The Ruthless

by J Bree

  Thank God they’re thousands of miles away in Texas dealing with bikers, blood and death.

  “Did he hurt you?” Jack murmurs again, his eyes sliding off of the road to look me over again. I shake my head and he frowns at me, clearly thinking I’m lying.

  “I didn’t see him. I didn’t see anyone, I just… found something. I wasn’t safe there, especially if he found out that I’d seen it.” My voice is too soft, too fucking fragile once again, but he finally looks as though he believes me.

  We make it through the busy downtown and past all of the seedy bars that Lips spent her teenage years working her jobs in, collecting information and doing hits on unsuspecting criminals. I know nothing about what it means to frequent those places, but I know everything about what it takes to be the Wolf. Every scenario that Lips has ever run me through flicks through my head as if on a movie reel, the ways she was cornered and fought back, all of the times she took down men three times her size with nothing but her knife and an uncanny ability to read the situations she was in.

  I’m constantly in awe of her.

  “The loft is secure and private. Barely anyone knows it exists and only mo rí and I know he’s the one who owns it. I’ll stay with you.”

  I nod and try to smile at him, but it’s stiff at best. We’re only a block away from Illi’s warehouse apartment when he turns into an old grocery store parking lot, parking the car in the darkest corner possible. It’s filthy and not at all what I was expecting, with a few cars parked closer to the store’s doors. It’s a twenty-four hour place, the type you expect to get shot in for a dollar, and I’m instantly uneasy.

  “There is absolutely no way on this Earth that I’m going in there,” I say, my tone exactly that of a spoiled rich brat.

  It makes complete sense.

  “Relax, Queenie. This is just the hiding place for the entrance. Nobody comes here, no one except some old gang members marked by the Ox and working girls who’re desperately flirting with death. No one would ever guess the loft was here too.”

  I grimace and nod because he’s correct, I would never guess that Aodhan would willingly sleep near this place. Jack gets out of the car and walks around to get my door, giving me an arm to hold like a gentleman. I almost stumble on my feet because I’ve forgotten that I’m wearing flat shoes, my outfit completely out of my usual attire.

  No wonder Jack was so worried.

  “It’s through here; we should move quickly so we’re not seen,” Jack murmurs quietly even though there’s no one around us, and I let him lead me past the grocery store building and down the alley to an old fire escape.

  Never had I ever thought I’d be climbing one of these but tonight has been a nightmare so why the hell not?

  Jack ushers me up first, following closely behind and promising he’ll catch me if I slip and fall. It’s sweet and everything, but I hadn’t even considered that I might slip and now my knees are shaking like a freaking leaf.

  When I finally get to the top, there isn’t a door waiting for me at all, only a small platform to stand on and a window that is barred with a blackout curtain on the inside so I can’t see a thing. When Jack heaves himself onto the tiny platform with me, I start to panic a little that maybe he’s not such a good guy and he’s going to throw me off of the side of the building.

  He grins at me and pulls a key out, sliding into a hole I hadn’t noticed in my freakout, and the window swings open like a mini door.

  “After you, Queenie. Your tower awaits.”

  Chapter Two

  The loft is… something out of a dream.

  Nothing in it is to my specific taste, I can’t imagine ever picking anything in here out for myself, but it’s all absolutely freaking perfect. The floors are all old wood, worn and warm, the kind of beauty that can’t be bought new but has to be broken in over decades.

  There’s a new rug in dark greens and grays in the kitchen area, and the cupboards are a rich oak with a simple stone counter top. All of the appliances are brand new, though none of them are the top of the line which makes sense to me.

  There’s a giant mirror with a beautiful gold leaf frame leaning against one of the walls, almost reaching the ceiling, and facing it is a mattress on the floor covered in pillows and blankets until it looks like a plush nest I want to climb into and never get out of.

  There’s no TV, no computer, no front door, nothing of the outside world in here to disturb me. It takes me a second to find the bathroom door, slightly ajar and a claw-foot bathtub peeking out.

