Beautiful Things Evil People Do

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  Jynx’s jaw tics.

  “Very well,” he says, smiling as Jynx pulls out my chair. I note the cane held tight in the man’s hand as he rises. “I will meet you in room six. I’m a little slow.”

  We walk, past the bar, to the private dungeons.

  Once inside, Jynx stares at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A mob boss,” he replies.

  “I gathered that much!”

  He licks his lips as I turn away. “She was seventeen and a mistake.”

  “Because she was seventeen?” I furiously yell, full of contempt.

  “No, because it got my ass suspended from my cousin’s club,” he says, forcing me to face him. “After my uncle beat the fuck out of me.”

  “How unfortunate for you! How many women have you coerced? Or you know, let’s just call vermin what it is! How many bitches have you raped with all that hatred you stash up in your heart?”

  Not exactly true, but I only know how Jynx is with me.

  Undisclosed. Cryptic.

  Shrouded in a cloak of secrets and half-truths.

  Refusing to acknowledge my tirade, he warns, “You need to stop.”

  I do not listen.

  “How many times did you follow in Daddy’s footsteps Jynx?”

  His fingers swipe across my cheek with an angry sting. “Do not ever talk to me that way again. It was one time. One mistake. And I will not be burned at the stake because she was a fucking whore and as guilty as any of us. Do you want to know how many guys in the club had her?”

  “I don’t give a shit about those guys or that fucking cunt,” I sass, pressing my hand to my cheek. “And I shouldn’t give a shit about you either. You ran your bike into the wall. Admit it!”

  “Abigail!”

  “Don’t fucking Abigail me!” I vehemently roar. “You didn’t tell me!”

  He backs up, threatening, “We’re not having this meltdown now. This is a discussion we need to have in private.”

  “When would you prefer to have it, Sir?” I sass, unrelenting. “When can I schedule an appointment?”

  “You know, there are lots of things you haven’t told me either.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he mutters, walking toward the door. “I’ll be waiting for you, like I promised. Enjoy your time with Dominic Gennaro.”

  37

  Hanging On By A Thread

  Echo

  Jynx leaves, slamming the door as devastation flutters through my heart. My eyes weep with regret at the harshness of the things said.

  Things said but not said.

  I’m full-blown crying when the strange man opens the door. He’s not as tall as Jynx, but with a lean definition, he boasts a grand air. He isn’t a man to mess with. My breathing turns erratic, and my feet sweat in the boots.

  He politely asks, “Are you okay?”

  I slide to sit onto the oversized padded table and hang my head low, ripping my mask off. I shake through the calamitous ache. “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t know about his issues,” he says, stepping closer. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have brought them up with you present. But we don’t need any problems when he returns to Texas. I don’t like drama. I needed to confirm that he would behave before extending our hand to facilitate his venture.”

  “Was he in Texas when it happened?” I peer up, needing something to cling to—anything, a fraying thread. I’m drowning in the seas, swept away and stuck between the obstacles ramming into my body. I’ll live through the flood, but I won’t survive the wreckage impacting my spirit with the vengeance of a landslide.

  “No,” he replies, standing before me. “We were at my house in New Orleans for the holidays. I walked in on them.”

  “So the deed was done,” I acknowledge, crying harder. “He was…fucking this girl. He had his dick inside of her when you walked in.”

  I search for air traps to breathe before I suffocate.

  This man brings oxygen and warm hands.

  “You need to know a few things about Jynx. He’s a great guy…”

  “But he has a bad habit of not revealing things that matter,” I interrupt as his finger presses to my lip. I refuse to stop, leaning back. “He should’ve told me. We had plenty of time on the farm.”

  “Silence, little one. Listen.” His smooth tone and gripping gaze force my attention before dropping his hand. “He isn’t the type to ever focus on one woman. You’re the first. If that doesn’t tell you something about how he feels for you I don’t know what will. I’ve known him since he was a kid because his dad was in business with my dad.”

  “Jynx is mafia?”

