by W. Winters
I couldn’t kill all of them. After all, someone had to talk. And he will, with two hands that work just fine.
“Did you have something to say now?” I ask him, not bothering to hide my face. He will die the slowest and most painful death I can conjure for the last words he spoke to me:
You’re no ghost. You’re no grim reaper.
You’re just a man about to have his heart ripped out.
Any of the myriad enemies I have could be behind this. But there’s only one I can tie each of these pricks to. Only one who would go after her entire family.
There’s a reason she’s supposed to be mine.
Everyone will pay.
This world will burn if they hurt her.
Cody
“Tell me again what happened,” Skov asks me. Again. The fucker doesn’t know when to give up.
“They were already dead,” I tell him. My tone is menacing and I pray to God for more control than I currently have while staring at the half-wit across the steel table from me. Every so often his left eye twitches. The dumb fuck can’t control himself or his nerves.
“You’re wasting time looking in the wrong direction and meanwhile, she’s gone!”
“This isn’t the first time she’s been hiding out—”
Rage is unbecoming. Marcus told me that once. He cautioned me to contain it, but the worst bits of it boil over as I listen to this incapable fool imply that Delilah, my Delilah, left of her own free will.
“She was taken.” The back of my teeth grind all while the words spill out. “Someone went to her sister’s home, and took her.”
“And the men there when we arrived? Did someone else kill them too?
“You just happened to be at the scene, your girlfriend missing, men dead on site …” The dumb fuck who has it all wrong leans forward on the steel table, inching his face closer to mine.
The skin around my knuckles is tight as I clench my fist with the unbearable need to slam it into his smirk as he adds, “And you just happened to arrive after everything went down.”
“There would be evidence,” I grit out, although my vision blurs and I swear I see red. “Gunshot residue on my hands, perhaps, if I’d fired a fucking gun!” The words claw up my throat, each one raising the intensity as I stare him down. I stand up straight, throwing the metal chair back and listening to it clang as I scream at him. “Do your fucking job!”
The snide look on his face vanishes, fear flashing in his gaze as he backs away slowly. My shoulders hunch, my breathing coming and going as if I’ve just chased down the man responsible for all of this. Everything is tight and suffocating.
“I think it’s best you calm down, Special Agent Walsh.”
The statement isn’t uttered with contempt, not with anything other than innate concern as he takes another step back.
Everything is so hot; I’m nothing but a caged animal in here. “I need to help find her.” I barely get out the words before inhaling deep and slow. My head spins. “This can’t be happening.”
Where the fuck was he? Marcus killed them, but what about the woman he claims to love so much. Where the hell was he when she needed him?
With both hands behind my head, I turn my back to the interrogator. “I don’t have time for this. I didn’t do it and she’s out there.” The statement is simple and accurate.
“You just happened to get there … and Miss Jones? She was already gone?” He repeats the same question but without the doubt and thinly veiled sarcasm. As if he’s only double-checking facts.
Lowering my arms and picking up the chair, I tell him, “We were on the phone.” The metal legs scratch against the floor as I put the chair back into place and take a seat. “She screamed, the phone dropped and I heard her screaming and then it was muffled and then …”
Fuck, my hands tremble and I can’t even look him in the eyes.
“A man’s voice said something and then the line went out. I was close, but not close enough. The first thing I did was call in the disturbance.”
Lie. The first thing I did was message Marcus. They have my phone. They’ll have the number. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
He got there first and left a fucking mess for me to walk in on with cops trailing behind me.
“And when you got there, the suspects were exactly as they were when we found them?”
I can only nod. Nothing else is able to come out.
“It’s one hell of a coincidence …” Skov states, taking the seat across from me, leaning back casually.
“I’m aware,” I say.
“You know we have to go through it all. Everything that was on you, your office, your records.”
The filing cabinet flashes in front of my eyes. I nod then tell him, “I understand, but put men out there. Don’t waste time.” I plead with him instead of giving any thought to what’s inside that filing cabinet in my office.
Please, for the love of God, don’t look in the cabinet. It’s locked. There’s no reason to. Not unless they wanted to pin this on me. Not unless they tie the phone number I messaged to any other crimes.
Fuck, fuck. Doubt surrounds me and it’s then that the interrogation door opens.
The other officer who took me in, I forget his name, strides in with heavy footsteps. His thin lips are pressed in a tight line and he flashes me a narrowed, untrusting gaze.
“I’m only going to ask you this once, and I expect full disclosure and honesty.” The severity in his tone sends a prick of warning down my spine. “You only have one chance to keep your job, Special Agent Walsh. If there’s even a possibility of that. How is the wanted criminal who goes by Marcus involved in all this? I want to know everything you know about him.”
To be continued…
The third and final book is available for preorder now: And I Love You the Most.
The first book belonged to Delilah. The second to Marcus. The third is Cody’s … in a way. You’ll have to read it and see.
This Love Hurts.
But I Need You.
And I Love You the Most, book three, is the epic conclusion in this darkly provocative, woven tale.
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Sneak Peek at Merciless
From USA Today bestselling author W Winters comes a heart-wrenching, edge-of-your-seat gripping, romantic suspense.
I should’ve known she would ruin me the moment I saw her.
Women like her are made to destroy men like me.
I couldn’t resist her though.
Given to me to start a war; I was too eager to accept.
But I didn’t know what she’d do to me. That she would change everything.
She sees through me in a way no one else ever has.
Her innocence and vulnerability make me weak for her and I hate it.
I know better than to give in to temptation.
A ruthless man doesn’t let a soul close to him.
A cold-hearted man doesn’t risk anything for anyone.
A powerful man with a beautiful woman at his mercy … he doesn’t fall for her.
Chapter 1
Carter
War is coming.
