Chapter 347
He couldn’t finish the sentence. The thought that Eliza had been poisoned under his watch, while he was busy playing corporate games, made him want to put a bullet in his own head.
He walked out into the rain. He needed air. He needed to scream.
His phone buzzed. A text from Vinnie Sharpe.
She’s awake. Damon is still there. She looks broken, man.
Dallas stared at the screen. He wanted to reply. He wanted to type: Tell her I love her. Tell her I’m coming.
But he couldn’t. Not now. Not while Dosha was still out there with a body double and poison. Not while he was a walking corpse held together by drugs and spite.
He deleted the draft.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking — not from the cold, but from the realization that his sacrifice might not be enough.
Simmons walked up, holding a heavy sledgehammer.
“Boss,” Simmons said quietly. “Standard procedure for compromised assets?”
𝘈𝖽𝖽𝘪𝖼𝗍𝗂𝘷𝗲 ոо𝗏е𝗹s 𝘰n 𝗀а𝗹𝗻о𝘷𝗲𝗹𝗌.𝖼o𝘮
Dallas looked at the hammer. Then he looked at the container where Estevan was waiting.
“Give it to the men,” Dallas said, his voice strained. He leaned heavily against the SUV, his breath catching in his throat. “He took my childhood. He tried to take my wife. Finish it.”
He turned away, refusing to watch.
A muffled thud, followed by a choked cry, echoed from inside the container. Then silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain.
Dallas didn’t look back as his men emerged.
“Dump him on Dosha’s front lawn,” Dallas ordered, wiping a speck of blood from his cheek. “Pin a note to his chest: Payment Received.”
“Yes, Boss.” Simmons signaled his team. Two men went in and dragged out the unconscious body of Estevan Norton, his legs trailing uselessly behind him, twisted at unnatural angles.
Dallas leaned against the SUV, his adrenaline crashing. The cortisone was wearing off, and the pain in his knee was returning with a vengeance, joined by a crushing pressure in his chest.
Vance was there instantly, shining a penlight into Dallas’s eyes. “Your pupil response is sluggish. Your heart rate is 140. You need a hospital, Dallas. Now.”
“No hospital,” Dallas gasped, pushing Vance away. “Take me to General Higgins.”
“The General?” Vance looked incredulous. “It’s 3 AM. And you look like you just walked out of a horror movie.”
“He owes me,” Dallas said, climbing painfully into the car. “I need the Ghost Protocol.”
“That’s for dead men,” Vance said, climbing in after him.
“Exactly,” Dallas said. “I need Eliza to be a widow. A protected widow.”
Eliza sat on the edge of the four-poster bed. The room was opulent, decorated in heavy gold and velvet, but it felt like a cage.
She had been discharged an hour ago. Damon had insisted she come here to recover, and with her apartment gone and the penthouse off-limits, she had nowhere else to go.
The door opened. Marilyn Luna, Damon’s mother, breezed in carrying a silver tray with a bowl of bird’s nest soup.
“Eat up, dear,” Marilyn said, smiling with a warmth that didn’t reach her eyes. “You look dreadful. But don’t worry. The Kochs never appreciated quality. We do.”
.
.