by J Bree
I curse under my breath and pull out one of my overnight bags, carefully folding my pajamas and underwear in there. Once it’s full I pull out another and pack away jeans, shirts, yoga pants, and a few light sweaters.
I pack a third with dresses.
You never know how many outfit choices you might need and I’m angry enough to want a lot of options here.
“So we’re being stalked and threatened together. Lovely. Did you tell Atticus about this yet or shall I call ahead to warn him I’m coming to stay? He’ll love this, you know? He’s going to chain me up, lock the doors, and never let me see sunlight again. Call Ash and Harley sooner rather than later about coming to rescue me.”
He doesn’t laugh about my dramatics like I expect. That’s more worrying than anything else he’s said so far tonight. “What else? What aren’t you telling me?”
I hear the crunching of his boots and the sounds of his family quieten down as he walks away from them. “The Crow is going to have a lot of questions about the photos. He’s had a guy snooping around after me for weeks and he got down here not long after I did. I’d taken down the photos and I was vague about them because… I needed to warn you first and find out what we’re going to say about them, to make sure our stories were the same.”
I sit back on my heels in my closet and stare at the dozens of shelves, all of them filled with shoes, as the dread pools in my gut. “Where was the photo taken?”
He heaves out a sigh. “Don’t panic. I’ve gotten all of the photos and I have them with me. If you don’t want anyone to see them, then I’ll burn them right now before Illi gets here but Avery… they’re from the Jackal’s lair. They’re screenshots from the video recording. Someone has a copy.”
I gag.
I need to vomit, I can’t contain the deep sense of shame that overtakes me and triggers my stomach to empty, but I choke it down. Aodhan grunts like he’s taken a hit and murmurs down the line to me all of the things he’d like to do to whoever the fuck has found that tape.
It doesn’t matter though.
If it’s out there it’s only a matter of time before it becomes our problem.
It takes me a minute to get myself under control but when I do there’s tears in my eyes and my voice comes out as a croak, “I told… I told Lips about it. She knows. Show Illi and tell him about what happened because I need that video gone, Aodhan. If Ash sees it… we can’t let that happen.”
Aodhan curses under his breath. “He’s just gotten here. I’ll take care of it, Queenie, just stay safe and I’ll check in when I have something. You know we won’t stop until this asshole is dead.”
That’s not as comforting as it should be because the fact of the matter is that Illi is going to know what happened now too. It’s a necessary evil, I’d rather it be him than Ash or Harley, but it’s just going to be another person picking over my decisions and seeing me in a different light.
I send Lips a text and for the first time since they left, I ask her to come home.
I immediately text her again and tell her not to, because if she comes home then so will Ash and also for the first time, I’m pissed my best friend is dating my brother because I need her but I can’t risk him coming home and seeing something.
She texts me back and those five little words give me the strength to get up, take a shower, and be the woman I need to be to face Atticus right now because the Wolf of Mounts Bay has never let me down, not once in our entire friendship.
I’ve called in a favor.
I’m waiting on my front steps with my bags when the Rolls Royce arrives.
I’m shocked to see Atticus in the driver’s seat and no Luca in the car, and when I start picking up my bags he gets out and frowns at me until I leave them for him to pack away in the trunk. It’s still dark out, no signs in the sky yet of the sun coming up, and I pull the coat I’m wearing a little tighter around my body.
“Thank you for picking me up. I could have driven myself but I appreciate you taking the time for me.” I’ve collected myself enough to speak without choking on the words but my stomach is still a riot of panicked what if’s.
He stares at me like I’m testing him and says in a low voice, “You shouldn’t be driving if there’s someone threatening you. You shouldn’t be alone.”
I shrug and brush past him to open my own car door, ignoring the huffing he does in my direction. “You drove here alone. I imagine there are always threats on your life… especially when you consider the way you go about business. Why are you any different, Crow?”
He really doesn’t like it when I call him that.
I really don’t care.
“I wanted to have the opportunity to speak with you privately. Your recent… distaste for Luca meant that I thought it was a good idea to leave him back at my place until we’ve had this discussion.”
I slide into my seat and let him shut the car door behind me. The car is stunning, everything that you could possibly want in a luxury car, and I look around at every little one of the details while he gets in and starts the engine.
I might get one of my own.
“I need to apologize—”
I cut him off, “Don’t. I don’t want or need it. Thank you for letting me stay with you, I’ll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine.”
He sighs at me and I take a better look over at him. His sleeves are rolled up on the dress shirt he’s wearing and one of his arms has a trail of feathers down one side. I haven’t seen him in less than a three-piece suit for years… since he was nothing more than a child and I had no idea he even had tattoos.
I mean, obviously I knew he had to have his markings for being a member of the Twelve somewhere in my mind but to see it for myself is another thing.
I want to know if he has any more.
“Avery, I’m trying to fix things between us. This is the first chance I’ve had to speak to you privately in months… years, even. Other than at the gala, I lost my head.”
