by Maria Luis
I couldn’t let her go. Call me an asshole, a bastard like my father, but I couldn’t let her leave. Before I even realized that I’d done it, my hand was locked around her arm, dragging her back. Keeping her from fleeing, from leaving me.
Please don’t leave me.
Desperate. Pathetic. But to a man like me—a man who’d lived without light so long—I wasn’t willing to let this relationship go down in a ball of flames without trying to fix it.
“Avery, please—”
She stared down at my arm like it was the source of the next Bubonic plague. Her lips pulled back, nostrils flaring, and then she yanked away sharply. Stepped out of my reach. “You weren’t the man who killed my momma. I know that you weren’t . . . your voices aren’t the same.”
“No. I have no idea who that was, but I can guarantee it wasn’t me.” Not wanting to frighten her off, I took a single step in her direction. My hands came up like she was a terrified colt. “The guilt ate me alive for years,” I muttered, “that I’d sunk so low in my own life that I considered, even for a second, taking—”
“For taking my life?” Avery shook her head with a bitter laugh. “Is this where I thank you for not putting a bullet through my head?” Her hands landed on my chest and pushed to no avail.
I’d take whatever punishment she doled out.
It was my penance. My atonement.
My hands wrapped around her wrists, my thumbs pausing over her pulse. “You were a mark, a way for Jason to strike back at Foley. The same mark that, not just a few days ago, you comforted me over.” I jerked her in, getting my face close to hers. “I know it feels different switching out the unknown kid for being you, but I didn’t know who you were. Or why Jason had a hard-on for your stepdad. I didn’t know.”
Her lip curled. “Then what did you know?”
This was not the way I’d planned to tell her about Foley and the case, but if I didn’t come clean from start to finish, there’d never be another opportunity. Squeezing my eyes shut, I exhaled through my nose and sought the calm that was quickly eluding me.
“Foley likes teenage girls.” The words sounded so clinical, too hard, and I tried again. “Jason . . . he was pissed off at Foley. He’s hated him for years, and I suspect he knew that if you were killed, that would send Jay in a tailspin he’d never recover from. I could be wrong—it’s speculation on my part, pieced together from information I’ve gathered over the last few years. Rumors I’ve heard.” Stories I’ve been told.
Avery stared at me, her eyes glassy and unfocused. “He was obsessed with my mom.”
“Maybe it was a front—”
“No!” Her throat worked with a rough swallow. “You don’t understand—he was obsessed with her. Cooking her breakfast daily. Always coming home with these little chocolates that she could eat by the box. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. Until he had her murdered.”
Fuck, I hated seeing the pain in her eyes. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms, but it wasn’t the right time. If it will ever be the right time again.
“Avery, I’m telling you—I’ve been in the trenches, trying to bring this thing to light over the last few years. Trying to get him locked behind bars for the shit he’s done to these girls. None of them will come forward to testify. None of them will say shit, but they all have admitted to sleeping with Foley. Every single one.”
“How old?”
My heart slammed against the cage of my chest, like I’d been in a car going from eighty to ten in under thirty seconds. “What?”
“How old were they? These girls you’ve talked to?” She didn’t mention the case or the testifying, and I had a feeling she was trying to prioritize all the information I was spewing out like a broken sieve.
She was the strongest person I knew, and it gutted me to think that life experiences had molded her this way. That she could compartmentalize her own emotions in order to focus on the conversation at hand.
I’d called her brave before, but it was pretty obvious that “brave” was a gross understatement.
Releasing her, I shoved my fingers through my hair. “All ages. The youngest was sixteen. Two, rather. Two of them were sixteen.”
Avery seemed to be working through something in her head—mouth moving, though no words emerged, and she pushed past me to head for the living room. I trailed her, trying to work the fuck out where her brain was going.
I was a cop and even I was lost.
“Looks?” she asked as she shoved one foot in her jeans, then did the same with the other. “What did they all look like?”
