All Hail
Page 1
All Hail
Queen Crow #1
J Bree
Copyright © 2020 by J Bree
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by J Bree
About the Author
CONTINUE READING FOR AN EXCEPT FROM
Also by J Bree
Prologue
Prologue
The Jackal’s Lair
“Beaumont. Don’t be an idiot, just fucking stab me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut a little tighter. I’m not one to attempt to block things out normally, I face everything head on but this? This situation I would do just about anything to get out of.
There’s a knock at the door and I can’t help but look as the Jackal steps up to answer it. The thick tattooed lines on his face are stark against the olive complexion of his skin. Objectively, he’s an attractive man but the sadistic light behind his eyes makes it impossible to find him anything but disturbing.
He looks exactly like the deranged psychopath Lips has described to me dozens of times.
No wonder she’s always been so scared of him.
“I told you I didn’t want to be interrupted.”
I can’t hear the answer to his snarl, my heart is beating too loudly in my own ears. My feet hurt in a way that I’ve never had to feel before. Sheltered. I’ve lived in a house with Joseph Beaumont Sr. my entire life and yet I’ve never had to feel pain like this before.
Ash felt it all for me.
“Listen to me, Beaumont. If he offers you the knife again you need to take it. There’s no way I’m walking out of this room unharmed and you covered in blood and wounds. Just take the fucking knife.”
I turn to look at Aodhan. The only marks on him are the ones he’s done to himself, straining against the ropes and handcuffs. His wrists are a mess, blood dripping down his hands and onto the ground, pooling slowly.
He looks nothing like the cousin we share.
I keep my mouth sealed firmly shut. I can’t answer him because there’s no way I could stab him, not even to save myself the pain. Dancing is an outlet to me and something I love doing but it’s not everything to me. It’s not more important than my morals or my friends and this man killed half his family as a gift to Harley. He’s paid penance for actions his blood took that he never once condoned.
I know Lips and the guys will be raising hell to find me.
I just need to hold out until then.
“Avery… listen to me, I’m not going to let you die for me. There’s no fucking way that I’m letting a girl like you die for the likes of me.”
The Jackal steps out of the room and shuts the door behind him. I try to distract myself from the pain and say, “And what type of girl is that, O’Cronin? Some delicate little rich bitch? I’ll die how I want to, thank you, and if I decide that my death happens here then it does. You don’t get a say on how that happens.”
He leans back in his seat, easing the pressure off of his wrists finally and rolling his shoulders the small amount that he can. “I think you’re too fucking good to die here for me. I think you waged war for your family from the moment you took a breath on this Earth and I think that you’ll do it to the end. I think that you saved Harley when the rest of us were too fucking scared to try. I think that I’m not worth the life of someone like that and if anything happens to you… fuck, just stab me. Either I die for you or I die after you, either way I’m dead.”
The air in my lungs seizes up and stays trapped in my chest until I think I’m going to pass out. “I’m not… I’m not like that.”
He shakes his head and leans forward towards me again. “You’re ruthless and you’re fierce. You’re unstoppable and you’re so fucking loyal that you won the Wolf’s friendship. The Jackal doesn’t fucking know who he’s messing with.”
The door opens again and the Jackal steps back in, his eyes manic and frenzied as he looks around. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second.
“We don’t have time for you two to be fucking flirting, are you dying Beaumont or are you killing O’Cronin?”
I open my eyes and stare into the deep forest green of Aodhan’s eyes. He stares back at me without reproach or any sort of hesitation. He’s already chosen to die here for me, whether I’m dead or alive.
I take the knife.
Chapter One
Beaumont Manor is in a highly exclusive and reclusive estate about three hours away from the ranch that I bought and renovated to be the perfect house from my family. The Manor is everything the ranch isn’t. Cold, formal, and full of the dead bodies of hundreds of girls my father and oldest brother murdered for their own sick pleasure.
There’s a reason I hate the place I was forced to grow up in.
“It’s so fucking ugly.”
I roll my eyes at Blaise’s comment and Harley elbows him in the ribs sharply. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re burning it to the fucking ground because the building looks like a mausoleum, dickhead.”
Ash slings a careful arm around my shoulders and leans down to whisper, “Are you sure you’re ready to do this, Floss? We can just hire someone to knock it down… or leave it here and pretend it doesn’t exist.”
I give my twin a sharp look. “Mom and Lips both died in there. Even if the rest of the horrors didn’t happen, I need to destroy it for them.”
My Mounty doesn’t look at all phased as she steps out of the building, Illi chuckling and jogging down the stairs with her. He looks extra… joyful today.
