Third a Kiss (GODDESS ISLES Book 3)

by Pepper Winters

  He would fight for them.

  He would extract vengeance for them.

  As he should.

  But…where would I be?

  Would he let me fight beside him?

  Or would he push me away?

  I didn’t have an answer and as the sun rose higher in the sky and Jealousy kept me company while we watched more smoke billow and stronger scents of charred earth and flesh trailed over the sea…I did my best not to be worried.

  But I was worried.

  So, so worried.

  Because we might be over…before we’ve even begun.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  WEARING WHITE TO TOTAL carnage was a gruesome wardrobe choice.

  Blood painted my t-shirt and slacks. Bone fragments and brain pieces, charred fur and dismembered animal parts. I wore it all as I dug through the smoking wreckage.

  Thanks to my team of gardeners on Lebah—and their tanker of freshwater to grow my crops—we’d put out the fire caused by Drake’s bomb. We’d salvaged part of the veterinary practice, saved a few holding pens, ceased fire from chewing its way through the dog enclosure and pieced together parts of the rabbit warren.

  But that was it.

  Everything else: the barns piled high with feed and medicine. The high-tech surgery for large and small beasts. The hours upon hours of excavating, building, planting, creating had all been destroyed.

  Along with so many, many fucking lives.

  Four hours ago, I’d been ready to jump aboard the helicopter and fly after Drake. To make his body blow apart like Cuthbert the pig and the adorable otters who’d been so close to releasing back into the wild. I wanted to see his brains splattered in the soil. I wanted his blood coagulating beneath the hot sun. I wanted the stench of his decaying body ripe in the air.

  I wanted him in motherfucking bits.

  But vengeance would have to come after I’d offered triage to those left behind. The singed monkeys and charred beagles and every other critter that’d already survived so much.

  Cal and I worked side by side with locals and staff.

  The Indonesian people operated under the law of karma and they arrived in droves, pulling ashore in their fishing trawlers or hitching a ride on a sea vessel, coming to our aid thanks to the plume of smoke announcing war.

  Their good deed today would help a good deed for them tomorrow.

  None of us spoke, too disgusted and deadened by what we shovelled from the layers of toxic ash, recognising severed tails, paws, and fire-ravaged carcasses.

  I’d thrown up when I’d come across a cow that’d only arrived two days ago. A roof beam had snapped, thanks to the bomb’s power, hurtling down to harpoon into the side of the animal. It’d been trapped against the wall as fire chewed its way up its legs and along its flanks.

  Dead while standing, its eyes were still open, a snapshot of blistering agony as it’d burned alive.

  I’d stumbled to the corner and expelled the dinner I’d shared with Eleanor. It’d splashed on my boots, coating me in yet more filth, blending with guts and viscera.

  I hadn’t eaten meat in fuck knew how long, and the stench of animal flesh made me violently nauseous. My mind and heart shut down, unable to associate the butchered remains with the creatures I’d tried to give a better life.

  It was my past all over again.

  The lab experiments. The domestic violence. The brother who tormented his own sibling.

  Fuck, the guilt.

  It nibbled its way through my chest until it took a knife and fork to my heart and ate it piece by piece. I bled guilt. I sweated guilt. My head pounded with culpability and utmost shame.

  I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, even as Cal patted me on the back and hissed in my ear that this wasn’t my fault. That I couldn’t have predicted that my brother would bypass my scouts on the sea and instead of coming after me go after the most vulnerable.

  But I should have known.

  It was fucking obvious.

  It was his M.O.

  I’d been such a stupid bastard not to see this coming. And I blamed myself, not just for this carnage, but for being too goddamn busy falling in love with Jinx to put parameters in place to prevent such a thing.

  I’d been selfish.

  I deserved this pain, but the rest of these poor victims did not. Their broken bodies and obliterated hearts were on my hands, no one else’s.

  In this instance, Drake had been smarter than me. He’d never entered my waters. Instead, he’d flown over them in a chartered Tomahawk and dropped two unrefined and highly temperamental bombs on Serigala.

