“I told you, I’m driving because I want my car.”
“In New York…” he adds dryly. “You don’t need your car there. No one has a car there.”
I pat his shoulder and then shove him. “You worry too much.”
“You give us a lot to worry over.” I can already feel everyone’s eyes watching me, and I’m not about to be questioned for the hundredth time today.
“I’ll be back in no time. Promise.”
Quickly jumping into the driver’s seat of the car, I fire her to life and look out my window for one more quick wave, but when my eyes connect with Miles, it feels as though I’ve been punched in the gut. His eyes shoot through mine, his jaw scarily relaxed and his shoulders stiff. A simple narrow of his eye has me putting the car in drive and flooring it out of there. “Turn left at the next exit…” the GPS voice yaps off from my dashboard. I roll the window down on my 911, sucking in the cool invading breeze. Hitting the volume up higher, I let Marshmello and Khalid’s song “Silence” seep into my soul. With each breath I inhale the lyrics and then exhale my bullshit, wrapping myself in the soothing bass of the song. Music has always been my escape. It’s like a different dimension of life. A world where your problems can be paused, good times can be rewound (or replayed), and the hard times can be fast-forwarded. If only I lived in that dimension. I’d dance my way through life, instead of killing my way through. But I live in this world. Which is why I don’t take that exit.
My phone vibrates against my back pocket and I lean up to grab it. Glancing between the road and the phone, I slide it unlocked, hitting hands-free.
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Change of plans. I have bikers asking questions,” Jada’s hushed whisper comes through the line.
I floor it faster. “Well get rid of them.”
“They’re bikers.” She keeps saying that like I should give a shit.
“They don’t scare me.”
“They should…”
I laugh. “Oh, there’s a lot you have to learn about me.”
Jada pauses, long enough to make me look down to the phone just to make sure it’s still connected. “Why do I feel like I’ve just conjured the reaper?”
My lip slowly curves. “That’s one way of putting it. So listen, if you don’t want to do this with me, you don’t have to. It’s something I need to do though.”
“You love him?”
My internal organs feel like they freeze and it’s not until sweat drips down between my fingers that I realize how tight I have been clutching the steering wheel.
“What?” I brush her off. “I don’t, like, I can’t. It’s not about him. It’s about my brothers.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“I’ve just taken the exit. I’ll see you in a few.”
“Yeah, meet me at the end of the driveway. Don’t need any more questions being asked.”
I end the call and throw the phone in the back seat. What the fuck did she mean love? Love? Love had absolutely nothing to do with this. A bond? Yeah. Love—no. To feel love toward someone, one must feel as though she deserves it in return. I don’t. When all is done, then, I’ll go to college. Hopefully. If that fails, I can just make a living from what I’ve been doing. It pays well so why not. Even as I think that I instantly feel guilty. I know Raze wanted me to be that girl. He wanted me to be perfect and successful, not ruined like I am. But it’s too late. I’ve been ruined since the day my mother pushed me into a world of destruction, and then into my brother’s arms, the very arms to put people down were the same ones that carried me to my crib. I was doomed from the beginning.
Pulling up to the clubhouse, I do as Jada asks and park at the end of the long gravel road. Looking around the place to make sure no one is around, it’s the first time I get a chance to truly take in its landscape. The long trees that line the extensive gravel road, and the grass that bursts through the fields. I glance at the time, noting I needed to be at Headquarters in roughly seventy-eight minutes, and I cannot be late. As much as I hate the bitch, I need to tread carefully. Sort of. Lighter than usual. Which is still pretty heavy because I can never seem to control my mouth. Grabbing my phone, I’m about to send Jada a message when I hear the light rumble of a bike coming down the road. I expect to see one of the Devils coming down with Jada on the back, but I see Jada riding on a dark purple Harley with shiny chrome fittings. I can’t fight my beaming smile. The girl is a fucking bad ass. Cranking my window down farther, my smile deepens when she kicks up the stick and swings her leg off. She’s wearing a tight leather crop top and tight leather black pants. Her long black hair is ruffled all over the place, and when she smiles, her white teeth come on display. She has tattoos that cover her everywhere, even on her stomach, and honestly—“You’re drooling. Do I need to protect my womanhood around you?” She comes to my window.
