The Dangerous Son (Coalition Collection Book 1)

by Zoe Hill

  Maybe his dad has already told him?

  That would explain his bad mood when he came storming out of the control room with our father’s running after him.

  Spenser tosses a pile of clothes that I assume is mine onto the end of the bed. Shyness overcomes me when he strips out of his clothing and begins dressing without a preamble. Even though, I’ve seen him without a shirt before, I wasn’t prepared for the full impact of his unclothed body.

  Every part of his body is honed to athletic precision. Wide shoulders down to tapered waist, his muscles move like a perfectly choreographed dance when he leans down to pull the legs of the cargo pants over his feet. The definition in his strong thighs turns my mouth dry, and I take a step back when he readjusts his bulge before buttoning up the fly.

  The mottled bruising over his ribs is stark against his light skin. Once again, the thought of someone hurting him makes me scowl. I want to beat them to death with my bare hands. I push away my murderous thoughts when, now dressed in black cargo pants and a long-sleeved Henley that molds to his upper body, Spenser bends over to tie his combat boots, and I peek at his backside.

  “Am I distracting you?”

  I lift my gaze from his wide shoulders to meet his eyes. A blush blazes up my face, but I try to save myself from further mortification with a joke. “As I said, I’m cataloging your flaws.”

  “Sure. Sure.” Pointing at the clothing I’m holding in my arms, he adds, “Do you need help?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Pity.” I flush even redder at his blatant innuendo. “I wouldn’t have minded helping.”

  While he finishes with his boots, I rush to dress as fast as I can. Stepping in front of Ollie’s dresser to straighten my borrowed clothes in the rectangular mirror that hangs above, I spot Spenser shoving the framed picture into his shirt.

  I turn around to ask him why he’s taking it.

  The question dies on my lips when he marches forward and crooks a finger under my chin. Searching my face with an inscrutable expression on his, Spenser morphs into someone else right in front of my eyes. His whole demeanor changes, darkness pushing the earnest longing he usually regards me with out of his eyes and replacing it with a possessiveness that makes my skin crawl. Lethal intent coils within his body and he somehow takes up more space in the bedroom while remaining the same size.

  It feels stupid to think this when I can still see him with my own eyes, but it feels like the Spenser I know has left his body, and someone else has taken control.

  Mistrust flickers through me when I meet his penetrating gaze, and he looks me over like I’m an insect that he wants to savagely squash beneath his boot for daring to get in his way. Doubts cloud my mind, and I step backward until he’s no longer touching my face.

  “You’re mine?” The way Spenser delivers his question is ominous. His tone is similar to Seb’s earlier today. Poisonously possessive and laced with the grim promise of punishment if I fail to measure up. Goosebumps rise along my arms the longer I look at him. The prickles of awareness turn into an icy shudder when he commands, “Say it.”

  “Y-yes,” I stammer. When his gaze takes on a razor-sharp glint, I realize that I’m contradicting my pledge by shaking my head. “It’s early, but yes... I think so.”

  My rejection makes something bleak flicker in his expression, then it’s gone, and the ruthlessness dominates once more. Heart pounding in my ears, I shuffle out of his way even further when Spenser rushes past me without speaking and stomps his way down the short corridor back to the main room where everyone’s gathering. I follow him, trailing slowly as I attempt to make sense of what I just witnessed.

  I enter the room behind him and find a hushed silence dawning in Spenser’s wake. Turns out that most of the people pulling on their protective armor are having the same reaction to him when he crosses their path as I am. Even Eli, the brother known as the biggest asshole in my family, stops and watches Spenser with narrowed eyes.

  “I see you’ve met Trigger,” Mrs. Ingram remarks as she comes to stand next to me.

  I give her a half nod, half head shake in response, then ask, “I thought Trigger was just Spenser’s underworld name?”