  My pilots had already tracked the aircraft to a private airstrip in Java. I’d sent guards to interrogate and find where Drake was.

  Had he flown to Indonesia to do this or had he sat in his goddamn La-Z-Boy in one of our parents’ mansions and pressed a button on a mass animal massacre?

  Fuck!

  My anger gave me strength to keep striding over bloody debris and horrendous homicide. My guilt wrapped me tight until any other thought or emotion was deleted.

  Eleanor was not allowed inside my head or my heart.

  Any remembrance of our afternoon yesterday just didn’t fit with this reminder of how death always found me. How the Grim Reaper used me to find its next chosen, picking those I cared about to exterminate.

  She’s not safe around me…nothing is.

  High noon passed in a fugue of humidity and stench. The afternoon faded into twilight as more ships arrived, helping carry animal refuse out to sea to feed the carnivores of the ocean. Better their remains were used to sustain marine life than bury it in fire-scorched dirt.

  The piles of mangled buildings were combed over by locals, earning my permission to take whatever they could scrounge. If a window hadn’t blown into smithereens, best they could find a good purpose for it instead of me smashing it to pieces in my rage.

  So many years of my life.

  So much hope that I was doing a good thing saving those who’d been brutally treated at the hands of humans.

  And look at what I’d done.

  I’d killed them.

  All over again.

  As night fell, our group of blood-splattered and dirt-smeared workers managed to set up holding pens for those creatures now homeless. I flew in extra drugs and supplies, acting as an unqualified nurse to provide emergency veterinary care for those beyond a simple salve and bandage.

  Two out of my four vets had survived.

  Two lay under a shroud in the rubble.

  Their families would be notified. Their widows and bereaved offered substantial compensation. Three locals who were in charge of cuddles and feeding had also been killed.

  The initial blast had torn them apart.

  I was responsible for this.

  I would pay every debt required.

  I would never ever fucking forget this.

  Drake is a dead man walking.

  Burying my hands in another pile of gore, I grabbed the slippery remains and tossed it into the bag that would be carted out to sea. As far as clean-up went, Serigala had been swarmed by helpful people, all carrying out some versions of disinfection and rebuild.

  This pile was the last of the mess.

  My body was fucking exhausted. My eyes wept from ash and air-particles. My throat scratched from the stubborn fire still smouldering in places. My lungs and belly cramped from pollution and my heart throbbed with agony for what’d happened.

  But I couldn’t go home.

  Not yet.

  I didn’t deserve to wash away this putridity. The biohazard I worked in made my entire body a contamination warning…just like my soul should be.

  I should be kept far, far away from everyone and everything.

  I bent to grab more handfuls of slaughter. A local passed me a spade with a grim half-smile. I took it, digging the rusty blade into the oozing remains and tossing them into the bag. The tool made my work faster, and I threw myself into the task.
/>   Cal arrived at some point, his hand landing on my shoulder.

  I jolted in panic.

  Pika.

  For a god-awful second, I thought Pika had flown here and witnessed what I’d caused. I didn’t know why but that almost broke me. The thought of Pika, my confidant and friend for fourteen years, seeing just what I was was the final straw.

  “Don’t touch me.” I shrugged Cal’s touch away, returning to my offal digging.

  “Your phone’s been ringing.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Who cares.”

  “You might…it seems important. Whoever it is hasn’t stopped. It ends, waits a few minutes, and starts again.” He eyed my grotesque-streaked slacks where the bulge of my phone rested. “Surprised you haven’t heard it.”

  Eleanor.

  Fuck…here I was doing clean-up, while leaving Eleanor exposed to the same attack.

  Dropping the spade, I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

  Cal wasn’t lying.

  Seven missed calls.

  All from a blocked number.

  I knew who it was before it rang again, buzzing in my palm, the screen getting covered in ash-blended blood as I swiped accept.

