Their Cartel Princess: The Complete Series: A Dark Reverse Harem Box Set

by Logan Fox

  The master bedroom’s doorway stood open a crack. Someone stood behind it, but in shadow. At such a distance, he didn’t recognize them.

  Were they making sure he left without a fight, or did they want to make sure he didn’t leave any trace of Ronan behind?

  There would be traces. The blood stains on the carpet. The trail of blood he’d leave dragging the soggy carpet to his car.

  Ronan’s body thumped down each step with a hollow thud that made Owen’s teeth clench tighter and tighter.

  A few of his lashes tore open when he bundled Ronan into the trunk. He rested his forehead on the open lid for a moment as he caught his breath and waited for the stinging to abate. He turned his head a little, staring inside the manor.

  It was wrong leaving the door gaping like that. Owen closed the trunk and walked with heavy steps back to the door. He stepped inside, gripped the door knob, and paused. There was a small table beside the door, empty but for a pair of sunglasses.

  A breeze whispered against his hair, bringing him the smell of roses and blood.

  Owen slid a hand inside his suit pocket. It brushed the video camera, and he grasped it, ready to leave it behind.

  But it was important to him. He needed it.

  Instead, he felt past it and drew out one of Ronan’s business cards.

  KING

  1 Rhodium Drive

  Mallhaven

  Owen put the card on the table and left. As he pulled out of Swan Manor, he realized he’d left a bloody thumbprint on the edge of the card.

  Evidence.

  He’d left evidence behind.

  He thought on that for a while and then began to laugh.

  42

  Switch

  When Owen came back for Ronan’s body, Kane’s eyes were already open. He listened to the man climbing the stairs as he lay in a tangle of limbs; Cora’s, Bailey’s, Lars’s. Finn was too far away, else he might have been part and parcel of the knot too.

  The four of them all slept.

  Some even dreamed; Cora’s fingertips had roused him from sleep several minutes ago when they had twitched against his stomach.

  He’d been watching them ever since, using the illumination cast from an outside light as he stared at their sleeping faces and their disparate bodies.

  He wasn’t quite sure everything that had happened last night had been real. Often, he’d wake up with strange memories. Most of the times, he knew they were just nightmares.

  Dreams where he killed people. Where he robbed them.

  But that was all they were — dreams.

  Yet, here he lay with the evidence of his night of debauchery as indisputable as a Polaroid.

  There was a strong impulse for him to stay where he was. After all, the gun had never made another reappearance. It might not have been trust, but a grudging acceptance. Some kind of resignation.

  This is what you want, isn’t it?

  He touched fingers to his lips, Finn’s words echoing in his head.

  The man lay on his stomach, massive chest rising and falling as slowly and gracefully as the others.

  They’d accepted him last night, but he wasn’t one of them. Maybe he never could be.

  What’s wrong with you?

  Nothing. He was perfectly fine. Which was why he couldn’t stay. The four of them had issues. Issues they dealt with by fucking the living sin out of each other.

  But he knew of a massive shipment of heroin arriving in the United States in two days.

  If Fredericks didn’t promote him after this, then he was fucking mad.

  Kane eased himself out from between the spent bodies, taking care not to jostle anyone to the point of waking. But he couldn’t leave without trailing a finger down Cora’s bare leg.

  Maybe he’d be back one day. Maybe they’d accept him one last time.

  But right now, he had work to do.

  He found his clothes and went to the bedroom door. It was open but a crack when he spotted Owen across the hall. The man was about to drag a carpet into the hall.

  Owen looked up, but he was sure the shadows hid him too well for the man to see him.

  The body thumped, thumped, thumped down the steps.

  Kane waited for the sound of Owen’s footsteps on marble before he walked across the hall.

  Cora’s bedroom was a nightmare of dark blood on beige carpets. Broken pottery. A bed that would have made an excellent addition to any snuff film’s props.

  Film.

  Kane’s gaze darted to the back of the sofa.

  Where was the camera?

  He hurried around, stepping in blood with a sick, wet sound, and peeked around the back.

  It was gone.

  He heard Swan Manor’s doors close below and raced through Cora’s bedroom. He took the stairs three at a time, but all he saw when he flung open the manor’s front door were the dwindling tail lights of Owen’s SUV almost a quarter mile down the road already.

  Licking his lips, Kane staggered back a step and slowly entered the manor again. He glanced at the top of the stairs, but no one else had woken yet.

  It was time for him to leave.

  He still had no idea where to yet, but he couldn’t stay here any longer.

  And there was the matter of the H. He’d have to find a motel close to the drop-off location, maybe track down someone reliable to help—

  As he turned, an unexpected flash of red caught his eye. He leaned in, studying the business card that lay on the side stable beside the door.

  He picked it up, turned it over.

  Turned it back.

  When he ran his thumb over the smudge of blood, it didn’t even smear.