  Spenser’s mother sighs. “Kind of... it’s what we call him when he gets like this. I know it’s hard to see, especially the first few times. I just hope this will be the final time my son is forced to bring his monster out to play. Both personalities are him, one dangerous, one cautious... I guess, what I’m saying is that I need the dangerous son to disappear forever, and my careful and loving Spenser back.”

  “B-back?”

  “Yes. I want him back.” She takes hold of my closest hand and inspects my fingers. “I believe you’re the one to bring my son back for good. I watched him with you earlier, and I can see that we’ve got one thing right... you’re special to him.”

  Tugging my hand out of her grip, I hold both my hands in front of my face. All I see are fingers. Normal hands with short nails and a small scar across my palm where I cut it climbing a tin fence to chase after a perp during my first year on the beat.

  “I’m not special.”

  “I disagree.”

  When my mom is helped onto a table so she can address everyone, I inch away from Mrs. Ingram. Her explanation makes little sense. Two personalities. Her dangerous son. Forced to bring out his monster to play. The glib descriptions she used to speak about her son bounce around my brain.

  How well do I truly know the man I think I’m falling in love with?

  “Come with me,” Mrs. Ingram demands. She heads toward the side entrance of the compound, and after one final look at Spenser, I follow her. When we walk past, Mom holds up a hand to stop us. Spenser’s mom offers her a tight smile. “It’s time, Eloise. She needs to know everything. No matter how well we run things, he won’t survive tonight without her.”

  Mom nods then barks an order at Chester. “Load everyone into the vans, then give us thirty minutes... I’ll text, so you know what to do next.”

  “Consider it done.” Chester lays a hand on the top of my head once he’s acknowledged our mom’s orders. “Good luck, squirt. This will be over before you know it.”

  I barely spare my brother a glance before I’m following Mrs. Ingram out to the van parked across the doorway. After the three of us climb inside, Mom slams the door shut and the van speeds off. Aside from the driver, we are the only occupants.

  We pass by everyone else as we pull out of the gates and onto the street. Looking back, I can’t see Spenser, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. The change that came over him in Ollie’s bedroom is playing on my mind. It was frightening at the time. Now that there is some space between us, I’m starting to realize that it might be another one of his coping strategies.

  After all, every person’s game face is different. The scary façade that emerged from somewhere deep in him might be his version of a poker face.

  At least, I hope it is.

  As silence invades, my stomach begins to churn with worry. I stare out the window, mindlessly studying the buildings that flash past as I attempt to corral my surging thoughts into a series of coherent questions.

  Before I’m ready, the van pulls into a parking lot that faces a nature reserve. Mom unclips her seatbelt and leans into the front of the van. When she emerges, she’s clutching a six-pack of my favorite beer. Lifting it into the air, she waves it in front of my face, then proclaims in a sympathetic voice, “Drink up, Poppy. You’re going to need it.”

  Once we’re all nursing an open bottle of beer, Spenser’s mom rubs her hands against her thighs. Meeting my gaze with an earnest plea, “Please forgive me for not telling you this straightaway, but my son has issues that I needed to make sure you could handle before I spilled the rest of his secrets.”

  “I’d rather hear it from him,” I interject.

  “As noble as that is, I can’t allow you to follow through with our plan tonight without possessing all of the inform
ation.”

  Gulping down my beer, I hold my hand to my mother for another bottle. When she hands it to me without question, I tilt my head to the side and ask, “What do you think, Mom? Is this something important enough to break Spenser’s confidence, or should I wait until he tells me?”

  “Bubba... this is the atomic bomb of secrets. You need to know now.”

  “Okay.” I nod my head at Spenser’s mom. “Go ahead.”

  “First up, my name is Sophia Ingram-Greaves. My husband is Harrison’s half-brother.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Mom holds up a hand. “Be quiet. You can speak once she’s finished.”

