“You should be sleeping.”

Violet shrugged, turning to head back toward the stairs. She snagged my hand as she did, pulling me behind her. “Don’t like being alone right now.”

I followed her upstairs, mostly because I had no choice. She dug through the drawers in the guest room and tossed me a pair of men’s boxers and a t-shirt.

“You’re making me tense in that outfit,” she said, referring to my business attire. “Change.”

I stared at her, wondering when the hell I lost control.

She was lying in the bed when I came out of the bathroom wearing what was probably a pair of my brother’s underwear and an old t-shirt I could remember seeing my dad wear years ago. I hugged it to me, a wave of grief rushing through me. Violet held out her hand and pulled me down onto the bed beside her like we were girlfriends instead of boss and employee.

“Tell me about him. How long have you known him?”

“Forever.”

I closed my eyes, the feel of Bo’s lips on mine, the pressure of his fingers in places they’d never visited before tonight, pushing the grief off to the side. I didn’t really want to think about my dad and Bo in the same moment. It was just…not right.

“Tell me.” She rolled toward me, propping her head up on her hand. “Distract me with something bright. Something good.”

I sighed. “He had an aunt who lived down the road. She was a live-in maid for one of our neighbors. His mother wasn’t…well, she wasn’t reliable, so he spent most of his summers with his aunt from the time I was a toddler. He’d ride his bike down here, hang out with my brothers—he’s the same age as my brother, Gentry. When his mother died, the situation became more permanent, but his aunt couldn’t really have him around that much. Her employers knew about him, obviously, but they didn’t want him getting into things, didn’t want people to see him on their property and think he was theirs, for God sakes! So he spent the majority of his time here.”

“That’s nice of your parents.”

“My mom adored him. I think she would have adopted him if his aunt would have allowed it.”

“Then you grew up like siblings.”

I shook my head. “I never thought of Bo as a sibling. He was always just Bo, you know?” Images danced through my head: Bo sitting across from me at the dinner table, the calm in the center of the storm my brothers always created; Bo sitting on the end of my bed as I recovered from some nasty flu; Bo standing at the back of the room during my debutante ball, the amusement dancing in his eyes reminding me not to take the thing too seriously. And there was the beer he snuck me when I managed to escape the festivities for five minutes.

That was a hell of a debutante ball!

“He was always around, always the first to come find me when I was upset about something, always the one who knew what to say or what to do to make me feel better. We’ve always been able to finish each other’s sentences, always knew exactly what the other was thinking. I’ve always known he was the one.”

Violet sighed. “The one. A soulmate.” She made a gagging sound. “If only you were a little older, you would understand that there is no such thing. There’s good sex and companionship. Beyond that, we’re all basically on our own.”

“I don’t believe that. And if you’d known my parents, you wouldn’t either.”

“Everyone thinks their parents had something special. But, really, they probably couldn’t stand each other.”

“No. My parents…my mother’s face lit up whenever my father walked into a room. And my dad…he was not himself unless she was standing beside him. They lived and breathed one another. This house? It was their place to get away from us kids, a place to hide from the realities of the world. They would come down here and stay for days at a time when my brothers were teenagers, just be together down here.”

“They liked sex.”

I groaned. Does anyone like the idea of their parents having sex?

“It wasn’t just that. My mom got cancer. My dad did everything to save her, took her to every doctor, tried every potential cure, even the quack cures. When she died, he lasted six months. Then he put a bag over his head and suffocated himself.”

Violet was quiet for a long moment. “That sucks,” she finally uttered.

“Yeah, it sucked.”

She took my hand and held it tight. “How long have you and this Bo been romantic?”

“It just started. But he thinks we should cool it off because of Gentry. He doesn’t think Gentry would approve.”

“Your brother? Does your brother routinely approve your lovers?”

“No, but Bo is his best friend and Bo is convinced it would be strange for the two of them.”

“So he’s choosing your brother over you?”

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but she had a point. Was Bo choosing Gentry over me? And, if he was, what did that say about his feelings for me?

Did I really want a man who would choose friendship over me?

“You love him; that’s pretty obvious. Does he know?”

“Yeah, I think he does.”

“My advice would be that you be patient, then. He’ll come around if you keep kissing him like you did tonight.”

I blushed, embarrassed by the idea that she’d been watching us. I’d thought we were alone, but maybe we weren’t. We’d have to be more careful in the future.

If there was a future.

“You’re an interesting person, Second Year. I’m glad you’re the one who found me in the cupboard.”