“Har, har…” I roll my eyes. “Sorry to obviously disappoint, but I like dick. How ‘bout you? You like the dick, or you like the vag?”
Her face scrunches in disgust. “Do not ever say vag again. And I’m undecided.”
That shocks me a little. I mean, I don’t like to put people in stereotypical boxes, but I never would have pegged Jada to be bi-curious. She just seems… wild. Which I guess, adds to her appeal.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe. You’re not really my type,” she adds, unfazed.
My face falls. “Ok, now I’m offended.”
She laughs, pulling out a card and handing it to me. My face stills again. “This it?”
She explores my eyes while smiling weakly. “Yeah, well. It’s the address. Listen, it’s the last of the serum that we know of.”
“And you’ve had it all this time?” I ask, an eyebrow quirked.
“Well, I had a feeling I might need it one day.”
“Well, thank you. It might just allow me more trust with the bitch, but how did you come across it?”
She cackles. “Ah, well, that’s a story for a raven…”
“In other words, I don’t really want to know?”
She nods. “Precisely.”
“Shoot, I better get going. Thanks for…this.” I turn the key, but her hand halts me. “Be safe, Ella. I don’t really know what it is that you are skilled in, but I’ve gathered that there is a lot more than meets the eye with you. Something your brothers have hidden from the rest of us. Not sure why—”she doesn’t want to know why“ —but I’m sure they have their reasons. Please be safe. No one knows about this, and I don’t want to be liable for the princess of darkness getting 86’d.”
“Princess of darkness, huh?”
Her eyes narrow and a grin kicks up in the corner of her mouth. “Maybe you are my type. Frost better watch it.” She winks and then walks back to her bike.
Is she kidding? She must be kidding. This is just Jada and Ella banter. Was she kidding?
“Princess?” Her voice cuts through my thoughts.
“Yes?” I clear my throat.
“I was kidding.”
I laugh nervously, waving her off with an eye roll. “I know!”
I totally did not know.
Putting it into drive, I gun it out of there and make my way toward the other side of Las Vegas.
Chapter 10
FROST
“Sorry Mrs. Walters, but your son has been displaying psychopathic tendencies for some time now. Since the age of four. I do not know what you would like me to do. There is no cure for psychopathy. There’s no pill to install empathy into him or a vaccine that is going to prevent him from carrying out careless acts as he ages, and no amount of therapy can talk him into a caring mind.” Frost sat on the chair in the doctor’s office, kicking his feet back and forth while flicking his tongue around in his mouth. A picture caught his eye that was hanging on the doctor's wall, and he tilted his head. It was a wooden cross, with a man over top of it. Frost narrowed his eyes in an attempt at getting a clearer look. Nails. He saw nails sticking out of the palm of hi
s hands. Heat started to flush through Frost’s body when he saw the sight of the blood dripping down the man’s hands. The cross would be better upside down though, he thought.
“Blood…” He pointed to the man on the cross.
“Lyle…” his mother whispered, straightening her clean white blouse. “Why would you say that?” Frost couldn’t understand what his mother was asking or why. Because it’s blood. That’s why he said that. He doesn’t answer though, and that wouldn’t’ve surprised his mom much because he didn’t talk a whole lot for a four-year-old boy. He was well aware how other boys his age spoke and how often. He was surrounded by them at school. He hated how they never knew when to shut up.
