The Vigilantes Collection

by Lake, Keri

  “Why?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I want to know.”

  She let out a huff, tipping her head back. “Look, it’s stupid, okay? If you want me to stay, I’ll stay here, but let’s just drop the questions.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  After a guarded glance back at me, eyes refusing to meet mine, she softened in my grasp, relaxing with defeat. “Because it’s weird. Men act different after sex, and … I enjoyed tonight. I don’t want to feel like shit tomorrow.”

  “I won’t make you feel like shit tomorrow, as long as you don’t make me feel like shit.”

  She gave a quiet laugh, but her smile quickly faded. “I look ridiculous when I sleep, too.”

  I couldn’t help frowning at that. I’d watched her sleep a few times, and in those moments had found myself lost in awe of how damn beautiful she looked while dreaming. “Is that why you sleep with a sheet covering your face?”

  When she nodded, an irrational surge of anger beat through me. “I thought you did that because of spiders, or something. Who told you that you look ridiculous?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” I battled back. “Who told you?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll kill the little prick.”

  Her head kicked to the side, and her brows furrowed to an incredulous frown. “Kill? For saying something stupid?”

  “No. For ever making you feel less than perfect.”

  Her slight turn from me didn’t hide her smile. “No need to go all Rambo. It was an ex-boyfriend. The only boyfriend I ever really had, and the last time I ever spent the night with a guy.”

  In the quiet that followed, I could damn near hear her brain talking her out of sleeping in the bed with me. I wrapped my leg over hers, caging her against my body. “I want you beside me all night. You move? I’ll be carrying your ass back into this bed, and you won’t like the consequences. No hiding your face under a sheet, either. Your cum-guzzling ex-boyfriend is nuts. You’re fucking beautiful when you sleep.”

  For a moment, she didn’t say a word, but just stared off. “You know, I was thinking … you and I … we’re not that much different.”

  I frowned. “How so?”

  “We were both abandoned at a young age. Both trying to survive in the aftermath. Both guarded by pain and loss. We’re the same, Jase.”

  We weren’t the same. I was leather and blades, and she was perfume and lace—feminine, soft, a far cry from the hardened women I’d taken over the years.

  As I contemplated her words, she looked back at me and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For making me feel good and beautiful. It’s been a long time.” She rolled back over and closed her eyes.

  In that moment, I imagined that my desire for vengeance didn’t overrun my desire for Lucy.

  Because she made me feel again, too.

  * * *

  I sat on the floor beside the window, elbow resting on my propped knee, as I watched Lucy sleep.

  Long chestnut locks tumbled over the edge of the pillow, and the sheets had tangled around her, where she lay on her stomach. One leg peeked out of the blankets, the honey tone taunting my fingers to touch her.

  Her body had taken a beating three times in the night, her exhaustion from it evident in the slow, rhythmic breaths of her deep sleeping. With her face half buried, I took in the soft glow of her skin where the moon’s light hit her cheek

  Mia Luce.

  Safe. In my bed.

  Only two days earlier, I’d wanted her to leave. A pain struck my chest at the thought of sending her out on the streets. Any one of those bastards could've found her, hurt her, a thought that had my hands balling into fists. Visuals of her bound and helpless, screaming in pain from their tortures, sent jolts of fury through my veins.

  A stab of pain struck my skull from the grinding of my teeth. I’d kill every fucking one of them. Bleed them out. Rip them apart with my bare hands. For her.

  Rubbing a hand down my face, I forced an exhale as I lowered my head. Have to keep her safe. She needs to stay, I told myself.

  For years, I’d obsessed over the woman’s words. I’d made her an angel in my mind, had her tattooed on my chest, and I’d vowed to keep her if I ever had the chance again.

  If only we’d met under different circumstances.

  How could I keep her without the urge to make her mine? Impossible. Yet, I refused to send her off to some other limp dick. She belonged to me. She always had. From the day I'd found her in the woods, she became mia Luce, my beautiful light.

  What are you doing to me, Lucy?