  Sometimes, blood dried so quickly.

  43

  Finally

  Finn snapped awake from a dream so visceral, he still had a yell in his throat when his eyes flared open. He sat up in a rush, a sheet pooling in his lap. Cool air brushed over his skin, making him shiver violently.

  Why was he naked? No, not naked — he still wore his briefs. But he had no shirt on. His burn wounds were exposed for anyone to see. He grabbed the sheet, ripped it off the bed as he stood, and twirled it around his shoulders like a cape.

  The fabric felt wet-cold against his skin.

  Something was wrong. But what?

  There was a throbbing ache on his arm. A bandage spanning his bicep where the bullet had grazed him.

  He walked moonlit hallways. Stairs that bucked and reared under his feet led him into a foyer that’s floor gleamed like blood-wet bones.

  Another shiver — this one more violent than the last.

  Echoes of thoughts rebounded—

  … his fingers bursting a man’s eyes

  … his teeth snagging flesh

  … the taste of Cora’s bruised mouth

  Gritting together throbbing teeth, Finn half-stumbled, half-fell into the hallway.

  Everything was too bright. Mid-morning, perhaps even noon light glared in from the house’s every orifice, spotlighting him.

  Finn struck a wall, rebounded, and collected himself, his balance, his mind.

  Voices. They should have been cheery — but somehow that felt wrong — and instead they were somber.

  Which, for some fucked up reason, felt just right.

  The kitchen gaped, swallowing him inside its chrome-toothed mouth.

  Bailey stood at the range, head down as he studied whatever he was cooking, baking, making.

  There should have been the appropriate smells in the room. But there weren’t.

  He could only smell Cora.

  Lavender and lemon. Strange, how it had almost never changed in the time he’d known her. As if the scent had been gouged into her skin, forever clinging to her.

  Bailey looked around, caught his eye. He said something Finn couldn’t understand, and pointed. Cora turned to him, and lights bloomed in her golden eyes.

  She was speaking, too, but he could understand nothing.

  He grabbed her, cl
umsy and too hard, and she made a pained sound. But there was no fear in her eyes, only love.

  Love so thick, so intense, it spilled over him like molten lava.

  He cupped her face in a hand. Kissed her. Pressed her into the kitchen island. He wanted to take her, but she felt too weak — and he didn’t want to kill her.

  To lose her.

  To let her die.

  “Finn?”

  The name echoed in his head. It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t latch onto it.

  “Finn.” A hand brushed his shoulder.

  His body moved on instinct. He had Bailey pressed against the kitchen, face in his hands in a grip so tight, bones creaked under his fingers.

  “Christ, Milo. You hit your head or something?” came a voice from a distant corner of the kitchen.

  Everything — all his rage, his confusion, his pain — it funneled from his mind like water down a drain pipe.

  He laughed and pushed away from the wall. Bailey dropped two inches to his feet and coughed hard, throwing Finn a look that could have been anything from terror to concern.

  When he turned to Lars, he saw his friend. His lover.

  Lars pulled out a chair for him.

  He sat on it the second time round, his body too stiff for him to move properly. Bailey went back to his cooking, and Lars went back to his own seat.

  “Where is he?”

  The room fell silent, even Bailey pausing mid-stir.

  “He left sometime last night,” Cora said. Her voice sounded as raw and bruised as her throat looked.

  “He wake you?” Finn glanced up at each of them. They each shook their heads. “He take anything?”

  Lars snorted, but gave his head a hasty shake as soon as Finn’s eyes landed on him.

  They sat in silence, the smell of Bailey’s cooking filling the room with bacon and onion. Coffee battled it a minute later when Lars poured them each a cup and brought it to them.

  Cora’s got hers first, and a kiss to the side of her mouth that made her smile. Bailey got his next, twitching when Lars planted a kiss on the side of his head.

  But he didn’t pull away. Progress.

  He brought Finn a cup and set it down. Then he studied him as a slow smile grew on his mouth. “You were a beast last night,” he said, and then shook his head. “Nope, wrong choice of word. You were mental last night.”

  Bailey barked out a laugh, and Lars’s smile turned into a grin.

  “You realize it’s all over, right?”

  “Yeah?” Finn asked, ducking his head to inhale the coffee’s aroma. “What makes you so sure?”

  Cora shifted, and for the first time Finn noticed she’d been cradling something against her chest. He frowned at her and then recoiled slightly when she opened her fingers.

  Santa Muerte’s decapitated head rested in her palms. Surprisingly, the only damage looked to be the break in the neck and a crack running over the skull.

  “It’s over.” Cora held out the lump of plaster to him.

  He took it, studying it as he sipped at his coffee. When he looked up, he happened to catch Cora’s eye. Her expression had changed. Her gaze seemed far off, her mouth slack and eyes dead as if she was reliving something horrible.

  “Cora.”

