Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds Read Online Free

and used me to exact revenge against his brother simply so I would feel obligated to him, indebted. And I fucking bought into it. That was where I came from, Katon.”
    The enforcer shook his head, but I cut him off before he could say anything.
    “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not making excuses. This isn’t a pity poor little Frank speech. I don’t give a fuck about your pity or anyone else’s, for that matter,” I said. “When I felt I lost Karra, nothing else meant anything, no matter how much it should have. I felt betrayed by DRAC, by you and Rahim, specifically.”
    “You could have—”
    “Could have what, Katon? Could have told you how important it was that I find her, how desperately I needed to know where she’d been taken?” I asked while closing the short distance between us until our noses almost touched. “I did, if you remember, but you were so caught up in your distrust of me that none of that mattered. It was just Longinus’ daughter and pathetic ol’ me involved, so how important could it have been, right?”
    The enforcer bared his teeth, but his fury didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was something cooler, more calculating hidden beneath his glare, but I ignored it and went on. He was gonna have to deal with it.
    “Had it been Scarlett who was taken, you would have torn Heaven and Hell asunder looking for her, looking for a way to bring her home no matter who got in the way.”
    Katon’s curled lip eased shut at hearing my cousin’s name. I’d struck a nerve.
    “But because it was the daughter of the bad guy carted off to another world you felt compelled to stand on your principles, whatever the fuck those are these days. What good could possibly come of my bringing Karra home, right? That had to be what you were thinking. You knew damn well Longinus would go after her whether you provided me with information or not. Nothing was gonna stop him, and that was a bonus in the whole thing, right? Two birds down without having to even toss a stone.”
    I saw the barest twitch of Katon’s lip as he processed my words, but it was Rahim who broke the standoff.
    “You’re right, Frank,” he said, finally a hint of color in his voice. “We let you down.”
    I spun on him. “You’re damn right you did. I—”
    He waved me to silence, and despite my rage and disappointment, the authority I’d always granted him took hold. My tongue stilled.
    “There were no grand plans or schemes involved, no malice or ill will intended. We simply overstepped our bounds in our need for control and even more unfortunately, underestimated how important Karra was to you.”
    “How the hell could you have possibly done that when I…?”
    “Because you’re a fucking drama queen, Frank,” Katon shouted. “We saw what your marriage to Veronica did to you,” he cast a sideways glance at the ex, who conveniently looked the other way, “and we lived through the fallout. ‘Twas a bitter season of whine we were made to live through. You’ve never been sane or reasonable when it comes to women, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
    “We felt you might go off and do something stupid, for which the consequences would be too great for you—and for the rest of the world—to deal with.” Rahim spread his arms, gesturing to our current location, the sight of his waggling stump souring my stomach. As much as if I’d cut it off myself, I was to blame.
    Worse still, he had me there. I’d done exactly that, but in my defense, they’d pushed me into it. Had they been upfront with me and told me what they thought…
    Yeah, who am I kidding? It wouldn’t have changed shit. Even if Azrael hadn’t been mashing buttons in my brainpan, I would have done the same thing. They knew me better than I did.
    “We only wanted to give you a little time to cool off, Frank, to think things through while we pressed Mihheer for information,” the enforcer said, his expression less feral than it had been a few moments before, but to say