  It’s perfect and everything I didn’t know that I so desperately need right now.

  “There’s food in the fridge and everything is clean in here; mo rí said you’d be worried about that. Go eat and shower and… fucking relax. Whatever. He’ll be home soon. I’m going to go move the car so no one sees it and recognizes it. They’d never find this place but better safe than sorry. You gonna be okay to just wait here?”

  I nod, stooping down to slide my shoes off because I hate shoes in living areas like this, and he heads off, the clunking noise of the bolt in the window sliding into place a soothing thing.

  I’m safe.

  I’m alone.

  I can breathe.

  Why the hell didn’t Aodhan bring me here in the first place? I might be alone here, but the loft’s location is so obscure that I don’t need security climbing all over me. This is the perfect safe house in the city.

  I leave my shoes by the window and walk around the room a little more, poking and prodding at the very minimal decor in here. There’s a bowl on the breakfast bar with some keys and loose change in it, a ticket stub from a movie I’ve never even heard of in there. There’s a Chinese menu in one of the drawers from a restaurant a few blocks away. The kitchenware is very basic but enough that I can cook dinner and very basic desserts. The fridge is well stocked; the milk is well within its expiration so Aodhan’s been here recently.

  The bathroom is immaculate.

  Top notch, perfectly clean and the products under the sink are all the same types and brands that I use. That’s soothing to me somehow, because that’s how deranged the clean freak in me really is, and there’s soaps hidden under the sink that he definitely picked out with me in mind.

  I don’t care that I sound conceited, there’s no denying the scents he picked are for me.

  I take one of them and run the bath as hot as I can possibly stand without screaming. He’s not here to frown and grunt at me over how I clean myself, so the first bath is brutal as I scour the horrors of the night away.

  When my skin is aching and raw, I let the water out and run a second bath at a more tolerable temperature.

  I almost fall asleep in it.

  By the time the sun is rising, I’m tucked up in one of Aodhan’s shirts and a pair of sweatpants that I have to roll the waist up six times to make them work, a coffee in my hands as I sit on the mattress and just… freak the hell out about what I’m going to do because this is do or die time.

  If I choose the wrong thing, a lot of people could die.

  I’m swallowing the last mouthful of my now tepid coffee when my phone rings again, Lips’ ringtone, and I can’t keep ignoring my family without them charging back home to rescue me.

  “Am I killing him?”

  No hi, how’s things—typical Mounty. “Which him are we talking about? Because my kill list is at least seventy percent male.”

  She scoffs down the line at me. “Of course it is, men are perverts and fucking creeps. I’m actually surprised it’s not higher.”

  I giggle at her and put the cup down on the ground, sinking back against the pillows. “I’m not sure if we’re killing him, Lips.”

  The line goes dead quiet.

  I don’t know where she’s managed to sneak off to that it’s so quiet, but I don’t even hear her breathing. I’m about to check she’s still there when she speaks again, her voice entirely the fabled Wolf of Mounts Bay.

  “What the fuck did he do to
you?”

  I almost fucking cry. “Nothing. He didn’t do a goddamned thing. He left when I got home and I… decided to poke around a bit. I found a set of stairs to the basement, and I found something there.”

  I pause for a second, trying to figure out exactly how much of this I’m going to tell her, but she doesn’t say a word. She just waits me out because she trusts me just as much as I trust her.

  I adore her.

  I fumble a little but I choke the truth out. “There’s someone locked in his basement, Lips. There’s an emaciated, disgusting man down there who looks as though he’s living in his own filth and going without regular meals… and that’s not even the worst part. He has a murder board there too. You’re on it. The… our whole family is on it.”

  Silence.

  “Ash is on the board, Lips. With his eyes crossed out.”

  Still nothing.

  I start to panic a little bit, mostly because I’m sure that she’s slipped fully into a rage blackout and innocent roadies and tech support guys might die if they walk in on her right now. Not that I couldn’t fix it for her, but then the guys would all get involved.

