by G N Wright
“How did you even get in here?” Taylor adds.
Jace gleams at her slowly taking her in from head to toe and I can see her blush from his appraisal, “Oh, I am a man of many talents, sweetheart.”
Lincoln walks in behind him, “You girls ready to go?” He asks, in his always serious tone.
I take the both of them in too and see they are both dressed casually smart and looking as hot as ever.
“Damn, princess, I knew that outfit was made for you,” Jace cuts in making me look at him, “Marcus isn’t gonna know what's hit him.”
Taylor replies, “Me, if he doesn’t fucking man up,” and I have to laugh at her feisty attitude inside a 5ft 2 package.
Jace crowds in close to her, “Oh, I like a girl who knows how to fight back,” he teases, before reaching behind her to grab the bottle of tequila and knocking some back before offering her a wink. The sexual chemistry between the two of them is practically visible so I cut into it and suggest we get moving.
The boys ride in the front so I sit in back with Taylor and finish off the bottle of tequila. I wish I could say I was just having a night as a typical teenager but, in honesty, I need the liquid courage for whatever tonight may bring.
Chapter 11
ASHER
Iam clouded by darkness and cloaked in death. That is what it feels like every time I step foot into my father’s house. No, the devil's house, built on bodies and coated in the blood of the innocent. I don’t call it home, it isn’t. The only home I know is the one where my daughter lives. My sweet, innocent baby girl. Too pure for this world. The stuff I would do to protect her, the stuff I have done. It is limitless. There isn’t a person in this world that I wouldn't kill to protect her and her mother. The only two people I genuinely care about in this fucked up thing I call a life.
She has that pure innocence in her, children always do. They don’t know the depths of evil until it is thrust upon them. I used to be innocent just like her. Innocent and unaware of the horrors happening in my own backyard.
My father, for all intents and purposes, appears to be your perfect upstanding member of society. People know him as the face of business and hefty donations, not the leader of an illegal sex ring or a gun and drug dealer. He is a King in both his public and private life. By day, people adore him and tend to his every whim. By night, he is feared, and he meets his needs with blood and pain, just not his own.
My brother, Greg, is the worst of the worst. Calling him a rapist and a murderer doesn’t do justice to the crimes he’s committed. Everyone fears him, even my father sometimes. He is a loose cannon, a wild card drawing unwanted attention. People in our circle are always watching him, worrying about what his next move will be. My father has men keeping tabs on him, always ready to clean up his next mess.
Where Greg is a wild hunter, I am a stealthy predator. His loud and brash actions, the perfect cover for my quiet and controlled ones. Greg and my father hunt little girls. But me? I hunt them. Stalk them in everything they do. They don’t even realize that when they invite me to the table, they are dining with a traitor.
A killer is what was needed to take them down, so a killer is what I became.
I changed that night. The night I don’t name. The night I don’t even try to think about. Thinking about it is just dangerous. The rage that courses through my body when I remember the blood on her, well it doesn’t bear thinking about. When I do, I think about how it will feel when I coat myself in my family's blood. I want to drown in it as I watch them choke on it.
I sit at the table in my father’s den perfectly prepped for another one of his meetings. It’s a large circular black table that has gold veins intertwining around the legs. The top is glossy and smooth, it houses three chairs around one side and four around the other. This is where his true business occurs. The only people in here are the ones he trusts. I sit to his left playing the dutiful son as Greg sits on his right, the place of our father’s heir. I sip the smooth clear liquid from my glass that is the only vice I allow myself. Something to take the edge off and allow me to be here and remain calm. I sit silently. Watching. Listening. Assessing.
We aren’t alone here tonight. Across from us we have his band of loyal followers.