His mom cleared her throat and turned back to the doctor. Frost bet that she was already thinking about what color she wanted to paint the kitchen this week. Frost knew his mom and dad had lots of money. They lived in a big house on a big street and drove nice cars. The kitchen was always filled with food and because Frost was an only child, he usually got the best of it. But he had a feeling his mom wasn’t liking this meeting with the doctor. He had heard his mom and dad fighting about it last night. She had repeatedly said that everything was going to be okay and that whatever they needed to pay or do, they would. Frost knew his parents didn’t really like him, but he didn’t care. It must be because of the sickness he had. He didn’t have many feelings. He felt hungry, and the need to pee, but emotional feelings, he didn’t have. He guessed it started when their family rabbit got run over outside their home when it broke out of its cage. Frost had that rabbit since he was a baby, and losing it alone should have caused him to break down, but he just stood there, watching it die. His mom and dad came running out of the house when they heard a car screech to a halt. His mom dropped down onto the road and sobbed, patting the big fluffy rabbit as if it was a child. Frost just stared. Tilting his head, he continued to stare in fascination. When his mom raised her hand from beneath the rabbit and he saw the bright red blood that was on her, something switched on in his brain. His heart began to thud in his chest, his fingers tingled with anticipation, and a bead of sweat felt like it had dripped down the side of his face. He wanted it. The blood. He wanted to keep it.
“Blood.” Frost glared at the rabbit.
His mom and dad froze, and then looked to him. I guess a four-year-old should be traumatized by this, but Frost wasn’t. He was fascinated, and both his parents witnessed it.
“Surely there’s something we can do? Money is not an issue with my husband and I. We can pay for the best of the best, just plea—”
“—I’m sorry. There’s nothing else we can do. Maybe in time he will find a stabilizer, but that’s not guaranteed.”
After the meeting, his mom sobbed into the steering wheel of the car, praying for a miracle. Then it went silent and her sobs cut off.
“I know what I need to do,” she whispered to herself. Then she swiped the tears off of her cheeks, drove them out of the parking lot, and straight to an orphanage where she pulled Frost out from the back seat, marched up the stairs, rang the doorbell, and then ran back to her car, skidding up the asphalt on her retreat.
I fucking hate revenge. Who the fuck wants normal feelings. I haven’t been more thankful for my illness all my fucking life until I became an adult.
Working nomad is ideal, for now. I know I have to concentrate on working Ikea so Raze can finally take the reins for not just The Army, but The Operation too. Then, when that happens, there will be no middleman between Raze and the fucking CIA. This shit is way too fucking close to the po po if you ask me, but I owed him. Which is another fucking thing I hate—debt. Cranking my neck, I wrap my fingers around the back and close my eyes, but every fucking time I close them, I see Ella’s face haunting me. Her body, dripping with sweat as every muscle clenched while she rode my dick like it was the fucking rodeo Olympics and she was gunning for gold. Her wide as fuck hips and sunken waistline sat in the palm of my hand like a fucking puzzle. God, she got my dick hard. Fucking worked every time. Usually, I’d be bored after the first night. Ella is the first chick I’ve fucked, and fucked, and fucked, and fucked again. I can’t get enough of her. Fucki—“You know….” Ikea waltzes into the boardroom and I have to fight the urge to snap her fucking neck just for interrupting my Ella visuals. “I have some great news.”
She does? Well, I don’t give a fuck. But I have to pretend to give some fucks or this won’t work. “We need her to be eating out of the palm of your hand. Make her fucking love you, bro!” Hella shoved at me. I looked to where he shoved, thought about clipping him in the jaw, but then I answered, “How the fuck can I make her love me when I don’t fucking know how to love?”
“It’s simple.” He walked around the table in the boardroom in the clubhouse, and all the brothers watched him carefully. He pulled out a smoke and lit it. “Just send love vibes, you know.”
“No. I don’t know.” I cut my attention to Raze. “Bruh, I am not the man for this job and you know it.”
“Sure you are…” Hella interrupted, taking a seat a little too close to me at the table. He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Just give her the bedroom eyes, but on crack.”
“Yeah, I don’t give bedroom eyes. That’s your game.”
“Well, what the fuck do you do when you want to fuck a girl? I know you fuck a lot, I see them all going in and out—though I have to ask, why have you never fucked a clubwhore? I mean, I’m not judging, I see the girls you fuck and they’re solid 9’s or 10’s, but club pussy is so much easier to obtain. Why go through all the trouble by laying a civilian?”
