Whiskey & Honey: Crimes of Crimson Valley: Book One

by A. Mae. Cooper

  Silas throws a robe at me that he snags from the back of the bathroom door nearby and I only put it on without complaint because I don’t much care to be exposed like this around Kass, Hawk, and Gabe who I had never been interested in romantically like Silas and Finley. Speaking of Finley, Silas rounds on me on again off again lover and his face turns murderous when he notices him completely in his birthday suit sitting on the edge of my bed panting heavily and sporting a killer black eye from his brawl with goon one earlier.

  “What the fuck is he doing naked in your room with you dressed like that, Honey?” Silas’s voice drops about a hundred degrees below zero as he shoots a withering death glare at poor Finley who was still mostly asleep and unable to catch his breath yet. Tying the front of my robe up, I threw a question at the prick instead of answering him like he had done to me earlier that week in my lecture hall. What can I say, I loved the battle for dominance with the infuriating bastard.

  “The real pressing question right now is what are you doing in my house, uninvited, at,” Glancing quickly at the grandfather clock in the corner of my room, “Eleven thirty at night? Were you coming to help them this time around, boys?” Keeping my brass knuckles on, I take up a protective stance in front of Finley to block him from Silas’s death glare and that brings his sharp fury filled eyes to me again and the overwhelming amount of anger radiating off him in waves is almost stifling. It’s like a call to my own anger simmering inside of me and it only makes me that much punchier if that is even a word.

  “We came here to warn you. Hawk overheard his father talking to Rebecca King about teaching you a lesson to stay out of Order business you had no right to have your nose in on Tuesday evening. We’ve been watching your house since then every night while you slept to try and intercept the attack before it started. I can see now you had that handled already though.” Gabriel says in that droll bored voice of his he always used to use even back when we were just kids.

  “Why should I believe that none of you were responsible for this after everything you’ve already put me through?” I ask and Hawk surprisingly steps forward and holds out what appears to be an ink pen to me and, brow furrowing, I take it cautiously from him.

  “Click the end of it.” He encourages me softly and I do, but only after a moment's hesitation. Three seconds of silence pass before a voice starts from the small compact pen and I almost stupidly drop it when I jerk in surprise at the suddenness of it. I should have known it was a recorder. It was like I was in the middle of a damn James Bond movie or something.

  “No. I want this taken care of as soon as possible Rebecca. That girl is going to end up just like those foolish parents of hers. It’s time she is reminded of who we are and what drove her out of this town in the first place. A petulant child has no business dabbling in our affairs like this.” Mason Rhode’s distinct voice booms out from the pen and he must have been on the phone with Rebecca because I don’t hear anything for several seconds, and then he is speaking again. “By the end of this week. She has her parents wake planned after the small funeral this Saturday at 5. Be sure to tell those idiots to just scare her, don’t injure her too badly.” Then, the recording stops and I hand it back over to Hawk, not wanting to be in possession of that vile thing anymore.

  “I started carrying a few of these around after you left ten years ago.” Hawk begins after an uncomfortably long silence and Finley finally moves from behind me to go around to his side of the bed, conscious of Silas’ glare on him, and he slips back into some discarded sweats. “I have a few very top-secret conversations between Order members hoarded in my safe in the floor of my room back home. Insurance, of course, for the future.” He winks at me, but there's no real playful banter behind it. There is nothing light and funny about any of this.

  “See, Honey? We told you we were all on the same side.” Silas, content now that Finley had clothes on but not happy he was still in my house with me obviously sharing my room with me, says to me his eyes hard on me as he tucks his weapon into the waistband of his jeans. I don’t know why my brain decides to find that action arousing right now, but I am annoyed by it. “Mind explaining what Mason meant by you putting your nose where it didn’t belong? You’ve barely been here a week, Honey.” His tone is reprimanding and I start to wonder after that recording if they had really been telling me the truth this whole time. A stupid niggling suspicion wormed its way in that they could just be telling me these things to catch me off guard again, earn my trust. But that recording couldn’t have been faked, right?

  Staring at Silas for a long moment, I go back to all the conversations I have had with these Red boys over the past few days. Of course, I had noticed Kassim and Gabriel hanging around campus when I was out and about and it made me wonder if they had been there to provide some sort of protection or back up for me in case something went sideways. Hawk did his best at the covert thing, but he was always able to easily stand out. He too had taken to showing up wherever I was all over campus in the last few days. Silas had been the only one that had kept his distance, aside from that day in my lecture hall Tuesday afternoon.

  “Why is your ankle wrapped like that in gauze and a brace?” Kassim suddenly asks, breaking me out of my mental rambling and I curse as it startles me. Glancing down at my ankle, I had nearly forgotten about the throbbing pain emanating from it with adrenaline still coursing through my veins so strongly still. Silas’ eyes home in on it and his face darkens as he notices the blood staining the gauze and brace just like I just did. Great. I wouldn’t be able to fib about twisting my ankle now.