Steven Baizen, Rolland Atkins, Joseph Kavanagh, and Carter Fitzgerald. All of them, like my father, are upstanding members of society housing dark and dangerous secrets. Baizen is Captain of the Hallows Police who has a liking for underage boys and illegal contraband. Atkins runs a pharmaceutical company and happily provides the drugs to help my father subdue his victims. Kavanagh is a criminal lawyer which, I think, speaks for itself, he is always on hand to dig these men out of any mess they might make. And Fitzgerald is your typical double-crossing politician, high up on the food chain and low on morals. Safe to say there are a lot of powerful men around this table. Men who look at me as just a boy. A boy sitting in these meetings to learn the ropes of his father’s business, to one day be by Greg’s side as he takes over. They have no idea that this boy is the last face they will ever see.
I know everything about all of them. Where they live, where they work, what they like, and what makes them tick. Who they are married to and who they spend their nights with. Every aspect of their life is under my microscope. I have spent the last three years watching their every move and every mistake. Cataloguing it all for my own future gain. When we decide it’s time for them to pay, they will be dead before they even breathe our names.
“What did your boys find, Cap?” Elliot’s voice booms across the table to the Captain of Police.
“The explosion didn’t kill your men, they were dead before it happened,” Baizen replies, scrubbing at the scruff of beard on his face. He’s a disgusting fat bastard who I will take no remorse in killing.
“How?” My father grits through his teeth at this new information.
“Shot, sliced, gutted. You name it and they got it,” he muses, and I take note of the new information. Five men were murdered that night. One by Elle with a knife right across the throat and four by Lincoln in what seems to be very versatile methods. How interesting.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” Greg interrupts. “First the Octopus disappears without a trace, and now this? Someone is after us.” I force my eyes not to roll at how obvious his statement is. Fucking cunt.
“In our line of work, someone is always after us,” my father replies. Oh, father you have no idea how true that is.
“And what about King’s girl?” Atkins asks. I can hear my heart beating in my head as I try to control my emotions and refrain from gutting every fucker at this table.
Greg laughs, “What? Do you think some broken bit of pussy is capable of getting one over on us?” He asks with a snort and the guy shrugs. My blood boils at the callous referral to my best friend. It takes a lot of self-control to not react and enforce the varying levels of violence I am imagining towards him.
“Who else?” He says tentatively, not wanting to piss off the wild card Donovan. I have to cover my smile; if only they knew that the only Donovan they should be scared of, is me.
“Literally anyone,” Greg replies, with another laugh but is silenced when my father raises his hand to shut him up.
“Regardless, we leave no stone unturned. I will look into the girl myself,” he says sternly, and I stiffen slightly.
“How will you do that? The boy?” Fitzgerald asks nodding his head at me and I feel slightly hopeful that maybe he will leave it to me but of course life isn’t ever that easy.
“Of course not, I will find her myself,” he grunts back.
“Where?” Greg asks with that sick little gleam in his eye, and I have to stop myself from putting a bullet in his skull right then and there.
My father smiles. It’s cunning and full of malice, “Oh, don’t worry about that.” He put a fucking price on her head for fuck sake, was that not enough? Will it ever be enough?
I barely hear the rest of the discussion as my sole focus i
s on how he knows how to get to Elle. I do everything I can to protect her without alerting it to my family and when I can’t, that is where Zack takes over. Except now it isn’t just Zack, it’s also the fucking South Side Rebels, well two of them at least. Did they lead my father to her?
Does he know where she is? Or is he just bluffing? Has he already had contact with her, and she just hasn’t told me? I mean it’s not like people don’t know she is back in town. Marcus fucking named her as his fucking Queen loud and proud and the way the Rebels flock around her, there is no way she is flying under the radar.
No, impossible. I might fucking despise them, but it seems Elle has them wrapped around her finger like she does me. I know they won’t hurt her, I don’t know how, but I just do. I grind my jaw just thinking about them. Marcus was bad enough, always trying to keep her for himself, he never understood how all I ever wanted from her was friendship. I am not infatuated with her like he is.
