The Misters Series (Mister #1-7)

by J. A. Huss

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I say, sitting up taller. “Oliver worked for you?”

  “He was quite infatuated with you that summer. Which wasn’t good, since you had to leave and I wouldn’t need him anymore. He even bought a piece of your art.”

  “What?” I say. “Is my whole world falling down right now?”

  “I had to yell at him like a son that time. I told him he could keep it, but he was to never contact you again. You would be back, I said. One day. But until then, he should hide that photograph and put you out of his mind.”

  “Oliver,” I say, suddenly so very, very sad. “I thought he was one of the good guys.”

  “Yeah.” The Russian sighs. “Your instincts are impressive.”

  “What are you talking about?” I snap, suddenly angry. “If he works for you, then he’s bad.”

  “They set him up too. Not his fault. He’s not one of them. I would advise second chance, Katya Kalashova. Or better yet, never speak of it.”

  The car stops and I hold my breath as the driver gets out and walks around the back of the car, and opens the door.

  “This is it?” I ask.

  “The end,” the Russian says. “Get out, Katya.” I start to slide over but he grabs my wrist. “Oh, you almost got away.” But then he lets go of my wrist and taps a finger on his tablet. To the live drone feed over the house on the mountain.

  Jesus fuck. Make this day go away.

  “I need your choice. Thumbs up or thumbs down. You know what my choice will be.”

  I scoot over the rest of the way and get out of the car. There are motorcycles everywhere. And people dressed up like zombies. It’s probably close to morning and today is the day the Zombie Run rides through Downtown Fort Collins.

  I lean in the car and look him in the eye. “Well, I’m gonna leave it up to you then. I think you have a better understanding of the situation. Goodbye, Mr. Russian.”

  He smiles, almost as if he’s proud of me. “Goodbye, Miss Kalashova. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  I step back from the curb and watch the driver close the door and walk back around the car. I can see the light from the tablet inside the car, even through the very dark tinted windows. I think he taps the screen, but what that means, I have no idea.

  So I just turn… and come face to face with Oliver Shrike sitting on the bus stop bench across the street from his house.

  “Hey,” he says with a long breath of air. He looks tired, and cold, and ready for something good to happen. Kinda like me. “Would you like to stay for breakfast? Start this whole thing over again?”

  I have a whole life’s worth of things to say to him right now. Everything is inside me. Stacking up into a tall, tall tower of sadness, and shame, and regret. I want to scream at him for lying. I want to hug him hard for being here on this stupid fucking bench just when I need him most.

  I want to send him away and hold him close at the same time.

  And everything plays out in my head. Every possible ending to this day. Or is this the beginning of a new morning? I hear all the words come streaming from my mouth, and then I feel myself suck them right back in and swallow them down.

  Maybe I will hold these words in forever? Or maybe I will spit them out next week, or next month, or next year?

  All I know is that right now is not the time to say things I can’t take back tomorrow.

  Because maybe he’s not a good guy. But he’s definitely better than most.

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’d like that.” My voice is strong and steady, and for once in my life, it’s not afraid. When Oliver takes my hand and walks me across the street to the gated fortress he built while I was gone, I don’t look over my shoulder.

  And when we go inside, he doesn’t even bother to arm the security system.

  He knows, I realize. He knows the Russian gave me that choice. And he knows what’s gonna happen next. So he cooks me comfort food for breakfast. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. And we watch it all happen live on the news.

  “I think it’s over,” I say, hours later when everything is still happening and the reporters are still exhilarated watching the mansion burn down after the massive explosion.

  “Maybe,” Oliver says through a yawn. “But something tells me there’s one more loose end to tie up.”

  We don’t wait for it. Oliver takes me upstairs, undresses me slowly, and then writes one more thing on my body. Right over the top of the silver-white scar on my throat.

  I think I found what I’m looking for.

