by Eva Ashwood
Ruthless Knights
The Dark Elite #2
Eva Ashwood
Copyright © 2020 by Eva Ashwood
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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
1. Hale
2. Grace
3. Grace
4. Zaid
5. Grace
6. Ciro
7. Grace
8. Grace
9. Grace
10. Lucas
11. Grace
12. Ciro
13. Grace
14. Hale
15. Grace
16. Grace
17. Grace
18. Grace
19. Lucas
20. Grace
21. Hale
22. Grace
23. Grace
24. Zaid
25. Grace
26. Grace
Books by Eva Ashwood
1
Hale
Methodically, I swing my fists against the heavy punching bag. The rhythm is usually enough to keep my thoughts at bay, but not tonight. Over and over again, I punch and dodge, keeping on my toes and channeling my anger into the bag, trying to expel my rage before it sinks deeper into me and eats me alive.
Thwap.
My heart thunders in my chest, but it has nothing to do with the physical exertion I hoped would distract me. It’s about something else, someone else—
Grace.
The roar of adrenaline that’s pumping through my body is just an echo of what I felt when we rescued her, when I saw that bastard of a fiancé, Brian, pressing the gun to her chest.
Helpless.
Never in my life have I felt so fucking helpless.
Never have I felt so fucking desperate that everything seemed to stop for a moment. I pride myself in my ability to think through any situation, no matter how stressful. To keep my cool no matter what. But when I saw that gun, there was only one thought in my mind, only one instinct that made me raise my own piece and pull the trigger.
Thwap thwap thwap.
I shot him to save her, and I’d do it again in a second. But something inside me flinched when I saw the blood spray over her face, her body. I can still see the haunted look in her eyes as she stared up at Brian before he slumped against her, dead.
Something twists in my stomach.
Grace didn’t need to see that again. She didn’t deserve to see yet another person she loved shot right before her eyes in cold blood. She didn’t deserve to have her freedom taken away.
You’re not enough. You’re not fucking good enough for her. She deserves better.
Even though I saved her in the end, I’ll always be the bad guy. I’ll always be the person that ripped her life away from her and stole everything she had. To her, I’ll always be her greatest enemy, her hatred incarnate.
She doesn’t want you. Look how you treated her, asshole. You think you deserve her?
With each punch, I fight the doubt. The pain. The panic. The absolute empty ruin that’s welling up inside of me—emptiness I’m starting to realize only she can fill. It hurts more than any stab, any punch, any gunshot or wound that has ever been inflicted on my body. It hurts worse than the injury to my leg that still twinges with pain on an almost daily basis. It’s like a fucking disease that’s spreading through me and taking over, inch by inch.
My mind. My heart. My body.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling away from the punching bag as sweat drips down my chest.
You can’t have her.
That’s the truth.
It’s a truth I keep reminding myself of, one that I want to grasp and take hold of, but I can’t. I can’t fucking accept it. The emptiness in my chest is swallowing me whole. Before Grace, I could ignore it, but now that I’ve had her…
Well, I’d better get used to feeling this fucking empty, because I can’t have her.
I’m never going to have her.
The thought rises from my stomach to my heart, then surges up my throat like a wave of acidic bile. I rip the bindings off my knuckles before attacking the bag again, needing to feel the full weight of what I deserve.
Because Grace is right. She’s always been right. I punish myself. I punish myself by punishing her. Giving in to her. And when I give in to her, the guilt consumes me, and I have to punish myself again and again and again.
Thwap.
Thwap.
Thwap.
The raw leather against my bare knuckles burns with each punch, but I don’t stop when the pain tears through me. I’m not going to leave this room until my thoughts are clear of Grace and my head is on straight. I’m not going to leave this room until she’s absolutely fucking exorcised from my system.
Thwap.
Ever since that night, everything has been wrong. It’s a crazy feeling in my lungs, my body, my bones. It eats me alive and consumes me whole, twists my mind and doesn’t let me go. I can’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds before I’m brought back to those moments.
Brought back to her.
I was fucked up when she came into my office that night. We’d lost a man when a deal went south, and I was drunk and pissed off. My walls were down. And when I saw Grace, when I touched her soft skin and inhaled her addictive scent, every scrap of self-control I prided myself on vanished.
I fucked her on my desk.
It wasn’t gentle, and it definitely wasn’t sweet.
But she met me stroke for stroke, her body wrapping around mine and her sweet pussy clenching around me like we were made for each other. Like the universe had conspired to bring us to that moment. To bring us together.
I’ve never felt the way I did in those few seconds of being totally connected to her before I fucked up and shoved her away. In that moment, Brian didn’t exist. The syndicate didn’t exist. It was just me and Grace, and it was fucking perfect. Even in my drunken state, I could feel the seismic shift inside myself. I felt… whole.