  I don’t want Ash anywhere near Mounts Bay right now for so many freaking reasons.

  “Are you one hundred percent sure it’s a murder board?” she says, her voice dark and dripping with rage.

  I stop for a second.

  What the hell else could it have been?

  “It was a lot of photos on the wall, most of us with our eyes crossed out… the way the Collector has been leaving me photos.”

  Lips hums under her breath. “Did you take photos? Who else is on there? I want to fucking gut Atticus for this but, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t see him wanting to kill Ash. Take a swing at him every time he opens his mouth? Sure. Kill him and hurt you? No. I just don’t.”

  I let out my breath and switch her to speakerphone, sending the photos through and then looking through them myself. There’s dozens of people I don’t know up there, plus the entire Crawford family. Amanda Donnelley isn’t up there, which I don’t know if it’s a good thing.

  When I say this to Lips, she hums again. “Maybe she’s the psycho sending the fucking photos? Maybe this is him collecting evidence and the creepy fucking ‘warning’ photos. Why the fuck he’d be hiding them in a basement, I don’t know, but that shit still makes more sense to me than him planning Ash’s murder.”

  A desperate sounding laugh rips out of me. “What about you? Do you think he’d kill you? And Harley and Blaise?”

  She doesn’t hesitate. “I think he’s had a target painted on me from the moment I won the scholarship to Hannaford. I think Harley could’ve gone either way, depending on how he treated you… and I think Atticus, no matter what he says otherwise, would’ve paid me a black diamond and a favor to take Blaise out if you’d fallen for him. Aves, you need to watch Aodhan’s back, because Atticus is only a rule enforcer when the rules work in his favor. He’d break them all for you.”

  That’s… not at all what I was expecting from her.

  Atticus has pushed me away at every chance, pushed me into Aodhan’s arms really because my heart was broken and bleeding all over the freaking place when I found him, so to think of him actually wanting me, wanting me enough to risk his position and his standing in the Twelve to get to keep me, it’s unfavorable to me.

  I became the Crow for you.

  “I’ll keep Ash out of Mounts Bay until you know what is really going on. No one will ever get close to him, I swear to you.”

  I know for sure she’s telling the truth.

  No one touches the Wolf.

  It’s almost lunchtime when Aodhan finally arrives at the loft, his clothes ripped up and covered in blood and dirt.

  I’m standing in the kitchen, waiting for the brownies to finish off in the oven, and his eyes are a little desperate as they dart around the open space before they finally land on me, softening immediately.

  “There’s my girl, fuck, I thought you’d climbed out the bathroom window for a second there.”

  I huff at him and prop a fist onto my hip, ridiculous looking with the oven gloves on I’m sure. “And why the hell would I do that, O’Cronin?”

  He smirks at me, all Irish charm that definitely doesn’t turn my insides to mush, and toes off his shoes at the window to leave them with mine. “You’re becoming a seasoned escape artist; I think I’ll always be chasing after you at this rate.”

  I shrug at him as he stalks into the bathroom, shedding his clothes on the way but holding onto them to throw them all in the washing basket in there. There’s no laundry in the loft that I've been able to find, so I guess he takes it all with him when he goes back to the O’Cronin compound.

  He showers while I finish up with the desserts, waiting until the pan of brownies cools enough to dish us each up a bowl with huge scoops of ice cream. I have no idea if he’ll even enjoy the sugar explosion after his day, but Lips never said no to my panicked dessert baking and I need the sugar right now like I need air.

  I do the cardinal sin and I sit in the bed to eat it.

  I never, ever, eat in bed.

  Ever.

  But there’s something about this loft that makes me… different. I know it can’t actually change me as a person, I still eat so freaking carefully so I don’t spill anything, but it’s as though I can be the most calm and relaxed version of myself here.

  The best Avery Beaumont I can be… without the manic, deranged psycho destroying everything with a scrubbing brush. Well, today anyway. Maybe after a good nine hours of sleep, I’ll be back to my wicked ways.

