ASHES (Ignite Book 3)

by R. J. Lewis

  “All I’m saying is maybe there isn’t a better room.”

  He shook his head. “I refuse to believe that. It’s not possible.”

  “But what if it is?”

  “It’s not, Liv.”

  “Keep trying to tell yourself that.”

  He looked absolutely wrecked. “Oh, God.”

  “God left this place a long time ago, Shane.”

  “I’ll be back shortly.”

  Oh shit. “You can’t be serious. You’re really going back to him?”

  His back was turned to me now. “Yes, I am. How can I not? This…This just isn’t right.”

  “Shane –”

  “Don’t move. Stay right here.”

  “Don’t move?” I mocked. “Where could I possibly go?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  I was about to leap off the bed to him as he closed in on the door. “Don’t go. Jesus, Shane, he threatened you –”

  But Shane was already gone, slamming the door shut in his exit. I dreaded the minutes as they ticked on by.

  The last thing I needed was a pissed off Reaper.

  Seventeen

  SHANE

  He wasn’t a man of faith. You couldn’t be if you were living this life. How many lives had he snuffed out to protect that lonely girl? She would never know, and he would never tell her.

  Being the daughter of Milo Dillinger was a curse, and she had been sentenced to a life of hell. It wrecked him to think some old man had been senseless enough to dump the child in Dillinger’s care. That man had left prison with more scars than he’d walked in with, and with a heart that was less a muscle and more an ice-pick.

  “What happened to you?” Shane recalled asking him. This was his best friend. The man he’d grown up with and would do anything for.

  “Life happened,” Dillinger said. His voice was all kinds of wrong. It was dead. No, beyond dead. Dead insinuated there had been life there to begin with, but it didn’t sound like that anymore. It didn’t look like it either. Dillinger used to be big and rough, but he’d had soft parts too. Parts that, when not concealed, revealed a hint of the humane child Shane had witnessed in their teenage years together.

  But when Dillinger walked out of prison, all sign of humanity was mute. It was gone. Worse than dead. It’d burned somewhere over the years behind bars and escaped into the air, like ashes from a disappearing fire. Dispersed and blown away, impossible to collect again.

  And what was the worst thing you can give to a man like that?

  A child.

  And she may as well have looked like that yellow fucking fuzzy thing crawling along the wall the way Dillinger appeared when his eyes fell on hers the very first time. Shane remembered how close he was to dismissing her to her room and letting the maids handle it, but he wouldn’t allow it. He’d grabbed Dillinger by the arm and growled into his ear quietly so she wouldn’t hear. “You may be dead inside, Milo, but she’s alive and fragile, and she has feelings, and goddammit, let her know she isn’t alone anymore. Tell her she’s safe. Tell her she’ll be alright, and she’ll never go hungry again.”

  Dillinger stiffened, and took a moment to think his words over. Then he clenched his teeth and forced a nod. It would be the first and last moment of comfort he’d offer the girl.

  Shane watched as he walked toward her, not at all awkward about it. Dillinger was a master at appearing normal, but Shane saw straight through it. The old Milo was long gone, and in his place was an emotionless fiend hellbent on power. And nothing was more powerful in a family dynasty than a kid.

  Yeah, there was no God. Where was He to put a stop to this?

  Dillinger dropped down to his knees and rested his hands on the tiny little shoulders of the girl. She was shaking. Her eyes darted from him and to Shane and then back to him. She was frightened and sad, but she stood still. Shane admired her strength. She hadn’t once fallen apart. She was playing it smart, keeping quiet, taking in her surroundings as if she were learning her place. An upbringing in the streets may have worked perfectly in her favour then to adjust to the life that was coming.

  But she needed reassurance. She needed to know she wasn’t going to be harmed.

  “You’re safe,” Dillinger said soothingly to her. “You’re alive. You’re okay. So long as you’re breathing, you’re okay, sweetheart.”