  She didn’t look up.

  Finn glanced around. Bailey had stopped stirring, and Lars sat with his mug halfway to his mouth.

  All staring at Cora as if waiting for her to break out of her spell.

  Finn took a nearby butter knife set out for their breakfast and wedged it into the crack in Santa Muerte’s skull.

  Not even that roused Cora.

  It wasn’t until he drove the heel of his palm onto the grip of the knife, spearing it deep into that crack, that she came to with a sharp hiss of a breath.

  The skull shattered into five pieces, one so convex that it rolled back and forth on its curve for a while before settling.

  “Now it’s over,” Finn said.

  Cora’s eyes darted up to his face. They flickered, flickered, went still.

  A hesitant smile spread over her mouth. Then she lay a trembling hand on her belly, and her smile turned bright.

  “No,” she said, glancing briefly over at Bailey and Lars before settling on him again. “It’s finally begun.”

  Epilogue

  Owen used his key card to let himself into Rhodium Drive. Patrick, the butler, was gone, which wasn’t surprising at four in the morning.

  His body ached, not only from the lashes Ronan had inflicted on him yesterday, but from carrying Will from the car and into Mallhaven’s private clinic.

  And disposing of Ronan’s body.

  The scent of orchids filled his nose as he hauled himself up the stairs.

  It was so quiet, and he couldn’t tell if that was unusual or not. He was either in Ronan’s room this time of night — having passed out on the floor from pain or exhaustion or both — or beside Darcy.

  Surprising, how the latter had always made him feel more on edge. He never slept well when he was in Darcy’s bed. He’d wake every half an hour, wondering if the sound he’d heard was Ronan making an unexpected visit to his wife’s bedroom.

  On instinct, he headed for Ronan’s room to check in. He paused with his hand on the door knob, laughing softly at his knackered brain.

  No, King wasn’t here. He’d never be here again.

  That was something he had to deal with tomor—later today.

  But first, rest.

  And Darcy.

  He had to see Darcy.

  He couldn’t break the news to her until he’d slept.

  But he knew it would be the best night’s sleep of his life.

  Darcy’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. He hesitated and then strode forward as the hair on the back of his neck all rose at once.

  He wanted to open the drapes, but that made little sense when he was standing within arm’s reach of the light switch.

  No… what didn’t make sense was his hesitation to turn on the lights.

  Owen rocked on his heels, his legs threatening to give way.

  No orchids in this room. That had been Ronan’s thing — the orchids. Fuck knew why.

  Usually, Darcy’s room smelled of fresh linen, or roses, or her perfume. Sometimes she’d even spray it on her pillows before he came to her.

  Had Ronan ever smelled his wife’s perfume on Owen?

  The thought grew teeth and claws and scoured its way down his back.

  This room stank of death.

  That was why he didn’t want to turn on the light.

  Owen leaned to the side and took off one shoe, then the other. His socks came off next. He dropped his suit jacket on the floor as he wobbled forward.

  His eyes had adjusted enough to the lack of light that he made out the square of the bed.

  Sleep.

  That’s all he’d need. A few hours of rest, and he could tackle anything.

  As his knees bumped against the side of the bed, his toes sank into wet carpet fibers.

  He wouldn’t turn on an alarm. This time, he would sleep until he’d had all the rest his body wanted.

  When he put his hand on the side of the bed, wetness coated his fingertips. He tried to draw back the sheet, but something heavy lay on it.

  He shouldn’t wake Darcy. She needed her sleep too. Her and the babe.

  His baby, not Ronan’s. There’d been nothing wrong with Darcy — it was Ronan who’d been infertile.

  Darcy slept, his child safe inside her womb. Only…Darcy would never wake again, would she?

  And neither would his unborn baby.

  The End of the Their Cartel Princess series

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  Glossary

  Puta Madre - Motherfucker/motherfuck

  Que - What

  Plata o Plomo - Silver or Lead

  El Calacas Vivo - The Living Skeletons

  La Sombra - The Shadow

  El Guapo - The Handsome

  El Lobo - The Wolf

  Hola - Hello

  Jefe - Boss

  Sicario - Hitman

  Halcon - Falcon (cartel's eyes and ears)

  Mi reinita - my little queen

  Dios mio - my god

  Por favor - Please

  cabrón - friend

  Lo promito - Sorry

  ¡Chúpame la pija! - Suck my cock

  Vato - friend

  Mi corazón - my heart

  Chica - girl

  Princesa - princess

  Tío - uncle

  Día de los Muertos - Day of the Dead

  Santa Muerte - Death Saint

  La Flaca - the Skinny Lady (nickname for Santa Muerte)

  Beun provecho - Eat

  Hijo de puta - son of a bitch

  Lugartenientes - Lieutenants, usually right-hand of the capo

  Capo - cartel leader

  ¡Come mierda y muere! - east shit and die