She was stunning, but in his current wrecked state, her sequined, stiletto-heeled glory was an assault on his burning eyes.
She blinked at him rapidly with big dark eyes and tossed her fiery mane of curls back with practiced grace. “Whoa,” she said throatily. “Crystal, check this one out. Who the hell are you, big boy?”
An equally impressive blonde, this one in a stretchy black-beaded sheath, sashayed out of the kitchen and looked him over with cool, professional interest. “Hello, there.”
Eric looked from one to the other. “Uh…this is Anton Trask’s apartment, right?”
The girls looked at each other and laughed. “It most definitely is, honey,” Crystal said. “So you’re the reason he’s tossing us out? What, are you his brother? You’re so big and tall and thick, like him. Just skinnier.”
“Hot like him, too,” the red-head observed, raking him from head to toe. “Nice.”
Anton appeared at the top of a spiral staircase, wearing only half-buttoned jeans. It left the extensive tattoo art all over his thickly muscled torso on full display.
His eyes flicked from Eric to the girls who were still blatantly ogling him. “Still here, ladies?” Anton said. “I told you that the car was waiting.”
“You can’t rush me,” the red-head said, pouting. “It takes a while to work a dress this tight back onto my body.”
“Your dress looks fine, Mandi,” Anton told her. “Goodnight.”
Mandi rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a dick. So who’s the new guy? What’s his deal?”
“He’s tired from a long trip.” Anton’s voice was cool and remote. “He doesn’t want to play. Out you go. Tomorrow is another day.”
Mandi sighed sharply. “Fine, we’ll fuck off, then. Later, babe. Come on, Crystal.”
They filed out the door, giving him the eye as they left. Their high-pitched giggling echoed down the corridor outside after the door shut behind them.
Eric stared at his brother. “That’s the kind of woman you bring home?”
Anton’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t judge my choice of sex partners, you fucking prude. Keep in mind, I haven’t gotten myself thrown off any cliffs or tossed into any prisons lately because I rolled around in bed with Crystal and Mandi.”
Eric let the pack and duffle bag fall to the floor with a rattling thud as exhaustion settled over him. “You have a point,” he conceded.
“Damn right,” Anton said. “Actually, I don’t usually bring women here at all. But I was too buzzed after my set to make it all the way down to the hotel suite. I got lazy.”
“Hotel suite? What hotel suite?”
“For sex,” Anton explained. “I keep one rented downtown. So I don’t have to drag the girls out of bed and throw them out, like I did just now. In the hotel suite, I can just get up and leave myself. Way easier and less embarrassing for everyone concerned.”
“Sounds cold,” Eric said.
“It is. But like I said, you’re in no position to offer relationship advice.”
The look on Eric’s face made his brother frown. He gestured at the bar. “You look like shit. Want a drink? Scotch, vodka, bourbon, tequila—”
“No tequila,” Eric blurted.
Anton nodded. “I’ll get you a beer,” he said. “Come on into the kitchen.”
Eric slumped on the table. Anton placed a cold beer in front of him and pulled a platter out of the fridge heaped with finger food that looked like it had come off a catering tray. He got right to work grilling him an enormous ham and cheese sandwich.
“Eat,” Anton urged. “You must have lost what, thirty pounds? You look like hell for a man who just got his life back against all odds. Is it because of the girl?”
Eric stared down at his beer. “She changed her cell number,” he said bleakly. “Blocked me on the socials. I sent her letters through the mail from prison. No reply.”
“Of course not,” Anton said.
“I just want to explain,” Eric said. “I want her to hear my side. That’s all.”
“Suck it up.” His brother’s voice was uncompromising. “You’re not going to get that satisfaction. Chalk a point up for the bad guys. Be glad you’re still in the game at all.”
Eric shook his head. Every part of him screamed in protest, but arguing was stupid when you knew you were wrong.
“I’ve got your room ready,” Anton said. “Back bedroom, end of the hall upstairs. I had the housekeeper make up the bed for you. You’ve got four job interviews tomorrow. The earliest is at six PM, so you can rest up first. Security jobs at the casinos and clubs. To tide you over until you’re back on your feet. With your military record and my recommendation, they’re all going to want you, so go where the showgirls are hottest.”