Complete.
Grace has wrecked me.
Absolutely fucking wrecked me.
“I’m fucked up,” I grunt under my breath. “Goddammit. I fucked up.”
Thwap.
My knuckles split open, raw from punching.
Thwap.
I shoved her away because I can’t have her, because I’ll never be good enough for her. She’ll always hate me for what I did to her, and she has the right to hate me. It’s probably better that she hates me.
Then why do I still want a chance? Why do I want her to love me instead?
I should let her go. Knowing that there’s nothing for me with her, I should be able to just let her fade away. Ignore her.
But I can’t.
Thwap.
I give the punching bag one final hit before I pull back, leaving it swinging back and forth in the middle of the room. Wiping my brow with my forearm, I suck in a few deep breaths. Then I reach for a cold water bottle and pour it over my head, the liquid instantly warming against my hot skin.
Despite the intensity of my workout, my mind hasn’t slowed down. Grace isn’t the only thing fucking up my head these days. I’ve been on-edge ever since we found out we have a traitor in the Novak Syndicate.
Someone on the inside working against us.
Motherfucker.
I twist my arms into a stretch above my
head, easing tension out of the ligaments, before lowering my hands in front of me, looking at the blood drying on my knuckles as I finish cooling down. The blood is already clotting. My knuckles are calloused, used to the weekly beating they endure against the heavy bag.
Carefully, I stretch out my hamstrings next, focusing on my breath.
“Christ.” I curse, flinching as pain shoots straight through my fucked up leg like an electric shock.
I try to walk it out, but it throbs and pulses mercilessly, a painful knot forming in my thigh. Grasping for anything, I steady myself on the workbench, cringing in pain as the sharp jolt fades to a dull ache. I try to stretch my leg again, more carefully this time, but the tension lingers and my muscles are stiff.
“Get it the fuck together, Hale,” I mutter, breathing through an agonizing pinch of muscles and veins. “You can’t—”
You can’t appear weak in front of your father.
I don’t want to say the words out loud. I don’t want to speak them into truth. I love the fucker, but Damian Novak has always been a driven, uncompromising man. Even though he knows I got injured for a worthy cause—freeing Ciro from a rival gang who held him hostage—the lingering pain from the bullet wound feels like a weakness.
I hate the way he looks at my leg sometimes, like he’s lost part of his son with it.
Despite that, I know he has faith in me. He’s given me more and more responsibility within the organization. His captains though? Some of them seem to think the weakness in my leg extends to my spirit. There are those who look at me with suspicion, doubting my ability to lead when my father steps down and passes the job to me.
They’re fucking wrong.
This is my legacy. My birthright. And I won’t lose what my father built.
I take a deep breath, shoving down the anger that’s flaring inside me all over again. I just have to get through today.
Today, we deliver Grace into the hands of my father. I’m not happy about it, but that doesn’t change what we have to do—it’s our duty, our obligation. I don’t have a choice in the matter.
If I did, she wouldn’t be anywhere near him.
When I step out of the bathroom, still securing the towel around my waist, Ciro is standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
“You ready?” he asks.
I nod but don’t say anything. I stride over to the closet to grab a suit, and his gaze tracks me as he leans against the jamb.
“You don’t have to do that, Hale,” he says gruffly.
“Do what?” I say without turning around.
I know what he’s talking about. I saw the way he glanced at my hands, the torn up knuckles. I’m not ashamed of my self-destructive habits, my coping mechanisms, but to have them so directly acknowledged makes my jaw tighten a little. Ciro already knows my flaws, my weaknesses—he has them too. We just ignore them.
It’s an unspoken rule that we don’t talk about this kind of shit. You learn quickly that there’s nothing personal in the mafia. Feelings are a weakness. A fault. We all have our own ways of coping with the violent turbulence of our minds—drugs, women, drinking, violence—but displaying anything other than a cold exterior is basically asking to get shot.
Still, instead of ignoring Ciro, I find myself saying, “I know.”
“Then why do you keep doing it?”
A picture of Grace flashes into my mind.
Her skin.
Her scent.
Her hands.
Because I don’t have any other way.
I don’t respond, pulling out a bespoke suit and shooting a glance over my shoulder at my best friend. Even without hearing the words, I’m pretty sure he knows exactly why my knuckles are so shredded today.
“Is she ready?” I ask.
2
Grace
I’ve been dreading this all day, anxiety gnawing a hole in my stomach.
It’s nearly evening before I finally work up the courage to open the box that was on top of my dresser this morning when I woke up—likely delivered by one of the guys while I was asleep. There’s no note on it, but I’m assuming it has something to do with our meeting with Damian tonight.
Unable to put it off any longer, I peel back the cardboard and tissue paper and unfold the dress inside.
