by Renee Rocco
Like it or not, Jamie’s Mayhem. Same as me. Same as all of us who were born here. This town’s in her blood. It’s why we found ourselves in that hellhole together. Fate or whatever, put us there because Mayhem’s gravity found a way to pull her back—even if I had to get torn apart to bring her home.
“Never have I ever gotten drunk and pissed myself.”
Discord and Jester take long pulls from their bottles of beer.
Jamie gives Jester a droll face. “You all have an unfair advantage.”
“How’s that, James?”
“One,” she says to Jester, holding up her water bottle, “I don’t drink, and two, I’ve led a boring life compared to all of you.”
“Fine.” Jester pops up and saunters around the fire pit. He pulls a reluctant Jamie to her feet and gathers her in his arms. She tries to wriggle away, but he keeps her trapped in his arms. “I’ll even the odds. Never have I ever killed a man. There. See? Fair.”
Jamie rolls her eyes but takes a sip from her water bottle. “You’re an asshole.”
Jester gives her a big, loud kiss on the top of her head. “No shit. Now, let me give you back to this big bastard before he gets jealous.”
He deposits her next to me. Truth is, though, I’m already jealous. I love these men like brothers, but I’m on the verge of beating the shit out of them if they don’t stop staring at her like a pack of starving wolves. Granted they’d have to be corpses not to appreciate the view now that she’s stopped dressing like someone’s grandmother, but she’s mine—even if I haven’t officially claimed her.
Personally, I think she looks cute as hell in her drab-ass clothes. Some women need fancy wrapping paper. Not her. She’s fine no matter what she wears—even in gigantic underwear. Okay, especially in gigantic underwear.
With the sun starting to dip, the weather turned crisp. We stopped riding a while ago and built a fire in a pit behind an old cabin near the edge of town. Thankfully, Jamie has indeed removed the stick from her ass and seems to be having a good time even though the conversation has gotten raunchier the more beers the guys destroy.
When she slides back beside me, she catches me staring at her and frowns. “What?”
I shake my head. “Admiring the scenery.”
Her smile kills me.
Discord points to his brother. “Your turn, Hav.”
Havoc is half-hidden in shadow with his dark hair covering the upper half of his face. “Not happening.”
Discord groans in frustration and turns to Malice. “Let me guess, you’re not playing either?”
“No.” Malice cracks open another beer.
“You guys are always so serious,” Discord complains.
“Not me,” Jester remarks. “I’m never serious.”
“No shit,” Malice grunts.
“Why so serious?” Jamie mumbles.
“What’s that?” Malice’s grumble has me putting a protective arm around Jamie. Friend or not, I’ll fuck up his world if he thinks to pull his bullshit with Jamie and ruin her day.
What I allowed on the drive home from Florida was one thing. I wanted to see her reaction when pushed. Now anyone who wants to get to her has to go through me—no exceptions.
Jamie squares her shoulders. “Nothing.”
Malice tilts his head and looks at her all side-eye and squinty. “Are you talking to me?”
Jamie lifts her chin, her gaze darting around the group before looking back at Malice. She presses against me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and the way I have my arm around her is pure possessiveness. Well, it’s one way to get them to stop eye fucking her without me having to beat the shit out of my closest friends.
“Calm down, Malice. I was quoting a movie.”
“So was I,” he tells her.
Her shoulders relax, and then she lights up with recognition. “Travis Bickle. You stumped me. I’ve only seen Taxi Driver once. No wonder I didn’t catch it.”
Jester wags a finger at her. “For someone who claims to be a movie geek, you’re off your game, girl.”
Jamie gasps, feigning insult. “I’ll have you know I am the biggest movie geek ever in the history of movie geekdom. I wear the crown proudly, sir.”
It’s nice to see her show the playful side to her personality given the tight control she always has over herself around people.
“But weren’t you homeless?” Discord, at twenty-two, has a lot in common with Jester. They both have foot-in-mouth disease.
“I was, yes. On and off for years, actually,” she explains.
