by Ace Gray
“You’re a Ryan.” I still couldn’t shake the snarl voice when I said it. “And if I know anything, that means you can take a whole helluva lot more than this.”
“Don’t say that name,” she cried out amidst her tears. “I don’t want to be a Ryan if this is what it brings down. If this is what it means.”
“A rose by any other name is just as sweet.” I offered her a halfhearted smile as I quoted Shakespeare that hit a little too close to home. “And a Ryan by any other name is still persistence personified, a pestilence to this family.”
“I don’t want to be those things. I don’t want to be a rose or sweet or a plague. I don’t want to be vengeful.”
I thought about vengeance and the way it colored my life. Rosalyn’s death had given me my first real taste. Filly was force feeding me my second. I thought about the way I would use vengeance to paint her freedom in blood.
“I wouldn’t change my vengeance for anything in the world. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t wipe out yours,” I said softly as I leaned my forehead to hers.
She shook with her small tears against me but still managed, “Why?”
“It’s only the things born of true and passionate love that can flip to wicked and unrelenting hate.” I sighed and reached one hand up to cup her cheek. “If I wasn’t merciless, I wouldn’t know your grace.”
She was all I could think about as I sat in the back of the SUV boring holes in the back of Emmett’s head as he rode shotgun. He was breathing with a slight wheeze that I was both proud and pissed at. It reminded me of yesterday. Of what I’d found. Picturing his eyes on Filly, his hands too, was driving me mad. The things he’d said to her...
I was the only one allowed to touch her. To taste her.
Except she was coming to dinner.
Every fiber in my body revolted to the idea. I would have been lying if I said I didn’t like these dinner parties. The escape and the warm, waiting women were gifts of the deviant variety. They were gifts I was happy to accept but Filly...
She was good and innocent. She was pure and sweet.
And she was coming to dinner.
I shifted, narrowing my gaze, and my gun pressed into my side where it was holstered. My body was restless without her. My soul… well, my soul rode an edge between submission and fury.
Someone deserved my anger.
Emmett’s sins had me debating pulling my gun and pressing it to his head. A breathy laugh slipped from my lips. I could blow him away, some of my troubles with him. It wouldn’t be nearly as difficult today as it would have a few days ago.
It would soothe the ache that had lodged itself inside me.
The car slowed beside the curb and I eyed the Italian bakery beside me. I let my loose smile hang on my lips as I stepped out of the car. The wind whipped my suit jacket back for a brief moment. If anyone was watching, they caught a glimpse of what I was packing before I casually buttoned my jacket and walked toward the front door.
Emmett’s steps were the shadow behind mine until I waved him off at the door.
“Brye?”
I didn’t dignify him with an answer. I didn’t have to.
The bell above the door rang, the only sound in the room until a voice called from the back. Whoever was back there didn’t remember that it was collection day. I kind of liked the idea.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I murmured.
A few soft footfalls preceded a quiet man whose eyes were soft and timid like a rabbit. I wanted to slit its throat.
“Mr. MacCallum.” His voice choked when his feet stopped short.
“The payment,” I said without pretense.
“I told your father I would have it in two days.”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I eyeballed where his fingers laid on the counter. The groove of the metal of the deli counter shone beneath his fingers where they wrapped around the Formica. My smirk quirked up.
With lightning speed, I reached for the swinging counter and slammed it down. I felt the crunch of his bones a moment before his agonized howl filled the space. With another smirk I leaned on it, the countertop splintering flesh and cracking bones that I felt with a vibration as much as I heard with a blood-curdling scream.
Emmett whipped in, his gun drawn and I simply quirked my eyebrow at him.
“Sorry, sir.”
“It’s all right,” I said as I smiled and shifted more of my weight onto the counter and heard more snaps. More screams.
“I’ll get the money,” he screamed. “I’ll pull it out of the register.”
He reached for the cash as his other hand fluttered where it was trapped. Blood dripped from his hand and landed in small splotches on the tile.
“Here,” he screamed.
I cocked my head as I studied him. He shook wildly as he held the fibrous bills out for me and his saucer eyes begged me to take it. Take it and leave him in the pieces he had left.
“Thanks,” I said with an easy shrug.
I snatched the money and turned on my heel, signaling for Emmett to follow. As soon as the SUV’s door shut tight behind me, I leaned forward, close enough to rustle the longer ends of his hair. “You’re next Emmett.”
The sound of his body breaking beneath my boot sent a shiver of thrill up my spine.
“What the fuck has gotten into you?” he snapped as he shot back against the door.
“A little bit of the devil it would seem.”
A tear would fall down my cheek every now and again as if I had no control of them. I unwound from the ball I’d been clenched in but found myself unsure what to do with myself so I slumped back down.
I was angry with my family. Well, anger was an understatement. Whatever I was, it simmered in my heart with a fair amount of hurt. I was lost for what I’d say to my mom or dad or Horse but the fact that I didn’t have the choice…
Another tear dripped down my cheek.
I shoved the hot salt from my skin and nestled into the leather back of Brye’s bedroom chair. His father said I was free to roam about, but the fear of his father was an effective prison all on its own.
