CRUEL SEDUCTION
KELLI CALLAHAN
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
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Kelli’s Voracious Vixens
About the Author
Also by KELLI CALLAHAN
Cruel Temptations
Prologue
SEBASTIAN
There is no greater revenge than the kind served cold and dead. The kind that is unexpected and long feared by professional backstabbers. My blood itches with the need to put my brother’s head on a damn platter for what he did. He ruined my life. Five years behind bars. Five years of pissing in front of someone and beating the hell of men who try and sneak a peek.
I have one year left in this shithole. The walls are caving in a little closer every day. The orange jumpsuit is uncomfortable and scratches my skin. I swear they don’t wash them: it’s disgusting. The food is even worse. Cold, thick stew every day. I believe they blended all the food up and pour it on a plate.
I would almost rather starve. Almost.
I stare at the marks I’ve carved in the wall. A tally for every day I’ve been here. Only 365 more. Crossing my arms above my head, my eyes lock on the metal that makes the bed above mine. My new cell mate, Gregor, s in the bunk above me. I hate new cell mates. Especially ones that are so damn vocal.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he moans quietly as he jerks off. His skin slaps together, and it makes me angrier by the second.
I hit the bottom of the bed with my fist. “Quiet up there. I don’t care if you get off, but do it with your lips shut.”
There isn't much time to pleasure yourself unless you get with other guys, and that isn’t my style. There have been attempts, and every guy walks away with a broken nose and a few teeth missing from my fist slamming in their face.
Life in prison is far from easy. It’s an eye for an eye in here. Survival of the fittest.
And when a man needs to get off, the only place he’s safe is in his cell.
I stopped doing that shit years ago because it wasn’t worth the fights it caused in here.
Another reason? I miss the feeling of being with a woman. When the day comes that I get to feel soft curves and warmth again, it will be the best day of my life. It will feel so good that waiting all that time to come will be worth it.
“Hell yeah, that’s good,” Gregor mumbles to himself, and I curl my lip, smashing my fist on the bed again.
“If you care for your health, you’ll shut up. Last warning, Gregor,” I say through clenched teeth and tight fingers as they curl into my palm.
He quietens, and then all I hear is the bed shaking, balls slapping against his fist, and a grunt when he comes.
I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. I hate listening to that shit.
“Knight,” the correctional officer barks at me through the bars. The keys jingle on his hip as he stretches the retractable wire from his belt so he can insert the key in the lock without having to take it off his belt loop. “You have a visitor. You know the routine.”
I swing my legs over the bed and plant my feet on the filthy ground, lifting a brow in confusion. I haven’t had a visitor since I got here.
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know why anyone would want to see your useless ass,” Andrews, the correctional officer, sneers at me.
I turn around and give him my back, pushing my hands through the small hole so he can cuff me. Andrews is a real bastard when it comes to cuffs and cruelty. He loves to tighten the metal until the skin bleeds. I have scars around my wrists because of him, but I never show my pain.
Pain is just another feeling a man can use over another man in a place like this.
The iron door slides open with a rough clank, and Andrews grabs me by the front of my jumpsuit and pulls me out of the cell. I stumble into the wall, my shoulder taking most of the hit against the cement. A flare of pain spreads through my muscle, but I keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to give Andrews the satisfaction.
The metal door clanks again, slamming shut, and Andrews locks it. “Get going,” he says, shoving me in the back.
I swear, the first man I’m going kill when I get out of here is Andrews. His days are numbered. The chains holding my hands together rattle as I walked. A few guys that I’m great enemies with come to the front of their cells and wrap their hands around the bars. The crazy bastards bite the air, showing their yellow teeth.
One guy, a drug cartel leader, places his fingers against his temple in the shape of a gun, and mock pulls the trigger. He’s telling me he’s going to shoot me. I doubt it. I’m too good at covering my tracks, and when I get out of here, I’m going ghost. No one will be able to find me.
I keep my shoulders back, back straight, and head held high to make sure I can always see where I’m going. The minute someone casted their eyes down was the minute they got attacked.
Weakness isn’t allowed.
The guys taunting me as I walk by their cages would never challenge me when we’re free to roam. No one touches me. I’m a king in here, and I plan to be a king out in the world too once I get my chance.
The buzzer to the door and the lock sound at the same time to signal the large metal opening for us. The door is old, tan paint chipping to show the silver beneath, and the square window in the middle of it is cracked. The place is a real shithole, but us criminals don’t deserve any better.
Only I do, actually, because I didn’t do the crime I was charged with. I’m not a saint, never have been, but if I’m going to go down for something, I want it to be for my own doing, not someone else’s.
“Third booth,” Andrews says, pressing his hand between my shoulder blades and driving me forward.