  Gimme more… gimme more… gimme more…

  Epilogue - OLVIER

  Apparently some jerk-off snapped a picture of Weston Conrad filling in for a sick actor at Sparrow’s haunted house the other night and then tricked a reporter into declaring him dead yesterday morning. Some people really need to get their facts straight. Weston is threatening to sue unless they all run a retraction.

  Which might happen.

  The explosion at my father’s shooting range was verifiably linked to two East Coast criminals who were targeted by another, as yet unnamed, organized crime ring.

  The last surprise surfaces late afternoon when the reports come in about an FBI raid on the Antimony House after the huge explosion up in the mountains that took out more than fifty people.

  Fifty. It’s a big, big number. And one of them is Lily Kalashova.

  Kat sleeps late, sleeps right through the live report on the TV. Or maybe she doesn’t. The bedroom is a loft, after all. Regardless, she doesn’t come down until evening. And she looks refreshed and clean, her pale skin a little bit red from the hot shower she just took.

  Most of the writing I’ve done on her body is still there. Some of it faded, some of it still bright. But it’s the one across her neck that I stare at.

  “What happened?” Kat says, motioning to the TV where the news is on mute. It’s footage of the Antimony House.

  “Turns out,” I say, sipping some coffee, “that the Antimony girls were up to some no-good shit. The rumor is, that’s why that mansion they own up in Estes Park was bombed last night.”

  Katya raises one eyebrow at me.

  “Dark web marketplace,” I say, before taking another sip of coffee and gauging her reaction over the top of my mug. I swallow and then ask, “You ever heard of that kind of thing? I guess they were like, selling drugs and hitmen. Some really nasty shit on there, Kat. You’d have been sick over it.”

  I cashed in a huge favor with the Russian. Once I learned that Antimony House used ShrikeSafe, I had Cindy go in through the back door and, yeah, we cracked their wifi code in like thirty minutes and got into their computers. None of us Shrike kids are good enough to fuck with that code they put on my system eleven years ago to make me their scapegoat, but the Russian has teams of people on the same level as Five. And since Mysterious really could buy a cop off the dark market, they exchanged my server for the one inside the Antimony House while they were raiding it this morning.

  Hook-Me-Up has been offline ever since, but who cares. The Russian is gonna buy it. He says he can fix it and it’s good for data-mining.

  But that’s not how I convinced them to help me last night. I had one more ace in the hole to offer up. Or rather, Weston Conrad did.

  His treasure. That stupid fucking treasure was the root of all our problems.

  Liam spilled about why all this happened and it really did all come back to that gold on the bottom of the ocean out off the coast of Nantucket. Turns out that a ship carrying six very important people—the original Silver Society members, in fact—and a whole lot of coin, was hit by another ship back in 1909, causing it to sink.

  Apparently these six people were up to some pretty sneaky shit with that gold. Trying to steal it, I think. Wikipedia says it was originally supposed to be either a loan to Russia, or some kind of relief aid for a town hit by an earthquake in Italy, or the payroll for the US Navy’s Great White Fleet. The RMS Republic really did collide with
the SS Florida. Six people died. The current estimation for the value of the missing gold is in the billions, just like Weston said. And the Russians were involved. My secret sources say it really was a loan to Russia and they even had to pay it back.

  You can’t make this shit up.

  If someone really does find that gold it would be the largest recovery treasure of all time. Liam’s salvage company had filed a claim on the ship. But the treasure had moved. Maybe someone moved it? Maybe it drifted into that cave where seven-year-old Weston found it? Who knows how it ended up where it was. Maybe it was just fate?

  So the Conrads… what a bunch of filthy assholes they were. They always knew there was more gold than Weston told them about. And when Liam couldn’t beat it out of him, they took him home. They were patient, I’ll give them that. But everyone’s patience runs out after a while. And by the time Weston was in his senior year at Brown, they’d had enough. They devised that rape charge to pressure him into spilling his secrets. Did we all get taken along for the ride? Maybe. Maybe not.