  “No,” he hastily replies and hands me his handkerchief emblazoned with a DMG. “Jynx’s father, Montgomery Monroe, handled multiple Gennaro books and investments for years. I know Jynx by association, but he spent plenty of time in the club in New Orleans.”

  Tears cannot wash away this kind of pain. We’re not making it out of this one. “How did he end up there?”

  “He ran away at sixteen to his uncle—Deacon’s father—who owned Reckless Rebellion.” My lip trembles as I glance around the room. “With his uncle’s encouragement and an RR cut on his back, Jynx went back home to South Carolina to finish school. He stayed until his uncle passed away, and then he went to mourn in Tennessee with some of the other club members. He was always finding trouble at home because of an overbearing, meddling mother and an absent father. His grandmother and the club raised that boy.”

  I pause and blot my tears. “… Did you know Clementine?”

  “I did,” he answers, smiling fondly. “I was in her dungeon a time or two. Before you, Jynx used and discarded women like fast food packaging. You’re the first one he’s placed on a pedestal and honored like his queen. Don’t doubt his intentions, even if the delivery isn’t what you expect. That young man…”

  Rubbing my nose, I snicker, “He’s thirty-seven.”

  “When you watch them grow up, they’re all young men, Echo,” he informs with a steely gaze. “Jynx has been to hell and back. Drinking, drugs, women, accidents…jail—he’s done it all. But he’ll never be bad to you.”

  “You’re defending him even though you showed up to lay down the law.”

  He smirks and caresses his finger over my cheek. “Because that is what a good father figure does. He’s present for his boys, no matter what. He never allows loneliness or despair to creep into their world. He keeps them up on the rails. So chin up, Buttercup. Rise above this bullshit of the past.”

  “His dad and brother…”

  He lifts his finger to my lips again. “His father has a problem and as for Axel, I’m still working on him. I’m not allowing you to dismiss Jynx because the situation is uncomfortable. Your reaction is unnecessary.”

  “Not uncalled for though,” I point out, arguing. “I have every right to be concerned.”

  “But not like this,” he consoles with a tenderhearted stare. “You’re special and you need to trust him.”

  “He doesn’t like younger women, but yet…” I shrug as my emotions collapse in a quandary. Jynx clearly has an issue, and until stalking me, he managed to sequester those feelings. I don’t know how I feel about becoming…being…his source of addiction. “How long can we reasonably last until the lust runs out? Until I am thirty, maybe? When he spots some hot young thing with perky breasts and no kids and I’m nothing more than a memory to him, what do I do then? How far do I let this go before knowing Jynx Monroe will only butcher my heart in the end?”

  He sighs, deeply and fully. “And what if, he never does that? What if, he is in love with you until the end?”

  His fingers linger on my cheek, comforting, endearing, before grazing the pads over my neck, encircled by the diamond halo symbolic of my subservience. He gently traces the leash to the dip in my cleavage as he parts the folds of my shirt. I say nothing as I unfasten th
e blouse and dismiss the fabric from my flesh. His hand never leaves my breastbone, flattening against my heart.

  I glance up to find the curious fire burning inside of the man. “How old are you?”

  “Forty-eight.”

  I unclasp the bra and remove it from my body. “Tell me what he sees. Make me understand that I’m worth the risk to his sobriety.”

  His hand cuts a distinct path around the upper curve of my left breast, to the side, and cups the weight in his hand. He lowers his head and closes his eyes as I stop breathing with another man’s touch.

  He isn’t Jynx.

  He is a foreigner…an intruder…an immigrant to my unchartered lands.

  My borders are not closed.

  At least, not for this one. I have fallen into a peaceful acceptance where I must trust his wisdom and guidance to see me through the arduous journey to the man I love. I will not traverse this magnificent range without this stranger. This stranger who I have become one with. This stranger who has dried my tears and told me tales inches me ever closer down the path where the man I love resides.

