His Inheritance

I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love

"Boss?"

Steve had just reached is study, ill at ease with the message Dyson sent him early this morning. All it had said was urgent. And that had been enough to pull him out of his bed before he wanted to leave it.

He wasn't sure what was worse, the implication of that text or leaving his little wife there sleeping peacefully in his bed. He'd quickly relieved himself in the shower, trying to be quick about it. But his hand couldn't come even remotely close to the sweetness of her tight little body. He'd barely explored her, just a few days into their marriage.

So Steve was in a foul mood to start the day, glancing up as Dyson bustled into the study, shut the door.

"What?" he asked his man with no small dose of impatience.

Dyson's color was high, his ears blood red. "There was another incident last night."

Incident? Steve had a bad feeling about this.

His man's expression was grim. "They hit Giordano's last night."

Giordano ran a highly successful retail shop that was under his protection. They dealt in hunting and fishing gear. It was a great front for running guns and ammo under the radar. The man's father had been an old poker buddy of his father's and they always had a good relationship, and dealt well together.

Anger rose quickly. "How bad?"

It took Dyson a moment to meet his gaze which just meant it was worse.

"They waited until they closed shop," Dyson explained. "And they broke in through the back before the staff could even make it out for the night. They got a shit ton of ammo, several rifles, and all their cash."

"Fuck," Steve muttered. Running a hand over his beard, he waited. He could just tell there was more by the way Dyson was shifting his weight from one foot to the other on the other side of his desk. "Anyone hurt?"

Dyson dropped his gaze. Oh, this is bad.

"Yeah, Vince's kid took a rifle butt to the head," Dyson told him. "Knocked him out. He's in the hospital. So's the girl..."

"Girl?" Steve felt bile rise in his throat, afraid of what direction that was going in.

"Yeah," Dyson explained. "The girl worked at the shop. A college kid. They, ah, they did a number on her... A really bad number on her. Yeah..."

Rape?

"How bad?" Steve wanted to know.

"More than one of them got her," Dyson told him in a lowered voice. "Cut her up too."

Steve knew what this was. Rising from the desk, he stared his man down.

"This is the second fucking time they've hit something that's ours," Steve said angrily. "And this is far worse than the first one."

The first hit had been on a pawn shop under his family's protection. Yeah, they'd taken the cash and most everything of value in the dive. But he hadn't considered that, at the time, as more than just a random hit.

That had just been a week ago. Now Giordano's had been hit and hit hard. It was on the same street, a much more lucrative target. And the loss of money and weaponry was bad enough. Attacking the staff? Violence and rape? That upped the ante.

The strike was meant to inspire fear. To shake faith in his leadership. While he wasn't entirely surprised by the move, he was taken aback by the brutality of it. It wasn't Barnes's usual style.

"Any clues?" Steve demanded. "I want to know everything."

"I sent Scott and Neal down there," his man explained. "If it had just been a B&E and robbery, we might have had a chance to keep the cops out of it. But with the assaults? The girl?"