Art was the only thing that saved me. My constant companion, my heart’s retreat. Brye’s walls were covered floor to ceiling in amazing paintings, canvas and frames of all sizes. The Degas on the wall closest to me was delicate and fragile. Beautiful and intricate. The sweet soft sounds of the ballet I could envision accompanying the painting soothed me.
Them and the idea of Brye.
Well sort of.
He was a monster and a bastard. He’d hurt me. He’d taken advantage of me. But he’d protected me too. And given me that orgasm. He’d suffered at my hand. He’d held me too.
I hated parts of him. I loved parts of him. The parts that didn’t seem to waver beside me, the parts that seemed to cocoon around me. The parts that hung Degas on the wall.
Every bit of him had me confused.
“Are you okay?” An unfamiliar female voice startled me.
I whipped around and curled over the leather armrest to find a tall woman with chocolate hair eyeing me from Brye’s doorway. She was dressed in fine clothing as Brye and Emmett usually seemed to be, linen trousers and a silk blouse unbuttoned so low, I could make out the detail on her lace bra. The red of her lipstick put the crimson in nearby paintings to shame.
“Did Connor rip out your tongue?” She arched an eyebrow as her faint Irish accent punctuated my thoughts again.
“Nah…No.”
“Well, then you’re doing something right.” She walked in, her heels making crisp clacks on the floor, as she helped herself to Brye’s scotch. “I’m Deirdre.” She extended her hand as she gulped amber liquid. I watched her long neck ripple then roll as she set the glass aside and eyed me.
“I’m Filly. Filly Ryan.”
She flinched when I said my last name and the confusion cracked my chest again. I didn’t want that reaction from strangers. I didn’t want my name to mean anything. Or if it did... There wa
s a small part of me tucked in the deepest spot of my heart that wanted to make good on the name.
“And just what do they plan on doing with you?” she asked as she touched up the edges of her lipstick.
“They haven’t quite decided yet.”
“Waiting to live, waiting to die.” She crossed her arms and studied me, something in her voice spoke of understanding.
“And you?” I asked tentatively.
“Already dead inside,” she shrugged exposing her collarbone. “Have to be to do what I do.”
“Which is?”
“I’m a whore,” she answered bluntly and without shame. “I let them fill my holes, hoping it’ll keep them from riddling my body with a different kind altogether.” She stepped closer to me and while I hadn’t seen it, she seemed to have unbuttoned her shirt farther.
“Would you leave if you could? Would you help me?”
“You don’t leave a MacCowan, not alive anyway.”
“That’s not what I said.” I mustered up my strength and sat up, hoping to feel a little less small. Hoping she’d feed off it. “I asked if you would.”
“Maybe once upon a time when the darkness didn’t feel good. When I had a conscience and this was a cage I was trapped in. But now...” she mused as a long finger traveled down her neck and she did unbutton another button. “Now I like feeling Connor inside me. I like his wicked games. I like Brye taking out his hurt on me.”
I growled at the mention of Brye as I pressed back away from her, as much as I could anyway, and the chair rocked the slightest bit beneath me. My jaw set tight and my eyes narrowed. Her rich laugh answered, everything honey and seductive. Deirdre followed, leaning over me. The view between her round breasts and down her taut stomach made me close my eyes as I turned away.
“You love him. You love Brye MacCowan.” There was laughter in her voice but hurt too. I cocked my head as if it would help me study her. Help me see her insides. “I was trapped by someone I love. If you want my advice, if you want to survive, turn that love into hate. Then feed it lust.” She smiled as she reached up and notched her long fingers on either side of my chin. “Surrender to the feral thing inside you.”
“Don’t touch me,” I swatted her hand.
“Who’s going to stop me?” She slid in closer, her eyes downcast beneath feather lashes, zeroed on my lips. “Brye?” She laughed.
“Maybe,” I answered letting a little bit of the hope he’d planted inside me bloom.
She laughed louder, darker. “Let me tell you, little girl, Brye won’t feed you to the wolves, he’s the first one that will feed on you.” Like a cobra, she attacked, her hand a snake that wrapped around my throat and squeezed. “And I certainly hope he’s a bit more gentle with you than he is with me.”
The panic that accompanied her squeeze waved through me a moment before I started clawing at her hand. I threw my body back and when that didn’t work, forward. Anything to get her to let go. The more I moved, the tighter my chest became, a balloon about to burst. Pink tinged dots clouded the darkening edges of my vision as my wild claws became sluggish tentacles.
When my leaden limbs fell with a thump to the chair, her laugher swam in and out of earshot. “You think love is a possibility in this world and you’re so unbelievably wrong. He’ll eat you whole. You can’t take a quarter of it.”
She let me go with a thrust. My chair shook again as I tried to suck in air through my bruised throat. Each gasp was ragged and painful, dragging in breath after breath was all I could focus on. Even as her wicked heels clacked right back out of Brye’s room.
“Brye.” His name was a whimper on my lips.
Once again, he didn’t come.
I was left to reach for an ice cube housed near his scotch on my own and rub it gingerly over the bruised handprint that now covered my throat. I backed away from the open door, doing what I could to swallow the emotion. It wasn’t that I was afraid to cry—I was afraid of everything here and unashamed—but this time it hurt. Bad. Her words... the things she said about Brye...
