Another shot was fired and I shrieked in fright before launching myself around a corner and slamming straight into a hard body.
"Rogue," Fox gasped, dragging me against him and crushing me in his embrace.
"It was Shawn," I panted, pointing back over my shoulder with my bloody flick knife still in my grasp. "He killed Tom and Eddie and tried to throw me in a fucking truck. I stabbed him but he had a gun, so I just ran-"
Fox snarled like a beast, pushing me towards Tatum and her boyfriends and warning them to protect me with their lives before taking off running down the alley I'd just appeared from. He was still only wearing the shorts from the cage fight and his flesh was speckled with more than a little blood, but he held a gun in his hand and looked ready to end this fight right now if he could.
I tried to chase after him, but Tats snatched my wrist into his grasp and held on tight. "It's not safe, unicorn," he warned me.
Tatum ripped a strip of material from one of her other boyfriends' shirt and quickly tied it around my bleeding arm. But I couldn't even feel the sting from the cut as my whole body tensed with fear for Fox.
But before I could freak the fuck out and start trying to fight my way out of there to go after my man, he reappeared.
"There was a big fucking puddle of blood but no truck and no fucking Shawn," Fox growled, shoving between the others and taking my face between his hands as he stared down at me. "I would have torn the world apart to get you back," he swore to me as I was taken hostage by the desperation and fear in his green eyes. But there was fury there too, a rage that had no outlet now that Shawn had run back to his hole like a rat in a storm and I knew he needed to vent some of the violence burning through his body.
"He had help," I breathed, sincerely hoping Shawn was currently bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, though I doubted fate would be that kind to me. "One of the bouncers in the club sold me out. He must have let Shawn in through a side door and he let us back out of it too. It was one of the guys who was on the door as we came in."
The roaring inferno in Fox's eyes turned to a simmering pit of fury and he kissed me hard, his mouth bruising and punishing against mine as his hands gripped my face firmly enough to hurt.
He broke away from me so suddenly that I was left reeling, my lips burning from the heat of his kiss as he took my hand and led me back to the club.
He made a call as we walked, telling the person on the other end of the line that they were to secure the two doormen immediately or face the wrath of the Harlequins.
Tatum and her men followed behind us, but as we reached the entrance to the club where people were pouring out of the door in a tidal wave, Fox turned to look at them.
"This is the part where you leave so that you don't witness anything else," he said firmly.
"You sure you've got it handled from here?" Tats asked, his eye swelling from their fight, though there was no animosity hanging between the two of them.
"Yeah. We'll have to finish that fight another time. I was enjoying beating your ass," Fox told him and Tats laughed loudly.
"In your dreams, big boy."
Tatum gave me a quick hug, making me promise to get my arm looked at by someone with medical credentials and I promised her I would before the four of them turned and left us to it.
The club was just finishing emptying out and Fox took my hand as he led me inside.
We strode straight into the huge room where the fights had been held, the lights now bright and the space looking decidedly less cool with beer bottles and empty glasses scattered about the place.
Two men were kneeling on the sticky floor beside the ring, a dozen Harlequins standing around them menacingly.
Fox looked to me in a question and I didn't hesitate for a second before pointing to the motherfucker who had sold me out to Shawn.
The guy whimpered and started begging, making excuses and generally acting like a total pussy.
Fox snapped his fingers and one of the Harlequins gave the other bouncer a shove to get him moving and send him on his way out of here.
"String him up," Fox commanded in a low voice and the guy’s pleas turned to screams and begging as the Crew quickly stripped him down to his boxers and tied his hands to a rope one of them slung over one of the roof beams.
They hauled him up until he was hanging by his wrists with his feet only just touching the floor and Fox gently took my chin in his grasp, turning my gaze from the show until I met his eyes.
"I'm going to make you hurt for putting my girl at risk like that," Fox told the guy while he continued to beg and sob. "I'm going to make you bleed and break and beg for death. But there's no point in you begging for it from me. She'll be the one who decides when enough is enough." He pushed the pistol he'd been holding into my hands, the green in his eyes seeming to brighten as I accepted it without hesitation.