“How did you know I was on my way here to you?”
“Otis told me,” Anton said.
“Otis wasn’t there when I got home,” Eric said. “He left my stuff outside.”
“He’s too ticked off to talk to you, but he’s been climbing the walls ever since your accident. He thought that you were done for when they tossed you in the joint.”
“He didn’t believe me,” Eric said bleakly. “About Boyd. And the Hummer.”
“Nope. Otis couldn’t wrap his head around that. It was too crazy for him.”
Eric braced himself. “What about you and Mace? Was it too crazy for you guys?”
Anton flipped the grilled sandwich. Melted cheese sizzled loudly on the surface of the pan. “Dude, please,” he said evenly. “We’re from GodsAcre. Crazy is mother’s milk for us. Besides, we saw the condition you were in. You were out of your head for that girl. You would never have risked that just for a fucking joyride. Plus, you’ve never told a lie in your life, except the night we were smuggling Fiona out of GodsAcre, and even then you sucked at it. So yeah, we believe you. Mace and I are Team Eric. Do or die.”
Eric’s covered his eyes with his hand. They stung. Those words made him feel like he could almost start to breathe again. “How did Otis know I was coming here?”
“Irma Stubbs at the bus station called him right after you bought your ticket. Otis called me up and gave me all kinds of instructions about how to manage you, what to say to you. I won’t inflict them on you right now.”
“I appreciate that,” Eric said.
“He called again to tell me he’d wired some money for you,” Anton went on. “Then he called a third time to put the fear of God into me about not telling you that the money was from him. There’s a thousand bucks on the dresser in that back bedroom. Do not ever tell him I told you that he sent it. I don’t want him mad at me, too.”
“I’ll never get the chance to tell him now,” he said bleakly.
“Bullshit,” Anton said. “He’ll mellow out. He still thinks it’s his job to provide boundaries. Like when we were in high school. Was that ever a goat-fuck.”
“It was,” Eric agreed.
“But we got through it,” Anton said, sliding the golden, fragrant sandwich out onto a plate and slicing it in half. “Otis kept us from blowing up buildings or slitting throats or ripping out guts. He did it by being a hard-ass, and now he can’t stop being one.”
“I know.”
Anton placed the sandwich in front of his brother. “And also, by the way. For what it’s worth, Otis hates that butt-wipe Ben Vaughan with a white-hot fiery passion.”
Anton sat down opposite him and silence fell as his brother watched him eat. He didn’t say another word until Eric had eaten every bite.
Then Anton took a long pull on his beer, and finally spoke. “Let’s kill him.”
His brother’s tone was so casual, Eric could hardly believe he’d heard right. For an instant, he let himself entertain the idea. It acted like gasoline on the embers of his rage.
He tamped it down. “No,” he said grimly. “That’s not who we are.”
“That lying shithead slandered you and got you fired,” Anton said. “He framed you for car theft. Put a contract out on yo
ur life. Had you wrongfully imprisoned. Fuck that guy. He doesn’t deserve to keep on breathing.”
“Please,” Eric said. “Don’t tempt me.”
“The world would be better off without him. Mace is on board. Let’s do it.”
Eric shook his head.
Anton looked frustrated. “Remember at GodsAcre, after we got Fiona out? You and Mace decided to kill that motherfucker Kimball after he flogged me. You would have followed through if the fire hadn’t done your work for you. How’s this any different?”
“I didn’t know what prison was like then, for one thing,” Eric said. “Plus, we wouldn’t have been destroying anyone’s lives by wiping out Kimball. Vaughan has a wife, a family. I couldn’t do that to Demi. I’ve done enough damage to her life already.”
Anton grunted. “What an altruist. All this regard for Vaughan’s wife, who hates you, and Vaughan’s daughter, who dropped you and dodged you and blocked you.”