  “As you know, my son is also a survivor of Harrison’s, but what you don’t know is that he was the first and most enduring victim,” Sophia reveals. Her voice is choked, and I remain silent as she places her bottle of beer on the floor at her feet and wrings her hands together in her lap. “The things that were done to my boy are unconscionable, and my husband’s position within the Coalition made it impossible for us to protect him from the fallout of his uncle’s crimes.”

  Speaking quickly, Sophia drops truth bomb after truth bomb, and I find myself reeling from her description of the depravity that pervades their life. Explaining that she lives with a death sentence hanging over her head if the man she married angers the head of the Coalition, Spenser’s mom attempts to make me see their life with a fresh perspective. She tells me that Harrison was able to get away with his crimes for so long because he has the most powerful man in the world in his corner.

  As the tale unfolds, I learn that Spenser’s parents did everything they could to avoid bringing innocent children into their world. They wanted the participation of the Ingram and Greaves families in the Coalition’s version of a new world order to end with them.

  Unfortunately, that plan was foiled when one of their trusted advisors, under orders from the man in charge of the Coalition, had tampered with her birth control. The birth of their twins was a blessing and a curse because they now had something other than each other to lose.

  Her husband bore the brunt of the brutality the Coalition uses to keep their own in line. To save his sons, he was forced to brutalize them himself because the alternative was worse. Allowing someone else to hurt their children whenever they stepped outside the Coalition’s carefully drawn boundaries was a situation they couldn’t control, so Zoran took on the duty himself.

  From being ordered by the head of the Coalition to torture Stirling so Spenser would become a cold-blooded killer they could wield against their enemies; to maiming Spenser in a fit of rage after he tried to run away; to forcing Stirling into a marriage he didn’t want, Zoran Greaves is equal parts victim and perpetrator of the Coalition’s immoral pursuit of power and wealth.

  Reaching over, Sophia pats my knee. “Trigger is the name we use for Spenser’s second personality. The therapist we sent him to thinks that Trigger was created by Spenser’s mind to protect his conscience from cracking under the weight of the bad things he’s expected to do. Stirling came up with the name when they were teens, and Zoran spread it through the Coalition that they were never to address Spenser by any other name when he was working on a contract. Being Trigger helps, although I worry that he’ll take over for good one day, and I’ll lose my son forever.”

  Blinking fast, I try not to think about the horrors Spenser has perpetuated. “So... that was Trigger I saw back at the compound?”

  “Yes.”

  “How does something like that happen?” I ask.

  Sophia peers out at the nature reserve. I drain my beer and gesture to my mom to hand me another. When I begin to lose hope that I’m going to receive an answer to my question, Sophia shocks me by blurting out a confession, “It was my idea for Zoran to torture Stirling. He didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t bear to think of someone else hurting my boys. When the order came down, I knew it was the opportunity Rom... um, the head of the Coalition, had been waiting for to have his revenge on my husband. Of course, my plan backfired... watching his father hurt his twin was the catalyst for Spenser’s mind breaking into two. The fracture to his psyche caused Trigger to emerge. In a way, I’m to blame for everything that’s happened before and since that day.”

  “Now, you know that’s nonsense,” Mom interjects. She takes hold of Sophia’s hand and the two women share an indecipherable look. “You were born into that world. No one in your family has ever had a choice. Doing all you can to survive isn’t a crime when you’re trapped.”

  “The things he had to do to keep the four of us alive broke Zoran as well,” Spenser’s mom admits. “What Harrison did to my son caused severe damage to their relationship, but it was the Coalition’s demands that ruined it. When Zoran asked for permission to kill his half-brother, the request was denied. Breaking that news to Spenser was one of the hardest things we ever had to do.”

  “I can’t begin to imagine,” I offer as sympathetically as I can in the face of her admissions.

  Although I hate Spenser’s father for his cruelty, I dread to think about how I would act if I was trapped inside their world. Every day demands another impossible choice, so while I can’t bring myself to forgive Zoran for his transgressions against the man who’s quickly wedging himself inside my soul, I can find it within myself to understand him better.

