The Ruthless

by J Bree

  Two guns, a Rolls, and red lipstick. This feels like a date.

  I giggle at myself and then head off, putting the new Vanth album on and singing along at the top of my lungs because there’s no one here to see how freaking ridiculous I look. There’s a reason they’re currently touring the country with sold out shows for every stop because Blaise’s lyrics are incredible and his voice pulls at your chest until every last emotion he’s coaxing out of you just pours out. I’m not quite as obsessed as Lips and Ash are but I still know every word to every song.

  When the duet with Lips comes on, I have to choke back tears the whole time because I’m so proud of her and her voice is hauntingly beautiful.

  I make the drive in good time, the roads a little less congested than they usually are at this time of night. The strings of lights in the trees that line the streets make the entire little town look like something out of a storybook fairy tale. I remember the first time I came here I thought there had to be something dark or sinister behind the little town, like a serial killer or two, but for our entire schooling lives it was just a quaint little place to come to during weekends. Once we hit high school, it became the place where the guys would sneak off to and drink at the bar.

  The chili cheese fries are a disgustingly delicious mess that even I can appreciate after a margarita or two.

  I’m far too tempted to go get some and send a picture to Harley to gloat.

  The small park is in the center of the town and every inch of the playground and lawn can be seen from the parking lot. I immediately know something is wrong and dread pools in my veins, the relaxing and joyful drive ruined in an instant.

  His car isn’t here.

  I immediately hit the locks on my car doors, even as I put the car in park and let it idle. I’ve never, ever come to meet Atticus and beat him to the location. He isn’t just on time to meetings, he’s chronically early to the point that I always assume he arrives a full hour before and just… enjoys the quiet. A commodity that as the Crow, he doesn’t get much of.

  He should be here.

  Jesus H. Christ, what if someone has kidnapped him? Panic starts up in my gut. I reach for my phone right as a shadow comes over my side window. They move too fast for me to look over, thank God, because suddenly the glass is blown out and raining down on me.

  A squeal rips out of my throat and I reach for my purse, but they’ve caught me unaware and completely unprepared, a stinking rag pressed over my mouth and nose before my brain has even registered what the hell is going on right now.

  I’m being fucking kidnapped.

  And then I’m out.

  I come to in the trunk of a car, trussed up like a freaking Christmas turkey, and my stomach is roiling with the aftereffects of whatever the fuck they knocked me out with.

  Who the hell chloroforms people these days?

  I thought that was just an old relic of bad thriller movies, not a real way of freaking kidnapping someone. I had no idea that the fumes would make me feel so sick, and the motion of the car only makes things ten times worse.

  The gag in my mouth isn’t the worst thing, though I don’t want to think about Atticus right now and if he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere because nothing else can explain why he didn’t meet me. The worst thing is the bag over my head.

  I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months working on the trauma of what the Jackal forced me to do and exactly zero time working through what it felt like to be kidnapped by Diarmuid. He’d arrived at my bedroom door back in senior year with a flirty smirk and a bag tucked in his back pocket. We had no freaking clue that he’d bargained with the Jackal to hand me over, that he had betrayed us all, so I’d just opened the door to him and listened to the lies he’d drawled out.

  The moment I turned my back the bag was over my head and my wrists and ankle were cable tied.

  I screamed out but he was much bigger than me and just slapped a hand over my mouth, pressing the filthy fabric into my mouth until I was too busy trying not to vomit to scream.

  The car trip was a nightmare.

  He’d spent the whole time trying to convince me that this was all my own fault. That Harley was an O’Cronin and I’d softened him. He might not have been complicit in the abuse that happened in the compound but he definitely agreed with half of their crackpot fucking sexist views.

  Harley couldn’t possibly be a real man if he valued women.

  He couldn’t be strong and capable if he went along with plans that Lips and I had made, because women don’t belong in conflicts. He had talked about Lips like she was a parlor trick, like she was nothing more than a talented magician who didn’t really hold any power.

  I still hate thinking about him.

  The differences in my kidnapping this time are that only my hands have been tied and I’ve been placed in the trunk of the car. I part my legs a little and tense them when the car takes corners so I don’t roll around too much. I can hold the position forever if I need to, my legs are the strongest part of my body, and that helps a little with the panic clawing up my throat.

  I do a lot of deep breathing and planning.

  This has to be either Amanda Donnelley or one of the members of the Twelve—the Viper or maybe the Ox. It could possibly be one of the Crawfords, pissed at Atticus and retaliating by taking me.

  Then the car comes to a complete stop and I snap my legs back together.

  I’m so goddamn pissed at myself for wearing a skirt. I might burn them all the second I get home, because they’re an easy-access item of clothing and I’m desperately trying not to think about what is going to happen to me here.

  Those same rough hands pull me out of the trunk, tugging at the bag to adjust it and ensure it’s still in place and blocking out all light. It also muffles sound fairly well but there’s an echo, so we’re obviously walking through a parking garage. It’s difficult to concentrate on the little details with how raw my entire brain feels thanks to my chloroform nap, but I push myself to start cataloging everything.