  “Drake.” I moved away from Cal, climbing the small pile of broken beams and smoking wood. From this vantage point, I witnessed the remains of Serigala.

  The heartbreak.

  The shocked animals.

  The colourful bandages soothing the pain of so many fire-touched sufferers.

  Ducks and sheep, hedgehogs and lizards, human and beast…they all made peace with one another, sharing their destroyed home, doing their best to heal.

  “Baby bro, I’m assuming the reason you’re not picking up is you’re elbows deep in intestines, doing a clean-up. You were never one to shirk your responsibilities.” He chuckled. “Like the remodelling I did?”

  My heart never rose above the numbed pound. I was no longer a man, just hunched up gristle and hate. “This was the last time, Drake. I’m done.”

  He sniffed. “Where’s the rage, Sullivan? Where’re the ultimatums?”

  “I told you.” I shrugged as the first twinkle of a star appeared above me. “I’m done with you.”

  “Well, that’s anticlimactic, I have to say.”

  “You always were an attention seeker.”

  “And you were the biggest little shit I’d ever laid eyes on.”

  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. My hands fucking stank. My nails were black with death. I honestly had no energy to spar with him. He was already dead to me. He’d never been a brother, just a tormentor. A fucking psychopath who should never have been birthed.

  “You want the truth, Drake?” I looked up, dropping my hand. “Fine. I’ll give you the goddamn truth. I’m glad our parents are dead because they were worthless two-legged creatures who had the means and the money to do some good in this fucked-up world. Instead, they only thought of themselves. They taught you the same righteous belief that you’re owed something. That you’re special.” My voice lowered, no spike of hate or flare of rage, just loath-filled ice. “They’re dead…and soon, you will be too. This is our last conversation, Drake. Next time we see each other, I’ll be driving a blade through your motherfucking heart.”

  A pause sounded between us. Heavy and potent, slipping into my bloodstream with sick foreboding.

  Finally, he laughed, loud and cocky. “Ah, there’s the ultimatum.”

  “Not an ultimatum. A fact.”

  “Okay then, a fact.” A rustle sounded as if he brought the phone closer to his mouth. “You’ve said your fact. Now, allow me to do the same.”

  My thumb hovered over the hang-up button. “Maybe another time. I have much more important things—”

  “Listen to me, you little shithead. If you hang up, then I’m done tormenting you. I’ll just go straight to killing you.”

  “You already tried that, numerous times I might add, and it didn’t work. I’m like the cockroaches you tried to squash but never could.”

  “Yeah, but this time, I have a guaranteed way to exterminate you. I’m not even going to give you a choice. I won’t ask for Sinclair and Sinclair Group. I won’t demand your shares or your bank accounts. There’s only one thing you can give me to stop me from doing this. One thing that’s far more interesting than science…give it to me, and I could be persuaded to play nice.”

  My knees locked; the wooden pile I stood on shook with instability. I didn’t bow to his taunt. I didn’t ask what he knew because I would never show weakness where he was concerned.

  But I didn’t need to ask as Drake had always loved to gloat.

  “You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you, Sullivan? Buying women and farming them out as whores? A little birdie told me that you’ve somehow concocted a drug that makes them beg for it. That they’ll take it up the ass or down the throat as many times as a guy wants and even more besides.” He laughed coldly. “Here you are spouting bullshit about doing something good in this world and look at you…Sullivan Sinclair, the goddamn king of skin and sin.”

  I pursed my lips.

  I would not respond.

  I would not give my reasoning.

  “The thing is, little Sully, I rather like your new business. More so than I do at the thought of geeky scientists and boring lab work. Sure, drugs are lucrative, but if you’ve bottled lust, then that’s fucking unstoppable.” He cleared his throat. “So…here’s my ultimatum. You sitting down? ’Cause you might want to.”

  I rolled my eyes and stayed quiet. Let him think I’d abandoned the call and wasn’t listening. It would piss him the fuck off.

