Revenge in Ruin

Chapter 6: Rulers

Jax POV

I was spinning my phone on the mahogany table, deep in thought about our next move, when the screen suddenly lit up and started vibrating. I swiped the screen and brought it to my ear.

“Hello, Sloane,” I said.

“Hey, Jax. I need you to go somewhere for me,” Sloane’s voice came through the line.

“Okay. Message me the details,” I replied, glancing across the empty chairs at the coffee-stained disaster sitting opposite me. “And... do I need to take her?”

There was a brief pause on the other end. “Yeah. She is our group member now, so I guess yes, she should know what we are doing,” Sloane said. Before I could even argue, she cut the call.

I stared at the black screen for a second. The thing was, we still weren't entirely sure if we should even let this girl know what we were actually doing. She never seemed to take anything seriously, and I had a nagging feeling she was going to mess something up. Honestly, we all had that feeling.

“Okay, brat. We’re going,” I said, shoving my phone into my pocket and standing up from my chair.

Aella snapped out of whatever trance she was in, her eyes flaring with annoyance. “Who is a brat? My name is Aella.”

“Who cares about your name? You act like a brat, so I’m going to call you a brat,” I shot back carelessly. I pulled my car keys out of my pocket, tossed them in the air once, and walked out of the meeting room, heading down the sleek hallway toward the exit.

She hurried to catch up, her boots squeaking faintly against the polished floorboards. As we stepped into the elevator, I noticed she looked completely lost in thought, staring blankly at the metal doors before she finally spoke up.

“Whose company is this anyway?” she asked, looking around the modern interior.

“Mine,” I said simply.

“Why the hell do you even need a corporate company for?” she asked, her brow furrowing in deep confusion.

“Because we needed something to cover our tracks. We can’t just walk around town and tell everyone that we are mafias,” I explained as the elevator doors dinged open, leading us into the private underground parking garage. “If we lie about our jobs, it gets incredibly suspicious when people find out we don't actually work anywhere but still have mountains of cash. Sloane said we had to fix that problem. She and I started this company from scratch, and later on, she handed the whole thing over to me.”

Aella scoffed, walking alongside me through the rows of luxury vehicles. “So you’re doing double work? And you’re the only one doing it? Isn’t that incredibly stupid?”

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around to stare directly at her. “Who the hell said I was the only one?”

She blinked, momentarily thrown off by my tone. “What do the others do then?” she asked.

“You’ll find out later,” I muttered, turning back around and walking toward where my car was parked in the shadows.

Jax POV

I unlocked the doors, the headlights cutting through the dim parking garage before getting in the car. I started the engine, letting it idle as I pulled out my phone to open the messages Sloane had just sent to see what kind of work she had given me.

It was a specific location pin. Along with it was a note: I was supposed to head there and meet with Enzo Lane's left-hand man.

I stared at the coordinates, stunned. Wait... how the hell did they get his location in such a short amount of time?

Wow. Ivy is terrifyingly fast.

Sloane POV (A Few Minutes Earlier)

“So? Anything ?” I asked, leaning over Ivy’s shoulder as her fingers flew across her laptop keyboard.

“Nope. The information I managed to scrape together is only this,” Ivy replied without looking up. She tapped a key, bringing up static-filled security feeds. “I checked the surrounding cameras, but there’s nothing more. A lot of the street feeds are completely turned off, or they were intentionally broken.”

While Ivy worked the digital side, I checked the local underworld wire and news logs to see where Enzo had been spotted recently. I called a few of our trusted street contacts to dig up more on his patterns.

Enzo was smart. He mostly stayed in blind spots areas with fewer cameras, or rather, areas with hidden cameras that he thought no city grid could track. But he didn't count on Ivy. She could hack into private networks he didn't even know existed.

From what my contacts told me, he kept two bodyguards with him at all times. But occasionally, a third, completely unknown man was seen walking with him. No one knew who this mystery man was or if they did, they were too terrified to talk.

Whenever my contacts dropped a potential street name or neighborhood, I fed it to Ivy. She immediately searched the coordinates while I wrote everything down, building a map of his movements. His most visited location on the map was a massive building the headquarters of something. But the registration was completely wiped.

“Found him!” Ivy suddenly shouted, slamming her hand on the desk.

I leaned closer to the screen.

“He just entered the building with his two guards,” Ivy explained, zooming in on a grainy freeze-frame. “And look right here: the guy on his left side has his phone exposed right toward the security camera. Wait, let me track the device's MAC address...”

Her screen flashed with lines of code. A second later, a green tracking dot pinged on a digital map.

“Done,” Ivy said, a triumphant smile on her face.

The moment the location stabilized, I picked up my phone and called Jax. He was already driving near that exact area, and since Ivy and I were currently working out of Ivy's house, he was the closest asset we had to the target.

Jax POV

I put the car in drive and stepped on the gas, pulling out of the garage and into the city traffic. I glanced over at her out of the corner of my eye and winced. I had completely forgotten about the coffee disaster. “Hey, look in the back seat. There’s a coat back there. Put it on,” I told her.

She didn't argue for once, nodding as she reached into the back, grabbed the coat, and slipped it over her ruined clothes. “Where the hell are we going anyway?” she asked, adjusting the collar.

“You’ll see,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road and checking the location pin on my mobile.