It’s something I’ve known for over two years.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
My jaw ticks in time with the skin over my knuckles turning white as my fist clenches tight
er. The tension in my stiff shoulders rises and I have to remind myself to breathe in deep and let the strain of it all go away.
Tick. Tock. It’s the only sound echoing off the walls of my office and with each passing of the pendulum the anger grows.
It’s always like this before I go to a meet. This one in particular sends a thrill through my blood, the adrenaline pumping harder with each passing minute.
My gaze moves from the grandfather clock in my office to the shelves next to it and then beneath them to the box made of mahogany and steel. It’s only three feet deep and tall and six feet long. It blends into the right wall of my office, surrounded by polished bookshelves that carry an aroma of old books.
I paid more than I should have simply to put on display. All any of this is a façade. People’s perceptions are their reality. And so I paint the picture they need to see so I can use them as I see fit. The expensive books and paintings, polished furniture made of rare wood… All of it is bullshit.
Except for the box. The story that came with it will stay with me forever. In all of the years, it’s the one of the few memories that I can pin point as a defining moment. The box never leaves me.
The words from the man who gave it to me are still as clear as is the memory of his pale green eyes, glassed over as he told me his story.
About how it kept him safe when he was a child. He told me how his mother had shoved him in it to protect him.
I swallow thickly, feeling my throat tighten and the cord in my neck strain with the memory. He painted the picture so well.
He told me how he clung to his mother seeing how panicked she was. But he did as he was told, he stayed quiet in the safe box and could only listen while the men murdered his mother.
It was the story he gave me with the box he offered to barter for his life. And it reminded me of my own mother telling me goodbye before she passed.
Yes, his story was touching, but the defining moment is when I put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger regardless.
He tried to steal from me and then pay me with a box as if the money he laundered was a debt or a loan. William was good at stealing, at telling stories, but the fucker was a dumb prick.
I didn’t get to where I am by playing nicely and being weak. That day I took the box that saved him as a reminder of who I was. Who I needed to be.
I made sure that box has been within my sight for every meeting I’ve had in this office. It’s a reminder for me so I can stare at it in this god forsaken room as I make deal after deal with criminal after criminal and collect wealth and power like the dusty old books on these shelves.
It cost me a fortune to get this office exactly how I wanted. But if it were to burn down, I could buy it all over again.
Everything except for that box.
“You really think they’re going through with it?” I hear Daniel, my brother, before I see him. The memories fade in an instant and my heart beat races faster than the tick tock of that fucking clock.
It takes a second for me to be conscious of my facial expression, to relax it and let go of the anger before I can raise my gaze to his.
“With the war and the deal? You think he’ll go through with it?” he clarifies.
A small huff leaves me, accompanied by a smirk, “He wants this more than anything else,” I answer him.
Daniel stalks into the room slowly, the heavy door to my office closing with a soft kick of his heel before he comes to stand across from me.
“And you’re sure you want to be right in the middle of it?”
I lick my lower lip and stand from my desk, stretching as I do and turning my gaze to the window in my office. I can hear Daniel walking around the desk as I lean against it and cross my arms.
“We won’t be in the middle of it. It’ll be the two of them, our territory is close, but we can stay back.”
“Bullshit. He wants you to fight with him and he’s going to start this war tonight and you know it.”
I nod slowly, the smell of Romano’s cigars filling my lungs at the memory of him.
“There’s still time to call it off,” Daniel says and it makes my brow pinch and place a crease on my forehead. He can’t be that naïve.
It’s the first time I’ve really looked at him since he’s been back. He spent years away. And every fucking day I fought for what we have. He’s gone soft. Or maybe it’s Addison that’s turned him into the man standing in front of me.
“This war has to happen.” My words are final and the tone is one not to be questioned. I may have grown this business on fear and anger. Each step forward followed by the hollow sound of a body dropping behind me, but that’s not how it started. Y can’t build an empire with blood stained hands and not expect death to follow you.
His dark eyes narrow as he pushes off the desk and moves closer to the window, his gaze flickering between me and the meticulously maintained garden stories below us.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” his voice is low and I barely hear it. He doesn’t look back at me and a chill flows down my arms and the back of my neck as I take in his stern expression.
It takes me back years ago. Back to when we had a choice and chose wrong.
When whether or not we wanted to go through with it meant something.
“There are men to the left of us,” I tell him as I step forward and close the distance between us. “There are men to the right. There is no possible outcome where we don’t pick a side.”
He nods once and slides his thumb across the stubble on his chin before looking back at me. “And the girl?” he asks me, his eyes piercing into mine and reminding me that both of us survived, both of us fought, and each of us has a tragic path that led us to where we are today.
“Aria?” I dare to speak her name and the sound of my smooth voice seems to linger in the space between us. I don’t wait for him to acknowledge me, or her rather.
“She has no choice.” My voice tightens as I say the words.
Clearing my throat, I lean my palms against the window, feeling the frigid fall beneath my hands and leaning forward to see Addison beneath us, Daniel’s Addison. “What do you think they would have done to Addison if they’d succeeded in taking her?”
His jaw hardens but he doesn’t answer my question. Instead he replies, “We don’t know who it was who tried to take her from me.”
I shrug as if it’s semantics and not at all relevant. “Still. Women aren’t meant to be touched, but they went for Addison first.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Daniel says with indignation in his tone.
“Isn’t it better she come to us?” My head tilts as I question him and this time he takes a moment to respond.
“She’s not one of us. Not like Addison and you know what Romano expects you to do with her.”
“Yes, the daughter of the enemy…” My heart beats hard in my chest, and the steady rhythm reminds me of the ticking of the clock. “I know exactly what he wants me to do with her.”
Click here to keep reading Merciless!
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