  The tenebrous passage is a darkened tunnel into a mountainside or a subway with no power—I cannot see a goddamned thing—and yet, I sink into the rhythm of his lead and follow along, a needy pilgrim seeking refuge in the night.

  I won’t make it to Jynx’s encampment tonight, or even tomorrow, or next week, or maybe even next year, but if I stay close, he’ll help in my plight and allocate the necessary resources to ensure I reach my destination.

  Somewhere in the cage of Jeremiah Monroe.

  He loves me; this, I do not doubt.

  But if we’re merging, bridging the gap of fifteen years and tons of experience, we’ll need hardhats for excavation and a mediator to handle our challenges. And this—mobster before me—with his fine tailored silk suit and Italian leather loafers is offering to be my tour guide into hell.

  “Will Jynx be working for you?” I whisper as his eyes slit, and he glances up with a menacing leer, a God with a bulldozer from the underworld sanctum.

  “That’s a difficult question.”

  He’s volunteering to be my tunnel rat, exposing me to things unseen, things which terrify good earth-dwelling mortals. He is not of this world. I’m being cordially invited into their chambers as a scared sacrifice with their pledge to keep me safe.

  I try the question another way. “Will history be repeating itself, Capo?”

  His lips perk with a touch of a smirk, playful, almost bashful. He’s dangerous, this man. He plays a wicked game. “I am no Capo, sweetheart. I am but the historian of relics and figures.”

  “Hands clean and notches on the belt?”

  “You could say that.” He smirks.

  Lifting an inquisitive brow, I accuse, “You librarian, discipliner. You, with all of that, cleave into my world without warrant or validation. How can you leave me like this?”

  “I’m not abandoning you.” He chuckles once, deep and foreboding. “You’re club royalty.”

  “Fallen from grace,” I admonish, knowing the toll my father’s philandering took on not only his reputation but the family name, including me. “I’m not welcome anywhere, by any club, in the South.”

  “Deacon welcomed you.”

  “To join his bandwagon of criminal outlaws and mischief makers in the mafia?” I rhetorically blast with the force of a nuclear bomb. “Why would the daughter of a Rampage VP want anything to do with the mafia?”

  His thick, burly eyebrows lift with a declaration. “Because you need protection.”

  “I’m a college student—soon, a doctorate student. I do not need your security detail, Mr. Gennaro.”

  “But you do because everyone knows what your father did.”

  “My father is a bad man…but he is still my father.”

  “Your father raped Tawny—brutally, horrifically, in front of you when you went home for the holiday. Fireworks blasted with beautiful colors in the sky while the seeds of abomination planted in your mind.”

  I shake my head and squeeze my way past the sanctimonious thug in his expensive threads. Lucky, he still has them. Mine are unraveling, eaten by moths, and left to decay like peacock feathers in the jungle-like sun. “I’m not doing this with you.”

  He latches onto my arm. “The hell you aren’t!”

  Shit. He’s stronger than I imagined.

  He pushes me face-first onto the table, lifts my skirt, and strikes my ass with his blasted cane. “Stop!” I bellow. But no one can hear me. “Don’t do this!”

  “No!” He yells with conviction. “You don’t get to swindle my boy into falling for you and bolt when things get tough!” He pops the wooden cane against my ass again. Harder than before. The welts burn on my butt cheeks. “Daddy wanted you to watch so you knew what a real man should do! His brothers held you down and made you bear witness to the villainy so you wouldn’t end up like Brandon!”

  “Fuck you!”

  “We can do that too, sweetness,” he charmingly warns, popping his belt off. “I can show you if need be!”

  “No, please! I belong to Jynx!” I beg, sobbing, knowing what I just said, claiming him as my owner. My legs are threatening to give out from under me as I barely hold onto the table. “I promise to be better. I promise I won’t put up the ad again. Please don’t rape me!”

  And only then do I know the reason for his lesson.