  Eleven months in hell, and the only taste in my mouth during that time had been the blood of revenge. I hadn't cared about anyone, or anything, else. I'd needed to strike down every one of the bastards who’d killed my family and walked away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Someone had protected those fuckers.

  No one had protected my grandmother and brother.

  Anger simmered in my blood. I had to finish the job. For them. No matter what happened in the end, I had to set it right, but I felt like I’d hit a brick wall. I’d have sworn Viktor was Pasák, and a part of me still refused to believe the bastard was innocent.

  A flash of my grandmother’s lifeless expression slipped behind my eyes, and I squinted, the same old fury rising up like an old friend from the pit of my soul. It battled against the warm thoughts of Lucy, stamping the image of her lust-glutton face into tiny fragments like a shattered mirror.

  Why did she have to come back into my life? Why now?

  More importantly, why couldn’t I let her go? Why did every part of me crave the woman?

  41

  Jase

  I claw across the linoleum. A stab of pain strikes my skull, shards of broken glass dancing through my head. Each breath arrives like barbed wire pulling through my windpipe, ripping my lungs from the inside out. As I drag myself across my grandmother’s kitchen floor, fallen grit from the men's boots rakes at the wounds on my chest.

  I need to reach Reed. He doesn’t move, and I’m afraid he’s dead. “Reed!” I call out, but he makes no sound. “Reed!”

  A force slams down into my back, knocking the breath out of me. “I don’t think so, motherfucker.” My tormentor’s voice echoes over the sound of Reed’s name rumbling through my throat. “Your hell has only just begun.”

  Laughter beats like a hammer against my spine, taunting the fury inside of me.

  In my periphery, I see him lift his boot, and before I can tense, it rockets toward my face.

  My eyes flipped open with the spasm that knocked me awake, but the black haze lingered, as Reed’s dull eyes played over and over in my head. Each breath arrived hard and fast, drying my throat, and I coughed to clear it.

  Something shifted beside me, and when it brushed my face, I grabbed hold.

  “Jase? Are you okay?” Lucy’s voice called out to me over the ghosting laughter in my head.

  Still trapped in the dream, I focused on the soft skin caught in my grasp, and the delicate tone in her voice that told me she was both frightened and concerned. For me.

  Cutting through the darkness, her beautiful face arrived in perfect clarity, and I slowed my breaths, my muscles relaxing, and released her wrists.

  She immediately trailed a finger down the edge of my face. “It’s just a nightmare.”

  I’d been so rough with her earlier that her gentle touch had me feeling like a bastard, even as the tension in my body eased with each long breath.

  “What happened to you?” Her stare was unavoidable, in spite of my urge to look away. “What did they do to you?”

  Swallowing a gulp, I dropped my gaze to the foot of the bed, my eyes narrowing as I stepped back into the memory. “Reed and I … we liked to stay with my grandmother on Devils Night. We had our own place with Dax, but … we just didn’t want anyone fucking with her, you know? She pract
ically raised us, so—”

  “You don’t have to explain. It makes sense.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath. “So, we were just hanging out, having a couple beers. Maria liked to make something special on those nights. Always worried it was putting us out to stay with her.” Smiling at the memory, I glanced up at Lucy, catching the intense concentration in her eyes. Few people in my life had ever listened as intently as she did. “I heard a crack from the other room, and when I got up to see what it was, four guys came barging in through the front door and knocked me back.” My throat clamped up, as I prepared to tell the next part of the story, and I flexed my fingers, watching as the tendons stretched along my forearms. “Maria … she was the first.” I frowned, swallowing the lump in my throat. “They tied her to a chair. Told us they’d kill her if we didn’t talk. You know, we stole those guns, so I thought they were coming after us for that. I told them we had the guns. Told them to take me and leave her alone.” I scratched the back of my ear, an effort to distract me from the pain dredging itself from the dark shadows of my memory. “She used to wear the …” In a poor attempt to explain myself, I gestured toward my neck. “Saints around her neck. And always had a rosary around her wrist.” A quiet laugh burst from my chest and ended on a sniff. “I was sixteen when I asked for my first tattoo. She told me …” I wiped at my nose. “She told me I could get as many tattoos as I wanted. But the first tattoo had to be of Saint Christopher. Just like the fuckin’ medallion she wore around her neck. So I got the damn thing tattooed on my hip, where nobody could see it.” I smiled, but sobered when I glanced up and caught Lucy wiping tears from her cheek.