  Shane nodded to himself in approval. Those were the words she’d needed. Dillinger would forget them in a minute, but she would remember them for a lifetime. You don’t come out of hell and forget the kind words spoken to you thereafter.

  Dillinger led her out of the gigantic foyer of his apartment with his hand wrapped around hers. She looked up at him, eyes heavy with tears and asked, “What about Eternity Man? Can’t he be here too?”

  “Oh, that old man needed to get back to his world,” Dillinger responded, catching Shane’s approving gaze.

  Shane frowned when they were gone. That old man had destroyed the girl’s life. If Shane had met him before Dillinger, he would have sent him the opposite way and smuggled the girl into a home. Dillinger was so absorbed in himself and getting to the top, he wouldn’t have known any better. He would have believed she was dead like her mother, and that would have been the end of it.

  Reaper was like Dillinger. But as far gone? Shane didn’t yet know, but he was losing hope fast. The man had put the girl in unimaginable conditions. Aside from the running toilet – holy fuck, thank the fucking stars for that – it was practically third world. And he understood the situation. Don’t get Shane wrong, he wasn’t unreasonable, or asking for much. He knew the operation here was temporary. Reaper was getting it done at a surprisingly fast rate. It was impressive. His men were one of a fucking kind, but Shane wasn’t about to reward a bunch of good drug dealers for being dedicated to their work by acknowledging that out loud.

  Back to the point at hand, she was living outrageously and she’d been fucking starved a day to boot by that tridactyl looking blonde bitch. That made Shane angry, and Shane had an anger problem. A very serious anger problem that twelve years of anger management did fuck all helping (not when you were fucking the counsellor). He’d learned self-medicating in the form of alcohol greatly improved that anger problem, but there was no fucking alcohol in the middle of this dense fucking bush he was going to trust himself to drink. The men may have been excellent little gardeners, but they weren’t to be trusted.

  Liv needed to get the fuck out of here.

  Reaper was with his men around an unlit firepit. They were all seated in the saddest looking camp chairs, heartily hunched over plates, attacking their food with their hands. Except Reaper. He was flipping through a fucking…duotang? Was that a fucking duotang? He hadn’t seen one of those since his first Canadian anger management counsellor (she didn’t last because she wanted more, whatever the fuck that meant), and even then, it was rare as hookers on a unicycle here. Shane squinted at it as he stopped in the circle, facing him, then he cleared his throat to announce his presence.

  Reaper didn’t acknowledge him, but he sure as fuck knew he was there. The other guys had stopped to look. Even the horrible pilot darted his green eyes at Reaper, waiting for him to acknowledge him. Why the fuck wasn’t he acknowledging him?

  “Reaper,” Shane finally said, weary already. This man had a penchant for being difficult.

  Reaper glanced up from his…whatever the fuck and stared at him. He didn’t say anything. Just stared, waiting.

  “We haven’t finished our discussion,” Shane told him. “Is there anywhere private we can go?”

  “No,” Reaper answered.

  In his peripheral, the blonde bitch suddenly appeared just outside the circle, no doubt eavesdropping.

  Shane grinded his teeth. Fine. “The room Olivia is in is primitive.”

  “Are you speaking on her behalf?” the pilot asked, sitting to the left of Reaper.

  “Yes.”

  “So, she sent you here?”

  Shane huffed. �
�I’m talking to Reaper, not you.”

  “I’d like to know the answer,” one of the men pitched in, looking at him.

  For fuck’s sake. “The answer to what?”

  “To what Logan just asked.”

  “She didn’t specifically send me, no –”

  “What’s wrong with her room?” another jumped in, sitting up straight in his chair, a bewildered look on his face. “I’d give anything for her room.”

  “Her room isn’t sanitary,” Shane tried explaining, but his blood pressure was quickly rising. “It’s filthy.”

  “Can’t the princess hack a bit of dirt?” Christy inserted, drawing nearer now with a pissed off look on her face.

  Shane glared at her. “I guess we have different perspectives on what a bit of dirt is.”