  “My husband and I are doing everything we can to take the Coalition down from the inside... despite that, it’s not enough to protect our son. Promise me you’ll help Spenser through the damage that the events that happen tonight will wreak on him, tomorrow and into the future,” Sophia demands, softly.

  I open my mouth to speak, but no sound comes out.

  Sophia’s hopeful expression crumbles into despair until I incline my head. Her face fills with fatigue and she slumps against my mother. “Thank you. If there was another way to finish this, I’d take it. Yet, everything we know about Harrison tells us that the only way to defeat him is to make him think he’s got us where he wants us. He’ll drop his guard if he believes he’s won.”

  “By using me and Spenser as bait?”

  “Exactly,” my mom answers. She pauses to tap out a message on her phone, before she hands me a small emerald jewel that’s the same color as Spenser’s eyes. “Take off the diamond and clip this to your navel piercing.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I lift my shirt and remove the diamond that hangs from my belly ring. As I clip the new decoration into place, I remark in a tight voice, “So that’s how you always know where I am.”

  “The world is dangerous. A mother’s gotta do all it takes to keep her children safe.”

  The van reverses out of the parking lot and drives toward the interstate. I lean against the window and stare out into the dark night and mull over everything I’ve just learned. Sophia’s confession has filled in a lot of blanks for me tonight, but one big one still remains unanswered.

  “How did you two meet?” When Mom bites back a smile and Sophia chuckles, I add, “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

  “Why don’t you think about that question a little longer, bubba, and get back to me,” my mom suggests in her bossy, mother knows best, voice. “I’m sure if you think really hard, it’ll come to you. After all, aren’t memories like seashells? Each one has its own story?”

  The urge to tell her where to stick her seashell analogy surges to the tip of my tongue, but I run out of time and guts—my mom is a scary woman when she wants to be—to make it.

  We’re at the location Harrison picked for the exchange.

  The time has come to end this vile man’s existence.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” ~Suzanne Collins~

  SPENSER

  Trigger remains in control until my mother ushers Poppy out of a different exit and into another van. As she is driven off without me, Spenser almost takes over. He needs her. Deep down in the back of my psyche, I can hear him screaming to stay
close to her, however, Trigger is in charge. He pushes away anything that looks like it will be a distraction from his mission to put a bullet between Harrison’s eyes.

  Well, that’s not strictly true... he’d also like to skin him alive, pluck his eyeballs out, and feed him his own dick, but that’s merely semantics at this point.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Poppy’s younger brother, Eli, climbs into the van and takes the seat next to me.

  “Nothing.” I glare at him until he slides over to the edge of the seat.

  Crammed into the van, armed and rearing to spill blood, we wait in silence for over half an hour until the door is slammed shut, and the van is driven out of the compound. I jam my hands flat on either side of my thighs to keep myself from leaning closer to Eli when the motion of the van causes me to slide around. Every time I lean away from him, he snickers, but I pretend I can’t hear him.

  I don’t think Poppy would appreciate me rearranging her brother’s face.

  Eli taunts me for a little longer, finding amusement at my expense before he pulls something out of the bag resting between his feet. After he drops it into my lap, he takes hold of the roll bar that runs down the roof of the van and tilts his body away from mine.

  Now that I have sufficient space, I allow myself to breathe.

  Opening my eyes once I’m sure that the van is on a straight section of road, I discover that he’s given me an iPod and headphones.

  I hold it in front of his face. “What’s this for?”

  “Well, long story short... Bella told Chester, who told me what Poppy’s been doing for the past couple of years with a bunch of random pricks in the city. It intrigued me, so I started an online course in psychology. I know we’re not supposed to diagnose without proper training, but it’s pretty damn clear that you’re in a dissociative state at the moment... and I’ve heard that zoning to music with a repetitive beat can help, so there you go... you can thank me later.”