I toss her in my trunk amidst a huge fight, and she starts screaming. This girl could be the in we’ve been looking for. If we can turn her against her family, she could get us everything we need.
The only problem is that I’m attracted to her.
The thought of putting her in danger isn’t one I am okay with. When I told her I’d throw her over that edge, I’d been lying. I hadn’t known it yet, but there was no way a beauty like her could be snuffed out by such a violent end.
I’m both pissed and enthralled by this attraction. I’m not looking to become King and Lilith. I don’t need a woman. I don’t want one. Especially not one from the enemy’s family.
My Infinity glides through the winding hills along the Chattahoochee River, and I know someone will probably track her car there. I’m half hoping they believe she’s jumped.
When King and I found each other, we’d been scrawny, little punk ass kids living on the streets. We watched and waited for our chance to rise above. When it finally happened, when King took over the guns and the drugs in the eastern U.S., I always knew we’d never have a normal life.
Then again, neither of us is a normal man.
With sociopathic tendencies and a severe lack of control, we’ve become formidable men. Hardened men. Along the way, we picked up Castiel, Atticus, and finally Carver.
Carver is the one to watch out for. He’s a sadistic, cold-blooded killer. The sick son of a bitch has laughed as his victims drown in their own blood.
While I preferred to hear the crunch of their bones as I torture them.
It’s what I should be doing to Ariel right now.
Not lusting after her.
Placing a call to Daniel, I need to get him on the hunt for info about Ariel’s life.
“Yeah, boss?” He picks up after a handful of rings, sounding a little frazzled.
“King’s queen giving you shit again?” King had put the man on Lilith’s detail, twenty-four seven, since finding the information we needed on McCray.
“Sort of. What can I do for you?”
“McCray has a niece.”
“What? There’s nothing on her. What’s her name?” He’s genuinely shocked to learn of her.
“Ariel. I assume same last name.”
“I’ll get back to you. Dammit, Lilith… I gotta go, boss.”
Daniel hangs up before I can ask what the woman has been doing to him. If I had to bet, she was probably dragging him around shopping.
Reaching the bottom of the mountain and the final turn, Ariel finally quiets down. Stopping the car, I debate checking on her.
The fact that I’m conflicted at all sickens me.
I don’t want this attraction.
I want her to be the means to an end.
“Please,” I hear her whimper just as I’m about to hit the gas pedal again.
“Fuck,” I grunt, throwing the car into park and climbing out.
Popping the trunk, I half expect her to jump out and run away. When I reach the rear end of the vehicle, I’m surprised to see her curled into a ball with her eyes tightly shut. Looking closer, I see tears staining the apples of her cheeks.
“Shit. Ariel, open your eyes.” I try saying it softly so as not to scare her, but it comes out more like a pissed off demand.
“Please don’t keep me in here.” The stark terror shaking her voice has me reaching in and pulling her into my arms. Her limbs wrap around me in a tight embrace as she shivers.
“What is this?” I ask. This girl is a complete contradiction to everything I’d have expected.
“I promise I won’t run.”
Her breath against my neck elicits the exact opposite effect that she was probably going for. My dick goes rock hard as I imagine her breathy moans against me as I take her pliable body.
“You have a problem with answering questions,” I tell her. Frustrated, she keeps deflecting her answers.
Either she’s refusing to respond, or maybe she’s flat out ignoring me. I don’t care which. If the stubborn girl doesn’t answer, I won’t do as she asks.
Leaning back over the trunk, I go to put her back in, and when she realizes what I’m doing, she explodes in a flurry of movement and tears.
“No, no, no, please don’t. Please, I can’t be locked away again.” Her hands claw at my back. I’m sure I’ll have scrapes as she peels her way through my shirt.
“Again? Who the fuck locked you away before?” This girl’s gonna have me doing fucking backflips with the secrets she keeps revealing.
Placing her on her feet, I grip her chin in a tight hold and demand, “Fucking talk to me, Ariel, or I can’t help.”
Help? What the fuck is wrong with me. I’m a stone-cold killer, I don’t do damsels in distress.
Now you do.
Between her crying and struggling, her breaths are short as she responds, “My father, he used to lock me in a closet when I would rebel.” Her hazel eyes, so deep, so pained, scream of a life of torture.
With a father like Timothy McCray, I would expect nothing less.
“You do that a lot?”
“Yes.”
Despite everything in me that is fighting to push her away, I grip her fire-red hair and pull her to my chest, her size that of a child as I try to offer her comfort.
“Tell me something, Ariel…”
“What?”
“How old are you?” She barely looks legal, and with my lustful thoughts, I need to know if I should be worried over a prison sentence because not much will stop me from owning her innocence.
“I turned eighteen today.” Her husky whisper freezes my mind at her youth, but my body praises the Lord that she’s legal.
Leaning my head on the top of hers, I’m torn between cheering and cursing. I’m almost twice her age.
Letting it go, for now, I drag her to the passenger seat of my car, buckling her in. As we head on our way back to the Adair estate, I try to come up with ways to use her to our advantage without getting her hurt.
Sadly, I’m coming up with nothing.
Ariel
Being dumped in that trunk, the blackness surrounding me, fear had been all I felt. I’d been transported back to every time I ever tried to stick up for myself. All the times I’d tried to get free of my father’s life.
He doesn’t like disobedience, and so, he retrofitted a closet to be my own personal torture chamber. The worst part is that it was in the garage, so fumes from vehicles that were often forgotten running would seep in, and I would suffocate.
Twice, I had been taken to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning. When questioned, my father would say I was severely depressed, suicidal, and I did it to myself. I never disputed it. I simply told the doctors what he wanted me to in order to leave and then filled the prescriptions they gave for anti-depressants.
I never took them, though, knowing that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I likely would have committed suicide.
The main problem in my fucked-up life is that I, still, stupidly protect my father. If I died while underage, he would have had to report me missing if for no other reason than appearances’ sake. The police would have dug into who he is, why he’s in America.
Something is seriously fucked up in my brain that I would protect the man who ruined me. Now, being an adult, I know they would more than likely consider me a runaway before anything else.
When my father moved to America from Scotland, he’d had dreams of wealth and power. Instead, he got stuck being slave to the wealthy and powerful, and in turn, I became his slave. My mother was his slave.
She’d once told me that as much as she loved me, she wished she’d aborted me. Not because she regretted having me, but because she didn’t want me growing up in this life.
At the time, I hadn’t known how to process it, but now, I wish she’d killed us both. Never existing would be fine with me.
Sneaking a look at the formidable man next to me, it occurs to me that I still don’t know his name. “Who are you?”
“Luther Sutton,” he finally answers.
My mind knows the name; I’ve seen it somewhere. I know I have. “Luther Sutton,” I whisper out loud, thinking it’ll click.
When it does, my entire body freezes with abject horror, and my blood runs cold in my veins as I realize exactly who holds my life in their hands.
His lip quirks to the side as he says, “So, you know me?” As though my fear is something to laugh about.
Perhaps, for him, it is.
I’ve heard what he does.
How he does it.
He’s King Adair’s right-hand man. Of one of the most ruthless empires in the entire country.
Gulping, I find the strength to answer. “I do.”
“That means you’ll listen.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t know it, but he’s the man my father is bent on destroying.
The man he blames for taking everything from him.
I’m dead, and not in the way I’ve envisioned.