by Chloe Walsh
To the outside world and the bastard, Anton looked unaffected, when on the inside, he was reeling.
For the rest of the evening, and many evenings to come, he replayed the bastard's threats in his mind…
I will kill every man that stood in this room tonight. I'll start with your brothers. They will die at my hands. Slowly. Painfully. Bloody. I will avenge my mother. You two, I will save for last. You, heir prince. You are the worst. I can see your humanity. But you are a coward. I will take your crown, heir prince. I will take your father away from you. Your home. Your mother. Is she still alive? If so, I will personally see that she suffers in all the ways in which my mother suffered. If you find a woman to love, I'll take her from you. Your children? It would be safer to have none because I will take them, too. I'll make you pay. You mark my words, I will burn your world to the ground."
1
Present Day
The time had come, the night of my initiation was upon me, and I was officially out of time. Nineteen years of being prettified and pampered, sheltered and kept at arm's length for a bunch of men to decide my fate. All because I had the misfortune of being born into a world of misogynistic villains.
My life, from birth to present day, consisted of being groomed for this very night. At any moment, I would be called into the room where my fate would be sealed. Men of the highest power in The Order would fight to claim me as their own.
Only high-born women were given an initiation. Only high-born women were deemed worthy to procreate with. It was an honor, we were told. To be claimed by a man of The Order.
Like a lamb to the slaughter.
Up until two years ago, I had been sickly excited about this night.
Because I had been promised to him.
Fabio Crellid's strongest soldier.
The bastard prince.
Because I trusted him to get us both out of this world.
Now?
Not so much.
My alliance with Fabio's bastard had been severed and now I was depending on his youngest, weakling son to protect me from the savages.
Fabio's youngest son, Jethro Crellid, who was the same age as me, had promised to claim me at my initiation. He vowed to give me a good life, one where I would be safe and sheltered. All I had to do in return was birth his heir and turn a blind eye to his indiscretions.
In other words, I was thoroughly fucked, because depending on Jet was about as sensible as sailing a paper freaking boat.
"Ashton, get in here!" Trigger Laperro bellowed from behind the closed door at my back, dragging me from my thoughts. The deep, timbre lilt of his voice startled me, causing me to knock over the carefully stacked house of cards that I had spent the last forty minutes building.
A spark of annoyance erupted inside of me and I glared down at the scattered deck of cards strewn across the floor.
I'd heard the rumors that he was back in town.
It was the reason I had waited here for most of the evening.
To catch a glimpse of my prince.
To beg him for mercy…
It had been two years since we locked eyes on one another and I couldn’t deny the way my heartbeat soared at the thought of seeing his face again.
Clambering to my feet, I smoothed down my short, white sundress and flicked my long, dark ponytail over my shoulder. Not quite the appropriate attire for groveling, but the asshole calling my name deserved to have his feathers ruffled. He deserved a helluva lot worse after what he'd done to me, and if I could achieve said ruffling with a thigh high hem and a plunging neckline then I considered it a noble win. Besides, I was running short on time and the beast behind the door was my only hope, and if a short dress helped me to get my way, I would never wear jeans again.
"Goddammit, Ashton!" he repeated, and I could hear the fury in his tone.
"…Run, little lamb, and run quickly." Clutching my throat tighter, he cut off my air supply. "Find a very good place to hide from your wolf and stay hidden…"
His parting words to me two years ago floated through my mind and a cold shiver racked through me.
"Are you deaf?" he roared, louder this time.
No, Trig, but I am pissed.
"I said get in here now!"
If he didn’t have so much power, and I had the ability to rip the shackles from my wrists and break free from this world, then I'd tell Fabio Crellid's bastard son to go fuck himself.
This is risky.
This is life or death.
You have no choice…
My basic need to survive and even stronger desire to not be raped prevailed and I slapped on my friendliest smile before strolling into the office.
Well, calling this place an office was a bit of a stretch. This was Crellid HQ and the so-called office I was standing inside was a pretty coverup to keep the feds appeased.
Dirty feds, I mused to myself.
In my relatively young life of nineteen years, I'd quickly learned that everything about this world was dirty.
Dirty parents.
Dirty cops.
Dirty men.
Dirty traitor princes.
As painful as it was to admit, I needed this man's protection. My father's name wasn't enough anymore. Hadn't been since I grew tits and hair.
Since he handed me back to them…
Feuding with Trigger was a bad idea. I knew this because I had barely made it out alive the last time we clashed. But like always, I found myself falling into the same old pattern of self-sabotage and destruction. Because something happened to me when I was around Trigger Laperro.
Something that used to feel an awful lot like growing hope, but had now morphed into growing resentment.
Resentment or not, I needed the man to hear me.
I needed him to stop what was about to happen to me.
Because he was the only one who could stop my initiation.
He had the power to change my fate.
Trig's shoulders were broad and thick and straining against the fabric of his shirt when my eyes landed on him, sitting like the dark prince he was on his throne of power and deceit.
Trigger didn’t look anything like his half-brother Jethro or the rest of his family. He had too much of his Spanish mother in him – her name, too – and it stood out like a sore thumb around his third generation Russian-American family.
