Defiance Falls Revolution: Defiance Falls Series Book 2 Read online

  “That night at the beach, you knew what you were going to do the whole time?” I could hear the disbelief in my voice. How could they act like normal high school seniors one minute and cold-blooded murderers the next?

  Bodhi was only a foot away from me, his knee touching mine. “Not exactly. We’d been waiting for an opening for weeks at that point. But this was something we’d been planning for years, Haze. We had to wait until we had everything else in place, or close enough.”

  “Everything else?”

  “Uncle Jeremy’s been pulling info about the Malones’ businesses for years now, getting all the evidence in place to bring them down. We had to wait until that was ready before we started a war.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “It was revenge. They already started a war.”

  Cruz shifted underneath me before he spoke. “It’s all semantics, Haze. At this point, it doesn’t matter who started it, or who has the next move. It’s a matter of survival.”

  I let out a long shaky breath.

  “So your mom, that wasn’t the beginning of it?”

  Sadness dripped from Cruz’s voice when he answered, “No, Haze, the Malones and the Bravens have been at this for generations. Back to the 1800s even.” The melancholy I felt from him wasn’t only because of his mother. Cruz had been born into this war, and he didn’t have a choice about it.

  My eyes lifted to the others. They’d had a choice.

  Spike was sitting on the table on our other side now, legs on his chair. When my eyes met his, he said, “The Bravens aren’t as big or far-reaching as the Malones. After Cruz’s mom, they needed reinforcements if they had a shot at fighting back.”

  Cruz added, “We also weren’t as corrupt. We weren’t always willing to get our hands dirty to fight back.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to cut through the shock and sadness saturating the air. “Can we start at the beginning? Maybe skim over the last century or so, but I’m still lost here, guys.”

  Cruz’s chest rose as he took a breath. “The Bravens were never involved in illegal enterprises like the Malones, but they’ve always been powerful, had connections in a lot of places like the Malones.”

  I shifted so I was able to see everyone, and Cruz tensed. He only relaxed when he realized I wasn’t going anywhere.

  He continued, “The Malones would try to take over Braven companies or worm their way in. They’d try to merge, manipulate, blackmail, intimidate, whatever they could to get a piece of the Braven pie. They didn’t want to have that kind of competition.”

  “For money? Didn’t they have plenty of that?”

  “It wasn’t just money though,” Emmett answered. He’d pulled up a chair on the other side of us. “The Bravens not only stopped them from gaining business advantages, but they also tried to expose the Malones’ criminal enterprises at times.”

  My hands started to sweat and I rubbed them over my jeans. Is that what the guys and my dad were attempting to do now?

  Cruz placed one of his hands over mine, the other remaining on my lower back. “My grandparents tried to end it. They came to an agreement of sorts that they’d stay out of Malone activity if the Malones kept their dirty business away from Braven. At that point Braven Pharmaceuticals was the main priority. We have family in medicine, law, academics, a lot of the same places as the Malones, but we aren’t organized like them. We’re just a family with a lot of wealth and connections built up over the years. We’ve never had ulterior purposes like the Malones.”

  “Until now,” Spike said quietly.

  I tried to ignore Spike’s comment and stay focused on getting up to speed on what got us to this point in the first place. “So, your grandparents on your mom’s side, your mom’s parents,” I started to clarify.

  Cruz interrupted to give me their names. “Margaret and Russel Braven.”

  “Right, Margaret and Russel Braven, they tried to end it with this agreement, but then what happened?” I couldn’t bring myself to ask, why did the Malones murder your mom? It was too harsh, too real. This wasn’t some ancestor or distant relative we were talking about. It might have felt like I was getting some sort of history lesson – no, scratch that, this was more like a Game of Thrones synopsis – but the truth was, this was Cruz’s family, his life, his past, present, and future.

  “To symbolize the goodwill or whatever, Flynn Malone joined Braven as Chief Operating Officer.”