“How’d you watch movies without, like, a television?”
“Orlando had a dollar theater. At first, I would use it as a cheap shelter when it rained. But then it became more for me. A dollar a day bought me a daily escape from reality. There’s not a classic movie from the ‘70s through the 2000s I haven’t seen at least a dozen times. Well, except Taxi Driver.” She points to Malice. “They didn’t show that one too often.”
Jester uses his now-empty bottle of beer to motions around the fire at all of us. “We have to do a movie night.”
“Don’t let Havoc pick the movie because there’s no way I’m sitting through Goodfellas again.”
Jamie throws up her hands. “Or me, because I’ll make you watch Avengers: Infinity War.” She looks over her shoulder at me. “What movies do you like?”
“Horror.”
“Intriguing.” God, her voice is sexy.
“Why’s that?”
Her hand comes to rest on my thigh, the heat of it scorching me through the thick fabric of my pants. She wiggles her brows. “The possibilities are endless. We can go old-school with Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. Or cult classics like Nightbreed or Hellraiser. Or maybe something cheesy like Puppet Master. But if you want scary… Endless possibilities.”
What I see is a host of different possibilities—none of them involving horror movies. All of them involve Jamie on me bed, naked beneath me. Or above me. On her on her knees… Endless possibilities.
“Hell. No. I’m planning it because I can just see you both ruining it with your lovey dovey bullshit,” Jester announces.
“Then plan away. No one’s stopping your annoying ass,” I say.
“I’m not annoying.” Jester looks to Discord. “Am I annoying?”
“Absolutely not,” Discord answers.
“Yeah, you are,” Malice counters.
“Remember the time I almost cut out your tongue to shut you the fuck up?” Havoc says.
Jester roars out a laugh. “Remember when I stabbed you when you tried?”
Havoc holds up his scarred right hand and inspects the old wound. “Got me good that night.”
“A lesson was learned that night,” Jester drawls.
“What, that you can get the drop on me when I’m drunk?”
That remark leads to such heinous slander that by the time we’re done, Jamie’s face is all sorts of red. But she’s laughing, and not hunkered down behind her defenses. Not even after the bickering dies down and Discord asks about her mother—something that’s always been a sore subject with her.
“She’s gone,” Jamie answers curtly.
“That sucks.” Discord pokes at the fire. “So, it was just you and your old man?”
“Yes.” Jamie slides her cold, trembling hand in mine rather than folding them on her lap like she usually does. And instead of her expression settling into a mask of indifference, she looks so sad it’s heartbreaking. “She left when I was three. I don’t remember her. I could pass her on the street, and I wouldn’t know. My father burned all her pictures the night she left.”
“What a dick,” Havoc grunts.
Havoc and Discord understand Jamie’s childhood because they suffered one just as bad—if not worse. It’s something neither brother speak about. Ever. They’ve never talked about it, and we know better than to ask.
I pull her closer and kiss the side of her head. “Sorry I didn’t kill him for you
when I had the chance.”
“He wasn’t your problem to fix,” she says on a soft sigh. “But enough about me. Are you all enforcers like Wraith?”
“I don’t know what you mean, James.” Jester feigns innocence. “We’re all law-abiding citizens.”
Her laughter echoes across the mountain. “Law-abiding citizens my ass.”
“I am the law,” Malice growls.
Jamie lets out an adorable gasp. “Judge Dredd.”
“Damn right,” Malice confirms.
“They’re enforcers.” Discord points to us, leaving himself out. “I’m something else.”
Her brows shoot up. “Cryptic.”
I roll my eyes. “Still with the dramatics, Discord?”
“And I have to live with him,” Havoc says.
Discord snorts. “You’re all just jealous.”
“I feel like I’m missing something.”
Discord sets aside his beer and pushes to his feet. He saunters over to Jamie and kneels in front of her. She leans into me, but he takes her hand and brings it to his lips. Stares her right in the eyes as he kisses her knuckles. But where her eyes are warm and alive, his are dark and cold as death. Discord may be young, but he’s the scariest motherfucker I know.