“Why were you in the cupboard?”

She fell quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed. “He knows things about me. He knows what buttons to push and he pushed them that morning and it freaked me out.”

“West?”

“Who else?”

“Bo told me about Mad Dog, that it’s a motorcycle club. He said that the local police arrested some of their members last night, including a guy named Trigger.”

“Trigger is their vice president and the brother of the president. Do you think they’re just going to sit back and allow that to happen without some sort of retribution?”

“He was attacking girls at a club downtown.”

“Highland. I know.”

“You don’t think he should be punished for that?”

“Sure. But your brothers don’t get the dynamics of this thing. West works with Mad Dog. He has them do the things he can’t. And now that they’ve been attacked by your brothers—a couple of guys West was already annoyed with—it’ll be all out war against them.”

“West is a cop. He won’t do anything to hurt my brothers.”

Violet laughed. “West owns this town, sweetheart. He’ll take down anyone who gets in his way.”

A shiver of fear ran down my spine. “What do you think he’ll do?”

She patted my cheek with something like motherly affection. “Don’t you worry about it. This is much too far over your head.”

Then she rolled over and snuggled into the pillows, softly snoring in seconds. I lay awake for hours, watching the shadows dance on the ceiling. I don’t remember actually going to sleep, just the feel of her shaking me awake after what felt like minutes instead of hours.

“Come on. I want to get some stuff from my house before West figures out I didn’t go home last night.”

*

Violet’s house was a small ranch-style brick in a modest suburb of the city. It was nothing like I expected. I knew she made six figures every year, but this house couldn’t be worth more than fifty thousand. She glanced at me as we walked up the cracked front path, a smile twisting her lips with ironic pleasure.

“It belonged to my parents. I never liked shopping, so I never bothered to sell it for something better.”

She unlocked the front door and we stepped inside, the smell of dust and neglect almost overwhelming. Violet didn’t bother with lights. She walked through the rooms with confidence as I followed close behind. I’d wanted to bring along one of Stone Security’s guards, but Violet insisted we’d be okay. They were both asleep on the couch, anyway, neither noticing us until they heard my car start. One chased us down the lane a few hundred yards, but stopped when he realized that wasn’t going to do him any good.

But I was pretty sure they’d followed us through the predawn streets in a Stone Security issued pickup just the same.

We walked into the bedroom and my heart stopped. It was fucking grotesque!

The walls had been covered in some sort of sweet-scented red liquid that was clearly meant to look like blood. It was splattered across the bed, on the dresser and the television. A white outline like the old chalk outlines on murder mystery shows was on the floor, leaving the impression of a body lying on its side, more of the bloodlike fluid pooled there. Taped above the bed was an enlarged photograph of a young man with dark hair that was a stark contrast to the pallor of his face, matching only the dark stitches that closed the Y-incision on his chest.

I stepped back, a little gasp escaping my lips.

“Do you see it?” Violet hissed.

“Of course! What the hell?”

She turned to me and grabbed my hands, tears running down her cheeks that were belied by the smile of relief on her lips. “Thank you!”

“Violet, what is this? Who did this?”

“He did. He’s been doing it for days.”

“Why?”

“I told you. He’s trying to ruin my credibility.”

I slipped my phone out of my back pocket and tried to move around her, but she tugged at my wrists.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to take pictures to show Bo. Maybe this will convince him to help us make this stop.”

“It won’t show up on your phone. I’ve tried.”

I glanced at her, once again wondering just how solid her hold on sanity really was. Then I stepped around her and took a dozen pictures, taking special care to get a few good shots of the photograph on the wall, hoping the identity of the dead man would help us figure this thing out.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Violet grabbed my phone and checked the pictures, sliding through them more than once as though she expected them to just evaporate as she stared at them. Her eyes were wild when she focused on me.

“Why does it work on your phone and not mine?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he did something to your phone.”

I turned her around and pushed her back down the hallway. She stopped halfway there and ducked into a room that turned out to be some sort of dressing room, filled with clothing and shoes and every accessory one might expect to find in a boutique.

“I like clothes,” she said as she dug through the racks, grabbing a half-dozen business suits and a few casual items and shoving them into a leather duffle bag she pulled from a shelf in the actual closet. When she was done, she rushed down the hall and ducked into another room. By the time I reached her, she was tugging open a safe hidden in the floor and removing a sheaf of papers that she quickly hid inside the duffle. “Let’s go!” She stood and rushed toward the door. It was all I could do to keep up with her.

