JETT
I couldn’t believe I’d almost broken her out of the asylum just based on those black eyes I couldn’t get enough of—I was turning soft. The boys had been right. She was a distraction, one I knew I shouldn't keep around. They had never seen me soft before. It had been months since I killed anyone, and yet all I thought about was her.
She was changing. Her fire was dissipating. That had been the best part about her, and the one thing I’d hoped would stay. Maria had told me my visits lifted her spirits for a time before she turned back into the fighting and animalistic patient she had been. Did that mean Ebony was as enthralled by me as I was of her? This had to end. I couldn’t get soft on this chick. When I released her from Serenity, she wouldn't stay with me—she would flee which meant I would be able to focus on my life again. I would regain my organization’s trust again. All would be good.
The efforts to track down my father hadn’t yielded any results. Even York was struggling. If York couldn’t find someone, then they really didn’t want to be found, but I also wasn't trying very hard. Ebony occupied every bit of my brain activity—she was in my dreams, and she was in my waking thoughts. She was everywhere.
I moved through the office stopping when I found Duncan talking to someone in the hall. He wasn’t happy judging by his animated arm waving, the other men behind him were agreeing. I stayed hidden, listening in on him.
“…he’s lost his edge, Dunc. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he hasn’t shot any of us… not in months.”
Even the men saw my weakness. Fuck. I waited for them to push off so it didn’t look suss that I may have been listening. Their voices started to fade as they moved off toward the carpark. I made sure they were all gone and headed for the office. York was sitting at my computer searching for something, his brows creased in thought as he looked at the screen.
“Boss.”
“York, what is it?”
He looked distracted, which I knew was never a good thing. York prided himself on being on the ball, twenty-four-seven.
“John Lambert has popped up in town. I put a hit on his social security, and it’s just pinged close by.”
“How close?”
He typed, and I saw something pop up I didn’t want to see.
Serenity Asylum.
“Jesus… you don’t think he knows?” York asked.
“I don’t know, but I can’t risk it,” I said. “Ebony is almost completely broken. I can’t hinder that. Not after all this time and effort.”
I picked up my cell and dialed Maria. “Hey, it’s Jett. Make sure Ebony is off the books and locked away from the public. I have a feeling you’re about to get a call from someone very interested in her.”
She said she would ensure everything was in place and hung up. I knew she wouldn’t betray me. She was a good staffer, but the fact John would go straight there was a worry. He easily could have been watching me all these years or even the last few months. He could already know what I’m doing to Ebony and the fact she was my weakness.
“Boss… what do you want me to do?”
“Gather the boys. I need to reassure them of their places in this organization. There’s been talk of me going soft, which isn’t entirely off-base, but I need them to know we can still rule this city.”
York nodded and got up from my seat to head outside. He hesitated at the door. I turned to face him.
“What about Ebony?”
“Leave that to me.”
“I mean, the boys have noticed you’re preoccupied, and Duncan knows it’s because of her. He has their ear. I hate to say it, but maybe he needs to pay the ultimate price.”
✽✽✽
Seeing the boys who I knew were talking behind my back, just sitting at the table, made me angry. Betrayal wasn’t something I dealt with well. I held back my gut instinct to draw my gun and start shooting and focused on what I needed to.
“I know you’ve been questioning my absence lately.”
Everyone was quiet as they looked up at me. Not one of them looked like they could betray me. Most had stayed loyal to me even after I killed their friend in front of them but that could change at any time.
“I don’t like the lack of faith you have in me.”
Pulling my gun out of the holster, I shot Duncan between his eyes. Gasps echoed throughout the room from everyone. Most of the men in range copped a spray of blood, brain, and flesh. They didn’t dare wipe it off.
“Any more doubters?”
Silence.
“Good.”
I put my gun in the holster and took my seat at the head of the table. “Now, what do you have for me?”
I could see the fear written all over their faces because they didn’t have anything good to deliver. I relished in it. In fact, I wanted so badly to have someone screw up so I could use my pistol again.
Ebony had turned me soft in recent weeks, and I needed to get my edge back. I had no idea how I had let this happen. Never before had a woman held such dominion over me unless she was giving me the money I needed. Only one woman ever had that power, and she hadn’t been back in my life since she fled five years ago. How could she be doing this to me? I’d never been so turned on by a woman in my life, and she’d not even sucked my cock. The thought of those pink lips wrapped around me as those black eyes looked up had me almost shooting off under the table. I moved forward with business so I could focus on giving them assignments and tracking down John. I couldn’t have him finding my weakness or helping Giordy to overpower me. John had always wanted everyone to cower to him, especially me. His only child, whether I wanted to or not, was born to be this man, to be dangerous and willing to kill those who pissed me off as easily as deciding what to have for dinner.
“Jenkins has launched an attack on the clubs. Giordy wants in.”
“Get Joe fucking Lamb on the phone.”
It’s about time that fucker did something for me. I didn’t get him into the Senate to do nothing for me.