  “We’re not a hotel resort.”

  “Well, this used to be.”

  “Yeah, as in past tense.”

  Shane shrugged, puzzled. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning up plates of food? Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Her eyes widened. “You fucking –”

  “Christy,” Reaper coolly interrupted in warning, looking up from his whatever the fuck. She quieted down instantly. What the hell? Clearly, she loved the guy. Shane didn’t give a fuck.

  Shane redirected his sights on Reaper. “Her room –”

  “Go find a better one,” Reaper interrupted simply.

  Everyone laughed. What was so funny? This was a fucking circus.

  Shane blinked hard. “Are you able to point me in the direction of a better one?”

  “He doesn’t answer to you,” one of the men piped in. He was this weird looking guy with those weird as fuck stretched out earlobes you could kick a soccer ball through.

  “Yeah,” Shane heard another yell. “Reaper doesn’t have to point out a thing.”

  Weren’t these men just speaking Spanish when he’d arrived? What the fuck was happening?

  “Honestly,” Shane sighed, exasperated, “I just want to talk to your leader. I’m not asking for much. I’m not even asking it for myself. I’m asking it for your future wife, and she shouldn’t be sleeping in a hole of a goddamn room with yellow fucking fuzzies climbing up the wall! And fucking hell, is that a duotang?”

  Everyone went quiet.

  Shane had overdone it. He had lost his cool. Sleep deprivation and a terrible pilot and this fucking humidity was going to do that to anyone. But he had raised his voice. To Reaper. To the man all these men answered to (he should have really focused on the anger management tips after all).

  And Reaper was pissed. He closed the duotang and leaned forward in his chair. It squeaked something awful, disrupting what should have been a serious moment. He stared at Shane for a while, deliberating something. Maybe Shane’s life, he didn’t know.

  “What’s a duotang?” someone whispered to Logan.

  Logan shrugged and whispered back. “I have no fucking clue.”

  “It’s the folder Reaper’s holding,” Christy said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t know why he didn’t just say folder instead of some weird fucking word.”

  Shane glared. “It’s not just a folder.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It needs paper with holes –”

  “Sounds like a fucking folder to me,” Logan interrupted, nodding introspectively.

  Jesus fuck. “Fine, it’s a folder.”

  “So, why’d you call it a duobang?”

  “Duotang. I travelled a lot,” Shane explained, completely depleted of all patience. “I picked up a lot of jargon.”

  “That’s a really weird name.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “I don’t know,” Shane said, enunciating every word slowly. “I am not a walking google engine.”

  Cue awkward silence. Reaper was still staring at Shane, and Shane was so tired.

  So fucking tired.

  These people were madness.

  “You want a better room,” Reaper finally spoke, his voice unreadable. “I suggest you go and find it.”

  That was it? Shane was partly relieved, and partly disturbed. There should have been more consequence for raising his voice. Dillinger would never have allowed it. But Reaper looked away, leaned back in his chair and opened back up his whatever the fuck. Maybe there was hope after all.

  Nodding, Shane finally gave up and went in search for a better room, and to regain his fucking IQ.

  Liv

  “Well, get fucked, this is the best room around.” Shane ran his hand over his worn-out face, looking shocked.

  He’d taken a long time to return, and the nerves had weighed me down, forcing me into a light sleep. I yawned and turned to my side, staring at him as he sat down on the chair, blowing out deep breaths.

  “Say that again,” I murmured.

  “This is the best hut, Liv. He, uh, gave you the best room.”

  “How do you know?”

  “First, we had an exchange. I won’t get specific. Please, don’t make me get specific.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I brought up the room, and he…well, he wasn’t happy I was bringing it up in front of his men. Rightfully so, I suppose, since your father is the same. But I’m fucking tired. Jesus, that flight was bumpy and my ass is killing me, and I’m not thinking straight since this whole fucking thing happened. And you know about my fucking temper. Let’s not get into that, either.”