I’m not sure what to make of it.
Lips nudges him with her shoulder and then stalks over to me, a half-smile on her face. “It’s all ready, you guys just have to light the matches.”
I grab her hand and tug her over to where we’ll be safe, behind the fence, and leaving the boys to light it up.
“You okay?” Lips murmurs, and I nod.
“I will be once this is gone.”
She nods and looks back out at the ugly building. It’s not really that ugly but I can’t look at it without seeing all of the terrible things that happened in there, the things that I can’t ever put into words because they’re nothing but festering scars on my soul.
All of the girls my father and brother both tortured inside those walls.
The memories of my mom live inside me. They’re not tied to a place. They’re tied to Ash’s grin and to the angle of Harley’s cheekbones. They’re all the little memories that only mean something to Ash and me because no one else lived through it all.
No one else survived it all.
“Do you want to stick around and watch it burn?”
I glance over at Lips but she’s still staring at the manor. She’s good at that, at respecting your space when the situation isn’t the best. No one knows better than her what it feels like to be breaking open with an audience waiting to pounce on any weakness you might show.
Lips gives me a sharp nod and links her arm with mine, steering me back over to my car. We’d come out here together, leaving the guys to ride over in the Cadillac that was packed with all of the supplies necessary to burn the Manor down.
The Phantom drives like a dream. Every time I slide in behind the wheel, I question why it is that I let the guys drive me around so much. When I slide my phone out of my pocket and find thirty notifications, that answers the question for me. Travel time is too valuable to spend behind the wheel.
I very rarely drive myself anywhere.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy driving, I’m far better at driving than Blaise or Lips are, but being around Harley and Ash means I always let them get behind the wheel. Driving is nothing more than operating a luxury piece of machinery to me but for the guys it’s like a shot of ecstasy straight to the blood.
Lips slides into the passenger seat without any hesitation, her hair down and fanning across her shoulders. Her nail polish is chipped and I’ve been meaning to try out a new color with her but time has run out for that.
She’s leaving in the morning.
They all are.
I refuse to let the panic bubbling in my chest show on my face. They’re going to go out and enjoy their lives together for a few months, they deserve that at the very least.
Lips deserves that and so much more after what she sacrificed for us all.
She tried to die for us… succeeded too, only to have her brother save her. The Devil himself and possibly the most unlikely choice for a secret sibling. None of us were expecting the heads arriving to our doorstep to be from the criminal underworld’s most feared and notorious killer.
None of us were expecting him to be such a caring brother either.
I can’t think about their budding friendship, or the fact that Lips adjusted to having a true psychopath for a brother with such ease, so I distract myself the best way I know how.
Digging for information and sharing intel with my bestie. “Why was Illi so happy? I thought he’d be sulking about you leaving him on babysitting duty.”
Lips grins and huffs under his breath. “Well, about that… he needs a little practice at babysitting… to prepare him.”
It clicks before she finishes the sentence. “Johnny ’The Butcher’ Illium with a baby? That sounds… well, I was going to say strange but he’s probably the most qualified out of all of us to be a father.”
Lips laughs and rubs a hand over her face. “I honestly can’t believe he waited so long. He’s been ready for kids since he first saw Odie.”
I lose myself in the traffic for a moment, categorizing information and planning out what I need to do next. It’s easy to zone out in the Phantom though I do need to do better about driving myself in Ash’s sports cars a little more often so I don’t get rusty at driving a stick shift. He’s not a fan of letting the guys touch his cars but he’s accommodating to Lips and I.
Probably because I bought more than half of the cars in his garage, all of them gifts because there’s no one that I enjoy spoiling more than my brother. He always appreciates his cars so much that it’s soothing to me, like a weird sort of ritual like my cleaning and obsessive need for perfection.
Lips clears her throat and pulls me out of my own thoughts. “Can we talk about my… the other Graves kids for a second? I think we need to have a plan here.”
I nod slowly, thoughtfully because all I’ve done since the Boar told us about them is think about them and what they mean for our family. “Do you want to meet them? Do you want me to arrange something with them?”
She’s nervous about it.
I know her well enough to see her tells, all of the little ways she fusses with her clothing and picks at her nails, so even though she barely twitches I can see the nerves in her. I don’t blame her for them either.
Siblings are a touchy subject in our house.
