by Max Monroe
Fox
A Stone Cold Fox Novel
Published by Max Monroe LLC © 2018, Max Monroe
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-7321702-0-9
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Editing by Lisa Hollett, Silently Correcting Your Grammar
Formatting by Stacey Blake, Champagne Book Design
Cover Design by Peter Alderweireld
Photo Credit: iStock Photo
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
FOX: BOOK THREE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Skittles: Not only do you taste delicious, but you also have a gross commercial that allows us to doomsday-parent our children into believing they can actually turn into a Skittle if they eat too many.
We really appreciate the help.
To Boxer Briefs: Thank you for highlighting the line of a cock perfectly yet seductively. You make character underwear selection so easy.
And to Levi and Ivy: Although you’re not real, in our hearts, you are. Thank you for taking us on this journey. Your story was painful and hard and took us on a hell of a ride, but God, it is so damn beautiful.
FOX: BOOK THREE
Some things are meant to be; some aren’t.
I never thought this would be my life.
I never believed I could feel this way.
I don’t know where to go from here.
I never want to be anywhere else.
My whole world has changed.
She is my whole world.
I’m not sure how to be me again.
I’ve never felt more like myself.
I’ve never needed anyone, but I need him.
I love her. I’ll always love her.
But is our love enough? Can Levi and I really survive this?
Together, Ivy and I can survive anything.
March 28th, 2016
My heart thrummed painfully as I pulled Ivy closer to my chest and put my lips to her hair.
She was silent, and the expression on her face couldn’t be described as anything other than lost. Jagged red lines broke the smooth white surface of her eyes, and an angry blush swallowed up the normally perfect skin of her cheeks. Her body was in the throes of a meltdown.
But that wasn’t a surprise. Half of her soul—Camilla’s half—had been severed and battered and was, right then, struggling to hold on through a set of trauma doors and unyielding concrete walls.
As identical twins, Camilla and Ivy were bound together by ties that were supernatural and inexplicably complicated.
They’d been born of the same egg, housed in the same mother, and lived a cherished life together. But now, they’d been forced to fend for themselves. Camilla fought for her life, and Ivy was left to stand by and do nothing.
I knew the torture of helplessness. I’d known it with Grace, and now, I knew it all over again as I watched Ivy lock herself inside and completely shut down emotionally because she couldn’t aid in the physical fight for her sister.
“Levi,” the chief greeted, his voice softened by grief. He gave me an affectionate squeeze of the shoulder with one hand and continued to hold his wife closer with the other.
They’d just arrived, the first of the crowd of support I knew would gather at Ivy’s and my sides. Margo had been sobbing on the way over here—I could tell by the mottle of her face and throat and the moisture in her eyes—but she’d pulled it together before entering the building for the sake of Ivy and for the sake of the town.
We were well-versed in disaster. Our strength, it seemed, was in our ability to stand beside one another despite it.
I noticed the dried blood that coated my hands as I smoothed them down the rigid lines of Ivy’s arms and pulled her even closer.
She was in shock; had been since the moment I’d abruptly woken her from a sleep aid-enhanced slumber and told her the news that had brought us here.
Cool blood still lay on the floor of the house we’d left, and police still swarmed over the bodies of Boyce Williams and Dane Marx, collecting evidence.
But the blood could wait. It would wait until we had word on Camilla, and Ivy had anything and everything she needed.
From this moment on, I was a man at her disposal. I’d be her punching bag when she needed and her shoulder to cry on when she allowed. For her, I vowed to be anything and everything. Always.
Moments after it had all gone down, mere seconds after I’d fired a bullet straight between Boyce Williams’s eyes, I’d been unwilling and unable to admit to Camilla’s end. Not there, next to the man she’d been willing to face head on in an effort to protect her sister. Not in the house where she’d spent those moments in terror, waiting for me to save her.
Not while her sister slept unwittingly in the next room.
And now, all I could do was pray.
Pray for Camilla. Pray for Ivy. Pray for a fucking miracle.
The door to the trauma unit opened swiftly, and a doctor came through, still pulling her mask from her face. Her surgical scrubs were covered in blood, and the look on her face would be burned into my mind for the rest of eternity.
“Camilla Stone’s family?” she asked, bone-weary and broken.
I knew the words before she spoke them. I’d lived them before. But Ivy, sweet fucking Ivy, still had a relationship with hope.
She hadn’t seen Camilla before the ambulance took her.