"You want me to be the one to finish him?" I asked in confirmation, weighing the weapon in my hand and wondering if I was really capable of that. I'd done it before. I'd killed Axel, but that had been different, he'd been hurting me, trying to assault me and I'd been fighting for my life at the time. This would be in cold blood. And as much as I was certain I wanted Shawn to die by my hand for all he’d done to me, this wasn't the same as that.
"Either do it yourself or hand it back to me when you want me to stop," Fox replied, his fingers pushing into my hair. "Either way, he's dead. No one gets away with hurting you, hummingbird."
"She's just some piece of ass," the bouncer whimpered. "Just some whore he wanted back. He paid me ten grand for her. How was I supposed to know you'd give a fuck about it? There are a thousand more like her. I didn't know she mattered. I didn't know!"
My grip on the gun tightened and a cold detachment filled me as I accepted it. Up until then I'd been letting myself think this asshole might not have been a total sack of shit. Luckily for me he'd just proved me wrong.
Fox gave me a dark look which really shouldn't have turned me on, but I had to admit, that fucked up little heathen in me didn't mind it one bit when he told his men to go wait outside and turned his attention to the job at hand.
I watched as he punched, kicked and beat the motherfucker for far longer than I needed to let it go on for. Time ticked by and my blood pumped with a dark kind of hunger as I watched Fox mercilessly beat the fuck out of him.
This was the beast that had been lurking beneath his skin. The part of himself he'd been trying to protect me from.
But as I watched him set his monster loose and break the man who'd put me in harm’s way, there wasn't a single piece of me that thought any less of him for it. In fact, my heart was racing as I watched him. The way his muscles bunched and flexed and the sweat gleamed on his bare skin from the exertion made my own flesh tingle with an ache I'd been fighting since the first moment I'd laid eyes on him again.
Fox Harlequin was brutal, savage and utterly intoxicating. And the more he made my enemy scream for him, the harder I fell into the dark with him. Because this was where I belonged. Down in the pit with the monsters. Deep in the heart of this chaos. The Harlequin Crew had been my worst nightmare for so long that it had taken me too long to realise this, but they'd clearly been my destiny all along too.
And when I finally had enough of hearing the man shriek and cry while his bones cracked and his body was broken, I raised the pistol in a steady hand, locked eyes with Fox, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
“A re you watching, baby?” Mia called from her bed as she rolled in the sheets with some naked chick.
I was on my phone, Googling can people die of boredom?
The answer wasn’t even a resounding no. Apparently long-term boredom increased your chances of premature death, but that wasn’t good enough. I needed boredom to make my brains shoot out of my ears right this second because I’d agreed to watch Mia fuck a girl after she’d been begging me to for a week. I was officially done with this relationship, especially as Mia waved her naked ass in my direction
and fingered Miss Who-Knew-Her-Name so hard I was pretty sure she wasn’t enjoying it.
“Look, baby!” Mia cried, doing some sort of ass shake thing before going down on the girl who was mewling like a cat in heat.
“Uhuh,” I grunted, opening my old Facebook account and scrolling through photos from my youth.
I paused on one of me and Fox with Rogue standing on our shoulders on the beach. Her hands were raised in the air like a cheerleader as we each held one of her ankles and my lips twitched at the memory. She’d watched Bring It On and had been so convinced she could do one of the moves that we’d worked all day on Sunset Beach to perfect it. She had this big ass grin on her face, her eyes full of pride at pulling it off and I swiped onto the video beside it.
“Go on, Rogue!” JJ called off camera and Chase whistled his encouragement, the sound so loud he must have been the one filming. Rogue ran down the beach towards me and Fox, did a cartwheel toward us and we caught her as she flipped over, throwing her up into the air and supporting her legs as she landed on our shoulders and whooped. I replayed the video a couple of times, trying to drown in that memory but Mia kept moaning so loudly she was pulling me out of it.