“Young. Young—I don’t know, Avery. Where the hell are you going with this?”
Hands on the button of her jeans, she turned to me again. “Did they look like me?”
Since none of the girls had been willing to go on record or even come forward at all, my database with their information was slim. Practically nonexistent. I’d been running on fumes for years now, trying to make something of a case that no one wanted to bring to court but me.
But I was a man obsessed with redemption. Vengeance. It drove me every day, was the force that woke me up at morning, and was the reason I hardly slept.
“They didn’t have dark hair like you,” I said, “hell, I don’t know. Maybe a few did, but it was clearly dyed. Heights were all over the place, no sort of similarity there. Eyes . . . I don’t fucking remember.”
“He used to fuck Nat,” she said in an almost off-hand kind of way, “and call her ‘Catherine’ as he did so. She’s not blond, but a man like that . . . a man like Jay doesn’t kill his wife for no reason or sleep with girls because he can.” She shook her head, then moved to shove her feet into her shoes. “No, a man like that screws anyone he can, and pretends that they’re all his dear wife.”
“Whom he killed.”
“Sometimes good people do bad things.” With a raised brow, she bit off, “I mean, I technically agreed to kill you, but I don’t think I’m a bad person.”
23
Avery
The minute the words were out, and I registered Lincoln’s look of betrayal, I wished I could stuff them back into my mouth.
Yes, he’d once been sent to kill me, but that was ages ago.
I’d accepted Nat’s offer just last week.
It didn’t quite matter that I never planned to follow through, that I’d only entertained the idea for so brief a period that it barely counted. Because somewhere along the way . . . Lincoln had stolen my heart.
I didn’t know anything about love—had gone years without even a glimpse of it.
Momma, once, had lulled me to bed with talk of the language of love. I remembered little of what words she used or the stories she spun, but I’d never been able to forget the warmth that radiated from her voice as she murmured in my ear and tickled my sides to pull giggles from my six-year-old frame.
The minute I’d heard the gunshot that had stolen her from me, that warmth and joy was replaced with fear, isolation, vengeance.
Until Lincoln had strolled into my life, my version of the language of love had encompassed dark streets and even darker secrets. Then he’d touched me, and I’d come alive, gasping, wanting, my skin ablaze with heat and my chest rumbling with laughter.
And maybe it was just that the stupid organ in my chest was so desperate for affection that I was making more out of my emotions than I should.
“Lincoln,” I whispered, hating the tumultuous way he watched me, like he was torn between reacting out of his basic instincts and killing me before I struck first or crumbling right there before me. “I’m telling you right now that I had no plans to—”
“Who,” he ground out, blue eyes locked on my face with an intensity that was almost unholy. “And don’t lie, Avery. Who the fuck put you up to it?”
From the first time we’d met, I’d never completely feared Lincoln.
I’d been wary. I’d been suspicious of his attention.
Fear had never entered the equation—
until now.
Rage radiated from him, making the whites of his eyes brighter, his muscles stiffer, which in turn only made him look that much bigger. More imposing.
With my fingers tangling in his shirt, which hung down to my thighs, I stepped back in trepidation. “Does it matter?” I asked, not because I wanted to protect Nat, by any means, but because I hadn’t gone through with it.
Just like he didn’t go through with killing you.
We were two pieces to a puzzle built long before we’d ever entered the equation.
“Was it Nat?” he demanded. “Hampton?”
“Let them implode.”
Haint-blue eyes turned in my direction, and I despised the inner struggle that I saw there. My heart twisted at the sight of his pain, his hatred, which so mirrored my own.
“Let them both implode,” I said again, voice gathering strength. “I pulled a card for you, that first day we met. The present you didn’t want to know. It was Cruelty, Lincoln.” Squaring my shoulders, I approached him with caution. “Cruelty is a mind game. It’s driving yourself into the ground, never allowing yourself to move forward. You’re stuck in the same cycle. I’m stuck in the same cycle.”