  This is how I’m going to get out of here.

  I don’t need a white knight, I need to pay attention because Aodhan isn’t going to come storming in after me this time. He won’t even know I’m gone, I’d told him not to expect me home and to stay at the compound for a few days.

  Will I still be alive in a few days? Aodhan’s words ring in my mind, as clear to me now as when he spoke them to me just hours ago.

  If I lose you, I’m going the same way as Jack, I swear to fucking God.

  Absolutely not, I’m going to survive this and go home to him. I will not be the victim this time around; I’m so fucking sick of being the target and the easy pickings for these people.

  We pause for a minute, the hand around my arm tightening and then an elevator bell rings. Hotel or an apartment complex, my guess is the latter. The man, definitely a man from the feel of his walking and the size of his hand, tugs me into the elevator. I wiggle my hands again but the bindings barely have any give in them. My hands feel a little numb, like the circulation to them has been cut for too long and then I have to push down another wave of panic.

  What if I have permanent damage?

  Stop it, Beaumont, focus.

  The elevator bell chimes again and out we step, my feet dragging but not doing much to slow us down with his rough treatment of me. There’s not much else to go on. We only walk for another seven seconds before he stops and pulls out keys, the jingling sound of them unmistakable. Then a door unlocks and we’re walking again.

  The room we walk into is too warm. There’s either no thermostat or this man is cold-blooded, because even in the skirt, I’m starting to sweat almost instantly. He drags me along and then stops, jerking me around and shoving me back until I stumble away from him awkwardly.

  He does something to the ties around my wrists and they loosen, not falling away but I feel a glimmer of hope.

  Then there’s a weird sliding noise around me, a loud click, and then nothin
g.

  Nothing.

  You forget how much sound is really in a quiet room until it all just disappears, and the only sound I can hear now is the thumping of my own heart as it beats an erratic tune in my chest. It’s as if I stepped into a freaking vacuum. The sweating gets worse and I tug at my restraints, surprised when they fall away from me.

  I scrabble at the bag, tugging it off and ripping at the gag.

  My eyes start streaming at the bright light and I blink rapidly, my arms coming in front of my body like I’ll have any chance to defend myself right now.

  Glass.

  I’m surrounded by glass.

  There’s a buzzing sound and then a voice comes through a speaker, though I can’t see where it is. “You really do look like a little birdie in there.”

  I rub at my eyes again, cursing under my breath as I try to find the man, but there’s nothing but an empty apartment in front of me.

  Little birdie.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  “Interesting woman, Amanda Donnelley. She can find anything a man would ever want. She was friends with my father; they both enjoyed curating collections.”

  Fuck.

  Fuck, that’s where the photos came from. I stare back out at the bare walls and carpets, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

  “When she hired me to follow you… well, I recognized you. My father once tried to add you to his collection. Such an exquisite example of Russian-American bloodlines. Did you know that? If you trace the Beaumonts back far enough you hit royalty. That can be problematic, what with the many diseases and defects, but you’ve been bred beautifully. Those cheekbones! I heard you have a twin, such a shame it’s a male. Males do not display well. There’s always issues with them.”

  I look around, but there’s piles of crap around me that don’t look helpful right now. A pile of blankets, a desk, some books… no speaker and the glass distorts the sound so I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.

  The glass surrounds me on all sides.

  “To think I almost lost you to the Crow. Atticus Crawford, the man who murdered my father. Paid a diamond to the Wolf to get rid of him. He couldn’t find my father’s place, you know? He couldn’t find it then and he won’t find my apartment either. I’ve been too careful. By the time the Wolf comes home, it’ll be too late for you. Everything happens for a reason, Avery Beaumont. You slipped away from my father then because you were always meant for me. The first of my own collection.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The glass is all one sheet without any joins or weak spots. It’s thick enough that pounding on it with my fists makes no sound, an eerie thing to see in action. I can’t see how the hell it opens and closes, only the noises I’d heard as he put me in here as clues. There’s no hatch for food and only a bucket in the corner that I’m assuming I’m supposed to pee in, but I’d rather die.

  I would rather die.

  I stand there and wait for the man to come back and do something but time crawls past me with nothing. The space I’m in is filled with items, and there’s a small wooden chair and desk pushed up to one side. I pull the chair out to look around the room beyond the glass.

  This isn’t the only glass enclosure but none of the others have prisoners or items in them. One of them on the far side is open, but it’s too far away to make out any clues on how to get them open.

  I’d never thought to ask Lips how she’d done it.

  I start to look through all of the items, just in case there’s something that might be a help to me. There’s no bed, only a pile of blankets and pillows in one corner that smell musty and old. I would be forced to peel my own skin from my body if I touched any of them, so beyond poking at them with the toe of my shoe, I forget about them entirely.

  There is a collection of books. None of them are hiding a weapon or key in them, and they all look as though they were borrowed from a library in the ‘80s and never returned. There’s a candle, a bowl, some little china figurines, and a bottle of water.

  I’d kill for some water, but I’m not ingesting a goddamn thing in here.