Now it isn’t just Marcus though, it’s the other two as well. That fucking pathetic playboy Conrad and their pet hacker Blackwell. I don’t know who I despise more. That’s a lie, I do. Marcus is blinded by love and his current tantrum will pass. I know him well enough to know that. He will eventually learn the truth and then I will have someone else who will want Donovan blood just as much as me. We won’t be allies in any way, but we will have the same goal. Avenge Elle and that is good enough to keep him in my good graces.
Conrad has his own demons to chase. Elle told me what my brother did to his sister and the only reason he hasn’t killed him yet is the same reason I haven’t. Patience. Patience and planning. Killing with reckless abandonment would only end in my own demise. So instead, I wait, plan and plot. I do this so when I finally strike there will be no loose ends left to deal with. Hallows will be painted in the blood of monsters and my girls will finally sleep peacefully and protected.
Blackwell is the only one I haven't figured out yet. No demons that I can dig up. No family either. He is just void of emotion and his skills with a computer mean he has left nothing behind for me to dig up about him. The only information I have about him are the tidbits I have picked up from listening and tracking him and Elle on missions. Which summed up is that he is loyal, capable, smart, and gay. I loathe that I know nothing about him. That and the fact that Elle just blindly placed her trust in him, just like Zack. It pisses me the fuck off. All three Rebels annoy me in different ways, but Lincoln Blackwell gets under my skin more than the others.
When the official meeting concludes, one of my father’s whores’ wheels in a drinks cart and that is my cue to leave. I have no desire to watch a girl be beaten and raped repeatedly. The horrors of what happened to Elle are imprinted on my mind for all eternity. I have never looked at a girl the same way since that night.
I head to my room to get changed. I am still wearing my Hallows Prep uniform and need to lose it before joining Elle and her merry band of Rebels at the warehouse on Riverside for a ‘chill’ night of fun. Whatever the fuck that means. I shower and change into dark jeans and a fitted Henley, I throw a holster on and place a gun on either side because regardless of how ‘chill’ the night is, I don’t go anywhere unless I am armed. I learned the repercussions of that lesson the hard way when I had nothing to protect Elle with and I won’t make that mistake again.
I throw a jacket on over my ensemble and leave my room, closing and locking my door behind me and start down the hallway and spot Greg hiding in the shadows as I round the corner.
“And where are you going?” he steps out of the shadows and I feign a jump and pretend I didn’t know he was there. Just another game of shadows and mirrors.
“Out,” I say, holding his gaze firmly but making sure the hate I feel for him is hidden behind the impassive mask I wear around my family.
“Business or pleasure, little brother?” he asks.
I smile a light smile, “Oh now, Gregory, you know I leave all the business to you. You’re dad's heir after all. So why not indulge in the pleasure only?” I say sweetly with a laugh like we are in on some inside joke together.
He laughs and moves to clap me on the shoulder, and it takes everything in me to not rip his arm clean off his body.
“You not pounded enough of those Hallows Prep holes yet? They are easy prey; don’t you want more of a challenge?” he asks.
“Oh, I like the challenge of working my way through every one of them,” I say with what I hope is a smug enough grin, like I am showing off my conquests.
Clearly it works because Greg laughs, “You should have told me, I would have taken a bet to see who could complete it the fastest.”
I fake a laugh in response in favor of telling him that raping girls against their will wouldn’t count and then slicing his throat. No, laughing is better for now.
He smacks my back three times, “Well, go on then, don’t keep all that pussy waiting, boy. The girls always go wild for Donovan dick.”
I nod, then head down the stairs imagining every way I am going to cut into his skin and bleed him out before planting a bullet directly between his eyes. I think about harvesting all of his organs into jars and gifting them to Elle.
Hmm maybe I do need to ‘chill.’ Yeah right. I won’t fucking chill until the only people alive with Donovan blood running through their veins are Cassie and myself.
