18

Jack

November 16th, 2019

She was too exhausted to care about the fact that Zo kept giving her the side-eye.

I had brushed her hair out, helped clean up the mess, and helped put her sweats back on before grabbing her phone and carrying her back out to the living area.

She fell into the seat next to mine only to lean heavily against me when I settled into my seat. It was something I wasn’t used too, the cuddling, the just wanting to touch phase she seemed to rest in. That wasn’t to say I didn’t like it. I liked it more than I thought I would. I liked knowing that she found enough comfort in my presence that she was able to both pick a fight and lean on me when she needed it.

That wasn’t to say I wouldn’t meet her with the same vigor on the fighting side, but the touching side? It was something I would have to come to terms with. Something I had to get used too.

I gave Zo a warning look after forcing Rae to drink some of my water.

I understood Zo had issues with the Claim I had made, but it was bound to happen eventually. If not to the three of us, then to the other Initiates. I couldn’t understand why she had such a problem with it. We had fucked. For a week, seven years ago. We had been stationed in the desert, we were alone, desperate, there was a lag in the assignment. What better to fill the time then fucking? It meant nothing, Zo was just trying to get under her skin, test her.

I didn’t have a problem with that, but these last several days had taken their toll on Rae, more than I thought it would. I’d have to show some restraint for the next little while.

At least the next day.

Or a few hours, that should do it.

Zo leaned over the table. “Who are you?” she asked her.

Rae forced herself to straighten up only to fall back into the chair, her eyes heavy, her lips still swollen from our kissing. “Rae Charlie Bennett,” she answered as confidently as her tired mind would allow.

It was something I hadn’t expected, what I felt when she hugged me, when she fell into me. She had needed comfort and she had fallen into me.

It could have been convenience. She didn’t have anyone else in this world right now, and I was there, or perhaps she was settling into her new role. Whatever it was, it had shaken me to my core. That last fuck had been unexpected. Soft and passionate. It’s not something any of us are known for, save for Greyson, I supposed.

But it felt…it felt good.

I slid a hand over her thigh, squeezing it tightly, pulling a soft whimper from her lips, her eyes falling shut.

“Jack,” Zo snapped. “Keep it in your pants for ten minutes, okay? Jesus.”

I glared at her. “I’ll fuck her whenever I want.” I just wanted to learn how to touch her without it ending in fucking. It wasn’t just that she was my toy, I had a role I silently promised to play too.

Perhaps Greyson was rubbing off on me. That was annoying. “Keep asking your questions, we don’t have time to fuck around,” I instructed icily.

She rolled her eyes and straightened. “Because of you, you ass. Rae,” she started, snapping her fingers.

“Don’t,” I snarled, my hand tightening unintentionally around Rae’s leg, a shiver running through her. “Don’t snap at her like she’s a fucking dog.”

Despite my reaction, I had seen the way she had reacted to Zo’s claims, and I fucking hated it. The way she shut down so fast. Her self-esteem, despite what she peacocked to the world, was in the fucking shitter, and I would fix that. I was going to fix it, and whoever stood in my way would get a bullet to their skull. No matter what they meant to me.

Zo sneered, cracked her neck, and leaned back in her chair, trying to rid herself of the tension. She was a genuinely good person. Somewhere between Greyson and Everett. Good, but still fierce, but she was protective too. All of her claims of women getting attached, she feared us getting attached to the wrong people too. Falling in love only to have to kill them days later when they proved to be talkers. Blabbing our business across the world about who we were.

That was her biggest fear. Us dying because of our hearts.

Don’t worry, Zo, Rae won’t say a word, I’ll make sure of it.

“Rae, where did you go to school?”

She inhaled deeply and rolled her eyes. “Brentwood,” she answered, picking at the table.

“Where did you meet Viv?”

She shifted in her seat and spread her legs a little more. “10th grade, physics class. She sat in the fourth row from the door, 8th seat up.”

I slid my hand around the inside of her thigh, a sigh escaping her lips as her eyes fluttered, her hands relaxing in her lap again.

“Homework must have come in by the ton, but you told Jack you learned a few different languages from your nanny, Donna. When did she teach you that?”

She started picking again, this time at her skin. “The weekends, early mornings.”

My brows furrowed as she shifted again, her muscles tensing.

“You didn’t have time for friends, did you?”

“No,” she answered, squeezing her thighs together and letting them fall apart again, her nails digging into the meat around her thumb. “Viv is—was all I had,” she corrected.

My eyes lifted to Zo, and she noticed it too, the shifting, the picking. Nervousness.

“Rae,” Zo went on, leaning over the table again. “Hey, look at me.”