We were two blocks away when flashing lights suddenly appeared in my rearview mirror.

“Don’t pull over,” Violet hissed. “It’s just him trying to play games with us.”

“It’s fine.”

She shook her head as I slowed the car and pulled to the curb. She had the duffle on her lap, but she quickly shoved it into the backseat, pushing it onto the floor and out of sight. When she was done, she sat forward, her feet on the floor, and tucked into herself like she was trying to disappear.

The patrol cop walked up to my door and rapped his knuckles on my window. I pressed the button that soundlessly rolled it down, smiling politely. “Good morning, officer.”

“Do you know why I pulled you over, ma’am?”

I shook my head. “I don’t, actually.”

“You have a broken tail light.”

I frowned because I had a distinct memory of seeing the tail lights both flash properly in the parking garage the day before and no reason to believe that anything had happened to them since. But my father taught all his children to respect authority and two of my brothers were former cops, so I didn’t argue.

“Okay.”

“Can I see your license and registration?”

I opened the console pocket to remove the registration slip when the cop suddenly went berserk. He jumped back from the side of the car and pulled his gun, aiming it right at my head.

“Get out of the goddamned car!”

“I warned you,” Violet whispered under her breath.

I held up my hands, trying to keep them within his sight as he yanked open the door. His gun remained trained on me as I carefully stepped out of the car. He grabbed my upper arm and slammed me against the side of the car, kicking my ankles apart with his foot. For a brief moment, terror whispered darkly in my ear that he was going to rape me right there on that public street. His hands were all over me, pretending to do a search. But that’s not what it felt like. I was pretty sure a body search didn’t require a cop to locate and squeeze a woman’s fear-hardened nipples.

When he was done feeling me up, he slapped a pair of handcuffs on me, the cold metal cinched much too tightly. Then he turned me around so that we were standing face to face, the length of his body trapping me against the side of the car.

“I know who you are,” he hissed against my ear, his gun out again. He pressed the muzzle against my lower belly, holding it in such a way that a car passing on the quiet street wouldn’t see it. But there were no cars out this early in the morning. “He knows who you are, too. This is a warning, Ms. Stone. You find someone else to entertain you. Keep your fucking nose out of his business.”

The gun’s muzzle moved even lower on my belly, forcing the material of the jeans I’d borrowed from the guest house this morning high into places it didn’t belong.

“I see you near her again, see you near her house again, I will do things to you that none of those pretty boys over at Stone Security have ever heard of, let alone indulged in. Do you understand?”

Despite the anger boiling in my chest, tears were forming in my eyes. I blinked them away as I met his dirty stare.

“Do you fucking understand?”

Spit flew from his lips when he spoke and his breath was sour, like he’d been eating fish and fried food all night. It took everything I had not to turn my face away.

“If you know who I am, then you know who my brothers are. And you know they won’t let you touch me.”

“I’m touching you right now.”

“And two big, burly, military-trained men are parked less than twenty yards away, videotaping this whole damn thing.”

He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “You’re pretty cocky for a woman who has a gun pressed against her cunt.”

“And you’re pretty ballsy for a guy who’s going to jail for a few years with the kind of criminals who just love to punish inmates who used to wear a uniform.”

He glanced over his shoulder and I took advantage of his momentary distraction to slam a knee into his crotch. He screamed like a girl, but that was all. He didn’t fall to the ground like I was half hoping, didn’t bend over to relieve himself of some of the pain. Instead, he punched me, rounded fist and all, right in my kidneys. Three times in quick succession. Then he grabbed my jaw, his gun disappearing once more.

“You will regret that, bitch!”

His face was red and tears were streaming down his cheeks. I think if he wasn’t hurting so bad and if a large Ford van hadn’t chosen that moment to drive by, he might have done more. Instead, he turned me around and quickly released me from the cuffs.

“Take her home and keep your nose out of it, or we will meet again.” And then he was gone just as quickly as he’d appeared.

One of Bo’s men, a former Marine named Kyle, was at my side as my knees went weak and I began to fall. He grabbed my arm and lifted me up, pressing me against the car. I jerked away, stepping around him to look at the back of my car. Both tail lights were in perfect condition.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Are you okay, Miss Stone?”

“Tell me you got that on video.”

Confusion crossed his face and he stuttered when he began to speak. I didn’t even want to hear what he had to say. I waved a hand at him and jumped into the car, taking off at a rate of speed that probably would have gotten me pulled over if there was a legitimate cop around.