  Aodhan gets out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel, raising his eyebrows at the bowl waiting for him on the counter, but he takes it without a word. The stag tattoo on his chest is magnificent, my eyes drawn to it, and the way it moves with his chest is captivating. If my mind wasn’t busy running through my conversation with Lips, over and over again, I might just be fantasizing about running my tongue over the edges of it until the shape was burned into my mind for the rest of time.

  “If you’re cooking up sweets then we’re all in trouble, not that I didn’t already know,” he says as he lowers himself down onto the mattress, groaning a little.

  The edge of the towel splits a little and shows me his entire leg right up to those sculpted thighs of his. I don’t want to move my eyes away from them, but there’s too much information hanging in the air around us.

  Instead of saying a word, I get my phone out and I hand it to him with the photos showing.

  I’d thought a lot about what I would say to him about this, whether I should lie about it or withhold the details until Lips and I had figured out a little more about what the hell is going on.

  But I don’t lie to Aodhan.

  Not about Atticus, not when he’s been far too understanding about the entire situation and always respected not only my feelings but my decisions when it comes to the other man who holds my heart.

  “Fuck. Fucking Christ, was this in his house? Is he the one threatening you? Trying to drive you into his arms or some shit? Fuck, even Jack is up there.”

  Jack and Aodhan and a handful of other O’Cronins I’ve never met before, but Lips had listed them all off to me to make note of. There were only four people she couldn’t name in the photos, but she’s going to send them through to Illi because she’s sure he’d know.

  I’ll ask Aodhan too. “It was in his secret basement. Unlisted in the house plans, the Coyote didn’t even know it existed. Lips—Lips and I are still trying to figure out his motives; we have a few leads. I’m sorry I freaked out. Seeing Ash up there… broke me.”

  Aodhan nods and flicks through the photos again, the spoon hanging out of his mouth. “Our night was just as bad. I think I’ve seen every inch of the human body from the inside today. Illi is too fucking good at carving people up, and he hasn’t taken the photos being out lightly. He— fuck, Queenie, he loves you the way a big brother does. He migh
t even be more fucking fierce than Ash.”

  I smile at him with the tiniest of shakes of my head. “You haven’t seen my brother in full Beaumont mode. Don’t get me wrong, Illi is definitely the Butcher and he lives up to all of the horror stories but Ash… Ash is everything our father ever wanted in a son, except he only uses that brutal rage to protect me and Lips. Or Harley and Blaise, but they’ve rarely needed it. I would never, ever, bet against Ash and that has nothing to do with my loyalty to him.”

  Aodhan nods slowly and takes another bite. “Your dad was a serial killer, right? Harley said some fucked-up shit about him, and I thought he was just trying to scare me off of you.”

  I giggle at him, placing my empty bowl on the floor next to the mattress before lying down. “From the time I started counting, Joseph Beaumont Sr. had over four hundred victims. All of them killed to fulfill his sexual deviancy and need for complete sadistic control.”

  There’s something reassuring about the way Aodhan suddenly looks sick. I need a man who can kill without question but I also need that man to have a soul and a moral line. I get that we’re not pious, noble people, but I do draw the line at raping and killing innocent women and girls. Christ, some of Senior’s victims were teenage girls stolen in other countries and sent to America to be sold at auction.

  Just like Odie was.

  I feel that same disgust and rage at the thought of it.

  Aodhan puts his bowl down as well and rolls to face me. “The Wolf killed him?”

  I nod. “She walked into our childhood home with a gut full of stitches and almost died to protect Ash and I. I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life. She just—she left in the middle of the night and by the time we realized, there was no making it in time.”

  He nods slowly, his eyes dropping down to the necklace he’d returned to me with his diamond and the Wolf’s diamond resting there between my breasts. “Everything she did for you all, all of the moves and risks she made, she’s one in a fucking million. No wonder she snared three grown men to an obsession.”