Chapter 12
MARCUS
The warehouse on Riverside is somewhere my boys and I have frequented regularly for the last few years. It doesn’t have a name or hold any loyalties, it’s a free for all, in terms of the invisible divide in this shitty town. Tonight, I don’t stand with my boys as usual, no the only person on my team tonight is fucking Cherry. And that’s only because she thinks tonight will end with me fucking Cherry. Spoiler alert, it won’t.
I used to love coming here. Indulging in shitty beer and easy pussy. Now, I’d rather shoot myself in the fucking dick than be here but it’s all part of the game. A game of Kings. A game where I don’t understand the rules, the players or what the outcome should be. But still, I play.
I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have to be, but I do because they will be, she will be. I heard Jace talking loudly about it as they left school at lunch today. Making plans and sharing jokes, seeing them together does something to me. Something I don’t like. I always hated her friendship with Asher but that was when I was a fucking punk ass kid who would do anything to make her mine. Now I’m jealous for other reasons. I don’t want her lying traitorous ass, but I want back what she has taken from me. My brothers.
They are the only family I have left, and I can’t lose them, regardless of how hard I wanted my fist to meet Jace’s jaw this week every time he touched her. Seeing them with her, protecting her, it burns something inside of me and confuses me. They know her truths just like I do and yet instead of hating her with me and taking my side, they are on hers. Why?
I can’t help but think I am still missing something but what other secrets could she be keeping from me? Nothing as big as a secret fucking love child, I’m sure. That doesn’t make the need to peel back her layers and allow her truths to pour out any fucking less. I feel powerless around her and that’s not a feeling I enjoy.
I have asked myself why I even care, and I am yet to figure out the answer. She lied, more than lied, the secrets she kept from me are fucking astronomical, so why should I care what she does or who she does it with? We aren’t Ells and River anymore; she has made that perfectly clear. She was making that clear from the moment she stepped foot back in this town, I was just blinded by what I thought was fate. It wasn’t fate that brought her back though, it was fucking family, just not mine.
I knock back a piss warm beer and clench my fist around the red cup with the need to feel the burn of whiskey in my throat. I have drank so much in the last few weeks I am surprised my liver is even still fucking intact.
“You want another, baby?” Cherry’s voice comes from my left and I have to fight to cringe when she
calls me baby. I am nobody’s fucking baby, least of all her’s.
She hasn’t left my side since we got here and, in all honesty, she is irritating the fuck out of me and is a big reason why I am always a one and done guy. This is the shit I don’t want, a girl hanging off my dick and crowding my every move. The fact she is already like this when I haven’t even let her wet my dick means she never will. Fucking her would take her from a clinger to straight up stalker. I have already got one girl who wants my soul, I don’t need another.
I stand pushing her off my body and tell her to stay there and head over to the makeshift bar to find my own drink. I don’t even know why I am fucking here, she isn’t, my guys aren’t, so what is the fucking point?
I manage to snag a bottle of rum, not my first choice but better than warm beer so I twist off the top and knock some back. When I bring it back from my mouth, I lock eyes with the last person I want to see. Asher fucking Donovan.
He is sipping from a pristine crystal glass and I honestly wonder where the fuck he got it in a place like this, without bringing it himself. I wouldn’t put it past the fucking psycho to do something like that.
He nods his head at me like we are friends and then pushes his glare past me to survey the room. I watch him eye every fucker in here, assessing them, noting their tells, anything that would give him an insight into them. Is this how he did it? How he took Elle from right under my nose without me being any the wiser. I push down my rage as I imagine all the secret rendezvous they must have had, the images of them fucking so much that he knocked her up. I squeeze my fist so tight I am surprised the bottle doesn’t break.
“Fuck you doing here, Donovan?” I spit at him.
He makes a show of wiping his face before responding “Trust me, Marcus, I am asking myself the same thing.”
“Waiting for your girl, I guess,” smiling smugly, but he doesn’t react, so I continue, “Only is she even your girl anymore considering she is now on the arm of a Rebel?”