I crack my neck, turning it side to side to relieve the tension of wanting to turn around and show that guy just who he’s fucking with, but his time will come. I have to be patient. My chains continue to jingle as I walk by a few guys talking on the phone to their visitor on the other side of the glass. Orange jumpsuit after orange jumpsuit fill each space until I come to the booth reserved for my visit.
The big brown eyes staring back at me have my feet frozen on the spot. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. What is she doing here? She isn’t supposed to be here. She is supposed to be gone, away from me, safe.
She has a blackeye and a busted lip, her flawless complexion is bruised, covered in abuse, and all I have are questions.
“Sit down, inmate.”
I twist my head over my shoulder to look at Andrews, and he squeezes his baton, the side of his jaw flexing, as he silently urges me to disobey.
Not a chance.
I swivel my head to the glass again, where the woman that haunts my fucking soul sits on the other side, completely untouchable.
I never thought I’d see her eyes again. With a racing heart, I sit and pick up the black phone to the left of me. She does th
e same.
“Gabriella,” I say her name on a broken breath. “What are you doing here?”
“I know. I know what you said.” She glances away, and the light above us illuminates another bruise on her cheek.
“What happened?” I can’t say I’m glad to see her. She’s the woman who makes my heart beat quicker than any illegal job I’ve ever done. She’s forbidden, wrong, a seduction that I can’t give into.
She is lawless.
“He found me,” Gabriella whispers as a tear falls down her cheek.
My racing heart stops beating the second I hear those three words. “That’s impossible,” I reply. I got her a new name, new passport, an ID, birth certificate, and forged divorce papers. There’s no way my brother could have found her.
I cared so much about her and triple checked that she was safe and out of harm’s way before I got sentenced.
See, I’m in love with my brother’s ex-wife, and there is no chance in hell we can ever be together. He will kill her, and I’ll never forgive myself. So I’ve always stayed a hundred steps away from her to stop myself from bringing her to where she belongs.
Safe in my arms.
“He told me to come here. To send you a message.” She covers her mouth with her hand and lays the phone on her shoulder to take a moment to get herself together.
Her dark hair has lost its luster and shine. Her nails are short, and I can see where she’s been picking at the cuticle from the stress she’s been under. When she slides her eyes to mine, she places her hand on the glass, and I don’t hesitate to do the same.
Damn it.
I hate the one thing keeping us apart is something my brother put between us.
“He said if you try to keep me from him again, the next thing he will send you—instead of me alive—will be my head. Then, he said he will kill you, Sebastian.”
“No.” I shake my head, in complete denial. “No. He won’t. He won’t ever be able to touch me. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“You have to let me go,” she admits, but she doesn’t mean the words.
“Gabriella, no. We can do this. In a year, I’m out. I’ll keep you safe. I can do that. I can keep you safe.”
“I won’t be alive in a year, Sebastian. You and I both know that.”
“You have to keep fighting. You must keep running. I’ll find you, Gabriella. I always do. Don’t give up.” I want to tell her not to give up on us, but there never was an us, and there never will be.
My brother will never allow it.
“It isn’t about giving up, Sebastian,” she says, wiping her cheek. “It’s realizing that I’ll never get out of the situation I’m in. And it’s about you. Your life doesn’t need to revolve around keeping me safe.”
“What life?” I ground through the emotion in my chest. “You’re my best friend—”
“I’m nothing to you now, Sebastian. I can’t be. We can’t communicate. I will not write you back. Save yourself from him. Okay? I can’t, but you can. You still have time.”
“No!” I slam my fist down on the table.
“Keep it down!” Andrews shouts at me, hitting the wall with the baton to make his point.
I take a deep breath and claw my fingers into the old worn wood of the counter. My body shakes with anger. I want to bust through the glass and hold her, to tell her everything is going to be okay, but I can’t lie to her anymore. I have no idea if things will ever be okay again.
If she goes back to my brother, Gabriella will be nothing but a ghost to me. I’m haunted in many ways, and losing her will put me in purgatory, where the doomed, broken, and dangerous are meant to be.
“Goodbye, Sebastian,” she sobs my name and hangs up the phone with a soft click as I stare at her.
There’s no doubt she can see my pain. “No, Gabriella! Gabriella!” I shout for her through the glass. She presses her palms against the counter as she stands. I notice the light pink handprint around her throat when she moves her hair off her shoulder. The bastard tried to choke her. “Don’t do this,” I beg. I hit the phone on the receiver and bang my fist against the glass. “Gabriella. Please!” She gives me her back as she walks away, no doubt hearing my muted cries behind the glass. I bang my fist until the glass cracks. “Gabriella,” her name breaks in half as my throat turns raw from the amount of force I use to stop her from walking away from me.