  “What?” Even without all this new information, I’d never heard of a Malone working at Braven Pharmaceuticals. Why would they when they already owned half the state?

  “I know. They never should have trusted it. But that’s the thing, they couldn’t say no when he asked. They were told it would be a temporary thing, a way to solidify the truce.”

  I could guess at the rest. “But they really wanted to take over Braven Pharma?”

  Cruz shook his head. “No, they knew they couldn’t do that. They also knew Flynn was being watched too closely for them to skim money or do anything too straightforward.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They used Braven as their own drug factory. Flynn didn’t steal drugs in finished form, which would have been more easily detectable. He’d get extra ingredients in shipments and make his own drugs to sell. The Malones have their own lab, scientists, an entire operation.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Anything, everything. Benzos, opioids, MDMA, and they’re moving now to legal prescription drugs that have a black market, mostly in developing countries.”

  “I knew their influence went outside Defiance Falls and Boston, but internationally? How big are they? How far do the Malones reach?” I probably sounded as clueless as I felt. I had never paid much attention to the Malones, never had a reason to.

  “Far,” Moody answered without hesitation. “They might live primarily in Defiance Falls and have most of their establishments based in the Boston area, but they’ve had overseas business for decades. It was in illegal arms for a long time, but in the past twenty years they’ve put more emphasis on drugs.”

  Bodhi let out a sound of disgust. “Terrorists scared them off from arms. The Malones prefer to be the bullies, terrorizing the victims, and the playing field was too level for them with terrorists.”

  I stared at Bodhi for a second. My rabble-rouser cousin, notorious flirt, fun-loving soccer player, was now psychoanalyzing a mafia family based on their pursuit of criminal enterprises. And he was talking about it as if he’d actually been paying close attention, studying them and their history for years now.

  My mind kept wanting to return to that night on the beach. The night Flynn Malone died. A morbid part of me wanted to know all the details. Which of these boys I grew up with had held the knife that made the fatal slit?

  “Okay, so what happened when your grandparents found out what Flynn Malone was orchestrating from his COO position at Braven Pharma?”

  “We don’t think they knew,” Cruz said. “Or if they did, they turned a blind eye.”

  “They might have been afraid of what would happen if they tried to stop it,” Emmett added.

  I was starting to see how this world worked now. I had the pieces and I was putting it together.

  Cruz filled in more details. “My grandpa passed when I was six, my grandma when I was nine. It was natural causes, their deaths. Cancer. When my mom and dad took over Braven Pharma, they discovered what Flynn was up to. They told Flynn he was done at the company. They let on they knew he was doing something sketchy, but didn’t tell him they knew about the entire operation, the lab, all the details.”

  “Why didn’t they just go to the feds? They must have had all the evidence they needed,” I wondered.

  “Exposing what the Malones had been up to would have brought down Braven Pharma too,” Moody answered this time.

  Cruz continued, “The Malones weren’t about to stop what they were doing though. Flynn stepped down as COO but they told my parents they had to keep the shipment
s coming or they’d bring down Braven Pharma with them, claim Flynn was working with the Bravens all along. It was just as it always had been, with the Malones trying to manipulate my family to use their business in illegal activity.”

  “And when they refused to cooperate, that’s when they killed your mom?” I forced myself to say it. After all, it was the truth.

  Cruz shook his head. “After they refused, my mom went to the feds anyway with all the evidence. Dad didn’t want her to do it, because they suspected the Malones had insiders there. They didn’t know who or how high up the connections were, but Mom didn’t think the Malones had enough power to wipe out the kind of evidence they had against them.”

  Cruz’s hand tightened on my leg before he finished, “She was wrong.”

  Emmett filled in the blanks. “They found out what she’d done. The evidence went away and nothing happened with it. Instead, any rumors about nefarious activity were shut down when Laura Braven Donovan took her own life by way of drug overdose.” His voice lowered to a whisper when he dropped, “In a bathtub.”