“That’s because you are.” He inhales Jamie, a slow grin lifting his lips. He’s deceptively youthful. Pretty, almost. Could blend in with a typical college crowd. “See these guys? Some asshole comes to Mayhem, gets rowdy and starts trouble, talks smack about the Unholy, they beat the shit out of him. They send him home in pieces. And yeah, they get all up in someone’s face and kill him no problem. That’s their job, and they’re real good at their job. And then there’s me.” He leans in closer and drops his voice to an intimate whisper. “I’m the nightmare no one sees coming.”
Jamie’s lips part. But she snaps her mouth closed and swallows before rasping, “You’re an assassin.”
Discord leans away with a wink. “I’m good at my job, too.”
She sweeps her gaze over his angelic face. “But you’re so young.”
“Beethoven wrote his first composition at twelve or something, didn’t he?”
“You know Beethoven?”
“I’m a killer, Jamie, not stupid.” Discord springs to his feet.
“Obviously.” Jamie lifts a brow and takes Discord’s measure. “I would hope the people you…eliminated…deserved it.”
“Obviously,” he mimics before returning to his place at the other side of the fire pit. “Unlike your piece of shit of husband, we don’t kill the innocent.”
“This is true,” she agrees. Then to me, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I like your friends. Thank you for bringing me today. This was honestly the best day I’ve ever had.”
I don’t tell her the day was arranged for her benefit.
Nor will I admit that her words hit me right in the heart.
“Wraith,” Malice grunts.
“What?”
“She’s right. Today wasn’t terrible.”
“Look at Malice making a friend.” Jester’s snicker is cut short by the rock Malice throws at his head.
And the battle begins. While Malice and Jester beat the living shit out of each other, Havoc proceeds to drown himself in another beer. Discord and Jamie keep up a steady conversation, with her remaining glued to my side. It’s a surreal situation given how I thought I’d never see her again. What’s weirder is being home when I was sure I was going to die in that dungeon.
Yet here I am, listening to Jamie tell Discord stories of when she lived in Orlando and Ocala. Of the odd jobs she had, how she did everything from waitressing to dog grooming. He, in turn, fills her in on everything she missed while she was away. And I just sit back and enjoy a moment I never thought I’d live to see.
Hours later, as we pack up our shit to ride back to town, I hear Discord thank Jamie for getting me home, and tell her that he’s glad she’s here and how it’s going to be nice to have her around.
But the monster damn near breaks out of its cage when I hear her answer.
“I’m glad I came back, too, but I don’t know if I’m staying.”
Well, fuck me.
So that’s how it is, huh?
Good to know.
16
Wraith
Pissed off is a dangerous way to go into a job.
I hang back with Malice and stand in the doorway of an abandoned mill. This far out, on the edge of Mayhem, gives us the privacy we need to work. We have the Berserker duct-taped to a metal chair, and yeah, being here has visions of the dungeon’s torture room ricocheting around my brain. Can’t stop envisioning the long-ass table with all those instruments lined up in a neat row.
And the drain with its leaky hose.
Fuuuck.
But I didn’t earn my way into that goddamn room. This motherfucker here? From what they told me, Axel ran his stupid mouth all over Wayne County, and now he’s got a beating coming to him.
Sanctioned by his president.
Ain’t that ‘bout a bitch.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m suffocating. The mill is too dark, even with the afternoon sunlight filtering in through the windows. The air is heavy, a weight sitting on my chest that makes each breath a labor that leaves me lightheaded. Sweat beads on my brow and upper lip, but I calm my breathing and remind myself that Gomorrah is over a thousand miles away. I’ve got this. I spent six years as an enforcer, and I’m good at my job.
We all have our talents, and I make zero apologies for mine. I maintain order to prevent chaos—because this country has seen its fair share of anarchy and look at what happened. If fucking up a few assholes keeps the peace in our town, I’m okay with it because I’m an evil man who hurts terrible people, and there’s poetic justice there that gives me the warm and fuzzies.