I pause. Open my mouth, and then close it before opening it again. “You answered your own question—they’re easy to obtain. I don’t do easy, and it’s really not that hard to lay a civ.” I took his smoke off him and put it between my lips. “Was it hard for you?” I grinned around the cigarette tip and then blew out a cloud of smoke.
He jumped off. “Then you obviously don’t need any help in that department. Just do what you do and I’m sure it will work.”
Beast—who had stayed quiet through that whole ordeal—was hiding his laughter from behind the palm of his hand. “Damn. See, this is why even before I had Meadow, I didn’t fuck around.”
Biting back my snark, I lean into my chair and stretch one leg out while leaving the other open. “Oh yeah?” I consider her, my index finger running over my upper lip. “And what’s that?”
Ikea’s eyes drag up and down my body, she smiles, and I gotta say, at least she’s attractive. With her short blonde hair, tight ass, and sexy little suit get-ups. Shame they don’t get my dick hard though. I think of Ella instantly and have to fight back a groan. Guess something happened on my face, or how I was looking at her because the next thing I know, she’s in front of me, her hands going up my thigh.
“You’re interesting.” She cocks her head while her hands remain on my inner thighs. Snapping her back into an arch, she leans into me, her lips skimming mine. “I know that The Devils hate The Army and The 6, who are probably The 5 now because Raze and Miles happened—”
“—and Millie,” I cut in, my eyes falling from her red lips, back to her bright blue eyes. Sort of like one of Ella’s eyes, what with the other one being green/hazel, though.
Her lips curl. “And her.” Oh, I sense hostility toward the nugget queen.
“Continue.”
She does. “So how do you feel about you and I working on a little something, something. Isn’t that why you’re here? Why Beast sent you to me?”
She’s walking straight into the lion’s den.
I wrap my hands around the back of her thighs, pick her up and then slam her ass down onto the boardroom table. Her eyes roll back, and she bites her lip.
Leaning down, I grip her thighs tightly, spread them wide, and pull so her back drops to the table top. “Let’s get one thing straight.”
Her eyes widen onto mine. “I’m the fucking boss of this,” I ran my hands up her thighs and th
en over her pussy and up her stomach before clenching on her nipple through her silk blouse. “And you can be the boss of this,” I waved around the room.” She bought it.
Shock changes to lust when she wraps her legs around me and yanks me back down on top of her. Leaning up, her teeth latch onto my bottom lip and then she sucks before looking back at me. “Deal.”
My mouth cracks as I tear off her blouse until the buttons are flying everywhere and her red lace bra is on display. Catching my belt buckle, I tug it off and flick the button of my jeans off before removing my shirt.
“Wow, a lot of tattoo—”
“—Shut the fuck up. We don’t talk.”
Fuck. Probably coming on too strong.
She licks her lips. “Fine by me.” Or not.
Gripping her tit with one hand, I kiss her, wrapping her hair around my fist. Fucking hate kissing, and kissing Ikea is right up there in my worst, it honest to god feels as though my tongue is twirling with a puddle of mud. I hear the door open to the side, but I don’t stop.
“Holy shit!”
I pull away from Ikea like she’s a bad disease, my eyes snapping to the doorway. I fucking knew it. My eyes meet Ella’s and she flinches slightly as she takes in the scene. She might not know that I noticed that flinch, but it was apparent.
She composes herself. “Sorry, Ikea, I didn’t realize you had company.”
“Ella… no, it’s okay. Frost and I can finish this later. He is sleeping in my headquarters, after all.” She walks across the room and picks up her blouse. She’s shit out of luck with buttoning that fucker back up.
“Oh, ok.” Ella clears her throat. I’m shoving my head through my tee again and about to ask her what the fuck she’s doing here and why isn’t her ass in New York like it’s supposed to be when she takes her hand out to me. “I’m Ella. You’re Frost?”