Cruel Seduction: A Dark Romance (Underground Kings Book 2)

by Kelli Callahan

  “What!” Gabriella shrieks and snatches my phone away from me, reading the alert on my phone. “No, why? Why! I don’t understand what he wants with me. I didn’t think he was there last night, but maybe he was.”

  Owen straightens. “Back up. You saw him?”

  “No.” Gabriella rolls her neck from left to right. “When we were walking in… I thought I felt someone watching me. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone. I thought it was all in my head because it was dark. I’m…” She closes her eyes, and she must have gathered courage because she doesn’t slouch anymore. Her spine is straight. “I’m afraid of the dark. And no, it isn’t because of scary movies, okay? I didn’t come out unscathed from my time with Kendrick, so please don’t tease me about it.”

  “We would never do that. We know your life hasn’t been easy up until now,” Heaven reassures her. He isn’t always serious, but when he is, he says the right things.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask softly. I don’t want to make her feel like I am being accusatory.

  “I thought it was in my head, I swear.” Her bottom lip wobbles. “They are going to come here and raid the place. They are going take you from me! I just got you, Sebastian. This can’t be happening. I’ll go back to him. He always makes sure I’m his. There’s no getting away from him.”

  “Hey.” I lift her chin, and her eyes aren’t watering, but I know they are on the verge. “You don’t need to worry about that. Police aren’t going to come here. No one knows we live here except us. There are some illegal names involve, and I have to cover our tracks, but no one knows we are here. No one will be able to find me. He won’t be able to find you.”

  “Well, you can’t stay here forever,” Owen says. “Eventually, you’ll want to go out. You’ll want to do something, what then?”

  “We need to prove that I haven’t been kidnapped. Why can’t I just go to the police and say I left him on my own free will and that he abused me? I have the scars to prove it.”

  “Guys like him will probably get off. He’ll blame the scars on Sebastian.”

  “But what about my word?”

  “Is your word rich?” Grayson stabs his fork into a pancake, waiting for her reply.

  “No, but—”

  “No, no buts.” Her chews and swallows. “Money talks. Money makes the world spin in the circle we love so much. “If you go to the cops, it won’t end well. We need to call our lawyer, just in case. We can tell him what’s going on, and he can at least put a restraining order against Kendrick for you. I’m not sure how much good it will do. Cops don’t really give a shit until someone gets hurt.”

  “But I have been hurt.” Gabriella sounds so defeated. “I can give them pages and pages of things that happened. Things they never thought they would hear. I’ve been hurt.”

  “You aren’t currently bleeding. I’m sorry, but they won’t care. We can set up precautions, but that’s all we can do. Sounds like Kendrick is a man who always gets what he wants. He probably has a few cops on the payroll. If he’s smart.” Grayson stares off into the distance and chuckles. “We could start there too.”

  “We don’t deal with cops, Gray.” I say.

  “I know, but we could. There’s always a cop on the right side of the law. I have the perfect guy in mind. The guy who arrested me.”

  “How is that going to help?” Owen bites out. “He fucking arrested you.”

  “He didn’t think I did the crime I was charged with.”

  “What were you charged with?” Gabriella asks, and we all fall silent. It’s a topic we never touch. Ever. Grayson is sensitive about it because it still kills him that someone would accuse him of that.

  He wipes his mouth and balls his fist. “I was charged with rape. I didn’t do it. The cop knew that, but he had no choice but to cuff me.”

  I remember the day Grayson found us. He was fresh out of prison, pissed off and a little broken. Being charged of rape, when you weren’t a rapist, did that to a man. He spoke to Jaxon apparently, briefly, in prison, and Jaxon said to look for him in Trinidad when he got out.

  He did.

  And now we were all here, waiting to get that sweet little thing called revenge.

  “All of you are innocent,” Gabriella says with awe as she stares each of us down. “You’re a group of innocent men who were wrongfully charged.”

  “Yes,” Grayson says, relieved that she believes him. He hates defending himself.