Where Jethro and the rest of his siblings were fair skinned and light haired, Trig was tanned with black hair. He was the sole owner of a pair of brown eyes in a family of blue eyes.
He wasn't one of them, not truly, and that used to give me comfort.
Now, I think I hated him more for it.
Because he came back.
Because he left in the first place.
Without me.
I arched a brow at the color of his shirt and sighed.
His soul is too dark to wear white.
He could clean his act up all he wanted, shove his big body into a designer suit, and I would still see the devil lurking underneath – and the tattoos to match his black heart.
At twenty-two, Trigger Laperro consisted of all the things a good girl's nightmares were made of.
Mean.
Check.
Dangerous.
Check.
Ruthless.
Check.
Cruel.
Check.
Hateful.
Check.
Killer.
Check.
Sexy.
Check.
Terrifyingly beautiful.
Check.
Heaven only knew how I managed to keep my nerve around a man I'd watched squeeze the life out of other men with his bare hands, but desperation did funny things to a girl. Luckily for me, I was rather skilled at the art of composure when surrounded by dangerous men.
Two full sleeves of intricately designed ink, along with a perfectly sculpted and heavily inked chest and back, could be seen through the fabric of Trig's shirt if one stared hard enough.
I was that one.
Staring at Trigger Laperro had become an obsession of mine long before he had become a man and long before I realized that my life wasn't mine to live.
All because I was a girl.
All because the family I had been born into was as psychotic as his.
My father, Royce Northwood, was to blame for my caged life. I never had the pleasure of knowing my mother, but since she dropped me on the doorstep of a madman and fled when I was days old, I could only assume that she wasn't worth knowing – or missing. I didn’t even know if she was alive or dead. All I'd ever known was Royce and his associates.
In the event of my father's demise, his only child was to be given to his best friend and business partner, Fabio Crellid, to guard over. My father's demise came sooner than expected – although, one couldn't really broach a guess as to the average lifespan for men in his position – and I was thrown to the wolves at the tender age of ten. Both literally and figuratively.
Because the members of the Crellid family were worse than wolves.
Much, much worse.
Tossed through the gates of the estate by my father's driver and handed over to Fabio Crellid and his mob of murder, mayhem, madness, and misogyny, I quickly learned where I ranked amongst the men in my world.
At the bottom.
Beneath them all.
Not Trigger, remember?
Corderito...
Little lamb...
"…Come on, Vasily, just leave her alone," the youngest Crellid brother, Jethro, mumbled as he hovered restlessly in my bedroom doorway, watching his teenage brother stalk towards me with purposeful, menacing strides.
I had been at the Crellid estate less than a month and this was Vasily's fifth visit to my room. Infuriated with the small boy for just standing in the doorway and not helping me, I glared at him and felt a small smidgen of satisfaction when his pale cheeks reddened.
"Come here," Vasily coaxed, drawing my attention back to the immediate threat, blue eyes shining with malice. "I only want to talk to you."
A wave of panic swept through my body and I found myself scrambling off my bed, backing away from the big, blond, seventeen-year-old boy. I knew what he wanted to do with me and it wasn't talk.
Trick me once.
"Stay back," I warned, glaring daggers at the huge boy. I knew all about the workings of a boy's mind. I might be young, but I was no child. I'd grown up quickly in my father's world and I was all too aware of the twisted minds of men. Had been for years.
And this boy was dangerous.
I could sense it.
I could see it.
I knew what he would try to do to me if I let him.
I also knew that I would rather throw myself out of my window before I let it happen.
Holding the book I had been reading in front of my body, I tried to sidestep him, but he blocked my path, leaving me cornered and trapped.
Again.
"Touch me again and I'll kill you," I warned. "I know how to shoot." I didn’t, but he didn’t know it. "My father showed me all the tricks." Another lie. "I'm dangerous."
A cruel laugh tore from his throat and he shook his head. "Did you hear that, Jethro? Northwood's baby-spawn whore is going to try to kill me." Snickering, he added, "She's dangerous."
"Leave her alone, Vas," Jethro mumbled, cowering in the doorway. "Father won't like this."
"Father said she was ours to do what we wanted with," Vasily shot back. "Just because you're all too pussy of Northwood's ghost doesn’t mean that I am." He smirked at me. "My brothers agreed to wait until you come of age before they unwrap you, but I intend to cash in on my gift now."
"I said that I will kill you, not try," I corrected, jutting my chin up in defiance. "Don't mistake my promises for threats."
"And how do you propose to kill me, baby whore?" he taunted, caging me into the corner. "With these scrawny arms?" Reaching down, he placed the palm of his hand against my flat chest and roughly slammed me against the wall at my back. "With this skinny body?"
The air escaped my lungs with an audible ooof and my book slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor.
"I'll find a way," I strangled out, panting now. "I promise you that."
"You'll do absolutely nothing because you have no power in this world," he challenged, stepping closer. "You are a girl. You are beneath me. You are only good for one thing –" he paused to cup my private area. "I'll break this."
