Going Mad For Maddox

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

MADDOX

"WHAT THE FUCK are you doing here?"

My grandfather steps into his library, snapping his fingers at me before shoving a file at my chest, "don't speak to a woman like that, Maddy."

"She's not a woman she's a nuisance."

"Do you even know what that word means?" Said nuisance asks, having me do everything in my power to not pull my Glock out, and empty the clip into her head.

"And do you know that the average intelligent person would usually leave when they sense they're clearly unwanted somewhere?"

"Stop it, Maddox." My grandfather pours himself a glass of what can only be his favorite raspberry sweet tea. The same sweet tea that was banned years ago for the sole conspiracy of it causing stomach cancer, but that never wavered my grandfathers love for it. Instead he just now orders a box of them from eBay ever so often when his stash is running thin. "She's here to help us and you will treat her with respect."

"That's impossible with her."

"Then make it possible." My grandfather's tone shifts, making me feel like I'm thirteen again. "Do you hear me?"

Isabellas lips lift into an amusing smirk and proceeds to hide it behind her freshly manicured hand, having me clench my teeth together, letting out a curt, "I hear you."

My grandfather had called me early this morning explaining that someone was joining our mission. At first I thought it might've been one of his older colleagues that have aided us in the past, but to my awful surprise it was no other than the rodent herself, Isabella Martin.

How she got into contact with my gramps is beyond me.

"Isabella tell him what you told me."

She crosses one leg over the other. "Pavel and...Alonso—" she mentions her grandfather's name, "—have been hiding in the warehouse where they keep their most prohibited goods. Not only is the placed packed with every illegal weapon and substance known to man it's also being guarded by forty different military trained guards."

I tap, tap, tap, "only forty?"

"What do you mean by only?"

"Both Pavel and Alonso are worth over billion dollars together." I stretch my legs out in front of me, playing the part of someone at complete and utter ease. "It just surprises me that less than half of hundred men are solely protecting them."

She matches my posture, "because the rest of their men are guarding the trafficking rings placed all around this fucking country."

"Open the file I gave you, Maddox." My grandfather interrupts.

I roll corner of the manila folder in between my fingers before flipping it open. I take a moment to read the vile information inside of it before throwing the flimsy thing onto the coffee table in front of me. "There's nine different rings alone in this city and twenty-seven in this fucking country?"

"And that's not counting the islands." Isabella's voice stutters, lifting my eyes I analyze her tight expression, revealing that there's more to the story that she has yet to relay to us.

A secret she's never uttered out loud.

"You're hiding something."

"What makes you say that?" Her nose twitches.

My grandfather who has a knack for pointing out liars notices her slip up, "do not hide anything from me Isabella or I will let my grandson kill you without a headstone ever bearing your name."