My heart stutters as I stare at the garment.
Running my hands over the dark blue fabric, I bite down on my lower lip. Nostalgia for a long-ago time washes over me. I wore outfits like this to the syndicate parties I attended with my mother and father—dressed up like the mafia princess I was.
Once, I belonged in a dress like this.
Once, I was a part of this world.
The soft fabric almost burns me, and a confusing mix of emotions churns in my stomach at the sight of it. Dropping the gorgeous dress back into the box, I close the lid and move toward the closet next to the attached bathroom in search of something different to wear. I’m meeting the head of the Novak Syndicate for the first time in years, and I know my choice of clothing will make a statement.
It still feels strange to walk freely across the room after the weeks I spent tied to the bed, one of the guys always watching me. But ever since the night Brian tried to kill me, I haven’t been tied down or restrained in any way.
Even though I’m seemingly free to wander the house, I’ve found myself stuck in this room for the past two days by my own choice. Honestly, I’m scared of myself. Of what I might let myself do, where I might let my feet wander.
“Focus, Grace. Focus.” I repeat my new mantra, blowing out a breath. “Just get through this one thing. One problem at a time.”
In the closet, I don’t find anything but the same variation of clothes that I’ve been wearing for the past week. Jeans, t-shirts, and sweaters. I hate to admit defeat, but I know rummaging through this closet isn’t going to yield anything suitable—the guys want me to wear the dress, which means I’m not going to wear anything else.
Steeling myself, I walk back across the room and pick up the box again, dumping the contents onto the bed. I strip, careful of the healing bullet wound in my side, and quickly pull the dress over my head, trying not to notice how familiar this all feels. The last dress I wore was a wedding dress, but before that, I had settled into a routine of simple, practical clothes. Clothes that matched the cozy suburban life I was trying to build for myself in Washington.
Slipping on this dress for a meeting with the head of a powerful mafia syndicate is like slipping into the past. Into a part of my life that I tried for a long time to forget.
I don’t know if whoever picked the dress out was trying to stir up old memories, but that’s exactly what they did. When I look at my reflection in the mirror, my eyes widen.
It’s like looking at a picture of myself in the past—one that’s moving and breathing and living. I look the same, but so much different.
The dress is nearly identical to one I wore to a party just before my mother’s death, but my body has changed since those days. The neckline and tapered waist now accentuate and compliment my curves, creating a perfectly sensual yet modest look. Whoever picked it out certainly has taste, and as much as I want to hate the dress and the reminder of the past, I can’t.
It’s absolutely stunning, and more than that—it makes me feel stunning.
Wanted.
Taken care of.
Smoothing my hands over the soft fabric, I freeze at the sound of the door opening softly. My gaze darts up to the mirror, and I find Zaid leaning against the jamb behind me. He does nothing to hide his reaction to my dress.
“You look stunning,” is all he says, voice low.
But his eyes say much more than that as his gaze trails down the curve of my back and calves appreciatively, moving back up to my reflection in the mirror.
“It’s a beautiful dress,” I say absently, brushing my hands down the fabric again. My palms prickle with sweat. “I feel like I’m meeting a king.”
He takes a slow step toward me. �
��You are… in a way.”
My gaze flickers back to the green eyes reflected in the mirror, holding his gaze. There’s so much I want to ask him about what’s going to happen, but I’m afraid of sounding weak. Scared. The violence of my father’s lifestyle rarely spilled over into our home. He protected and insulated my mother and me from the darker aspects of his work. But still, one thing he instilled in me that I’ll never forget is how dangerous it can be to show weakness.
And even though I’ve come to trust the four men who stole me from my wedding, who later saved me from the man I was going to marry, I’m still holding a part of myself back. I don’t want them to know just how fucked up and confused I am about all of this.
I don’t reply to Zaid’s words, and he opens his mouth as if to say something else but closes it again.
I’ve hardly seen any of them since the night Brian tried to kill me—the night I tried to run away. But even though I’ve been hiding in my room like a coward, I swear I can feel a change in the atmosphere that hovers over the entire house.
Something has shifted between all of us.
I know I’m not the only one who senses it, not the only one who isn’t sure what it is. I’m not sure I even want to know what it is. I don’t know where I stand anymore. Am I the enemy to be watched with suspicion, or am I becoming one of them?
The thought has crossed my mind more than once.
It consumes me.
Am I becoming one of them?
Can I even be one of them?
Even if I wanted to become part of this world again, I don’t know if it’s possible. No matter how protective they may seem of me now, I know how deep mafia loyalties run. These men have sworn their lives and their loyalty to each other and their syndicate. Just because the flames of the past have rekindled between us, that doesn’t mean they’ll choose me over the organization that’s meant everything to them.