“Yes.” Ivy’s voice was scratchy and dry from the screams and wails and subsequent nonuse. Her agony had been physical as I’d told her the news. Potent. Piercing. “That’s me. I’m her sister,” she said. “And our parents are in LA, but they’re trying to catch a red-eye flight out here.”
My throat thick with saliva, I did my best to steady myself, hooking my arms around Ivy’s body.
I knew when the words came—words that would change everything she’d ever known—she’d need the support.
Direct and professional, the doctor stepped forward to Ivy and made eye contact, but she worried the mask in her hand with her fingers. “I’m Dr. Ines,” she introduced
herself, and Ivy nodded and swallowed, unable to say anything else.
“Your sister came in with a severe laceration to her throat and had lost a significant amount of blood volume. We rushed her to the operating room, started a transfusion, but we lost her on the table. We defibrillated for twenty minutes, but I’m…I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”
High-pitched and soul-destroying, the wail Ivy let out was the likes of which I would never recover from. It keened and moaned, and utter devastation rattled at its core.
She was a half of a whole now, and she’d never find the missing piece.
“Oh, Ivy,” I murmured, pulling her close and spilling into the abyss of guilt.
The bottomless pit of blackness that taunted I could have done something more—that I could have stopped it if I’d taken it all more seriously from the beginning.
Hell, I hadn’t even told Ivy the heroic decision Camilla had made to protect her.
But it wasn’t out of secrecy; it was because I knew, in this moment, Ivy wouldn’t be able to handle the truth of her sister’s sacrifice.
God, I’d give anything to change this, to remedy the pain Ivy would never release, but I was powerless.
Helpless to alter the past and unable to protect the future.
All I could do was live this with her, be present for her, and pray for God’s grace.
We couldn’t take any more hits.
We couldn’t take any more surprises.
Though, as the ones left behind—no matter what came—we had no choice but to survive.
And I’d spend the rest of my life making sure we did it together.
THE NEW YORK POST
Lightning Strikes Twice
Two days ago, tragedy once again rocked the small town of Cold, Montana. After six years of peaceful quiet followed the string of murders carried out by the Cold-Hearted Killer, Camilla Stone, Hollywood starlet Ivy Stone’s twin sister, and the circumstances of her death have brought Cold back into the news.
March 30th, 2016
COLD—Authorities say just six years after the killing spree that took Montana by storm transpired, another set of tragic deaths has occurred.
Cold, Montana has been the home to Hollywood’s finest for the last few months while the truth-based film, Cold, was being filmed. The script is based on the real-life events of Grace Murphy, the police detective killed in the line of duty while investigating the Cold-Hearted Killer.
On the evening of March 28th, popular Hollywood actress Ivy Stone and her sister, Camilla, were in their remote rental house in Cold, under the watchful eye of an active police officer Dane Marx, following several incidents related to Ivy’s stalker.
Boyce Williams, a producer on the film, texted Ivy Stone to confirm her whereabouts and then used that information to carry out his plot.
Officer Dane Marx was killed at the scene, while Camilla Stone was transported to Cold Medical Center for immediate attention. She was declared dead an hour later. Ivy Stone, said to be sleeping in a back bedroom of the home, was unharmed.
“To say this has rocked us would be an understatement,” Chief Pulse said during a press conference. “The loss of one of our officers, combined with the tragic death of one young woman while visiting our community, is overwhelming. We’re doing our best to cope and make sense of something like this happening here again.”
“Boyce Williams showed unusual behavior throughout the filmmaking process,” Officer Levi Fox of the Cold Police Department admitted at the press conference. “None of us saw an ending like this, though,” he concluded.
Levi Fox is the officer responsible for killing Boyce Williams after finding Dane Marx dead, and this isn’t his first foray into the news. Six years ago, Officer Fox was also the one to take the life of Walter Gaskins, thus ending the months-long reign of the Cold-Hearted Killer.
The city’s medical examiner is in the process of performing autopsies on both of the victims, and details will be forthcoming. All of this has the town of Cold on high alert and its citizens fighting for a resolution. “We’re a quiet town of quiet people,” Lana Jessup, a longtime resident commented. “We’re ready to get back to that, once and for all.”
CELEBRITY ONLINE
Hollywood Darling Ivy Stone’s Twin Sister Dead
March 31st, 2016
Hollywood is shocked and reeling this morning about the death of Ivy Stone’s twin sister. Camilla was Ivy’s assistant and had joined Ivy on location in Cold, Montana a few weeks into the filming of the upcoming movie Cold.