"You'll die if you try!" Snarling, I shoved at his chest and he backhanded me, knocking me against the wall again. "Fuck you," I sobbed, lip wobbling, as I cradled my stinging cheek. "You'll pay for that."
"Oh, I will fuck you, baby whore," he promised darkly. "And then I'll share you with my brothers."
Shuddering, my lip curled up in disgust and I shoved at his chest again. "You are Crellid scum!"
"And you are Northwood pussy."
My stomach heaved. "I'm too young."
"I don’t care."
"I don’t want to."
"I don’t care," he repeated, smiling down at me.
"Please," I begged now. "Don’t."
"Don’t you see yet?" He laughed cruelly when my attempt to push him away failed miserably. "You have no control here. You do what you're told, when you're told, like the good little whore you're being trained to be."
I whimpered, feeling my bravery slip. "I'm not a whore."
"You are a whore, and I am a prince," he corrected. "You're living in my castle now, baby whore, and your daddy isn’t coming back from the grave to save you."
"You're all criminals," I spat, shaking. "And the only thing that you and your brothers are princes of is wickedness."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he chuckled. "Like you're not cut from the same cloth of corruption." Narrowing his eyes, he hissed, "Your father was as bad as mine, if not worse."
I didn’t deny it – couldn’t if I wanted.
"I'm royalty around here, baby whore," he continued. "I'm the apex predator and you are whatever the fuck I say you are. If you were born a boy, your father's name would make you my equal, but you're completely worthless. An heiress whore. All of your father's inheritance; the property, the land, the business, it will go to whichever one of my brothers that claims you on your initiation, and you can't do shit to stop it from happening –"
His words twisted into a snarl when I ducked under his arm and bolted for the door.
"You can't run from us," he snarled, fisting my hair and dragging me back to him. "And there's nowhere to hide." Wrapping an unyielding arm around my small body, he carted me back to the bed. "We own you, Ashton Northwood. Your father gave you to us," he sneered, tossing me down on my bed and reaching for my jeans. "One of us. All of us." He grinned darkly. "At the same time."
"Don't touch me," I cried out, scratching and pushing on his chest as he roughly dragged my jeans down my legs. "Please!"
"I love it when the whores beg," he growled hungrily. "Beg, baby whore." He hooked his long fingers into the waistband of my cotton panties and dragged them down, too. "Cry for me –"
Choking and spluttering, Vasily's words faded on his tongue and his hungered expression morphed into one of panic, the whites of his eyes turning bloodshot, as he released his hold on my panties and frantically clawed at his neck.
Trembling from head to toe, I watched as his big body started to slump.
Only when Vasily was on his knees on my bedroom floor did I notice the huge, dark-haired, foreign boy looming behind him, holding a piece of cord to his throat.
My breath escaped me in a sudden rush as I watched Fabio's bastard son strangle his half-brother into a state of semi-conscious submission.
"Te gusta follar bebés?" he asked in a deathly cold tone of voice, not relenting his tightly fisted grip on the cord wrapped around his brother's neck. "Eres un bastardo enfermo!"
"Trigger," Jethro began to say in a nervous tone, taking a step into the room. "I – uh… maybe you should
n't…" He swallowed deeply, hands fluttering at his sides. "I think you're killing him…"
"Silencio, príncipe bebé!” Trigger commanded, and even though I didn’t know what he was saying, I could hear the warning in his voice.
Jethro did, too, because he swiftly snapped his mouth shut.
"Voy a enseñarle una lección a tu hermano," the black-haired boy growled, releasing his grip before reaching a hand behind his back. "Corre a lo largo si tienes miedo."
Withdrawing a jagged edged dagger, the bastard prince tilted his head to one side and stared down at his brother gasping for air on his hands and knees.
At thirteen, the bastard was younger than his pure-blood brother but no one would have guessed it from the way he physically overpowered Vasily with ease.
"Si no te gusta la vista de la sangre, debes irte ahora," he said with a glint of madness shining in his dark eyes, and my heart roared to life at the sight, heat flushing to my cheeks.
Ripping at his jeans, he managed to strip his older brother down to his boxer shorts.
"Don't, don’t, don’t," Vasily cried out, curling up on the floor when Trigger fisted his penis and lowered the blade. "Please…God…Jesus, don’t do this to me!"
"Ordando a Dios no te salvará," Trigger replied, voice deathly calm. "Mi madre también oró a Dios." Taking a knee, he pulled on Vasily's private parts so hard that he screamed out loudly. "Qué le dijiste a ella?" He tightened his grip. "Qué le dijiste a mi madre cuando rogaba misericordia?"
"I don’t understand what you're saying…Oh god, I can't…Jethro, get help!" Crying out, Vasily pressed his palms together and started to cry. "Don’t hurt me, brother."
"Father!" Jethro screamed, running from the room. "Father, help!"
"Le dijiste a mi madre que gritara. Le dijiste a mi madre que disfrutaste sus gritos," the bastard continued, unfazed. "Esa fue tu misericordia." He released a pained snarl. "Y esto es mio."
His eyes, dark as night, flicked to mine and I felt something shoot straight through me. Tilting his head to one-side, he watched carefully, waiting for something.
Fear?
Resistance?