Ty, one of the most vicious men in my organization but also the most annoying, nodded and ran out of the warehouse to call him. If Jenkins was still on Giordy’s payroll, I needed to call in a favor. This shit had gone on long enough.
When Ty returned a few minutes later and handed the phone to me, I dismissed everyone and walked to my office to take the call.
“Joe.”
“What’s up, Jett?” There was just a hint of fear in his tone.
“I hear Jenkins has a boner for me. Any idea why?”
He hesitated before lowering his voice. “Yeah, it’s strange, that’s for sure. All I figure is Giordy is pulling some string of his.”
“Have a word with him, will you?”
“He’s the goddamn Commissioner, Jett.”
“Yes, and you’re a goddamn Senator. Do your fucking job, or I’ll out you to everyone. You’ll never work in this city again.”
“Okay, okay… I’ll see what I can do.”
I hung up. Joe knew I knew his fetishes, and I knew his involvement. It was fucking disgusting, but he was entitled to his little fantasy—fuck, I had mine. This little secret of his could destroy him and that perfect family image he held so close.
I felt the cell buzz in my hand. I looked down at the text and cringed. It was from Maria.
“He’s demanding to see isolation.”
John was still legally the owner of Serenity now that he was miraculously still alive. If I didn’t get rid of him soon, he’d steal Ebony from me. I just couldn’t let that happen.
She was mine.
I had to protect her from him.
“Stall him. I’m on my way.”
“Boss?” I spun around, hung up the cell, and grabbed my gun. Without thinking, I shot before looking to see who it was. Ty went down quick, spilling blood out over the cement floor of the office. It wasn’t a mortal wound. I got him in the leg because I hadn’t been focussed.
Lucky for him.
“Don’t sneak up on me, kid. Now, go clean yourself up.”
Walking to my car, I left him there. I had better things to do than watch him bleed everywhere, probably crying while he mopped up the blood. He was young, and not used to so much bloodshed even though he bragged he had killed over a dozen people before coming into my fold.
Yeah, fucking right.
I jumped in my car and headed for Serenity Asylum for a long overdue catch up with daddy dearest.
✽✽✽
By the time I got to the asylum, John was waiting for me. I’d almost forgotten what he looked like, but his dark eyes were the same as was his five o’clock shadow. His hair was graying at the sides, the only thing about him that told me he had aged.
“Son.”
“John,” I greeted him. “Thought you were dead.”
“It’s good to see the man you’ve become. I always knew you had it in you.”
“Where have you been?” I countered, not wanting to put stock into his words. I didn’t need his approval. I needed him dead. This city was only big enough for one of us.
“Busy building an empire, but I’m back now.”
Like hell he was.
“What empire?”
“Something tells me you already know.”
Of course, I did. He’d started an empire when I was a kid and after years of trying to crack the market, he almost achieved his goal. That was when I’d taken him out, or so I’d thought.
“Sex rings?”
“That’s where the money is, son.”
“You always did follow the green, no matter the cost. You make me sick.”
He laughed, a sound I had had nightmares of as a child. “Good. Now I hear you’ve been holding a certain Torelli hostage. Time to give her back. You don’t want a war with that family, boy.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Just give her back.”
His jovial, chuckling nature was gone, replaced by hard eyes and a grimace I had once feared as a boy. Father of the year, he was not.
“She’ll go when she’s good and ready.”
John frowned taking a seat on the visitor lounge. I continued to stand looking down at him as he had done so many times to me as a boy. It was oddly uplifting for me.
“Since when did you give bitches a choice?”
“You heard me,” I growled.
He was silent, regarding me, before pushing off the seat and moving to the door. “Giordano put a hit on you. I know you have a rep for being the big bad wolf now, but there will always be someone willing to pull that trigger, even one of your men.”
“And you?”
He didn’t answer me, but that was the answer I needed. My father would be willing to kill me for cash. I shouldn’t be surprised he was the one who taught me to be ruthless in the first place.
Maria surfaced not long later with a bag in her hand.
“He’s gone,” I confirmed.
“Would you like her to go back to her room now?”
“No,” I said, instantly. “It’s time to let her go.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, noting how terrified Maria was. I knew John could be intimidating but never thought the tough-as-nails Matron could be scared of him. She had to know I’d protect her for all she’d done for me in the past. She headed through the doors leaving the bag on the counter.
It’d been a year since I locked Ebony up in here. She’d undergone a mass of treatments, and most of them involving electro-shock therapy. I wondered what kind of woman she was now. Please, please let her have some kind of fire left. That fire was all I lived for, it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing before I finally fell asleep. She had a fire in her that I wanted to make my own—I wanted to make her my own.
But I couldn’t do that to her, I wasn’t a man who fell in love. I was a man who fucked and killed. I knew what I had to do. I had to protect her from my father and that fucking twisted family of hers. I needed to get her away from this city and me.