Something hard hits against my head and spittle flies against the glass. “Shut the hell up!” Andrews says, hitting me with his baton to subdue me. I struggle against him, still shouting for Gabriella to stop, but she walks out the door, leaving me wondering if she’ll survive the madness that is my brother.
Andrews let lose all his pent-up aggression with every abusive swing. I don’t feel it.
All I feel is the pain of knowing I’ll never see her again. The moment Gabriella walked out this prison and ended out agreement, she signed her death warrant.
One more year, and then, revenge is mine.
Chapter One
SEBASTIAN
Present Day
“Yeah, I have the blueprints right here,” I say into the microphone in an annoyed huff as I stare at the layout of the building. “Yes, Owen. The vault is to your left.” He turns right, and I want to yank the earpiece from my ear and be done with this fucking job. “You idiot. Your other left!” Owen stresses me out. I cross my arms and pinch the bridge of my nose to breathe in and out. It takes all I have not to get out of the van and run into the building to knock sense into him.
Owen is brute force, but he’s so aloof. I often wonder if common sense missed him completely or what.
“Why didn’t you just say that?” he replies, and I want to ball up the blueprint and say the hell with it and let the guys figure it out on their own, since they think they’re so damn smart.
It isn’t all the time I get to join in on the action. I’m great with computers. I can hack into any security camera and make the security guards see what I want them to see most days. If I can follow where the guys are going and switch cameras from point A to point B, we get jobs done without a hitch.
Jaxon had to out a few of the guards, spill some blood, which isn’t new, but it has never been my thing. I like to stay behind the computer, work my magic, get my brothers in and out safely. That is my job, and I’m good at it.
“Richard Fuerez is going to be pissed,” Owen snickers. That bastard gets off on ticking people off. He is weird like that. Owen is more bloodthirsty than Jaxon, Grayson, and Heaven. Sometimes when he gets on a roll and needs to let out some of his built-up anger, he’ll disappear for days, then come back soaked in blood.
We never ask.
He’s never told us what it is about.
We leave it alone.
If he doesn’t get caught, Jaxon doesn’t really care what Owen does. Jaxon is the man in charge, the guy who created this misfit group of innocent criminals; only we aren’t so innocent now. I guess we are more like vigilantes these days and take the law into our own hands. That is fine by me. I never really liked how the criminal justice system worked anyway. They fuck up too much.
We never fuck up.
“Owen, you have a guy coming up on your right.” I peer into my monitor and then take a swig of whiskey out of my flask. Ever since I got out of prison, there are two things I never go without.
My flask.
My whiskey.
It’s only the expensive shit that I have imported. I never knew how much I loved a good bourbon until I had to go five years without it. Now, there is only one thing I wanted more than anything when I got out of prison, and that was to finally feel a woman again, but after Gabriella left, finding someone to sleep with wasn’t important anymore. Gabriella is the priority.
I’ve looked for her. I’ve searched the dark web. I get notifications of every death in the world on my computer, filter the women within her age range, hair, and hope like hell she doesn’t appear. I have facial recognition software that alerts me
if any cameras found her.
Nothing. Nothing for a year so far. She’s gone.
Either my brother has her hidden her like he promised, or she is dead, buried or thrown in a lake to rot.
“Come here, you bastard. Let me cut you up so your mama can’t recognize you,” Owen says to the guard who has his gun aimed at Owen’s head.
I roll my eyes. He is so theatrical.
Jaxon moves stealthy behind the guard, a silver blade shining in his hand, and I lean back, getting comfortable as I watch Jaxon press the sharp metal into the back of the man’s skull. The guard falls to the ground and even from the screen, I see Owen’s jaw flex with annoyance.
“I had him! He was mine.”
“Shut up and stop playing around, Owen,” Jaxon says, stepping on the guard’s head with his boot. He wraps his hand around the blade’s handle and yanks it out. Jaxon wipes the blood on his pants, then tucks the knife back in its sheath.
“You have another three coming up on your right. They are running down the hall, and they are loaded, guys.” My brows pinch together when movement catches my attention from the other monitor. It isn’t Heaven and Grayson. There are more guards. “Fuck, guys. Forget the vault. We need to get out of here. There are more guards coming in the other direction. You’re six against two.”
Jaxon and Owen share a look, and Jaxon picks up the gun from the man he just killed and inspects it. “I think we’ll be alright; don’t you, Owen?”
“Oh, yeah.” Owen pulls his nine-millimeter from the back of his waistband and cocks it. “I love a good bloodbath.”
Cruel Seduction: A Dark Romance (Underground Kings Book 2) Page 1