Her eyes shifted to Zo’s, hardening as much as they could in her exhausted state.

“Are you lying to us?”

“No,” she bit, relaxing back in her chair. “I’m not lying. My mom was gone all the time, Donna raised me. My driver dropped me off and picked me up from school all the time. That’s what I remember.”

I know it bothered her. Finding out everything she had a week ago, but as Zo kept asking questions, I was starting to question myself. This wasn’t a girl who had the ability to lie this well, not to me. This was something else entirely.

Zo studied her for a moment before nodding. “Okay. Your mom was an art dealer, she must have brought home pieces for you when she visited. Do you know where they are?”

She flexed her thighs again, picking at her nails. “Um…” she closed her eyes, thinking back, her body tensing.

Seconds ticked by before she finally remembered. “Oh, there was a storage unit. Unit…447,” she decided, opening her eyes again. “Downtown, that’s where she put the gifts she brought me.”

I turned to her and grabbed her jaw, forcing her head around until our eyes locked. I searched them, saw the exhaustion in them, the redness in the whites of her eyes. She didn’t have the energy to lie.

She glared at me anyway.

“Who do you belong to?” I asked, watching her carefully.

“Jack,” Zo groaned. “Come on.”

I ignored her. “Answer the question, Princess.”

Her entire body slowly relaxed, her pupils growing, her shoulders falling, her glare fading away, her hands relaxing in her lap. “You,” she breathed out, her eyes filling. “I belong to you.” A truth she couldn’t deny no matter how hard she tried.

Fuck, I loved when she said that. “What is your mom’s name?”

Her body tensed, her fingers picking at her bare legs, the muscles in her face hardening, but not in a glare, she was still feigning truth. “Marla Bennett,” she whispered.

I nodded, unsure what was happening here. Unsure what was happening in her head, what was happening in her life. I’d figure it out soon enough though, and when I did, anyone who had a part to play in this would pay their dues.

I leaned back, releasing her jaw, sliding my hand back over her thigh as I did. “I have three other brothers,” I told her as she angled herself towards me and reached for her water. Good girl. “Everett, Greyson, and Azrael. I have three sisters, they look after us. Zo,” I nodded towards her. “Poppy, who watches over Azrael, and Evie, who watches over Everett.”

“Babysitters,” she suggested innocently.

Zo smiled and shrugged. “Yeah.”

“No,” I frowned, glaring at her.

Rae allowed a small smile, relaxing once again. “Why doesn’t Greyson have a babysitter?”

I swear to God.

“He doesn’t need one,” Zo answered, inspecting her own manicured nails. “Too good. We all went through a program. The Shadow Initiation Program. The sons first, all but Greyson, and then us daughters soon after. Once they went through, Malachi opened it up to his people. We’re spread all across the world, you could say, but only a few hundred of them actually made it through the program. Some died during it, others failed, and more just didn’t take the chance.”

Rae nodded, thinking over this information. “Am I allowed to ask questions?”

“Only if you’re willing to die if you speak them out loud.”

Without hesitation, she agreed, and I was proud of her for it.

Zo waved her ahead. “Ask away, but we can’t stay long. We’ve always got business. It never stops. Something to keep in mind as we go about this.”

Rae nodded her agreement. “How many sons does Malachi have?”

“Four,” she answered. “The first four who ever went through the first version of the program.”

“Blood?”

Zo’s eyes flicked to mine and back. “No.”

“Do any of you have families?” she asked, her eyes finding mine.

“If you mean do we have blood out there, the answer is yes,” I explained evenly. “If you’re asking if they’re involved, the answer is no.”

She chewed on the inside of her cheek, pain clear in her eyes, but she held her tongue and turned back to Zo. “What is it you do?”

Zo shrugged. “A little of everything, I guess. We do what needs to be done. Malachi runs the show, a lot of shows, and if there’s a problem, we’re the people who deal with it.”

“Hired guns?”

She snorted. “You watch too much television, Bennett.”

A smile touched her lips, light reflecting in her eyes as if that term was endearing to her. “What else is a girl to do with no job, no family, and no friends?”

Before Zo could respond, Rae’s phone started ringing, mine buzzing in time with it.

Rae looked over and glared at me, rolling her eyes before pulling it out of her sweats and seeing who was calling.

Her shoulders tensed when she saw the name.

Captain Bard.

She rolled her eyes and silenced it, pushing it away.

“No, answer it,” I told her, wanting to see what he had to say.

Avoiding looking over, she shook her head. “I don’t want to deal with it right now, Jack.”