“What do I do, Mom?” I whispered once I slipped into the bathroom, hoping her sculpture was some sort of conduit.
The tub was empty so I slid into it, hiding behind the high walls, and stared up at the steel. I’d always thought my mom’s work was whimsical, based on fairy tales, but here was this piece—this life—that was anything but. They were both unyielding but sad. Her sculpture was a heart, complete in shape but broken all the same.
It was poetic. It was ugly. It was truth. Just like my family. My life. There was a symmetry to me being bruised in the bathtub of my enemy basking in the admissions of my parents’ wrongdoings. But from where I was sitting, the perspective was distorted. Wrong. I shifted from time to time, trying to change that view. Trying to find the one where they were my parents good and light, not liars dark and devious.
I simply ended up with an achy ass to match my bruised throat.
“Filly?”
Brye called to me and the deep honey sound filled my ribs and pressed on my heart. I started to pull myself up to go to him, but my neck ached and throbbed. A pathetic yelp was all I managed as I crashed back to the slope of porcelain.
“Filly?” he called again, just before he rounded into the bathroom.
His eyes found mine a moment later and something twinkled behind them but then they dropped and a snarl seemed to build from deep inside his belly.
“What. Happened?” The beast he could become punctuated each word.
“Please…”
“Please what, Filly? Please don’t?” His anger was a living, breathing being in the room with us.
I flinched back even as my heart shot straight up. It was so protective. A claim on me in tone alone, a threat to anyone who challenged. I shivered. I’d been broken, furious, fearful, all because of him and I hated it. I hated it all but when he roared like that…
“Deirdre,” I said softly.
“I’ll fucking kill her.” He spun about ready to bolt.
Loneliness reached up and grabbed me equally as hard. “Please,” I begged again.
“She deserves to be punished.” He scoffed. “She’s probably fucking waiting for it.”
“Please don’t leave me,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard.
His body stopped as if it had hit a wall. His eyes darted back and forth, a signal his brain was still running out of the room.
“You want me to stay?” he asked with disbelief.
I nodded as I started to play with my hands.
“Not because you don’t want me to go after her?” He turned back toward me.
“Because this world only makes sense when you’re here. Because I guess that means I missed you.” I couldn’t meet his eyes when I said it. I didn’t want to see the wolf waiting to feed on my feelings.
But I caught his slight, deft movement as he undid the button of his suit jacket then slid it off and tossed it on the counter. His eyes coaxed mine to his as he loosened his collar first then unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up.
“Make room,” he said as he jerked his chin.
I slid forward as he stepped in and slid down, his long legs wrapping around me then his arms followed suit. I nestled in.
“How can you miss me?”
“You don’t make it easy.” I breathed in his warm, fresh scent that reminded me of home in a way not even paper cranes could. “But I do.”
He blew out a deep breath and wrapped around me all the more tight. He was silent for a little while, his lips tucked into the curve of my neck but not pressing against the fresh pain.
“If things were different, I’d live in this moment forever,” he confessed as he brushed his lips against my skin.
“Why can’t we?” I murmured.
His chest rumbled against my back. “We have to go to dinner.”
Everything was so fucked up. So unbelievably fucked up. Holding Filly was perfect, and I was not. There was a sliver of hope for her
full forgiveness, but that was because she didn’t know what would happen next. Or the list of similar offenses that rolled out into the hall, through the foyer and down the front steps.
And then there was Deirdre.
I would have choked her out if I didn’t think that she’d get off on it. She’d touched Filly. That alone made my blood boil. But it was the fact that Filly was fading that made my skin itch with the want of vindication. The spark behind her eyes barely registered anymore. And after last night, it should have been brighter. More beautiful.
I tried to shove down what that meant as I clung to Filly as we sat silently in the tub. Instead, I focused on the tiny details of her. The many shades of blonde in her hair and the way that white seemed to weave in and make a halo fitting for her. The chocolate of her freckles melted into the cream of her skin. I could have drunk her up.
Then I glanced up to the sculpture hanging above us. Her mom’s art had spoken to me since I found it buried in the basement. A dark heart that still burned. That was what beat in my chest and someone else understood. Someone who gave me Filly. And Filly was quickly becoming everything, including my greatest weakness.
I couldn’t be weak. There was no place for it in this world.
She could rise up to meet me. I’d seen it in glimpses. But after last night, I didn’t want her to. I didn’t want her to lose the things that made her special. I certainly didn’t want her to lose them to me.
“We have to get ready.” My words were rough and I had to clear my throat as I started moving behind her. “I’m going to give you a pill before we go okay?” I asked as I stepped out of the tub and started sifting through the medicine cabinet.
“Why?” The edge of fear sharpened her voice.
I sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing was going to make it better. Except maybe that Oxycodone.
“This is going to hurt.” I gestured to my neck, but it was so much deeper. With any luck, she’d ride that little bit of euphoria and mellow the fuck out.
Hell, I considered popping one.
“At dinner?” She had climbed out of the tub and stood close as I shook one out.