Sources say Camilla was jealous of Ivy and pretended to be her in an attempt to experience some of her stardom but, at the hands of a killer, paid the ultimate price.
Boyce Williams was a producer on the film and an integral part of the casting of Ivy for the role. Our sources say he started his obsession with the Hollywood starlet the day he met her.
“It was twisted,” an anonymous source commented. “But he was insistent about having her in the film no matter what.”
We don’t know about you, but we think sometimes it pays not to know people.
STARS MAG ONLINE
Ivy Stone Hides Away Amidst Emotional Breakdown
April 3rd, 2016
Despite her return to Hollywood for the burial of her sister, no one has seen or heard from Ivy Stone.
Inside sources claim she’s on the verge of a full-on mental breakdown. Screaming, breaking things, yelling at those closest to her. Apparently, she’s really gone off the deep end.
We’re wondering if this is the end of her career or if the crazy side of her will make her even more marketable.
We can’t wait to find out!
April 4th, 2016
Warm water washed down our bodies and mingled with Ivy’s silent tears.
She’d been crying them for the entire twenty minutes we’d been under the spray, and I still didn’t think she’d actually felt them.
Silent and stark, she was a shell of herself, and I was doing my best to make sure the thin exterior didn’t break.
“Tilt your head back,” I instructed softly, working my fingers through the tresses of her thick hair to rid it of the sudsy shampoo.
Extending her neck and letting the weight of her grief sink deeper into her shoulders, she complied.
There was no sign of contentment, no fire of contempt, and no relief in the warmth of the water or my gentle touch. She’d shut out everyone and everything the moment Dr. Ines had broken the news of Camilla’s passing.
Police questioning, meeting Ivy’s distraught parents, traveling to LA—it was all a blur.
For me and Ivy, I suspected.
Ivy was lost in her grief, and I was lost in being there for her.
On a normal basis, we try to live our lives looking outward. What’s in front of us, what’s around us, what’s worthy of finding out more.
But now, my sole purpose was seeing to the well-being of the woman I loved. My view was focused inward. In the window. Inside the house. Away from the noise.
At the heart of Ivy.
Where she had a bottle of emotion just waiting to explode.
“Talk to me, baby,” I urged. “Get it out.”
Hard heart and blank eyes, she ignored my plea and my touch as I ran my hands down the slick skin of her shoulders and then back up to settle at her neck.
I tilted her chin with the pressure of my thumbs, bringing her defiant, distraught eyes to meet mine. She fought the contact, fully aware of intimacy’s ability to tap into well-hidden emotion. She didn’t want me breaking through the façade. She wanted it to hold strong—she wanted the distance to protect her.
I’d used the technique for years of my life, torturing myself and those around me, and I recognized the look of it in her.
I was hesitant to resist anything she felt she needed—but I knew better.
Self-contained grief only multiplied. It attacked its only available opponent and destroyed the person appropriately. I didn’t want to watch her de
stroy who she was. Lively, fiery, and full of life. She had so much to offer, and I couldn’t imagine her turning into a female version of what I’d been for so many years.
“Ivy,” I called. “Look at me.”
Deprived of her solitude, she lashed out, whipping my skin with the lash of her tongue. “Leave me alone.”
“No,” I refused. “I’d do just about anything you asked. But I won’t do that.”
“Get out!” she screamed, high-pitched and desperate, splashing the water against the thick marble tile as she slashed out an arm.
I wrapped my arms tightly around her body, trapping her arm beneath them, and pulled her close. “No,” I repeated. “Not now, not ever. You and me against everything else. You and me, no matter the obstacle, we face it together.”
The words were like a hammer to the wall she’d built. Brick by brick, she crumbled into my arms and gave herself over to the emotion.
“I just… How do I do it, Levi? How am I supposed to say goodbye?”
Squeezing my arms tighter, I put my lips to her hair and breathed in her pain. If I could take it from her and put it inside of myself, I would.
My voice shook as I tried to find the words to give advice I hadn’t followed myself. I had been a one-man shitshow until Ivy had come along. It felt ironic to be trying to put the pieces of her back together when the glue was still drying on myself.
“However you can. For me, I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t move past anything, and I think you know that better than anyone.”
A sob tore from her throat as she pressed her face farther into my throat.