Well, that’s just too damn bad. I reached for her phone and hit answer, putting it on speaker in the middle of the table.

She worked her jaw, her face twisting into a quiet rage as she stared at that phone.

“Rae?”

Her throat bobbed as she pressed her lips together.

“Rae,” Bard demanded.

Zo eyed her in question, irritation in her own eyes.

After a second, Rae finally rolled her eyes and cleared her throat, her face shifting, her body adjusting, as if she were physically putting on a persona. “Good afternoon, Captain, how can I help you?” she asked sweetly.

Papers shuffled. “Well, it seems we’ve received a complaint of sexual assault against you.”

She straightened, her body going still as stone. “What?”

My eyes found Zo’s, her eyes flaming. I swear to God if Max did something.

“Max Justice came in today. He was missing two fingers and he said you stuck a hot coal into his mouth. Now, while I wouldn’t consider that just sexual assault, he was adamant that’s what it was. I’m assuming he isn’t telling me everything.”

A hot coal? I would have cut out his entire tongue, but I also know Zo had done more than that to him during their little bit of time together.

“We need him to talk,” Zo mouthed.

Rae spun on me, her eyes wide. “I can assure you that I did no such thing,” she told him. Thanks reflected in her eyes, relief, appreciation.

You’re welcome, Princess. Anything for you.

“He has video proof.”

She snatched the phone and brought it closer to her. “What?” she asked, her careful composure slipping.

“What?” I seethed, finding Zo’s eyes.

She was already pulling out her gun.

“Now, I’m sure you’ll throw money at it to make it go away, but what can’t go away, Rae, is the evidence I have lying on my desk. It doesn’t matter how much money you give me, I can’t excuse an assault of this caliber, do you understand me? But perhaps we can come to another sort of agreement.”

Her body tensed and I immediately snatched the phone from her hand.

“Captain,” she warned, glaring at me as I held the phone out of reach, “don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

She was trying to protect him? What the fuck?

“Max is here right now, Rae. It will take me two seconds to file this report, make it a permanent record. A woman so distraught over the loss of her mother, she attacks her half-brother in a brief mental break. You’ll lose everything. Unless, that is, you do what you should have done months ago, but now you need to let Max watch.”

Her eyes widened.

I laughed, feeling something within me snap. “Your rank means nothing in my world, Alan,” I hummed. “Finish off your bucket list, you’ve got an hour left to live.” I hung up the phone and stood abruptly, the rage shaking through me. Blackmail? He was trying to blackmail my goddamn girl?

“An hour?” Zo asked in shock. “Seems an awfully long time to let him live after that.”

“You’re going to kill him?” Rae asked, shoving herself to a stand. “He’s the Captain of the Police Department, Jack, you can’t kill him.”

“I’m going to kill him on his way home,” I told Zo, heading over to the island where my jacket and gun were laying completely ignoring Rae. “Should be about 15 minutes.”

“Jack,” Rae snapped.

I glanced over, taking her in. Fuck, she was beautiful.

“You can’t kill him, he’s the captain of the fucking police,” she said again as if that would make me change my mind.

“As if that means anything in our world. If you’re going to Viv’s, ask questions. If you feel like you’re in danger, run, call me, I’ll be there. Luckily for you, our next assignment is twenty minutes from Viv’s place.”

She glared at me. “You’re going to kill someone.”

“And you were going to run away and get yourself into some deep shit like you did in the shipping yard after I told you not to do anything stupid.” I clicked my tongue, watching as her pupils widened at that. “Do as I say, Princess. Tomorrow, you move in.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she growled, despite the way her thighs clenched together.

I smiled back at her, knowing her dirty little secret as I shoved my gun into my belt, Zo joining me. “That’s cute that you think you have a choice.”

“You’re going to push her into breaking your rules,” Zo pointed out as we rolled into an alley a few blocks from the police station.

I had already called Brett, had him pull some people to block off the streets for us, and I shut off all of the cameras in the area, making it look like a technological issue. Whatever happened, nobody but the Initiates would know.

“That’s the point,” I replied, replacing my helmet with my mask. No paint this time, but it wouldn’t matter. The captain liked to turn his cameras off, just as most of his cops did. A corrupt station through and through. If I didn’t have a world of other things to do, I would have shut the entire station down.

“You want to punish her?”

“We pick the girls who will accept us as we are, Zo, not the ones who fear everything about us.”

I loaded my weapon and headed for the mouth of the alley, pulling up the street cameras on my phone as I did. He was just now leaving the precinct. He looked scared.

Good.

“You pick the girls who like getting hurt,” she stated coldly. “You’re not looking for love.”