  “I always thought I was protecting her,” I continued, “but … she protected me from the day I was born.” I cast my gaze away from Lucy. “I’ve never had somebody care about me and my brother like that. It felt like we couldn’t do enough to pay her back for what she gave us. Those bastards sliced her throat. And when she didn’t die right away, they shot her in the head.” I expelled a shaky breath, as Lucy gave a small gasp beside me. “Strongest woman I ever knew, and her body looked so frail when she hit the floor, like her bones would shatter all over the place.”

  Lucy dabbed her eyes with the bedsheet, her hand resting against my heart.

  “Shit’s fucked up. I’ll stop.”

  “No.” Her fingers curled into my hairline, where she massaged the back of my neck. “It’s okay. Tell me.”

  I chewed at the inside of my cheek, bracing myself for the worst of it. My grandmother’s death had been hard enough to watch, but it was Reed’s that'd broke me that night. “I fought two of them. Busted one of the bastard’s arms. Knocked the other out. Then they went after Reed, and I … just went ballistic. Grabbed a fallen knife and stabbed one of them in his back. That’s when the big guy came after me. It was lights out for a while.” My fingers dug into my face as I scratched my chin. “I, uh … woke up. And they had Reed strapped to a chair. Cut away his shirt.” I frowned, breathing hard through my nose to hold back the tears just itching to break as the anger surfaced, tightening my throat. “He had burns all over his chest. They must’ve tortured him for a good couple hours, because he looked broken. That’s when they pulled the knuckle dusters and … a few punches, he was gone.” I diverted my gaze toward the end of the bed—, couldn't take the tears in Lucy's eyes. “My brother … he never got a fuckin’ break. Day he was born, he was left to cry in his crib, until Maria came over. My mom never held him. Never once told him she loved him. Either of us. Kid was fucking bullied his entire life, and all I ever wanted was to get one of us out, you know? If I could just figure shit out … maybe he’d be okay.” The failure killed me the most. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without seeing the shit written across my face. I’d failed him. I’d survived, while his ashes had long since scattered in the wind. “He was born alone in this world, and he died alone.”

  “He wasn’t alone, Jase.” Lucy wiped her tears away and cupped my face, her fingers still damp. “You were there with him.”

  “I couldn’t save him.”

  “And maybe he thought he couldn’t save you, either.” She rested her head against my chest, stretching her arms across my body. “I’m so sorry.”

  I felt her everywhere. On me. Through me. Inside of me. Gripping the back of her hair, I tipped her head back and, kissing her, rolled over top of her. “How did I find you again?”

  Eyes still shiny with tears, she smiled. “Fate.”

  “I don’t believe in fate.”

  She traced the shell of my ear, down to my jaw. “You don’t have to.”

  Falling to the side of her, I tugged her body against mine. “I’ve been to prison, licked the bottom of the barrel, and tasted nothing but bitter desolation my whole damn life, Lucy. You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me. You make me believe there’s still something beautiful left in the world.”

  “And you make me believe I’m something beautiful, Jase.”

  Nuzzling my face into her hair, I kissed her nape. “You are beautiful.”

  She thumbed the Celtic cross along my forearm. “I remember the story you told me that day in the woods. Soleluna. An eclipse of the sun and moon, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said your grandmother spoke Italian. Is your whole family Italian?”

