Crown

•33•

"Keep your arrogant charms to yourself, Salvador. You aren't as handsome as you think," Rachel laughed over phone.

"I believe I am actually. Why else were you screaming my name in my car yesterday?"

She flushed. "What can I say? Your ability to please a woman doesn't really have to tally with your looks."

"Alright. So you'd have sex with a troll then?"

She laughed, feeling bubbly. "Only if that troll is you."

"Touche," be chuckled.

"Scandalous, actually."

They both laughed and then the door bell rung.
Rachel checked the time. 5am. Who could that be by this time?

"Hold on for a sec, someone's at the door."

"This early?"

"My thoughts exactly."

"Go on, I'll call back. I have work to attend to by the way. See you at the club tonight?"

"Only if you bring enough condoms."

"Bad girl."

"Only for you, daddy. Bye now," she hung up and hurriedly went to attend to the door.
She didn't know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn't her best friend, with swollen, puffy eyes, holding her suitcase and looking like total shit.

"Jayda?"

"Hi," her voice was cracked.

Rachel didn't wait for her to say anything before she took Jayda in a tight hug and then the water works came again.
She just couldn't stop crying.

"Hey, hey, shh. It's okay. I'm here."

Jayda only sobbed more and Rachel hated it.
What happened to the happy woman she'd seen a week ago?

What had Kaden done?

|•|•|•|•|

"Why are you just telling me this now?" Kira asked Pablo. "I literally asked you how work was over dinner."

"I thought he'd handle it more sensibly."

"Well, he didn't. Jayda's phone is switched off and so is Kaden's."

"He'll be at work soon. Calm down. He has several meetings today. He can't afford to miss them following all that's happened."

Kira shook her head and sighed.

They were in deep shit.
Very deep shit. The kind of shit that would make you scream "shit!" in frustration.

Following the back and forth raiding of the warehouses, Lucifer and the Morettis did their worst. They literally bombed two of Kaden's hospitals in Mexico along with the 3rd main base warehouse of their guns.
It was a huge loss.
Many died in the hospitals. Workers, patients, visitors even. It was terrible. It was genocide, basically.
The impact of it wasn't something to just affect the Crown Empire, it was much worse. They'd dragged innocent lives into it and it wasn't good at all.

Kaden was beyond furious.
First hearing his girlfriend was possibly his enemy's ex and then knowing what deep shit he was in. He wanted to just kill the Morettis and that darn Lucifer.
But he knew it was his fault.
If he didn't waste February away, none of it could've happened, but instead he put Jose in charge, knowing what was at stake, knowing that Jose was not mature enough to handle things both in Mexico and America like he could.

And when he was killing people in the BAM, when his demons had taken possession of him, he blamed everyone and everything.
Blamed his father, for making him disappoint him - making him don. Blamed his mother for not trying harder to talk Alexander out of it. Blamed his uncle for dieing slowly, blamed Kira, for being his sister, blamed Pablo for not advising him better, blamed Jose for being stupid, blamed the Morettis, blamed Lucifer.
Blamed Jayda.
For breaking the walls he had started building around himself, blamed her for capturing his souls, blamed her for kissing him, blamed her for not pushing him away, blamed her for getting into that accident, blamed her for making him vulnerable, blamed her for making him run mad in love for her. Blamed her for hunting his every though. Blamed her for loving him and making him happy.