“No one ever said we were. I don’t need love to have a good fuck.”

“Does she know that?”

His car pulled away from the curb.

“She knows what she needs to know to remain where she is. You sure changed your tune when I brought her back out,” I pointed out, shoving my phone away. “Did Malachi call you and threaten your status?”

She laughed. “Malachi wouldn’t dare.” Zo slid her own mask on. “I heard her crying,” she confessed, walking to the other side of the alley, mirroring me. “She said she didn’t know who she was anymore. I know you boys won’t admit how you felt when Malachi brought you to that building, but I can admit without shame that once I started that training, it was the first time in my entire life that I knew who I was. I knew what I was meant to do. Who I was meant to be. Maybe I haven’t been in a closet, sobbing to a serial killer about my identity crisis—”

I glared at her.

“—but I do know what it feels like to have no idea who you are or where you belong. It’s hard. So, while I’m not saying go easy on her, just…just try to have some sympathy to her position.”

I studied her eyes, her mask covering the bottom half of her face. Rae didn’t need a program to remind her who she was, I’d get the answers for her, whatever it took. “She’ll be fine.” She didn’t need coddled. She needed pushed and shoved right off the cliff.

Over and over again.

Until she was begging for me to stop.

“I never said she wouldn’t be. Says a lot about you though, that your mind went straight to that.”

My lip curled.

She gave me a look.

I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone, watching the cameras I had placed on the buildings lining his route. “Thirty seconds.”

Zo cracked her neck. “Here we go.” She walked out into the street like a cat challenging a bear.

I waited until his cruiser came speeding around the corner, only to slam on the breaks as soon as he realized she wasn’t moving.

He stopped a foot away from hitting her. “What the fuck are you doing?” he roared, getting out of the car. “You kids and your fucking arrogant upbringings. Careless. I should ticket you for jaywalking.”

I stepped out of the shadows, my gun at my side as he stormed towards Zo.

“You have no respect, no care for anyone else but yourself,” he snarled, pointing a finger at her.

She grabbed that finger and snapped it back, the crack finding my ears just half a second before his cry did.

She grabbed his wrist after that and twisted it back, pulling another cry from his lips. “Fuck,” he whimpered, trying to bend his knees and twist in a way that would ease the pain. “You’ll pay for this, you cunt.”

I let my gun run across the hood of his cruiser, the sound pulling his attention over.

“What the fuck?” he asked, the anger draining from his voice as he took me in. “Wait,” he started, realizing who I was. “Wait, you said an hour. I had an hour!”

I pulled up the gun, pointing it at his head, unfazed by his whines. “I lied. Tends to happen from time to time. Why are you extorting Rae Bennett?”

“I’m not.”

I pressed the barrel into his temple. “I don’t like liars.”

“Wait!” he screamed, shaking in his mediocre suit. “Wait, just…” he panted, his eyes wild, sweat dripping down his face. “Let me think, just—”

“I don’t like when people have to think,” I told him. “It usually means someone is trying to lie to me.”

Tears dripped down his cheeks. “Okay. Okay! They wanted her dead. I couldn’t give her any information on her mother’s death because there was no murder. It’s all…it’s all part of the game,” he tried, his eyes finding mine. “It’s the game. It’s all a game. He wasn’t happy with their decisions about the game, so he ordered them to finish it. He ordered them.”

I leaned down, getting in his face. “What game?”

He shook his head, his eyes filling, a smile spreading across his face. “Even when you think it’s over, it’s still going. It will always keep going. You can’t stop it. Nobody can.”

I snarled, shoving the end of the gun into his skin. “Tell me who spoke to you, tell me—”

He moved his jaw around, his tongue, and crunched down.

My heart stopped.

He started shaking, foaming at the mouth.

“Fuck!” I roared as Zo let him fall to the ground. I slammed my foot into his face, his head cracking back, his body going stiff before sagging into the ground.

I turned away from them, panting, heart racing. What fucking game? What game? “Why the fuck did he have a cyanide capsule in his mouth?” I asked, turning back to Zo. We weren’t even required to do that. Who was he? Who was controlling this?

She was already on the phone to Jade as she toed the man. “Don’t know,” she commented, the foam still dripping from his mouth, his eyes wide, pupils blown. “Guess we’ll have to ask the makers of this so-called ‘game’ when we find them. Or the guy in charge of telling them to end it. Seems like a soldier went AWOL.”

And the boss didn’t like that.

Fuck, I wanted to kill someone. Anyone. All of them.

I paused and straightened. Max. It was a good enough start. He had to know something about this. Even if he didn’t, he’d be a good enough punching bag until I found someone else to punish.