  My arms moved instinctually around Cruz’s neck then and my head dropped to his shoulder. I’d never known the details of his mother’s death. I’d heard the loss of her parents followed by the pressure of taking over their company had driven her to take her life, but it had been unclear if the overdose was intentional or not. She’d died when Cruz was twelve, and he never spoke of her. I imagined it was too painful.

  “It was a warning,” Bodhi said. “So was your kidnapping. They wanted information, but they were also reminding us what would happen if we meddled or tried to stop their businesses from running the way they wanted.”

  My head rose from Cruz’s shoulder. “But you’re not heeding it. We can’t.”

  “No,” Cruz said, his voice solid and strong. “The Malones are still getting the shipments, but it’s about to stop. We’ve started a revolution, and we’re not backing down.”

  At his declaration, I recognized how insignificant our relationship three years ago had been in the scheme of what was at stake, everything he was dealing with. Yet it also hit me that despite all of it, he’d waited for me, he’d still wanted me. We still mattered. We needed each other. And I knew, the two of us, what we had, it was anything but insignificant.

  Chapter Three

  Cruz

  I’d just admitted to Hazel that I was going to keep fighting, even though we knew it made her a target. The Malones had taken her. They’d told us without words that she would meet a similar fate as my mom if we didn’t continue cooperating with their scheme. They knew what we’d done to Flynn Malone, and if they got evidence to prove it, they’d want their own revenge. The cycle would continue. And now Hazel was part of it. She had become part of it when her dad decided to help us, though she might have been less of a target if I’d been able to stay away.

  I couldn’t, though. Not when she’d put herself in the middle of it at my birthday party. Not when her safety was never guaranteed to begin with. Not when I needed her so bad. It’d taken years to admit this to myself, and as I watched her taking it all in tonight, I sensed she knew it too. We were a team. The two of us together and all six of us.

  There was still so much to explain, details to fill her in on if she was going to fight with us, plans to go over, strategy to discuss. We had to make our next move, and it had to be done quickly, before the Malones had a chance to regroup.

  But then I heard an engine in the distance, coming closer. I knew the others heard it too because they tensed. I could barely hear anyone breathing as we listened. It was more than one engine. Several vehicles were headed down the drive.

  Spike darted to his feet, Emmett behind him. Bodhi went for the door, while the others took position at various windows. Grasping Hazel’s hips, I stood up, placing her on her feet.

  “We got this. Go behind the couch.” I nodded to the couch in the far corner. We had to get her trained and armed. And fast.

  Someone turned off the light and we were encased in darkness. It only heightened my attention to the sound of the engines. Hazel moved away from me and I squinted to find her getting on her knees behind the couch. She was a fighter, but she knew when to let the fight go and hide, which was a damn good thing.

  Very few outside of my family and Jeremy knew about this cabin. Half the teens in Defiance Falls might have come to the Lake to party, but that was on the opposite end of the property, with a separate driveway. There were no roads connecting the two sides of the lake, just a trail that wasn’t easy to spot. It was nearly a mile from one side to the other.

  Whoever was driving to the cabin now was in a caravan and they were coming fast. They knew where they were going. This wasn’t someone who took a wrong turn. They were coming for us, and we all had a strong guess who it was.

  The engines stopped. A car door slammed. Then another.

  “Yo!” a voice called out.

  Yo?

  “We know you’re in there, assholes!” That voice I recognized, and it wasn’t a Malone.

  I moved toward the door. “What the hell is Isaiah Cross doing here?” I asked Bodhi, or anyone else who knew the answer.

  “We knew they’d find the cabin eventually,” Bodhi answered. “That’s why we set up the Spot.” He was referring to the old paper mill we’d turned into our home base.

  I ran a hand through my hair. It had to be tonight of all nights. “Great timing,” I grumbled.

  “At least we had it to ourselves this long,” Spike said from his crouch by the window. He peeked over the edge of the windowsill before tucking his gun back in his waistband.