  Gabriella looks even more confused. She looks around the house, trying to figure out how we can afford this. She opens her mouth to say something, but then she shuts it. She is letting something roll around in that head of hers, and I want to know what it is.

  “I have a feeling you’re trying to piece together how we can afford to live like this?” Heaven laughs, then sits back, lifts his good foot on a chair and clicks his tongue, staring at me. “Wow, you know how to wait to the last minute don’t you, Sebastian?” He relaxes into the couch and growers at Gabriella. “He hasn’t told you what we do? How I broke my leg? Why Grayson always holds his side? Anything?”

  “We haven’t had a lot of time to talk,” I mutter and pour myself a cup of coffee from the carafe.

  “Oh, there has been time. Believe me, I heard it,” Heaven snorts.

  “What do you guys do?” Gabriella asks the one question I don’t want to answer.

  “We are a group of innocent criminals who steal from other criminals. It’s how we make our living,” Owen says, as-a-matter-of-factly, and sips his coffee with loud slurps, waiting to see her reaction.

  “Like heists?” she asks, dumbfounded.

  “Yep,” Grayson replies, smiling behind his mouthful of eggs.

  “So, we could plan to do that to Kendrick, take him for everything he is worth, and then we could kill him, right? That’s the gist of what you guys do?”

  Owen spits out his coffee, Heaven slaps his knee as he laughs, and Grayson stares at her like a deer in headlights.

  “It doesn’t bother you. That we do that? We nearly got blown up a few weeks ago in our efforts,” I state, waiting for her to be shocked or scared. I know Quinn didn’t handle it well at first, and it’s one of those things that could take awhile to sink in and absorb.

  “Is it supposed to bother me?” She chews on her bottom lip as she thinks. “Nope, it doesn’t bother me. I think it’s cool. I want to join the club. Let me join. Let me join!” She jumps up and down and claps her hands.

  I cough into my fist to try to disguise my laughter. I glance at the guys, and they are all grinning from ear to ear.

  “She’s so stinking’ cute. I just want to squeeze her,” Heaven says, wrapping his arms around himself. He makes her sound like a cute puppy.

  “Baby, it isn’t a club. It’s a dangerous job. We nearly got killed. Why would you want to be a part of that?”

  “Because I want to take back what was lost from me. I’m going to guess that’s why you do it? You’re mad at the criminal world, so you take it on to get back at them?”

  “She’s very intuitive for not asking a lot of questions about this,” Owen says, about to take another drink of his coffee when he thinks better of it, since he spit in it, and poured it down the drain. “Damn, I hate wasting coffee.”

  “Same,” I say, rubbing it in his face as I bring my mug to my lips.

  He narrows his eyes but doesn’t say a word. We are cowboys at a standoff, holding each other’s gaze to see which one will flinch first.

  Heaven whistles the typical theme song in those old western shows. I break first because I have a fucking sense of humor. Owen just grunts and spins around to pour himself another cup of coffee.

  “She is right here,” Gabriella sasses, snatching a piece of bacon of Grayson’s plate.

  “Oh, meow. Kitten has claws,” Heaven teases and claws the air like a cat.

  I rub soothing circles in the middle of Gabriella’s back, biting back another grin from, seeing her get feisty.

 
; “Guys, I’m serious. I know it’s life or death with whatever you guys do, but I’ve experienced that before, more than once, maybe more than all of you combined.” She stops speaking when I wrap my arms around her from the back and lock her in my embrace. I need her close. She sighs and the stress leaves her body, causing her to sag against me. “I’m just saying, I want to do to him what he did to me.”

  “And what’s that?” Heaven asks, prying.

  “He made me afraid of the dark.”

  “Same monsters live in the light, you know,” Owen says.

  “At least you can see them. When it’s dark, you never know what can happen,” she says off into the distance.

  We sit in brief silence after that, not really knowing what to say, and eat breakfast. Grayson finishes his plate first and tosses his napkin in the middle. “We need to come up with a plan. You,”—he points at me—“can’t leave the property. We can’t risk you getting caught and getting our names exposed like that. If we do, we will have to move somewhere else, and I happen to like it here.”

