Valenzuela settled in like he was about to tell a tale and spoke again.

“You see, Georgia, I have a rather tenacious adversary. I’ll need patience in dealing with them, and in the meantime, I need nothing further to take my attention. I also need not to damage relations with those who keep out of my way. I’m afraid, for you, it’s important for me to keep the Sebring brothers happy.”

“So you’re telling me, Nick playing my sister…what? He’s got some guilt and he wants me dead because pissing you off got her dead? So to make him happy you’re gonna take me out even though because of you I’ve got nothing?”

He shook his head. “Nick doesn’t want you dead. He wants you neutralized.”

So the invisible Nick Sebring was communicating his wishes.

Fucking fucker.

She should have taken care of him first. Unfortunately that had not been a viable option, considering at the time the House of Shade wasn’t strong enough to withstand the onslaught from Knight Sebring and Marcus Sloan if she had.

Then he played her sister and when shit got hot for him, he disappeared.

Months…nothing.

Now…

Fuck.

She leaned back slightly and crossed her arms on her chest, drawling acidly, “Congratulations. Job done.”

“It’s me who wants you dead,” Valenzuela stated.

Georgia Shade froze solid.

“You’ve cost me money. You’ve cost me time. You’ve cost me assets. All of that has value. I don’t like losing things I value, Georgia,” Valenzuela went on.

She stared at him, giving all she had to keeping her breathing even. She’d lost everything to this motherfucker. She was goddamned going to keep her dignity.

“But because he loves your sister, Sebring wants you neutralized, which means breathing,” Valenzuela continued.

She let out a heavy breath, saying, “He didn’t love my sister. He played my sister.”

“He seems to be going far out of his way for a woman he’s playing with.”

“Then he’s going in the wrong direction since, because of you, there’s no sister to love.”

Valenzuela’s knowing smile sliced through her sternum all the way up her gullet.

A knowing smile.

What did he know?

He loves your sister.

Loves.

Goddamned loves.

In her current situation, the only thing that could keep her alive was the wishes of Marcus Sloan.

Or a Sebring.

No. Not the wishes of a Sebring.

The wishes of Olivia who would never want her dead.

Fuck, Liv was alive.

This was Sebring.

She looked down at Gill and felt the dry sting her eyes.

It was all Sebring.

She looked back to Valenzuela to see his smile had died.

“Unfortunately,” he kept going, “that doesn’t work for me.”

One of his men started moving toward her. She felt another approaching from behind.

She opened her mouth to shout.

She got not a sound out.

Fifteen minutes later, beaten bloody and bullet-ridden, Georgia Shade bled out five feet away from Gill Harkin’s body.

She was found with the gun that murdered her man in her hand, powder residue on her fingers. His fingers were curled around the gun that had the clip that had been emptied into her body.

It looked like a lovers’ spat gone terribly wrong in a ratty twenty-dollar-a-night motel in the middle of nowhere between two criminals desperate and on the run.

And the House of Shade was no more.

* * * * *

Eric

Eric Turner prowled out of the motel room, phone to his ear.

He heard the connect and got the clipped greeting, “This number is only for emergencies. Please, fuck, do not tell me you’re calling with the score of the goddamned Broncos game like last time. I’m in Tennessee, not on the moon, and we got fuckin’ DIRECTV with Sunday Ticket. I get the scores same as you do.”

“I’m not callin’ ’cause a’ that. I’m callin’, askin’ you to please tell me that bloodbath is not you,” he clipped back.

There was a beat of silence before Nick asked, “What bloodbath?”

Turner gave him short, curt details.

“Fuck,” Nick muttered.

Turner relaxed.

It wasn’t Nick.

“Well, the good news is, Denver is gonna be a lot more quiet, Valenzuela won his war against the House of Shade. No more explosions. No more dead bodies,” Eric noted.

“No more war,” Nick concurred.

They were both silent.

Turner drew in breath.

“She’s resting easy now, man,” he said quietly.

For another beat, Nick didn’t answer.

And the one word was weighty with meaning when he finally said it.

“Yeah.”

Hettie was avenged. The bad guys got their due. Not how Turner would have played it, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen all the same.

Moving them out of that heavy, he observed, “Now all we gotta do is sit and wait to see how Kane Allen and his Chaos crew deal with Valenzuela’s shit.”

“That MC is solid, Turner, so I hope there are no more bodies. Least not ones from the wrong side,” Nick replied.

“I hope that too. Though I’ll have to get it through the grapevine.” He glanced back at the open door to the motel room, now teeming with local cops and not-local Feds, feeling the twist of disgust pull at his mouth. “Done with this shit.”