

"You're so fucking reckless," I finally said to his lifeless looking self after I'd sat in silence for a while. "Stupid too. Did I tell you that yet? Really fucking stupid." Nothing but the monitor responds to me. No smug replies or arrogant retorts. Just the steady beep beep beep.  I hate it. "You should've let me go with you. I should've gone. I would've protected you." At least I would've died trying. "Your mother said you wouldn't die that easily. I wasn't inclined to believe her at first but well, here we are. I'm sure you'll be up and bragging about it soon enough, saying how the scars just make you more sexy or something to that effect." After a few moments I tentatively grab ahold of his hand knowing if he weren't asleep he wouldn't let me do this nor would he hear the next statement without some assholish response. "I know you think you can do everything all by yourself, handle everything and protect everyone but you don't have to do that anymore. You are not alone anymore, Torey." I repeat the words his mother had said to me outside as I glance over his features, landing on his full lips. "You know, I never thanked you for being vulnerable with me. I know that had to be hard but I want you to know that I saw it and I felt it. I appreciated it."

"It's hard to picture my son being vulnerable with anyone." I quickly pull my hand away from Torey at the sound of Denver's voice. "Too much like his fucking mother, that one. Thinks showing vulnerability is a weakness. Which it can be," he comes to stand on the opposite side of Torey's hospital bed, "but not if it's shown to the right person or people." He crosses his arms over his chest as his hazel depths find mine. "If he showed you that vulnerability it means he cares for you far more than he lets on." I shrug, not knowing whether I can actually believe that statement or not. "I'm serious. He just probably doesn't understand it since he's had to shove it so far down for far too long."

I give him a slight nod of the head before snapping it to the side when I hear a woman screaming, "WHERE IS HE?! WHERE IS MY FUCKING BROTHER?!"

I turn back to Denver when I hear him let out a loud irritated sigh. "That'd be Adri, Torey's older sister."

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!" The voice scream-growls and then a blonde-haired blue-eyed feminine version of Luke stalks into the room. Her enraged eyes immediately land on me with, "who the fuck are you?"

A/N:
And there we have the first chapter!
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