Chest hitching, he cut eye contact. “The cards mean shit. This is real life, Avery. And, in real life, you don’t sit around waiting to be picked off while your guard is down. That’s not the way this works.”
“So, what are you going to do? Just waltz into their homes and kill them all?” I’d be the first to admit that I’d spent years wanting just the same, but from the look on Lincoln’s face . . . it wasn’t nearly the same thing.
He was spiraling. Retreating back to the violence that had been ingrained in him since childhood. And it seemed like a strike of fate that I realized . . . I couldn’t do the same. I wanted the love my momma had whispered to me about so fervently. I wanted to live, my conscience clear, knowing that I had taken the high road to my redemption. Through the courts, the way I should have done so long ago if I hadn’t been so fearful of my own shadow.
Be brave.
Be bold.
My momma had guided me for years now, and I’d never listened over the furious pounding of hatred that seethed like poison in my veins.
I had to listen to that guidance now.
“I’ll testify.” Jaw clenching, I swallowed my fear and stepped in front of Lincoln, so that he had no choice but to look down at me. “Whatever you need to lock Jay up for what he did, I’ll testify. He never touched me, but he killed my momma, and he can rot in hell for that.”
Heart catching in my throat, I gently touched Lincoln’s chest. Over his heart. Over the numbers and dates that reflected a life of horror and death. Somewhere in all that ink, I had a sneaking suspicion that he’d marked my death with a number, too.
“Tell me what you’ll need me to do,” came my whisper, “tell me, and I’ll do it.”
Hard blue eyes dropped to my fingertips on the even harder planes of his chest. And I knew it—I knew it before he even spoke—that this wasn’t my Lincoln, the man who brought me to orgasm and protected me from anyone who dared to pose a threat to my safety.
“Lincoln, c’mon. Don’t be impulsive. Think clearly. I lo—”
He spun away, leaving my hand to suspend in mid-air, forever grasping a ghost.
My momma.
My identity.
Him, a man who stood before me, though the ghosts of his pasts were drowning him still.
“I need you to stay here.”
My jaw dropped. “Are you serious? You’re not going to just leave me here while you go do all of—”
“You’re a liability.” Without waiting to see if I’d follow, he strode down the hallway. Ducked into his bedroom.
I followed like a lemming, ducking into the bedroom a heartbeat after him. “How the hell am I a liability?”
He stripped off his sweats. Naked as the day he was born, he yanked open his closet and began pulling out dark clothes. Pants. Long-sleeved shirt. Boots. One by one, he pulled them on—but not before arming himself. His trench knife, his two guns.
A walking armory, always and forever.
My gaze flicked to the rumpled sheets, and then fury displaced all else as I snapped, “I’m not a liability, Sergeant. I can take care of myself. I’m not—”
“You’re a liability to me.” The words shattered the otherwise silent bedroom like a crack of thunder. “I can’t think straight when you’re near me. If it came down to making a move against Jay or protecting you, I’d choose you. Every. Single. Time.”
“Then why—”
His mouth came crashing down on mine, stealing my fury and giving me his own in return. The kiss was brutal, unromantic, a stake of claim and possession—but who was claiming who . . . I didn’t know, not anymore.
Tearing away, his blue eyes flashed with heat. “I don’t deserve you, Avery. You’re . . . you’re light where I’m dark.” He shook his head, a wry laugh escaping his lips. “I picked the Dominion card for you, and I’m going to make that happen.”
“And what about you?” I worked out, an edge to my voice.
“You picked Death for me, remember?” He gently nudged me to the side, stepping out of the room. “Stay here.” One glance over his shoulder revealed a touch of sadistic humor in his gaze. “I once asked if you knew how to obey—here’s your chance to prove that you can follow an order.”
The slamming of the front door coincided with me picking my jaw off the floor from his high-handed arrogance.