I look out of the window so I don’t obsess over the tattoos enough that he notices my interest. “What you do with your head is none of my concern. You had every opportunity to do the right thing, Atticus, you chose not to.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I think about ignoring it. Yet when he glares down at it, I can’t help but pull it out and scroll through my messages slowly just to piss him off some more.
“I need your full attention, Avery. I’m willing to discuss some things with you now if it will repair what is happening between us.”
I speak without looking up from my screen, “Is this because you know I’m seeing Aodhan? Is this your jealousy speaking?”
His jaw clamps shut and he speaks between his teeth. “If you want to play with Mounty trash then that’s your own issue to deal with. I’m talking about what happened with my family. I’m talking about the game you’re playing with Amanda Donnelley that is more dangerous than you know.”
My eyes narrow in his direction at his comment about Aodhan but I focus on the other issues for now. I can chew him out later about the absolute hypocrisy of talking down about Mounties when he himself is a member of the Twelve… a Mounts Bay institution.
“Give me one good reason to listen to you because everything you’ve given me so far has been veiled lies and half-truths for no reason other than keeping me out of your world. This isn’t about the sex, Atticus. I think I’m ready to walk away from you if this continues because I’m not going to be treated like this… not even by you.”
His hands tighten on the steering wheel until the leather creaks. I settle back in my seat, expecting that to be the conversation over with. There was a moment, after Luca had found me and Aodhan and walked me back out of the old and dilapidated bank, that I thought Atticus was going to finally open up to me. The look on his face when I walked out of there, covered in burns and bruises, wearing Aodhan’s shirt and Luca’s jacket… he looked at me like I was the sun. Like everything in his world revolved around me, like I was
the most precious thing he’s ever encountered and he would live and die for me.
Something changed.
I don’t know what happened after that day, but his careful surveillance of my life went into overdrive and it was as though he no longer trusted me to keep myself safe. Still doesn’t trust me. Something very obviously has happened but I don’t know what it is.
If he can’t trust me with it then I’m done.
“Your father sold you at auction four times.”
I freeze, only my head moving slowly so I can stare over at him. He keeps his eyes on the road, his hands still tightly wrapped around the steering wheel and his jaw is working as he grinds his teeth. I always knew he’d been protecting me but he’d never told me the finer details.
He doesn’t sound tense though, he’s just firmly laying down the facts that I was completely unaware of. “The Devil was only the last time he auctioned you off at those skin markets. The buyer before him collected women for the pleasure of owning them, the one before that was one of his business associates. The type of man that enjoyed slapping women around and belittling them, and he enjoyed them a little too young. I took care of both of them and so your father just kept using you as a threat to Ash until he would grow bored and attempt to sell you again.”
“What about the first buyer?” I whisper, and he pulls into the driveway of his fortress-like mansion, the gates opening for him automatically.
“I bought you first. I bought you and I made arrangements for you to move into my apartments in Mounts Bay. You could live there happily, and safely, without ever having to see Joey or your father again. I would have taken care of you until you were eighteen and made your own decisions.”
My heart is beating too hard in my chest, loud in my ears. “You bought me… to keep me safe from Senior? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t I get to stay with you?”
He stares at the gates but he doesn’t make a move to direct the car down the driveway. “Ash. I was very aware that there was no way to get you and him both out. If I had’ve just taken you both your father would have thrown everything at me and at eighteen, I wasn’t a match for him . I needed this empire to be able to get you both out and… I knew you’d never leave your twin behind. I knew you’d never be whole without him. It was always my back-up plan, to just take you and run, but until Joey attacked you, I thought you were safe enough in the house as long as I kept you from being bought.”
I take a deep breath. “Did you know they were hurting Ash?”
He groans and rubs a hand over his face. “I did. There was nothing I could do about it without risking everything. It was not a choice I would wish on anyone, Avery, but you know how far your father’s net reached… there’s still a lot of clean up going on thanks to his death. It’s never as simple as just killing an evil man. Dozens spring up in their place.”
It’s the answer I suspected but not exactly one I want to hear. “Tell me, then. Tell me who I need to neutralize and I’ll do it. He was my father, my problem, and his death was for me. Why shouldn’t I be the one cleaning up the mess?”
He straightens back up and finally moves the car forward. “I became the Crow for you, Avery. None of this will be worth it if anything happens to you.”
I don’t get the chance to argue with him, that same argument we always have, because the moment the car pulls up three men come stalking over to empty my bags out from the trunk, two more opening the car doors for us both and taking care of our every need before I have the chance to answer Atticus.
I feel instantly smothered.
This is exactly what life in the Beaumont Manor felt like. Dozens of faceless, emotionless maids and butlers who saw nothing and everything. Who would take care of everything to the point that life was unbearably boring. I didn’t even dress myself, bathe myself, I was thirteen and still had someone to buckle my shoes every day because to bend over and do it myself was unacceptable.