“You’re not even watching!” she shrieked and I looked up.
She had her ass on the girl’s face as she crouched over her like fucking Gollum, pawing at her own tits. I could see the porno title now: Gollum gets his one ring destroyed by busty Orc.
I checked the time on my phone, finding we only had ten minutes before we needed to leave. Kaiser had invited us over for dinner and I was ready to be done with Mia and her whole goddamn family at last. Tonight, I’d be walking into that house with a grenade hidden in my pocket and I was going to blast my way into the Rosewood crypt, get the stash inside and get the fuck outa there. I’d lock down my island so hard that Kaiser would have to declare war on The Damned Men if he wanted to have it out with me, and frankly I didn’t give much of a fuck what happened after that.
“She’s doing a shit job. I’ll eat your ass good tonight when we get home,” I said as I pushed out of my seat and Mia’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.
“You will?” she gasped, losing her balance and ass-planting the girl so she got buried between her cheeks and started screaming, the sound muffled by the amount of ass she was lost in.
“Yup.” Nope.
I walked out of the room, grabbing my leather jacket on the way. “We’re leaving in ten minutes,” I barked and Mia squealed in excitement.
It wasn’t long before we were heading to the mainland and I pulled off the boat with Mia on the back of my motorcycle in the bitch seat – its name apt for once. I drove through my side of town and circled around to the Rosewood Manor while Mia whooped like a school girl. I was pretty sure she was on something tonight, she liked popping pills from time to time and it made her clingy as fuck. The girl she’d brought to bed was likely high as well, so maybe she wouldn’t remember the assmageddon she’d lived through this evening. Kinda fucking funny if she did though.
We reached the gates and I flipped up my visor so the guard could see me and he nodded, letting us through onto the property. I accelerated up the drive with a roar of the engine, parking outside and waiting for Mia to get off the bike before I did too. We left our helmets on the bike and I wrapped my arm around her waist, keeping her close as we walked up to the door.
My heart warred excitedly as we passed another set of guards and I felt the time ticking down to when I’d be free from this charade at last. No more Mia in my bed, no more fake smiles or fake politeness with her father. No more pretending I gave anything of a shit about them or their damn allegiance. I was making an enemy out of them tonight and I looked forward to the backlash.
We were taken into the dining room for dinner and we sat opposite Kaiser and his wife as they talked money and more renovations to the grounds and manor. They told me about building a giant chessboard out in the garden which made me almost throw up my starter from how tacky that idea was, then went on to say they were planning to demolish the summerhouse which made me sick for a whole different reason.
A thousand memories of my childhood lived in that summerhouse. It was a place I’d only known good things to happen, where we’d sipped fresh lemonade made for us by Miss Mabel, and spent hours lazing there playing cards or just talking shit. It was where I’d seen Rogue’s tits for the very first time too.
When I was officially done with their bullshit, I excused myself to the restroom and adrenaline rushed through my blood.
And so the fun begins…
I tried to exit through the side door I’d gone through with Rogue the last time I was here, but found my way blocked by some security asshole so I doubled back before he spotted me and slipped down another corridor.
This house was stupidly large and I was definitely pushing the limits of my restroom break already. They either thought I was doing the biggest shit known to man or were gonna start getting suspicious. So I needed to hurry the fuck up.
“Where’s the fucking exit?” I snarled in frustration as I walked down yet another hall.
“Hello?” a distant male voice called and I glanced at a door opposite me which was locked with several bolts and padlocks.
I figured that was none of my fucking business and I was on a time limit, so I started walking again, but the voice called out once more and my blood froze in my veins.
“Is someone there?” he yelled and my brain rattled.
I just stood there like my legs had turned to stone, glancing back at the door as a frown tugged at my brow.
Not possible. I’m hearing things.
But I found myself drifting back towards that door with my pulse drumming in my ears and hope tearing a hole in my chest.