  The bucket is haunting me from the corner.

  The more I look, the less I find and when I’m flipping through the books for the third time, the panic finally consumes me. My breathing speeds up until I’m gasping for air and still getting none. My heart feels as though it’s about to burst in my chest and my vision starts to white out around the edges.

  It’s a full-blown anxiety attack.

  I can’t pass out here, what if the man is watching me? What if he comes back in here after I’m out and touches me? There are too many bad options here.

  Months ago while I was feeling particularly terrible about myself and how I’d handled everything that had happened in the Jackal’s lair, I’d asked Lips about it.

  About the secret to surviving everything.

  “How do you get through it? How do you work through something that painful? When the Jackal cut up my feet I—Lips, I thought I was going to pass out dead on the ground.”

  She had smiled at me sadly, looking uncomfortable to be talking about her trauma but always open and honest with me when I needed it. “You have to find something you can really focus on. It has to be something that isn’t an easy thing or something that doesn’t mean shit. It’s like… so Illi once told me he goes through the correct way to butcher a pig. The whole process from slaughter to plate. I count down from a hundred in French, because numbers were always the hardest part of the language for me. It has to be something you know but that is complicated enough that it can keep your brain busy.”

  It sounded simple enough, but it had taken weeks before I found the thing that my brain could hold onto, even when everything else is blocked out, to work through until the pain or panic subsides.

  I work on recipes.

  Not just the general ingredients lists of boring things like oatmeal cookies. No, I work my way through my entire cookbook. Years ago, Ash had bought me a huge leather-bound blank journal that he had joked about, calling it my magnum opus. Blaise called it my spell book, and in the dining halls at Hannaford, Harley used to joke loudly that it was bound in human skin; a sacrifice of worthless, gossiping little sluts who got in my way.

  Every recipe I love goes in the book with photos and reviews. If something goes wrong I make a note. If someone else in the family has a popular request, it goes in the book.

  I know it back-to-front.

  So I sit there on the tiny and uncomfortable wooden chair and start to work through the book, reciting not just the names of the dishes and the basics of how to make them but also the variations and notes. I recite the changes I’ve had to make because of the differences in the oven operation from Hannaford to the ranch. I picture the plates that I use for each dish, because I would never serve a carved roast beef on the same serving dish as a broccoli gratin, or a stack of blueberry pancakes on the same shaped plate as French toast with ice cream and sprinkles.

  I watch through unfocused eyes as the sun sets, working my way slowly through the entire recipe book and when I finally come to the end, my heart is beating normally. My chest still has a dull ache but I can breathe around it. The anxiety is still there and I doubt it will leave me until I get the hell out of here, but I can now think around it. I can acknowledge it’s there without being consumed by it.

  Now that it’s dealt with… how the fuck am I getting out of here?

  With no clock in the room, I have no fucking clue how long I sit there and just stare into nothingness. I’m used to sitting for long periods of time and working, but without my phone there’s limits to what I can keep busy with.

  I miss my phone.

  I miss all of the information in there that would keep me busy for months. I’d just gotten a new file full of the arrest and warrant records of the Unseen down in Coldstone. King Callaghan absolutely without a doubt in my mind went down for a crime he didn’t commit and there is a long, stinking trail of dirty cops and judges who ha
ve kept him in that prison for this long.

  What I wouldn’t give to be looking for patterns in the paperwork right now.

  Because the glass cell is soundproof I don’t hear the door on the far side of the apartment open, so the movement startles me. The man who walks in is entirely average and forgettable. The type of man you could see in a crowd a hundred times and still never notice anything about him.

  His glasses are clean but a little too low on his nose, and while he has broad shoulders and toned arms, he also has a little bit of a beer gut hanging over his pants, the type that says guilty midnight snacks are obviously a staple in his pantry. Hair the color of dirt, eyes a little too small for his head… he’s just some middle-aged guy.

  I loathe the sight of him.

  He lifts a walkie-talkie up to his lips and says, “You look so pretty in there, little birdie. You were made to be collected.”

  His eyes drag over my body and I cross my arms over my chest, covering what I can from his eyes. I’m still wearing the blazer and camisole, even with the heating making me feel like I might die. He’s obviously turned it up to get me to strip down, but I refuse.

  He walks up to the glass, pressing his entire body against the length of it and peering in at me. I want to slam my fist against the glass, but it’ll only break my hand and I need to be smart right now.

  He lifts the walkie-talkie to his mouth again, his lips too close so the sound is a little distorted.

  “My father never spoke to his collection. He just locked them away and watched them slowly break down. Did the Wolf ever speak of them? Did she know all about the careful curation she ruined? My father had spent decades finding the right bloodlines. Decades. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find pure bloodlines and a perfect package?”

  I really couldn’t care less about his drivel, none of it helping me to escape and none of it even the slightest bit interesting. Why is it always the self-important, arrogant, perverted men that ramble on for hours? I don’t care what Illi said about it, from the way he’s pressing himself against the glass I can tell that it’s only a matter of time before he’s going to jerk himself off out there or do something else fucking disgusting.