  God they make me sick.

  Weston was all too happy to wash his hands of the whole thing so when I offered it up to the Russians to pay for their help in setting up the Antimony Association house, he was ready.

  It was also a bribe to stay far, far away from my Katya.

  Katya’s other eyebrow goes up. “Well,” she says. “Imagine that. And nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, Mr. Match.”

  “Me either,” I say, handing her a cup of coffee too. “But speaking of Mr. Match, another totally funny thing happened while you were sleeping.”

  She doesn’t bother cocking her eyebrow this time. “Really?” She laughs. “There’s more?”

  “Yeah, what do you think about me selling Hook-Me-Up?”

  “You’re selling Hook-Me-Up? I feel like Rip Van Winkle. How long was I asleep?”

  “Some Russian called up Ariel last night and offered her seventeen million dollars for it.”

  Katya literally spits out her coffee. “What the fuck did you say?”

  “Seventeen million is a lot of money, you know?” I wait, practically holding my breath. I wonder if she’ll ask, or demand to know my part in all this. Demand to know if anything between us was fake.

  But then her hand goes to her throat and her face relaxes. The tension and doubts fall away. “Wow,” she says. “You could do a lot with that kind of money. Leave town, if you wanted.”

  “Hit the open road,” I say, trying not to get too excited. “On a bike, or in a car, or a fucking RV. I really don’t care, Katya Kalashova.” I walk over and take her hand. Hold it up to my lips and give it a kiss. “I give you my love more precious than money. Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?”

  She lets me fuck her six ways to Sunday after that little bit of romance.

  I mean every bit of it, even though everything is still confusing.

  I think they wanted us. Those Silver people. I think they wanted Mysterious to get even with Mariel. I think they wanted Perfect because he knew I was covering for Allen. I think they wanted Romantic because his mother dissed them and they already had Claudette. I think they got me by mistake, and they really wanted Allen. But maybe that’s just my inner snowflake talking? Maybe they wanted me because my sister, dead or alive, she got away too. Just like Mariel.

  The only one I can’t figure out is Corporate. And both his parents are dead now. His mother hanged herself in jail last night—so they say—and his father went up in flames out on that mountain with Katya’s sister.

  Maybe he was never anything but collateral to them. But I’m not gonna say that to his face. Regardless of what they did, they were his only family. Same goes for Kat. I know she will mourn Lily for years to come. That yesterday will forever be the day she lost everything… again.

  But I also know that today will forever be the day she got it all back.

  I’m gonna give her a home and make her a mother. I’m gonna grow old with that girl, and the tree in our house will get old with us.

  She got me, and my sisters, and my friends. I told Romantic earlier today that he should let his fucking managers deal with that resort. What kind of rich dude actually lives at his resort? Maybe before his dad died he needed to worry about money. But now? I’m betting he moves down near Perfect in the Denver Tech Center and Ivy and Ellie will be BFFs forever and ever.

  Cindy has pretty much decided to live in my dad’s condo. Mysterious doesn’t give a fuck where he puts his head at night, as long as my sister’s there next to him.

  Victoria will be at Ariel’s house until Corporate gives in and buys her one nearby. You gotta hold on to your friends, I told him earlier today when I called to see how he was doing. Let her stay, I said. I told him to use the jet as much as he wants if he still needs to do business on the West Coast.

  He’s still pretty shook up. But I said, “Look, asshole, if you cry you’re a goddamned pussy, you hear me?”

  I said just kidding afterward, but he gets the idea.

  Don’t look at what you lost, look at what you have left.

  I don’t know if I really understand what happened ten years ago. It was the perfect storm of people with grudges, and people filled with greed, and hate, and plans to take others down no matter the cost. We will never be cleared of that crime. But we will never be charged either. Maybe that’s the best we could ever hope for?