“I don’t blame her,” Eric said. “Any sane, reasonable person who isn’t you or Mace would have concluded that I’m a dangerous dickhead moron with no impulse control. That was the whole point of this drama. She’s scared of me now.”
“I just want to take out the trash,” Anton said. “We’d be doing the world a favor.”
“Me, too. But that’s old Jeremiah yammering in our heads. This isn’t Jeremiah’s world. We aren’t establishing dominance in a blasted apocalyptic hell-scape. We’re trying to integrate into society, remember? We follow their rules, we keep our noses clean, and we win anyway, because we have the stuff. Remember all Otis’s lectures?”
Anton just barely cracked a smile. “Yeah. Getting preached at seems to be our fate. First Jeremiah, then Otis.”
“We made a pact,” Eric said. “Let’s hold to it. We’re going to crush it. All three of us. No excuses, Prophet’s Curse and all. But we won’t get very far if we start killing the people who piss us off. That violates the pact.”
Anton took a swig of his beer. He still looked rebellious. “I started fantasizing about killing that prick after I visited you in jail,” he admitted. “I was so angry.”
“Yeah, me, too. But killing Vaughan isn’t worth prison time. Trust me on this. I don’t want you or Mace to learn that firsthand. And then there’s Otis. Remember all the assholes who tried to persuade him we were psychopaths and that taking us in was too dangerous? We’d prove them all right. We can’t do that to Otis.”
Anton frowned. “We’d be smart about it. He’d never know.”
“Like hell. Anything happened to Vaughan, Otis would be all over our asses.”
Anton acknowledged that truth with a frustrated sigh. “Fine,” he growled. “Vaughan gets a pass. Lucky bastard. For Otis’s sake. But I still fucking hate it.”
Eric leaned on the table, covering his eyes with his hand again. He couldn’t stand eye contact with his brother. Not without shaking into pieces.
The weight of Anton’s hand rested on his shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Dude. Fuck the Curse.”
Eric nodded. “Yeah,” he said wearily. “I know. Fuck the Curse.”
“It won’t get you. Not today. And not ever. We will crush this, bro,” Anton said. “Because we know the secret.”
Eric rubbed his eyes. “Secret? Right now I don’t know jack-shit.”
“You know this.” His brother’s fingers dug into his shoulder. “Jeremiah’s prime rule, remember? Don’t flinch from pain. It makes you fucking invincible.”
Eric looked up at his brother. Their shared past flashed between them, buzzing in the air like a bolt of electricity. Shocking old memories to life. They hurt.
He forced himself to feel what lay beneath the years that had passed since GodsAcre. Feeling it all, like Anton said. It was hard not to flinch away from it.
The GodsAcre fire was always burning in there. The screams of the dying echoed endlessly in his ears. The smell of smoke and charred flesh, always present in his mind.
He’d tried to hide it from Demi, but it wouldn’t have stayed hidden forever. Ben Vaughan had only speeded up the inevitable.
The Prophet’s Curse cast a long shadow. He would never get out from under it.
There was nothing left to do but show all those assholes just how badly they had underestimated him. Car theft, his ass. As if he needed to steal other people’s shit.
They had no idea what he was capable of. But the world was going to find out.
Maybe Demi would find out, too.
No. Fucking…no. He couldn’t let his mind go there.
Eric looked Anton straight in the eyes and raised his bottle. “To not flinching.”
“Invincible,” Anton repeated, lifting his beer.
They clanked bottles and drank deep.
Epilogue
Seven years later…
Eric Trask looked out the floor-to-ceiling wall of glass of his private office at the sweeping view of the Golden Gate Bridge, wreathed in morning fog. He’d chosen this site for the San Francisco headquarters of Erebus, Inc. specifically for that view.
It relaxed him, which was rare. When he found something that worked for him, he took it.
The phone buzzed in his drawer. During his early morning deep focus sessions, he programmed it to ring only if Mace, Anton, or Otis called. But this wasn’t their usual call time.
He opened the drawer with the fingerprint lock and answered. “Hey. Anton.”