  “Just my grandmother. My grand-pop was English and Irish. She’s how I learned to speak Italian. When she’d get mad at him, she’d go off, mumbling the shit.” Thoughts of my grandfather lightened my mood, and I smiled at the memory of the old man. “His mom, my great grandmother, had some strong Irish roots, so even though he grew up Hawkins, he celebrated his Irish heritage more than anything. Bastard drank like his life depended on it and eventually died of liquor failure.”

  “Liver failure?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, he was a good guy, though. My grandma, she was beautiful when she was young. Like a young Sofia Loren, and he busted his ass his whole life to make her happy.”

  Her cheek puckered with a smile. “I wondered why you had all these Irish-themed tattoos. What about the eyes? On your chest?”

  “Enough about me.” Resting my chin against her shoulder, I felt her body curve deeper into mine, her ass nudging against my hardening cock. I kissed her shoulder and up to her neck, my hands unable to get enough of that smooth skin, which beckoned my palms across her thighs. “What about your folks?”

  “My folks, huh?” She puffed a breath and sat quiet for a moment. “My biological father abandoned us when I was about ten, so I hardly remember him. Kinda made my mom go a little crazy for a while there. She got into drinking quite a bit, too. She always talked bad about him, so I never really knew what to think of him. Then she met Paul, and he was a godsend. Like an angel had fallen from the sky and somehow picked us.” The gentle stroking of her fingers across my tattoo lulled me into a state of calm. “He was so good to my mom and me. Eventually, I just … forgot about my dad. Paul raised me until he died a few years back, and then my mom got back into drinking and eventually had a stroke.” She pulled my arm in tighter to her body, slipping my hand under her cheek. “That’s when I dropped out of college. Going to classes, working to pay the bills, and taking care of her was just too much. I got tired too quickly, and eventually something had to give. I never went back.”

  While I’d pissed and moaned about my mom, she’d sacrificed her future for hers. “Why?”

  With a shrug of her shoulders, she lightly stroked my arm still tucked beneath her. “Just had a hard time caring about anything after that. I felt really alone for the first time in my life. Losing Melena and then my mom was like the universe caving in on me, smashing me into a small square box that I couldn’t dig myself out of. My mom had always been my safety net if things went to shit, and suddenly, I didn’t have her anymore. I was scared.”

  A long pause that followed, but I didn't speak, just waited for her to continue.

  “You don’t kno
w how much you love a person until you watch the light fade from their eyes.” When she rolled over onto her back, more tears had formed, and dragged my thumb across her cheek. “How did you cope afterward? Where did you go after they did what they did?”

  I looked down at her hand, as she threaded it through mine, entwining our fingers. “Guys who broke into my house sold me off to Tesarik, after I’d confessed about the guns. For three days, they tortured me. Tried to get me to tell them where they were stashed.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  I shook my head. “No. I was ready to die after what happened, and even if they killed me, it’d be the one thing I’d take to the grave. Dax had hidden the guns, and I sure as hell wasn’t ratting him out. So they threw me in the salt mines, and for eleven months, I was kept there. Forced to drill and mine in long twelve to sixteen hour shifts.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “The work itself wasn’t bad. It was never seeing the sun. The darkness. The nightmares. I lost my mind down there. And that fucking taste in my mouth. I’ll never eat salt again.” I rolled onto my back, tucking one arm beneath me.

  Lucy snuggled herself into my side and kissed my chest. “How did you get out?”

  “One of Tesarik’s men broke me out of there.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her it was her father who’d bailed me out. I didn’t trust Roman, and if he hurt her somehow, I’d have the shit job of killing Lucy’s only living father. “He’s the one who told me it was Pasák, a member of the Seventh Circle, who had my family killed.”

  “Pimp.” she said. “His name means pimp.”

  “Yeah.” I’d forgotten she spoke Slovak. “I’ve been tracking him down for weeks.”

  “What will you do when you find him?”

  My jaw shifted at the question. “Kill him.”

  “From what I understand, these are dangerous men. I saw them dump the body of a woman they’d chopped to pieces. They kill without remorse, Jase.”

  I glanced down at her. “You take what’s mine, and so do I.”