Just because you share blood with someone doesn’t mean that they’re going to turn out anything like you. Ash and Joey couldn’t have been more different as brothers, and finding our older brother’s head in that cardboard box back in junior year was one of the biggest reliefs of our lives. Knowing that his life was no longer in our hands, but that he was gone from ever touching either of us again, was like a weight had been lifted from us both, no matter the consequences from Senior.
Blaire is another touchy sibling issue. Blaise’s baby brother is now nearly two and he’s only seen him twice in his life despite desperately wanting to know him.
Lips and I have both discussed it often.
There’s no question that Blaine Morrison’s days are numbered, we just need to make sure that his company will be under our control when he’s gone. One way or another, Blaise will get what he deserves even if he says he doesn’t want it.
“I don’t want to meet them… yet. Can we just get all of their details and the dirt on them for now? I don’t really know if I want to know them all yet.”
I hum under my breath and tap my chin while we wait in traffic. Ash, Harley, and Blaise are in the car behind us, the music blaring and I can see Blaise laughing like an idiot in the mirror. They all just look so… relaxed now. These past few years of fighting to be together and alive and whole really was like a boulder sitting on our chests and now we’re free.
Except I don’t really feel free.
I feel lost and tired and traumatized.
I feel terrified of what’s going to happen next, of who is going to be hiding in the shadows to kill us all next, of what the consequences of the Jackal’s and Senior’s deaths are going to be. Nothing ever happens without the ripples affecting everything, the Twelve can’t lose two members the way they did without repercussions.
I can’t think about what happened in the vault in the Jackal’s lair.
I cook a three-course meal for our last dinner together.
I don’t tell anyone that it’s supposed to be eaten separately because then they’d all know that I’m not coping as well as I’m pretending to be. Lips watches me a little too closely so I already know that she’s suspicious but the guys all miss it.
They always have.
Not that I’m upset by that at all. As the only girl in our family for years, it was always good to know that I could hide my feelings from them all if I needed to… which was most of the time. Ash and Harley are both too protective and Blaise would tattle to them both without a second thought.
The thing that makes Lips the perfect best friend is that she knows all of this without me saying a word and not once has she tried to convince me to go with them on tour. The relief of knowing she trusts me to get through this my own way is overwhelming.
This is why she’s my family.
“I’m packing your bags for you. I’m not leaving here without you.”
Ash, on the other hand, will not leave me alone about coming with them.
I roll my eyes at the sound of his voice but I manage to keep my face calm and serene as he stalks into the kitchen wearing one of Blaise’s band tees and a pair of Harley’s sweatpants. You’d almost think their relationship was a true poly-style orgy at the way they’ve all become so codependent but Ash is as straight as they come.
I hand him a platter of roast vegetables and a jug of gravy, ignoring the huff he gives me. When I move to grab another platter of food, he snaps at me to leave it for him to carry like it’s somehow too heavy for my delicate hands.
Ash Beaumont is chivalry in the most arrogant and snarling package.
I adore him.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to live under his ridiculous rules just to ensure nothing could ever possibly happen to me again. He’d smother me in under a week and I might have complied while we were at Hannaford but things have changed.
We’re supposed to be free.
“You’re going to be too busy getting drunk and high to even notice I’m not there. Please don’t ru
in our last night together.”
Ash’s eyes narrow at me and I shrug at him. “It’s true. I don’t just want this for me. You need to go and have fun with your girlfriend. Act your age for a few weeks and just forget about everything that happened. Illi will be here if anything happens but nothing will happen. Your whole life can’t be about keeping me safe, Ash. You need to figure out exactly what you want to do now school is over.”
I follow him into the dining room and we find Harley snarking at Blaise while he pours out drinks for everyone. My Mounty is tucked under Blaise’s arm at the table with an AirPod in one ear as she hums along to a Vanth song, working on her trauma before they’re on tour. I already know about her plans to surprise him and she’s working hard to make it happen.
Nothing about Ash’s appearance or facial expressions changes but I know him better than I know myself.
He’s desperate for the time away.
I don’t blame him for it.
He waits until we’ve placed the tray on the table and headed back to the kitchen for the last of the food before he says, “Illi is going to be busy with Odie.”
I should have known Lips would tell them all. I roll my eyes at him. “She’s pregnant, not terminal, she won’t need all that much from him on a daily basis. You better hope none of you knock Lips up while you’re away if pregnancy is that foreign a concept to you.”
He huffs at me and snaps, “Like I’d ever risk our bloodline being passed down.”
I sigh as he stalks back into the dining room. I almost feel sorry for them all for having to deal with his sour mood while they’re gone… almost, but not quite because I’m sure he’ll cheer up the moment they all fall into bed together. Gross.