  Emmett stood up from his position by another window and turned to me. “Everyone was flipping about the arrest today, Cruz. You know they think it’s a prank pulled by the Malones. They’ve been waiting for something to happen. First your birthday party, then the fight at Patriot Taphouse. They all think we’re messing around, and they want in on the fun.”

  I nodded to Moody, who had the best view of the driveway from the far window. “How many?”

  Moody kept his eyes out the window as he answered. He kept his gun in his hand, too. “Three cars, everyone’s still getting out, wandering around. All dudes. Bet they want to know if they can go beat up some Academy kids now.”

  “It’s all our high school?” I clarified. Sometimes Defiance Falls High and the Mayflower Academy kids mixed for club sports outside school, but for the most part, I didn’t trust Academy students, Malone or not. Sure, I’d gone there until freshman year as part of the façade of the truce between our families, but I’d known even then to let the Malones hold court. I hadn’t blended into the background, not entirely, but I knew better than to test sides and loyalties on Malone territory.

  Moody watched for a moment longer before nodding. “Yeah, they’re all out of the cars now. A few guys on our team. Isaiah and his basketball guys. Landon and Nick and their football crew.”

  We could hear them talking, but couldn’t make out the words. Shadows passed the windows. Moody lifted the corner of his mouth. “They’re scoping it out. Saw the Hummer so they know we’re here.”

  It was Spike’s ride, but everyone knew where one of us went, the others wouldn’t be far away. Word must have spread I was out on bail. They probably figured we were meeting here to party or plan a retaliation prank. I wish that was all this was.

  I felt hands slip around my stomach and my chin dropped to my chest. God, how I wished this was nothing more than cruel pranks. Hazel’s hands were warm as they brushed the skin just above my waistband. Her breath on my neck was a tease when she whispered, “Safe to come out now?”

  I tilted my head to peek at her over my shoulder. Her emerald eyes danced with an energy unique to Hazel Ross. The girl had never been in trouble in her life, got straight As, was adored and respected by everyone she met, and was one of the best high school soccer players in the nation. Yet she was filled to the brim with mischief. I saw it glimmering at me in the shado
ws. She’d been biding her time, even if she didn’t know it. Preparing for me, for us, for this life.

  I turned so I was facing her and my hands moved to her butt. We were with all the guys but I just couldn’t help it. Hazel Ross had the most amazing ass. She might think her boobs were her best asset, but her bottom was a close contender. Maybe it was her eyes. Or lips. Damn. The whole package was just, Hazel.

  “Cruz?” she murmured.

  “Hmm?”

  “I asked, is it safe to come out now?” Her eyes shone, and I loved that she seemed to be laughing at me right now. After everything we’d hit her with tonight, she was touching me, making me want her, and she knew it.

  “Safe enough,” I responded, but only pulled her closer.

  “The guys have guns,” she said. “Where’s yours?”

  “I just got let out of jail, Haze,” I reminded her.

  “Are there more here?” she asked.

  “They’re at the Spot. Why didn’t you guys meet there, anyway?”

  Hazel shrugged. “They wanted to, but I insisted we do it here.”

  There was a knock on the window and we saw Landon’s face peering in. A moment later, a headlight shone through another window, illuminating us.

  “Cover’s blown,” Bodhi said on a dramatic sigh before opening the door. The others went with him, but I wasn’t ready to deal. Not with Hazel in my arms.

  Pulling her back from the light, I moved her until we were against the kitchen counter, around the corner from the windows facing the drive. “Why’d you want to come here?” I asked.

  I thought she might say nostalgia or something. We used to hang here all the time in eighth grade and the summer before high school. Instead, she said, “I feel like a prisoner at the Spot. Well, I felt like one. An outsider. It’s like this reminder there’s this whole world you guys have that I don’t know about or understand. I wanted to do it on more familiar ground, where I wouldn’t be so off-balance.”

  I leaned back a little so I could bring her with me and feel more of her body against mine. “And now? I don’t want you to feel that way anymore.”