  His temper darkened his tone as he snapped, “I’ve taken away your animal sanctuary, just as I took away the strays you rescued in our past. But that wasn’t my end goal. Call that a little warm-up. Because…this birdie also told me you’ve finally stopped being an animal lover and turned your eye to someone with two legs instead of four.” He laughed. “What’s better, Sully? Fucking a girl or something with fur?”

  Not waiting for me to reply, he continued, “This girl of yours…it’s taken you long enough to dabble in the commitment pool, so I’m guessing she means quite a lot to you. I might even go as far to say you love her. And if you love her…fuck, I’m going to enjoy this all the more.”

  I clamped my mouth together.

  He’s fishing.

  He doesn’t know.

  He can’t know.

  If he did, that meant I had a traitor in my midst.

  Just like always. Just like forever.

  Goddammit, could I trust no one? Not even the people I paid such substantial funds to? Was loyalty so fucking destitute these days?

  “You have four hours, little brother. Four hours to send through the recipe of your elixir, the deed to your islands, and that fucking whore who’s keeping your bed warm at night. I will spare your life if you do that, but I won’t spare hers. I’m going to kill her. Not right away, of course, I want to taste what you’ve tasted. I want to see what makes her pussy so much better than all the rest you ignored. I will make you watch. I will set you free from your ideologies that you are better than me. If you show some grovelling on your part, we could even run your side enterprise together. Brothers in blood and business. But if you lift one finger against me. If you try to save her from her fate, then I will fucking hurt you. I will hurt you until you beg for death, but I will never grant it. I will happily watch you break apart for the rest of your tortured days.”

  Silence fell between us.

  My heart stopped. My body swayed. I didn’t believe he could touch me, but…there was a spy in my midst.

  A spy who’d gone behind my back and ensured the deaths of so many animals I’d tried to save.

  And Eleanor was currently on my island with that spy.

  She was at risk. Worse than with traffickers or guests or me.

  She was the leash around my throat that could ensure I bowed to my heinous
brother. A leash that would choke me if I ever had to watch her suffer.

  Before, I hadn’t responded to him out of power.

  Now, I stayed silent because I couldn’t speak.

  My mind raced.

  My heart hammered.

  What the fuck do I do?

  It came down to trust again.

  Did I trust what he said?

  Did I trust he was lying?

  Shit!

  Drake chuckled. “I’m taking by your quietness that I’ve finally struck a nerve. I almost feel sorry for you. You finally know what it feels like to love and now you have to watch me kill her. That’s the price you pay for picking a war with me, baby bro.”

  My hand curled around my phone as I leaped from the wooden pile, tripping over destruction to the helicopter in the distance. “I’m calling your bluff, Drake. You can just fuck right off. I’m going home to have a shower. You probably have an hour at the most before I fly my ass to wherever you are to shove a bomb down your throat.”

  “Oh, yeah? Calling my bluff, huh? I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Fuck, I hated this cunt.

  “Oh, no? Why not?”

  “I wouldn’t test me because I’m currently sitting in your sea with a fucking army ready to blow your Goddess Isles apart. I have my finger on the trigger, Sully. I have the name of your girl. Four hours just became three. Tick-tock.”

  I broke into a run, waving at the pilots to drop their sack of animal parts and climb into the chopper. They leapt into the fuselage, running a pre-flight check as I bolted up the steps. “One question and then I’ll believe you.”

  “Sure. One question seems fair.”

  I did my best to keep fear from my tone, masking it with hissing rage. “Her name. The girl you think I’m—”

  “Eleanor Grace, of course. The goddess you’re in love with. Now, run along, little bro. Three hours and then it’s party time.”

  He hung up.

  I threw my phone at the expensive upholstery opposite me. “FUCK!”

  Cal shot inside the helicopter, just as the pilots added speed to the rotor blades, warping the laws of gravity.

  I didn’t look at him, sinking deep into my thoughts, planning warfare, plotting strategy, mulling over every option from all angles.