  “What kind of sprained ankle bleeds?” Hawk muses lightly and I shoot him a glare and Silas advances on me. Instead of pushing me back on the bed to sit like I thought he would, he drops to one knee before me and gently lifts my ankle to his lap so I have to balance on one leg while he examines my wound. Taking my brace off and then slowly starting to unwrap the gauze, I hold my breath for his reaction when he gets to the four semi deep canine bite marks, two on either side of my ankle. I shouldn’t be letting him touch me like this. I should take the brass knuckles still wrapped in my grip and peg him in his stupidly beautiful face, but it’s like my body freezes at his skin-to-skin contact with me. I am not proud to admit the shudder that works its way up my body when his fingers brush against the skin of my ankle.

  “I had heard from my father that Frankie Newhouse had experienced a break in of sorts early Tuesday morning and his dog had been hit with a sharp object and needed to be stitched up. That was you.” It wasn’t a question, just a cold hard statement, anger riding his voice hard again. Well, screw Silas King and his demands.

  “Listen, I don’t think you guys have any right barging into Honey’s home like this despite the fact you think you did it for good reasons.” Finley suddenly hedges, interrupting whatever snappy remark I was about to make to Silas and attempt to yank my injured ankle away from him so he would stop running his rough calloused fingers all over my bare flesh like that. At Finley’s words, Silas’s head snaps up from where he had been looking intently at my seeping wounds and he returned a hard glare on my lover. Silas’ hand wraps around my calf in a possessive hold and it takes everything in me not to show how much that move affected me.

  “What right do you have of being in her home? Honey isn’t yours.” Silas growls out and I open my mouth to intervene and quite possible reach forward to choke him out for his alpha male posturing act that I had warned him about, but Finley is quick to retort and I have to say, it impresses me he has the balls to stand up to Silas King like that even after all my warnings to him about the guy.

  “She isn’t yours either. I’ve known Honey for years. She doesn’t do relationships.” He snaps back and Silas goes rigid. I go to pull my ankle away from him but his large hand around my calf tightens and keeps me in place. Hawk steps forward out of my periphery but the sharp growl that escapes from Silas when he glances over at him makes him pause in coming to my aid again like he had that day in my le
cture hall.

  “Honey might not agree with it right now, but her heart has always belonged to me, just as mine has hers. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to her for what I’ve done, but she will be mine again. The fates brought us together for a reason all those years ago.” Silas says, his voice low and deadly. I have no idea what to even say to that and Finley obviously doesn’t either because he just snorts but doesn’t say anything. Satisfied no one objected to his claim on me, Silas turned back to me with a brooding expression on his face. “The dog did this?” He gestures to my ankle and I just shrug.

  “I just wanted to see how bad my parents' car had fared after the accident. That Mercedes was my dad’s pride and joy and I had wanted to see if it would have been salvageable.” I half lied and Silas considers this for a moment before he brushes off my bullshit. They had no right barging in here to demand answers from me and I was about two seconds from putting them all out on their asses.

  “You were there to see if you could find any sign of foul play.” He surmised and when I didn't reply, pursing my lip haughtily at him, he smirked. “I know you Honey, better than you think. What did you find? We hadn’t been allowed to help in any way after their accident so Kass didn’t get to check out the car like we had planned.” He explained but that part of my brain that still didn’t trust him balked at that. The Red boys held a lot of power in this town, if they had wanted to do something they would have done it, right? Perhaps not? Perhaps they were just as afraid of the Order as I was? I hated my ridiculously overactive brain sometimes.

  “Their brake lines were cut and the brake fluid had been syphoned out before the line was partially severed.” I admit blatantly. I don’t tell them about the copies of transaction’s I found in the glove box between Silas’ parents’ incorporation and Rockfield Oil Refinery out of Shadow Hill’s three towns over from us. After some digging yesterday afternoon, I had found out from one of my contacts in the old security firm I used to work for a few years back, that Rockfield had been recently investigated in illegal money laundering across state lines about six months back. Which led me to believe that the King’s had been dipping their hands into that aspect of the criminal underworld and who knows what else. The documents I had recovered from my parents' car had been copies of the transactions, nothing that could be admissible in court, so that’s why I had assumed whoever looked over the car for incriminating evidence against the Order had just left them in the glove box.

  “Partially severed? So that’s what caused the accident? When your father hit the break too hard it snapped the line the rest of the way.” He furrows his brow. “They siphoned the fluid so your father wouldn’t have noticed the stain in the garage before he left.” He quickly comes to the same conclusion I did that night and I just nod. Why? I have no idea. My brain didn’t function right around this man on a good day, let alone on a night where I had just been attacked and forced to fight for my life, yet again. My right leg was starting to ache from keeping my balance and Silas quickly notices my struggle and he lets me pull my left leg from his lap and I gingerly move to sit in my vanity chair on the other side of my nightstand by my bed.

  “Why not just tell me you expected an attack that day in my lecture hall or any time after that? Why camp outside my house for days? I don’t need your help nor do I want it.” Half a lie, but a lie, nonetheless. The smart part of my brain is trying to convince the suspicious betrayed part of my brain that I could use the Red boys to my advantage. They had the inside scoops on their families and they were privy to family secrets amongst their own that I didn’t have access to.