  He lunges, hovering over my back and whispering in my ear. His warm, whiskey tinted breath crashes onto me. “What I want you to do, is promise to be good to Jynx. That is what I want. I need you to slow down, take two deep breaths before you jump off the cliff into the ocean. Before you decide this relationship is over and you break his fucking heart, make sure that is what you really want to do. Because I will be cleaning up that mess of a man and there won’t be any coming back on my watch. We do not have a revolving door.”

  With drool and snot bubbling onto the black leather, I whisper the only thing that makes sense. “Spank me, Daddy.” My words drip like honey rushing through the ravine where Jynx resides as I stand with my escort to the other side.

  This time—he truly could be my father.

  Twenty-six years separate our experience, distancing, as he volunteers to cauterize the wounds of my past, flushing them with his blood, and rending new scars for his minions to tend.

  This is my sundering; this is my reawakening.

  His belt shoots out of the loops, and soon I’m met with lash after lash of permeating heat rising, festering in my body. Every welt bites worse than the last until my core glows with the embers of love. This isn’t about crossing Jynx, but serving another and growing from within.

  A strange man that Jynx believes in, pushes that boundary, and propels my inner reflection. He doesn’t restrain but delivers fucked up, precision strokes like a machete to the thick underbrush. He provides the fuel that I burn through faster than a rocket launching.

  We’re getting somewhere, but this will take time and healing.

  The journey is long with demons crossing, haphazardly at will.

  “Did you like what you saw that night?”

  “I hate you,” I whimper, unable to stop crying as he callously impacts my buttocks again. “I hate you so much.”

  “Did his moves foster all the hate you felt, Abigail?”

  “Yes, to everything! I’m a terrible human being. And do you know what? I don’t deserve Jynx or this or any of it! You should’ve just let me die to a hoodlum in a dank alley! I didn’t ask for a merry gang to hold my hand in the dark.”

  “But you did,” he alleges, rubbing the bruises. “You cried out for help. And we answered the call.”

  “Fuck all of this. I can’t do it anymore. Just let me go back to being mediocre and quiet. Just let me get back to being me.”

  “This is the new you,” he contends, slipping his hand low and running over the damp lace between my thighs. I struggle to understand how all of this happened from one stupid mis
take. “And she is so fucking beautiful.”

  The belt singes against my rump like I’m being sawed in two at a circus. Only the blade isn’t a trick, but an agonizing pulse, ticking in my veins. “Please just let me go and forget it all ever happened. Let me have a tombstone so Jynx doesn’t have to fight my war. I’m not worth this much trouble. I’ll never be good enough.”

  “Not a chance, doll.” He breathes as his belt buckle clanks against the floor. His hand moves off of my back, releasing the pressure. I stand still, barely breathing, waiting on his next move as he confirms my worst fears, “You belong to Jynx and his brothers now.”

  I clutch my things and dash for the door. I toss the sheer blouse over my breasts and make my way from the private dungeons to the club. I hate navigating anything, so I’m slower than I would like to be as I scan the crowd for Jynx. The man with his cane won’t be able to chase after me. Jynx will.

  In the middle of the dance floor, I spot his foreboding frame arched around a girl in red leather. They’re bumping and grinding, having a good old time, while I embarked on a deliriously intense scene with a delusional madman.

  I want my top.

  I need my Dom.

  But he’s with her.

  I am alone, crying, lost, as the thread snaps.

  And I am gone.

  Spotting a neon yellow-shirted member of Madame Tilda’s team, I grab her arm and plead, “Can you show me to the exit? I need to catch a taxi.”

  38

  Suicide Hotel

  Jynx

  I never saw her leave.

  Fuck.

  I pace, waiting for my car from the valet, not knowing how long she’s been gone or where she went. In the amount of time I’ve wasted on them fetching my vehicle, I could’ve run to get it and been halfway back to the hotel by now.

  I cannot escape the past, who I was, or what I did. I won’t deny any of it. I’ve paid for my sins—time and time and time again. Trouble finds me. It’s in my middle name. I’m the archangel of the abyss, the king of an army of locusts residing in the pits of hell as I champion destruction.