  “Why can’t anyone know about where you guys live?”

  “Because if criminals find out about us, they will come and try to win the throne, overtake us in a way.”

  “Why not just have something cool underground then instead of a big fancy Cliff House?” she asks Grayson.

  Heaven answers, “Um, because have you seen this place? It’s fucking awesome. Living underground would be gross and wet, probably cold.” He shivers at the mere thought of having to live under the dirt.

  “Well, it would still be fancy, just like a hobbit house or something.”

  “Do we look like hobbits?” Heaven feigns, splaying his palm against his chest. “That’s just rude.”

  “No, hobbits are much cuter.” Gabriella leans against the island as she watched the horror strike across Heaven’s face.

  He barely had a bump on his head last night. He was being a baby passing out like that. He’s fine now.

  “That’s just insulting with how big and hairy their feet are.” Heaven bends to the side and stares at his feet to check them out.

  “You know what they say about big feet.”

  Hearing her joke like this puts me at ease. I’m not so much worried about the arrest warrant like I should be. I can handle the warrant. I bet I can somehow hack the system and get it erased too. I need to figure out how they found my mugshot. I thought I deleted myself off the planet unless Kendrick kept a copy.

  Which he probably did because he is an asshole like that. He loved to try to ruin my life.

  “Listen, I can say this; for a man, I have average sized feet, but I’m not average where it counts, so that is obviously a myth,” Heaven holds out his hand for a high-five but no one returns it. “Fine, then. I’ll just be my own teammate,” he brings his other hand up and gives himself a hard slap. “Bunch of jerks.” Heaven points to each of us. “Even you, missy.” He stops at Gabriella, wiggling his finger at her, but she just lifts a shoulder and shoves another piece of bacon into her mouth.

  My eyes fall to her lips as they wrap around the piece of meat, and she moans and licks her lips. She is doing that on purpose. There is no way bacon tastes that good. I want her to do that to me, wrap those plump lips around my cock and suck me down until she’s humming for more.

  “Hey, earth to Sebastian.” Owen snaps his fingers in front of me, and I look at him in a daze.

  Gabriella is cleaning her fingers with her tongue, and I am too distracted to focus on anything else. I have an arrest warrant out for kidnapping, and all I can think about is her mouth on me, which probably isn’t even a good idea considering we’ve fucked so much over the last few days that I physically hurt.

  “Stop staring at her. Jesus, you have the rest of your lives. We must plan. With Jaxon busy with Quinn, it’s just us. Jaxon usually makes the decisions.”

  “Well, first thing is first,” I reach over to snag my laptop and turn it on. “Let me see if I can get rid of this warrant before we think of anything drastic.”

  “And then we plan to kill Kendrick.” Gabriella brings up her hand and punches it with the other for added threat.

  “Woah, there, killer. Someone is thirsty,” Grayson chuckles. “It takes time to make sure it all goes correctly. You can’t even remember where you were all these years, do you?” he asks Gabriella, and the wind and hope flies right out of her sails. She isn’t even thinking about specifics. She is on board to just get on with the show rather than think things through.

  “I hate him so much,” she says in a weak voice. “I can’t remember anything. He always kept me drugged or locked in a room. Even when we went to the market, I had a bag over my head going there and coming back. I just know he lives on the side of a cliff in a mansion, but it’s made of stone. It isn’t too high from the water either. It was how I managed to jump and live.”

  “Yeah, you didn’t live. You died. Sebastian is the one who was willing to break your chest and give you a heart massage if you didn’t start breathing,” Owen says and opens his computer too. He plucks the keys with his index finger. “I’ll try to narrow down the houses in Trinidad that are on a cliff.”

  “That will be all of them,” Grayson murmurs. “I’ll contact the officer who arrested me and see if we can’t get him on our side here. It will be nice to have a cop in our pockets.”