  And who cares, anyway? That lie brought me this girl. That lie brought me these friends. That lie gave me my whole world back. If it wasn’t for that lie, I’d have left this town behind and never looked back. I would’ve gotten on that open road and turned into somebody else.

  So fuck that girl, and fuck that school, and fuck that night.

  I don’t care anymore.

  So I lost everything eleven years ago.

  Who fucking cares?

  The next day I got it all back because I got all my friends. I got Mr. Perfect, the guy who really is as good as he looks. I got Mr. Romantic, a fucked up dude for sure, but he’s my fucked up dude. I got Mr. Corporate, who knows better than anyone that second chances are real. He’s had enough of them for three lifetimes. And of course, my own BFF, Mr. Mysterious. Who really can fix just about anything. He’ll take good care of my baby sister.

  I got so much more than I lost.

  Just like Katya.

  She expresses me better than I express myself.

  She is more to me than my poem.

  She is my whole world, now and forever.

  We are the perfect match.

  *****************

  Are you ready for the REAL STORY of FIVE & RORY!? Because that’s up next. You might be tempted to skip Five and go right to Mr & Mrs but I’m telling you from one reader to another, you don’t want to do that. You NEED Five’s story to really appreciate what really happens in Mr & Mrs. (Which is THE BEST Happily Ever After book ever, trust me!)

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit (called the EOBS by me and my minions). This is book five in a series, so you Bombshells know the drill. I sorta think of this last chapter as like a little mini-review of my own books. Hahah.

  So much to say about this series now that it’s complete. First of all, Five will be back in September 2017 for the rest of his story. I get so many messages about that, but it’s my own fault because I’ve been promising that story for more than two years now. But for reals, next September.

  This EOBS I’m gonna talk about each book so let’s jump right in and start with someone who now feels like an old friend, Mr. Perfect.

  When I first came up with the idea for this series I was thinking it would be a quick serial. Sorta like Social Media, but releasing one month apart instead of two weeks. But I quickly realized I’m not really a novella writer. I don’t write super long books at all. I think of all my romances, 321 is the longest and it only comes in at about 90,000 words
. So it’s not that I always go long. I just have this process in my head about where each plot points fits and making that 50% plot point mark at 15,000 words instead of 40,000 just kills me. I can’t do it. It’s pretty difficult to build up to the 50% mark in only 15,000 words.

  I knew pretty early in Mr. Perfect that my novella serial idea was bust and I just kept going like I usually do.

  Once I got over that whole mistake I started thinking about the sex scenes because let’s face it, when you’ve written as many sex scenes as I have you start to run out of ideas. So when the butter scene came up out of nowhere while I was writing I knew it completely ridiculous. But Ellie had already made herself out to be a completely ridiculous person by chapter six, so I embraced that butter scene and kept going. Fast forward a month to the night Jana Aston called me up while she was reading the ARC:

  Ring, ring, ring.

  Me: Hello?

  Jana: Dude, that butter scene…

  Me: Hahahahahahahhahahah

  Jana: OMG, I’m picturing your reviews for this and I’m worried. I’m not even kidding.

  Me: Hahahahahhahahhahhah

  Jana: They’re all gonna write about this…

  Me: Hahahhahahahahhahahah

  Jana: Why are you laughing?

  Me: I just don’t care anymore. Let them say whatever they want. I probably deserve it. I just do not care.

  But Bombshells, if you’re in my Facebook fan Group, Shrike Bikes, then you know how much fucking joy we’ve gotten out of that butter scene. That alone was worth it. And every single time one of you guys posts a funny butter meme, I laugh all over again.

  I did get plenty of one-star reviews for this series because I just don’t care what people think of my stories anymore. I got people saying the butter scene made them feel dirty and they needed to go to church. I had people accuse me (once again) of condoning rape because of Mr. Romantic’s fantasy. I’ve had people say I bored the hell out of them with Mr. Mysterious. (what? Like for real, if you hated Mr. Mysterious, just move along. lol. You are not my people).