Even though it would kill me to imagine her with someone else—just the thought alone had me reaching for my gun to shoot anyone trying to take her away—I knew that was what she needed and what I needed. I needed to be free from distraction, and that’s all she was.
I had to let Ebony Caine go.
Maria returned empty-handed. She must have sensed my confusion because she smiled. “She’s coming. Just need to change her into some street clothes.”
Maria was busy doing up paperwork while I rifled through the bag. There was a sketchpad in there with charcoal pencils. When had she gotten that?
Quickly checking to make sure I wouldn’t be busted, I opened it up. My senses were overloaded with drawings of me and detailed sketches of my tattoos. I wasn’t aware she had even seen them all, yet there they were in fine detail.
What an artist, I could only marvel at her skill.
The doors opened, and I shoved the sketchpad back inside the bag. Ebony walked through the doors unaided, nor was she in a dreamy state like the last time I saw her. She seemed distant, yet oddly confident.
“Here you go.” I handed the bag to her. She looked up at me with those damn black eyes that could force my knees to buckle. I almost lost the will to let her go right then and there.
“Feeling better?”
She shrugged her shoulders and looked at the door.
Had I gone too far?
Was my fiery minx gone?
Maria worriedly looked at her and then at me. She was anxious, and I had no idea what had rattled her so much. She was the unshakable, the main reason I kept her on as the matron of Serenity. She’d never failed me, but her fear had me worried.
I pushed the door open, letting Ebony outside. She didn’t try to run, just waited by the Lincoln with York sitting in the front seat reading a paper.
Maria cleared her throat, and I turned to her. “Be careful, Mr. Black. That woman is the devil. Watch your back.”
Confused, I looked over at the orderlies who were standing well back from the door. They appeared a little anxious as well. I didn’t recognize any of them.
“Where are Tex and Ray?”
“That’s what I am saying, Mr. Black. She killed them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She seemed a little confused by my question. “I called your office. Someone said they would tell you. When you didn’t call back, I assumed you wanted me to cover it up.”
I don’t remember any note like that coming across my desk, which meant I had someone not looking after me in my organization. That shit needed to immediately be weeded out.
“How did she do it?”
“Strangulation and broken neck. She has a strong kick.”
I was impressed. Perhaps Ebony’s stay in Serenity had done exactly what I’d originally wanted.
She was broken.
The Ebony I put in here twelve months ago would never have harmed anyone, and definitely never kill someone.
“Did she show remorse?”
Maria grabbed a tablet from the desk behind me and clicked on the screen a few times before handing it to me.
I was watching CCTV footage of Ebony’s room. Orderlies were trying to restrain her, but she kept outsmarting them. As I watched her kick one orderly, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle before he fell to the ground. She seemed to look down at the body for a moment, before she launched at the other orderly, wrapping the buckle of her straitjacket around his neck and pulling backward with as much force as she could. I surmised they had been trying to get the straitjacket tied on her when she launched at them. As the second orderly fell, she started to maniacally laugh. As she looked up to the camera, flipping the bird, I could almost feel a chill as her black eyes showed absolutely no remorse.
“She only got worse after that.”
I handed the tablet back to her. This was definitely something I had wanted to know. My broken princess was ready for me. This stint at Serenity had done more than I had ever expected. “Who took the call from my office?”
“Somebody named Duncan.”
The one who hadn’t liked my obsession with Ebony. I almost felt regret over killing him already. This insubordination would have been perfect for putting the fear in the boys.
“I want a copy of that footage. Don’t worry. She won’t hurt me.”
Maria didn’t seem convinced, but nodded sending the footage off to my email account as I left the building. I had wondered if Ebony would run, but she was patiently sitting in the back seat waiting for me.
There was something I needed to do. Something my gut was telling me to do. If Duncan knew I was getting soft, then the others would know too. To be honest, I even think York doubted my decision-making skills lately. I’d taken her for long enough. If there was one thing that would prove to me what kind of person she was now, it would be returning her to her family. That was something Giordy would never expect, and something I knew would give me the answers I needed.
I told York to take us to Giordy’s restaurant, watching her the entire time. She didn’t flinch nor look at me. What was going on in that crazed little mind of hers? I texted Giordy to let him know I was bringing her back, which didn’t elicit a response. He must have been running scared at the prospect of me returning his little niece after the past twelve months of threats and mind games.
“I guess she told you.”
Her voice was different—harder, darker. It seemed she had an indifference to everything, much like I was after my father beat me for the tenth time. The time I spent four weeks in the hospital with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a broken arm. That had been about the time I had changed from the innocent kid who had listened to his mom being murdered by his father and into the hardened teen who would one day fuck over his mentor and take over the city.
“Yes, and showed me. I’m proud of you.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“I could see that. Tell me… why did you laugh after you killed them?”
She didn’t immediately respond, just simply watched as the scenery went past her.
“It felt good.”
She had said it so softly that I almost missed it. Slowly turning to me, I saw the brokenness I’d caused in her eyes. It filled me with pride that I’d been the one to do it to her.
“That’s my girl.”