I didn’t realize just how much I hated it until I had my own house with no one but myself wandering around the spaces, cooking for myself and cleaning everything whenever I feel like it.
I don’t know how Atticus can stand it either.
“Have dinner with me. We can finish this discussion over good food,” Atticus says as he helps me out of the car.
I shrug at him. “I’m not sure there’s much more to say.”
He pulls me into him, ignoring his people around us shifting away from the display. “There’s always more, Avery. Between us, there will always be more.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I spend the day in the rooms Atticus has put aside for me planning out my next moves.
The first thing I do is call Lips and try not to lose my mind at her about what we’re going to do.
“Stop worrying about Ash, he’s distracted with trying to convince Harley to sneak off into the night and murdering Grimm Graves while we’re here just to be for-fucking-sure he never comes after us… he’s taken a very anti-fathers stance on the tour. Blaise’s dickhead father is on borrowed time.”
I roll my eyes at her but I’m also secretly hoping Harley caves and they kill the biker asshole. “Have you heard from Illi? Aodhan just keeps telling me they’ve found someone and are taking care of it but that tells me exactly nothing, Mounty.”
She scoffs down the line at me and I can hear the murmuring of voices outside of the tiny bathroom she’s locked herself in for this conversation. “Illi has been keeping me up-to-date. Look, you probably don’t wanna hear what they found down there until we have more details because… well, it looks like someone is trying to set Atticus up. Everything just keeps pointing to the photos and the drugs being him.”
What?
That makes no sense to me and when I say exactly that to Lips she agrees with me. “Men don’t look at women the way he looks at you if they’re not fucking stupid about them. Now, sending death threats to Aodhan I understand but to you? No way. We know enough about him to know that he’s not that guy.”
I hum under my breath. “Well, who would be setting him up? We’re looking into the wrong person because if this is about him then why are we trying to sift through my past for answers?”
Lips groans softly, an echo of my own frustration with the whole situation. “I fucking hate politics. All of these veiled threats and shit… if I want someone dead, I fucking kill them. Other people should do the same.”
I chuckle at her, stretching out on the very nice bed Atticus has given me for the night. “If they did that then I’d probably be dead by now. We’re lucky they’re giving us time to find them and kill them.”
She sighs at me. “You have a gun and a knife and I know I’ve taught you how to kill any asshole that tries to touch you. Illi is your backup. Aodhan too now, I guess. You’re not some weak damsel in distress, I wouldn’t have left you if I didn’t think you could hold your own. If Atticus starts making you feel weak then stab him, I’m fucking done with him making you feel this way.”
I smile through the ache in my chest. “I love you, Mounty. Hurry up and finish that tour so we can plot our global domination and grow old together.”
She giggles back at me, always sounding her age when she does. Her throaty chuckles are all the streetwise kid older than her years but when I manage to get the giddy laughs out of her, she sounds like the fifteen-year-old girl she should have been when we met.
If her father wasn’t biker trash and her mother wasn’t a junkie bitch.
“I love you too, Aves. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She hangs up and I try to rest but my mind is too busy processing information and connecting dots to switch off. The information my hacker has for me on the Graves siblings is infuriatingly sparse and no matter how many times I read it, the eighth sibling’s name doesn’t magically appear.
I’ll have to seek other sources for help, as much as I don’t want to.
A maid interrupts me around midday to ask if I want to go down to lunch but I’
m too engrossed in my work and she brings me a tray of foods to eat at the small table in my room. The salad is good, the dressing is clearly made fresh and lifts the whole meal, but it’s served with fresh bread and a platter of meats that are to die for. If I ever consider getting a live-in chef I think I’ll steal whoever it is that Atticus employs.
I’m poring over the Chaos Demons’ clubhouse blueprints, finding the best routes in and out for Lips, when Atticus knocks at the door and lets himself into the room. I frown at him, not at all expecting him to be dropping by for a casual chat, and he frowns right back at me.
“Are you really not going to come to dinner? I asked the chef to cook the stuffed lobster you love.”
Damn him.
I didn’t realize all that time had passed and there’s absolutely no way I can say no to an offer of that dish. It’s my favorite, which he well knows, and I haven’t eaten it in years.
“I’ve been busy, I assumed one of your poorly-tailored men would come and fetch me for you when you were ready for my presence,” I say as I tap through the images on my phone, encrypting them and saving them away for closer inspection after we’ve eaten.
The frown looks as though it’s permanently etched into Atticus’ face and when I slip my feet back into my shoes, he holds out an arm for me to take. “I wouldn’t send up someone to get you if I thought you would be happy to see me. Every time I see you these days it seems I’m waiting for you to pull a knife on me… or yourself.”
I roll my eyes at his dramatics as he leads me down the stairs, his men stationed around every corner. It’s worse than smothering, like I can’t breathe with all of their eyes on my every move, but I keep my head held high and my gaze icy. I don’t want to show any sort of discomfort or weakness here.
I know they all report back to their boss and I don’t want Atticus having anything to use against me.