“Hello?” I called back.
“Maverick?!” Chase’s voice came, sounding desperate and doubtful at once.
Not. Possible.
I stood there for two endless seconds then gripped one of the padlocks on the door, the cold metal kissing my skin.
“Rick is that you?!” he called, pain in his tone and I knew it was him. I didn’t know how, but it was. He was in there. Chase fucking Cohen had either risen from the goddamn dead, his ghost was trapped down in the basement of this house, or he was fucking alive.
“Are you still there!?” he called, panic in his tone like he really believed I’d left him. “It’s Chase!”
I tried some of the bolts on the door before yanking on the large padlock, but the door was locked up like an ogre lived down there. My mind worked over everything that was happening and I came to a terrifying conclusion that was the only one which made sense. Chase was here. Alive. And a prisoner to Kaiser Rosewood. I had no fucking idea how those facts had come to be true, but they had. Holy fuck. He’s alive.
I rested my forehead to the door, cursing under my breath as emotion ripped up through my being and I shook my head at myself as I made the most stupid decision of my life. I took the grenade from my pocket, wedged it under the doorhandle, pulled the pin and ran away.
The boom that rang through the house was followed by the fire alarm going off and sprinklers turning on over my head. Chaos descended in seconds, and I was now fully invested in this choice.
I ran through the massive hole blasted in the remains of the door and the wall surrounding it, knowing I had so little fucking time to act that I was probably a dead man already.
I reached the bottom of the stone stairway, finding an old woman there sitting in a wooden rocking chair, fast asleep and I skidded to a halt as my eyebrows shot up in recognition.
“Miss Mabel?” I rasped in shock, my head spinning, but then the hammering of fists on a steel door to my left brought me back to my senses. Is everyone from my past rising from the dead tonight??
There was a bolt on this side of it and I unlocked it, wrenching it open and Chase slumped through it at my feet. The inked map of Sunset Cove on his back was intersected by old wounds and fresh ones, the Harl
equin tattoo on his shoulder had been burned clean off and a myriad of cuts and bruises lined the rest of his arms. My gut tightened as I took all of that in within a single torturous second.
I fell to my knees, pulling him up as fear split me open and he stared up at me through his long hair, looking so fucking pale. My gaze settled on his mutilated right eye, a gruesome X carved through it so it was now sealed shut by a savage cut that split through his eyelid. My chest crushed and I found it hard to draw in a single breath, but when I did, I spoke his name.
“Chase?” I gasped, unsure if I could even believe it was him. Not that I cared but fuck it I did.
“Don’t leave me here,” he said in a tight voice like he thought I was really about to turn tail and run. But I hadn’t risked everything just to abandon him, so I hauled him to his feet.
He groaned in agony, unable to put weight on his left leg at all and I could tell it was broken. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck a duck.
I slung his arm around my shoulders, supporting him as I moved. We were dead. Absolutely fucking dead. But I was in for the ride now, so we might as well make a run for it and see how far we got.
“Maverick,” Miss Mabel croaked, coming to as she blinked groggily and I moved toward her, not knowing how I was going to carry both of them, just sure I had to do it. “No.” She held up a hand to stop me trying to help her up. “You have to run. I can’t come with you,” she said firmly.
I didn’t know how the fuck she was even alive, but I needed to get her to her feet.
“Come on, don’t be stubborn.” I reached for her, but she batted my hand away weakly.
“No. You need to go now. There’s no time and Kaiser gave me a damn sedative. If you can get onto the grounds, head to the fountain in the walled garden,” she said, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment before reopening. “There’s a tunnel beneath it. It’s been there since the prohibition days. Press the stone with the Rosewood crest on it to open it and it will lead you to the woods beyond the grounds. Now go.” She pointed and I growled under my breath, seeing she was a lost cause and vowing I’d get her out of here somehow, but I couldn’t waste any more time and she clearly wasn’t coming.
Carnival Hill (The Harlequin Crew Book 3) Page 25