After about fifteen minutes of driving through the city traffic, the GPS brought us to a halt outside a standalone house. It looked quiet, but Ivy’s tracking was never wrong.

“Let’s go,” I muttered.

I exited the car with Aella right behind me. We crept up to the front entrance and found the door completely unlocked. Giving each other a quick look, we slid inside silently, moving down the hallway toward a dimly lit room.

Inside, four men were aggressively tearing the place apart, searching for something. We had the element of surprise. We could have taken up positions, drawn our weapons, and

“YOO!” Aella suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs.

Every single head in the room snapped violently toward us. What the actual f**k was that?! I stared at her in absolute disbelief. Was she insane?

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” one of the men shouted. I noticed a distinct yellow tag pinned to his jacket.

I forced my expression to go cold, reaching into my back pocket to quietly draw my gun, keeping it ready but out of direct sight. “We are here after a man of Enzo’s,” I said clearly.

The guards looked at each other, waiting for orders, before the man with the yellow tag spoke up. “How did you find my location?” he demanded.

Bingo. So this guy really was Enzo's left-hand man.

Before his guards could raise their weapons, Yellow Tag held up a hand. “Don’t,” he instructed his men. He turned around, walking out of the trashed room and heading toward a cleaner living space. “Let’s sit and talk. I know you are here for that.”

He walked over to a table and took a seat in one of the chairs. I followed him, keeping my guard up, and sat directly opposite him while Aella sat beside me.

“So, yes. Why are you here?” he asked, leaning forward.

“We wanted to meet Enzo,” I said, locking eyes with him.

He let out a dry laugh. “Hmm. You know that’s completely impossible, right?” his face turned deadly serious.

“We just wanna talk,” I replied calmly.

“About what?”

“About Harbor Watch,” I said.

I was intentionally lying about our main goal. If I blurted out right away that we were investigating the Number 1 gang, it would be incredibly stupid; if he panicked and shut us down, he wouldn’t let us meet Enzo for anything. I needed to test the waters first.

Yellow Tag let out a heavy sigh. “Sir, I am sorry. I can’t do that.”

“Why?” Aella demanded, crossing her arms.

“Ma’am, Boss will literally kill me if I set up a meeting,” he said, shaking his head.

“Bullshit,” she shot back instantly.

“I'm sorry,” he said, his tone final. He didn't waste another second. He stood up abruptly from the table, walked straight toward the back door, and left the room before we could stop him.

Jax POV

I looked down at the steering wheel, a wave of sheer exhaustion hitting me as I shifted the car into drive.

“By the way... why are we even after this Enzo guy?” Aella asked carelessly from the passenger seat right beside me.

I snapped my head around to glare at her. Was she actually serious right now? “Because we need to get to the Number 1 group,” I gritted out, hitting the gas.

“And why do we wanna know the Number 1 group?” she asked back, turning in her seat and blinking blankly at me.

Was she literally sleeping during the meeting? No, if I remembered correctly, she was wide awake and asking questions.

“Because we want to be on good terms with them. We need that connection,” I said, weaving through the dark streets.

“Good terms?” She tilted her head, watching my profile in the dim dashboard light. “Are they... the rulers of the underworld or something?”

At this point, I seriously wanted to know if she had ever actually worked a single day in the underworld. “Stupid brat. THEY ARE,” I snapped.

Her eyes instantly went wide. But it looked like she was acting.

Five Minutes Later

I dialed Sloane while maneuvering through the dark streets. I quickly filled her in on how the left-hand man had bolted. She stayed quiet for a second before sighing. "It's fine. We'll track him again. Toss it for tonight."

“Okay, today is done,” I told Aella, tossing my phone into the cup holder.

I looked over at her, expecting a sarcastic retort, only to find her completely lost in thought, staring out the window into the passing streetlights.

“Heyyyy,” I called out, breaking her trance.

“Yeah?” she asked softly.

“Do I leave you at your house?” I asked, my hands gripping the steering wheel a little tighter.

“Yeah,” she said. She quietly recited the street address and area code to me.

Hearing the location, I felt my chest tighten. Wait. Did she leave Max's house? Or did they move here? A million questions flashed through my mind, but I forced my face to stay completely blank, keeping my eyes locked on the road.

“Okay, we're here,” I pulled up to the curb a short while later.

She unbuckled, pulled my oversized coat tightly around her coffee-stained clothes, and stepped out of the car. She walked away into the darkness without saying a single word. No 'thank you,' no 'see you tomorrow.' Nothing.

As her figure disappeared from my rearview mirror, a sudden, sharp ache hit my chest. My heart felt... exactly like it did back then. That same heavy, suffocating feeling from high school.

I shook my head, aggressively shifting the car into drive to banish the memories. I accelerated toward my own place. When I finally reached my mansion, I didn't bother checking in with anyone. I walked straight up the grand staircase, unlocked my bedroom door, threw myself onto the bed, and dozed off immediately. I don’t want to recoil that moment.

Aella POV

I stood inside the quiet house, shedding Jax's heavy coat and tossing it onto a chair. His angry voice kept echoing in my head.

“Stupid brat. THEY ARE.”

A slow, sharp smile crept onto my face as I stared at the ceiling. So... the Number 1 group are the undisputed rulers.

Now, it has been officially confirmed. I needed to find out exactly who they were and who was running the show.

Ruling the entire underworld? Now that sounds fun.