“Chief Bristol’s been trying to reach you.” His older brother’s tone was harsh. “Your people won’t put him through. Neither will your fucking cell phone.”
Cold dread stabbed through him. “My people and my phone are both trained not to bug me when I’m working. What’s up?”
“Fuck,” Anton muttered. “So I get to be the lucky bastard who tells you this.”
Eric lowered himself down into his chair. His legs felt hollow. “Say it.”
“Bristol called me,” Anton said. “Otis had a stroke. At his house, sometime last night. They took him to the ICU.”
“How is he?”
Anton didn’t speak for moment. “He’s gone.” His brother’s low voice was thick, almost unrecognizable. “He’s dead.”
Anton kept talking, but sound had retreated to someplace far away. Eric couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. The roaring, crackling sound. He closed his eyes and saw trees burning like torches.
“…his voice message, but I didn’t get it in time.” Anton’s voice was audible again.
“Message? What message?”
“Check your voicemails. Otis left one for me and Mace around two o’clock last night. He must have left one for you. Go listen to it.”
Eric opened up his voicemail. There was a message for him from Otis, dated two-eleven AM.
Hey. Otis here. You boys need to come home. Soon as possible. All of you. Got things to tell you about GodsAcre. Can’t say it on the phone. I’ll explain when you get here. Bye now.”
The sound of Otis’s gruff voice made his throat seize up.
Eric clicked back to the call. “I heard it, but I don’t know what it means.”
“Me neither. I heard it after I finished my set at the club at four in the morning. I’ve been trying to call him ever since. Until Bristol reached me. He told me that Otis was dead by the time they got him to the hospital.”
The sound of his brother’s voice retreated once again. Eric pressed the smartphone to his ear, trying to hear his brother’s voice over the crackling sound. His hands were cold, but his face was burning hot. Billows of heat felt like they were pressing against it. A cloud of flying sparks seemed to drift in front of his face.
“…Otis’s house by this evening, but Mace won’t be able to get there until tomorrow at the latest. Probably late tomorrow. He’s trying to get a flight from Nairobi now. When can you get there?”
He struggled to focus. “If I start now, I could be there by late tonight.”
Anton paused. “You’ll come for real, right? You won’
t bail on me? I know you hate that fucking place like hell itself.”
Eric’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t been in Shaw’s Crossing since his troubles with Demi Vaughan and her family. And his brief but memorable stint in prison.
But Demi wouldn’t be there. She’d be seven years gone. And he could face all the rest of those lying, thieving, murdering motherfuckers. Face them and smile.
“I’ll be there,” he heard himself say, before closing the call.
A knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” he said.
Milo, one of his personal assistants came in, crisp and fresh, his white shirt adorned with a red bow tie. “Good morning, Mr. Trask.” He put a tray on the worktable that held a gleaming chrome carafe and a cup. “Your coffee. Shall I put in an order to the kitchen for your breakfast?”
“No, thank you.”
“Okay, then.” Milo whipped out his tablet and stylus. “For messages, you have…let’s see…three calls from a Chief Wade Bristol requesting an urgent call back, and then from last night, there are calls from Christina Spano, Astrid Kohl, Laurel Schissinger and Margot Paget. Do you need any of their numbers?”
Eric shook his head. All women he’d slept with in the past few weeks. Not today.
“As for your appointments this morning…let’s see, first up, you have a meeting with Senator Ames at ten-thirty to discuss industry regulations for—”
“Cancel it,” he said.
Milo looked shocked. “Cancel the Senator?”
“Death in the family. I have to leave town. Please let everyone know.”
Milo gasped. “Oh, Mr. Trask, that’s terrible. I’m so very sorry for your—”
“Thanks, Milo. Pack a case with all the equipment I might need to set up a remote workstation, and do it fast. I need to go home, grab some clothes and get on the road.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” Milo said hastily. “I’ll get right on it.”
“I’ll get one of the cars from the garage and meet you out in front.”
Eric walked through the quiet Erebus, Inc. building. Most of his employees had not yet started their day, but the place would fill up soon and be a buzzing hive of activity.
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