  I’m hacking into the police database searching for my arrest warrant when my software pings. “Score,” I say and hover by mouse to click on it when my software pings again. Someone else is hacking in too. “Fuck!” I curse and start typing as fast as I can to get out of there, but the person is right on my trail.

  “What? What is it?” Gabriella asks, laying her hand on my shoulder.

  “They knew I would try to do this. They are trying to catch me right now.”

  “Do they know it is you?”

  “No, I don’t think so, but if the catch me and follow my imprint, I’m screwed. They will know it’s me then.”

  “Get them off your trail!” Heaven shouts.

  “I’m working on it. I can’t type any faster!” I bite in return, my fingers dancing over the keyboard faster than they ever have. I am sweating. My heart pounds from the adrenaline. I keep switching my algorithm and have my signal bouncing off dozens of towers so they won’t be able to pinpoint me. No matter what I do, they are a step behind me.

  That isn’t enough.

  “I’m going to have to add a virus,” I say. “I can’t lose them, but once I let them catch me, they won’t be able to pinpoint me because the virus will destroy everything on our end and theirs.”

  “Including your arrest warrant?” Gabriella asks, hopeful that maybe all of this isn’t for nothing.

  I shake my head. “No, that will still be there, but their systems will be fried, and it will take days, if not weeks before they are up and running again.”

  “Doesn’t that mean your computer will be toast?”

  “Aw, Gabriella, you’re too cute,” Heaven crinkles his nose at her. “He has an entire room with backups. This computer is a drop in the bucket and not the first time he’s had to destroy, and it won’t be the last.”

  I hit enter and my laptop sparks and starts to smoke. I let out a tired gust of air and slam my laptop shut. “Well, that’s taken care of. Downside, another laptop down, and I still have a warrant.”

  Gabriella twists her long hair and circles it in a bun on top of her head. “You sound like there’s an upside.”

  “Their system is fried too. That’s something, right?” I ask, wanting there to be hope in this situation.

  “It’s something, but it isn’t enough. You can’t get arrested, Sebastian. With your record, you’ll go behind bars even longer this time, even if it is for the simplest thing. You can’t risk going out.”

  “I know.” My gaze falls on Gabriella. I hate that this is our life right now. She deserves to be wined and dined after everything she has been through. I want to have he
r go shopping with Quinn, pick out a pretty dress, get her nails done, and then take her to an expensive restaurant where we have no idea which fork or spoon to start with because it would be so classy that there would be ten utensils to pick from. I want her to drink wine, laugh, and have her favorite dessert.

  Peach sorbet. She loves it.

  We’d fuck all night when we got home and then the next day, I’d take her out all over again. This time, maybe we’d go dancing, and I’d get to feel her hips sway to the beat, hopefully salsa so I could feel her ass move against me, and my hands could map every inch of her body, and it would look normal because salsa is sexy. I’d be allowed to touch her on the dance floor like I wanted to fuck her.

  I want us to have those nights. We deserve that together. Good times will have to wait until Kendrick is taken care of. He won’t let us live a peaceful life. The man doesn’t know what peace is. He loves causing strife. If Kendrick comes out on top, he didn’t care who he has to hurt in the process to do it. He was always a sick bastard.

  I won’t let Kendrick ruin her life anymore or mine.

  If he wants a fight, I'll bring it to him. Gabriella is no longer his; she was never his.

  She is mine.

  And I will fucking kill for what’s mine, even if it means killing my own brother.

  Chapter Twenty

  GABRIELLA

  There isn’t much else we can do until we talk to Grayson’s cop friend. I guess he isn’t a friend since he arrested Grayson to begin with, but having him is better than having an enemy. Once we talk to him, we can put a restraining order on Kendrick, perhaps even press charges for what he had done to me.

  I’m not going to let Kendrick ruin Sebastian. Sebastian saved my life.

  I don’t even know what Kendrick really wants with me.

  “Are you ready for today?” Sebastian asks, pressing a kiss to the middle of my back as he holds me. I love being a little spoon. He engulfs me with his body, and there isn’t a better feeling in the world than being surrounded by his warmth and strength.