And even though he was gone, and the house was empty, my soul fractured anyway, belting out my anger in a way that I’d always kept locked inside before.
“I lied!” I shouted to no one. “I lied!”
Death was meant to be his new beginning, not a suicide mission that landed him in a tomb with me grieving yet another person I’d loved being taken from me too soon.
The man thought he was invincible.
He wasn’t.
Would never be.
But I’d be damned if I let anything happen to him.
Be brave.
Be bold.
There wasn’t any other choice.
24
Lincoln
Anger had long been my biggest motivator.
It ruled my heart. It sabotaged my hopes for something more than the life I lived. It wrapped its claws around my ankles and dragged me back into the flames whenever something good entered my world.
Avery was that slice of good—and like all those who’d come before her, she’d been forced to make the decision between taking me out or letting me live.
Unlike the others, she’d given me life.
But that was the thing about anger. It was hard to shake. Harder to ignore. And as I flung open the door to Whiskey Bay, anger was the sole force driving me forward.
“Asher?” said a familiar voice to my left. “Man, I’m gonna be honest, you’re persona non grata over here right now. Nat’s not going to want to see your face, so I’d get the fuck out—”
Kevan’s sentence died when my hand wrapped around his throat.
Our eyes met.
Fear swirled in his, and his hands came up to grasp at my hand, desperation making each move sloppy. Blunt nails scratched my flesh. His mouth popped open, and I heard his ragged gasp. Noted the reddening in his cheeks as I kept him suspended an inch off the ground.
My grip never slackened.
“You’re going to let me upstairs.” Quiet, lethal, my voice barely reached a pitch high enough to draw attention to us. The Birkenstock crowd was too concerned about the women dancing to even glance in our direction. Perfect. Jerking Kevan close, our noses almost brushed. “You tell Nat that I’m here and I’ll finish what I started.” My gaze dropped to my hand encircling his throat in a clear threat. “Don’t fuck me over, Kev. It never ends well.”
Lips purpling, his tongue darted out to wet the bottom one. “P-please—”
“It’s a yes or a no. You let me up
stairs and tell her nothing. That’s the way this shit is going to play out.”
His head bobbed, fingers scrambling for purchase, and I dropped him a breath later.
Legs quivering, his hands went to his knees as he dragged in air. “W-what the fuck is wrong with you?”
In a rare moment when Nat hadn’t explicitly showed her hatred for me, she’d once ruffled my hair and teased, “Lincoln, our resident killer.”
That’d been before I’d murdered her brother on Ambideaux’s command.
Before she and Jason had separated and then divorced.
Before she’d requested Avery handle the honors and end my life.
For twenty-seven years she’d been at my throat, waiting for any opportunity to throw me under the bus and watch me suffer. I was done playing by the rules. Done letting her have the upper hand because she didn’t have a penis and should be left alone.
I wouldn’t kill her—she wasn’t worthy of being taken out quickly—but I’d make her life hell.
I turned my gaze on Kevan, who’d always been Nat’s part-time fuckbuddy when she wasn’t busy screwing dignitaries as a full-time gig. “Unlock the door to the Basement.”
He laughed, the sound crude and hollow. “It’s your head or mine if I do that, Ash, and I like mine just where it—”
He didn’t see it coming.
My arm around his wiry chest, the other locked over his mouth to keep him from shouting and making a scene. I knew Whiskey Bay like the back of my hand, and I dragged his thrashing body back, back, back, until we were ensconced in a side closet brimming with cleaning supplies.
“I hope she fucking kills you for this shit. You’re no better than Jason—”
His words died with my fist colliding with his cheek. Head swiveling to the left, a grunt broke free from his mouth—and I didn’t miss the irony with this little setup. Ambideaux had done the same to me in my townhouse. Had shoved me into a chair and tried to break me.
I wasn’t trying to break Kevan. Wasn’t trying to kill him either.