  It wasn’t like Shane to swear so much. “What did he say?” I prodded.

  “At first, he said nothing. He stared at me silently for a while, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. Then he told me to find a better room.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes, just like that. He seemed quite determined I do it. So, I went to every single one of them, and well…” his voice trailed for a moment, and he visibly shuddered. “Let’s just say there are things you can’t un-see.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I glanced around the room, wondering how shit the others were to warrant this the best. Then, I kind of felt curious about it.

  “He gave me the best room.” I needed to hear myself say it. “He didn’t throw me in a shit hole?”

  Shane flinched. “The other rooms are…pretty fucked up, Liv. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. The set-up here is temporary. It was an old abandoned resort, and your room has the only working toilet. So, they’re living in the wild for the most part.”

  I sat up. “So, I guess you got what you wanted.”

  “What?”

  My lips twitched. “You got me the best room. Congratulations.”

  He chuckled dryly. “It’s not a victory I would brag about. In fact, it hadn’t been up to me. Reaper had your room sorted before you arrived, or so the men say. Honestly, they don’t stop talking. You’re quite a distance away from everyone, too.”

  “Yeah, he isolated me, Shane. Kept me locked up in here. Remind you of my childhood?”

  He looked at me strangely. “Liv, you were put here for your safety. There are always six men circling this room, and another half a dozen more a little further out I counted. He couldn’t risk one of his men turning on him for a woman. He even brought around a few prostitutes to keep them satisfied. Again, words spoken from his very own men.”

  I thought of the jungle skanks, and the men cheering when they stepped out of the car. My brows came together. “But they wouldn’t ever do anything to me. You’ve seen the guy. Everyone’s scared of him.”

  “Yes, but you’ve never seen a man starved for that kind of attention. Every now and then, it just takes one to do something irreversible. A little bit of temptation goes a long way, and apart from that ghastly blonde bitch, you’re the first woman they’ve seen in a very long while. Why would anyone risk that?”

  I used the covers to hide the Goosebumps climbing up my arms, chilled by his words. This whole set-up was logical the more I thought about it. In my fury, I didn’t stop to consider the obvi
ousness of it. That was my weakness, though. I let the anger in like it was armour, and it drove out logic faster than a bullet.

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  Shane sighed, long and slow. “Now, we wait for tomorrow.”

  On one hand, tomorrow felt like an eternity away. Every minute was like an hour. I didn’t know whether I wanted to sleep this time away, or feel every torturous second that went by.

  As I reflected on his words, I let out a soft chuckle. Ghastly blonde bitch. “I see you don’t like Christy.”

  He chuckled. “She was standing far back as I spoke to Reaper, watching me like I was an insect. She looked like a goddamn bulldog that wanted to physically harm me. I see her hatred extends to you if she bloody starved you for a night.”

  “Oh, but she forgot, apparently.”

  “I’ll be fucked if that’s the truth.”

  “I wonder why the guys won’t go near her. Shouldn’t she have been a target too?”

  “Mind my words, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her cunt had shark teeth. She’s savage, isn’t she?”

  My life was fucked, and yet I stood there, laughing so hard my ribs ached. “I definitely missed you, Shane.”

  “Well, I’m right here now, darling.”

  The day moved as slowly as I feared. Plates of food were delivered twice throughout the day for us, but not by Christy. Shane advised me to behave over the coming days, which meant not talking back to Reaper and doing what I was told. He had given me the same speech about Tony, so I only mildly listened. Mostly, I was hyper focused on the sounds outside the room. I anticipated Reaper’s return, even though I knew he probably wouldn’t. There was no reason for him to see me, not since I gave him my permission. Not since he won.

  I was right.

  He didn’t come. Even when Shane parted from the room to sleep somewhere nearby, I couldn’t feel Reaper’s presence at all.

  I crept to the window intermittently throughout the evening, scanning the small view before me. I saw figures blending in the jungle. Figures I now knew were my bodyguards. I strained to hear his voice, to know at some level he was close-by.