Apparently, Axel caught a righteous beating for causing a ruckus in Devil’s Den—as one deserves when acting like a jerkoff on Unholy ground. Should’ve been the end of it. Would have been the end of it. But he made the colossal mistake of talking shit afterward, and now he’ll be lucky if we let him walk away with his tongue.
Because he for damn sure isn’t walking away with all his teeth.
That’s how it is in our world.
You earn a beating. You take the beating. You don’t act like a bitch and cry about it afterward. If you do? We make sure to give you something worse to cry about.
“Why’d you have to be a dick?” Jester bends at the waist and puts his face all up in Axel’s. He smacks the man upside his head. “Come on, dude. We don’t want to be here. We don’t want to have to hurt you again.”
“I do.” Malice doesn’t look up from picking at his nails with the tip of a stainless-steel tactical bowie knife. He’s got his hip braced against the doorframe, and he’s dressed head to foot in black, looking bored to death with the situation.
Me? I want to make someone bleed. Need to make someone bleed, and if Axel’s that someone, well, sorry man, but you pulled the short straw.
Jamie’s nonchalant bombshell about being undecided on whether or not she’s staying in Mayhem got me all kinds of riled. Haven’t talked with her about it yet because my temper is running too hot, and I don’t trust I’ll be able to keep the monster caged if she tells me she’s leaving once Crane is dead. But it’s a discussion that will happen once I can get the words out without wanting punch my fists through things.
“No, we don’t,” Jester continues as if Malice said nothing. “But here we are, Axel. And now we have to hurt you because you couldn’t take a simple beating, you dumb shit.”
Axel, duct tape over his mouth, blue eyes wide and fearful, glances at me for help.
I roll my lips between my teeth and shake my head. “This is your mess. You have to own it. That’s how this goes.” Those eyes narrow, and he huffs out a breath of frustration from his nose because some assholes just refuse to learn. “Watch how you eyeball me, motherfucker.”
&nbs
p; Axel wisely wipes the aggression off his face.
“This is what’s going to happen,” Jester begins. “I’m going to hit you a few times. You’re going to beg to me stop. I will, of course, ignore you.” He jabs a thumb at me. “Then this big bastard is going to fuck you up some more. When he’s done, that psychotic Roman giving himself a manicure over there will finish the job. When it’s over, there will be a lesson learned here today. Do you understand?”
Axel stares at Jester, his eyes about popping out of their sockets.
Jester’s sigh is so dramatic it’s downright comical. “Nod your head if you understand, Axel.”
Axel nods frantically.
“Wonderful. Let’s begin.” Jester gives him a brilliant smile. Then he makes a grand sweeping gesture. “Malice, if you will.”
Malice strides forward. Axel whimpers, and a wet spot forms over the crotch of his pants. “Have some dignity.”
But I understand what Malice doesn’t. His blade makes even my bladder clench. I was in Axel’s position. So, I get that right about now, our victim wants to shit, piss, and vomit all at the same time. If I close my eyes, I can almost sense Lyle behind me with that fucking whip in his hand. Can feel the drag of the leather across my back…
Jester’s watching me. I scowl at him, wordlessly letting him know I’m fine. Bullshit. I’m barely holding it together.
Malice swipes at the duct tape, cutting Axel free.
The guy starts right in with the apologies. “Come on, man, I didn’t mean none of the shit I said.”
“Yeah you did,” Malice says as he stalks back to the doorway, putting his body between Axel and freedom. “Say it now. Call me a pussy.”
“I was messing around. I didn’t mean it,” Axel pleads.
Malice’s grin is pure evil. “Coward.”
But the conversation is over because it’s time to get to work. Jester lands the first hit. He nails Axel in the face. The man’s head snaps to the side, and blood spews from his mouth. Another well-placed jab swells an eye. Axel, desperate, makes a run for the exit.
Stupid move.
It takes Jester three long strides to catch him and knock him to the floor. Axel lands on his hands and knees. A kick to the guy’s face sends a tooth sailing out of his mouth.