  If I had any hope of bringing down the Order and uncovering the truth behind my parent’s murder, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to deny the help these boys offered for long. Bringing my ankle up to rest across my other leg, I inspect my slowly seeping wounds with a scowl. Stupid scuffle with the hired goons from the Order was going to slow down the healing. Part of me half expected Silas to drag my ass to get it looked at, but part of me would never let him.

  “Would you have believed any of us if we had approached you and told you? Recording or not, you are not very receptive to listening to anything any of us has to say.” Hawk says with a smirk and I see he has a point, so I don’t comment as I pull open the bottom right-hand drawer on my vanity and pull out the first aid kit I stashed in there yesterday for easy reach.

  “Honey... “

  “Don’t. Whatever big speech you undoubtedly had planned the moment you came in here expecting to be the hero, just don’t. I can’t just forgive a lifetime of lies in a handful of days and none of you should expect me to, that would be absolutely absurd, so forget it.” I raise my eyes and contact all four of them for the briefest of moments before I drag my gaze back to the bane of my existence. “We are not the teenagers we were ten years ago, powerless, naive, reckless, and hopeful of a different future than what we were dealt. What happened, happened. You made a choice, all of you did, and because of that choice, our future was irrevocably altered. If you ever wish to have any chance to make it up to me in the future, you need to leave and give me space.”

  He stares at me for a long time. Longer than is probably necessary as a dozen different emotions play across his heartbreakingly handsome face. Because that’s exactly what he was. A walking heartbreak waiting to happen all over again and I wasn’t sure if my heart could handle any more bombs.

  “We will go.” He eventually concedes on a sigh and surprise ripples through me. I hadn’t expected him to go so willingly. Silas wasn’t exactly the type to back down so easily. “First thing in the morning though, you should have that checked out and stitched.” And with that, he pushes up to his feet as he had still been on his knees a few feet away and he turns and leaves without another word.

  Shocked as hell, I look at the other three Reds. Gabe’s expression is unreadable as always and Kass looks conflicted, but eventually they turn and leave together without another word, leaving just Hawk standing awkwardly in the middle of my room.

  “Want me to call someone to deal with this?” He waves his hand, indicating the three unconscious idiots still strewn around my room and I shake my head.

  “I have my own guys. Guys that will take care of them well enough that I will never see them around again.” I say cryptically and Hawk’s eyebrows shoot up, but he doesn’t question me and I am more grateful than he knows for that.

  “Stay out of trouble, yeah? Silas likes to think he can be the hero all the time, but he is only one man.”

  With that, he leaves, too and I try not to ponder on his remarks about Silas. I knew all too well about Silas and his tendencies. When a girl falls in love, no matter how young, she tends to make it a priority to learn everything she can about the guy. Sighing, I wrap up my ankle as best as I can, fully intending on seeking medical attention and not letting Silas think he won that fight tomorrow before turning to Finley.

  “This is going to be a long night. Put this in that little box titled ‘Things to never bring up around anyone ever again’ and leave it at that.”

  The day I had been dreading for the past week since I first came back into town arrived way too fast. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was even going to be able to hold myself together through this whole miserable day, but I just had to try. My parents deserved to be remembered and laid to rest. It’s the least I could do for abandoning them because of my own selfish fear.

  I swallow back the flood of emotion that has been threatening to consume me since I woke this morning after a terrible night's sleep. Friday had been uneventful after the failed attack on me Thursday night. I just went through the day on autopilot, trying my best to stay away from caffeine because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before my parent’s funeral and wake.

  “You look beautiful as always, Honey.” Finley’s voice startles me out of my internal wallowing and I glance at him in the reflection of the mirror I stood in front of on the back of my closet door. More o
ften than not, I always find myself standing in front of this mirror admiring how I look. I am not vain by any means, but even I can appreciate hard work and maturity when I look at myself.

  “I’m still not sure you should be coming, Finley.” I admit as I smooth my hands down the front of my simple black lace gown that fell to about mid-thigh paired with black stockings and simple flat boots that go about mid-calf. I wasn’t able to wear heels today due to my injury. The last thing I needed was any of the Order members to notice it and question me about it in the open.

  “I told you I don’t care what those guys say or do to me. You deserve to have someone in your corner today, Honey. Don’t let them take that support from you.” I turn then and reach up, straightening his black tie to give my hands something to do, my mass of auburn curls falling over my shoulder as I move. He reaches up and tucks a piece behind my ear and I find myself looking up into his eyes.

  Finley has been a constant for me for a long time. Someone who never took too much from me and, most of the time, he had been exactly what I needed to forget all the painful memories I had associated with Silas. However, ever since coming back here, I can hardly bring myself to even try with Finley. I didn’t at all accept Silas’ claim he had put on me the other night, but I just didn’t feel that connection with Finley like I used to.

  Sure, the sex was still good, but Silas had done some serious damage on my mental barriers as well as the ones I had around my heart with his declaration. I shouldn’t believe a word out of his mouth, but I can’t help wondering if there is some truth to his words. His actions lately have certainly been a positive reflection of that. It was just so hard to push past those lingering feelings of hurt, betrayal, and mistrust.