20

Jack

November 17th, 19

It was just past midnight when I was finally on my way to Rae’s location, only pausing to make a quick switch of vehicle due to the storm hitting California.

The three bastard boys we had been assigned to kill had caused more trouble than Zo and I had thought, but we handled it just fine. She had to stay and wait for Jade, but I needed to go. I hadn’t heard from Rae in over an hour, and I was tired of waiting. I trusted her to take care of herself, but I had also hoped for at least one drunken text teasing me. She couldn’t help herself, that much I knew, so the fact that I hadn’t heard from her at all worried me deeply.

The shrill of my phone broke through my thoughts. I picked it up, glancing at the name, my heart skipping when I saw her name flash across the screen.

I hit answer, her ragged breathing seeping through the speakers of my car almost immediately.

“Hello, Princess,” I greeted, barely able to contain my anger. I didn’t want her going to Viv’s, the woman was bad news, but she would have gone anyway. I at least expected a couple of updates, drunk or not, and she had gone silent. She shouldn’t have gone silent.

Silence was death.

Greyson had tried to walk me through breathing exercises to control my anger problems, but so far, those lessons had proved to be useless. Our anger was meant to be used as a weapon, nothing less.

“They’re in the room,” she whispered, her fear-filled voice cracking.

I slammed my pedal to the floor, my knuckles turning white. “Hide,” I ordered. I didn’t need anything else. I didn’t need any names, any information, the fear in her voice was enough.

“I don’t want to die,” she whimpered.

“So dramatic,” I cooed, vibrating in quiet rage. “Hide, Princess, I’ll deal with your death later.” She didn’t sound right. I had heard many different versions of Rae, from angry to lustful, but this? Something was very wrong. As much as she liked to play the fearful little girl, she was brave. She faced her fears with a smile on her pretty little lips, this was not her. Not in the slightest.

“Jack, p-please.” She inhaled sharply. “It w-wasn’t Molly. It wasn’t—I’m scared, please. My h-heart…”

I heard the steering wheel groan under my grip, my teeth grinding so hard, they should have cracked by now. “Where are you?”

“An old—”

“In the fucking church, Rae, where are you?”

“B-bath—” She gasped, her breath hitching, silence following.

I waited. The only reason she would have gone silent was if she heard something, I was sure of that.

She exhaled a sob. “What floor?” I asked when I heard it. “What side of the hall?”

“Second, right—no, no, uh…” something muffled met my ears. She was hitting her head, trying to remember. Her voice cracked again. “I can’t—I can’t remember—my heart—”

I heard a door open.

Rae cried out and then she screamed. “No, no! Wait, please!”

I slammed my fist into the steering wheel, my heart racing as I heard her scream, the voices of the men drifting through.

“Ash!”

Even in a panic, she wouldn’t use my name. Such a good girl. “I’m coming baby.”

I slid into the cathedral parking lot and slammed the car into park. I slid my mask on, gun already in hand when I got out of the car. I pointed and shot at whoever came near me, whoever tried to stop me. Innocence never crossed my mind, not once.

People started screaming, streaming around me, trying to avoid me and get out of the building as I stalked through it, seeing nothing but red.

I killed three more guys going up the stairs, two in the hall, uncaring that my silencer was gone, that someone might call the police. Let them. They were upstairs near Rae, that was guilty enough for me.

There were doors lining the hall, labeled as offices or study rooms. Only one bathroom. I didn’t even bother checking to see if they had locked it, I didn’t care. I lifted my foot and slammed it into the door, splintering the wood inwards.

The scene wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before; four men, lots of blood, a girl on the ground barely conscious.

But it was my girl.

Two of the men turned towards me and I killed them before they could even take a step.

The third had been going after Rae, but at the noise I was making, he redirected, roaring, taking a step for me as if he had a chance.

One more bullet.

The other man was already on the ground beside her, blood gushing from his throat, his eyes wide, unseeing.

Rae was whimpering, one hand wrapped around a piece of broken glass, blood coating her skin, her dress, splattering across her face.

She had killed him.

Rae had killed someone.

I shoved the gun in the back of my pants and hit my knees beside her, uncaring of the blood soaking my Armani pants. “Princess.”

She was shaking, her face pale, covered in sweat, her beautiful eyes wide. “I didn’t mean too,” she whispered, blood dripping from the hand that still held that shard. “I promise, I swear to God.”

I reached for her hand, carefully unwrapping it from the glass, the clink ringing through the now silent club. “Yes, you did, and you did so good. You did good.”

Her wide eyes flicked to mine, tears streaming down her face. “M-my heart,” she shuddered, unable to stop moving, to stop squirming. “I d-don’t want to die.”

I tore off a strip from her dress and wrapped it tightly around her hand before forcing her to sit up. “You’re not going to die.” I peeled off my favorite leather jacket and wrapped it around her. Fuck, she looked so good like this. Covered in blood, wearing my clothes. I put my fingers to her neck, checking her pulse. Her heart was racing, far too fast. Her skin was clammy. Whatever Viv had given her, it certainly hadn’t been Molly.

I finally slid my arms around her and picked her up, the blood quickly soaking into my shirt. “Let’s get you home.”

She curled into my arms, twitching, shaking, chewing, pulling my jacket closer. “I’m sorry,” she whispered over and over again.

“Stop apologizing,” I told her. “You did what you had to do.”

She pressed her face into my chest, clinging to my shirt, whimpering. “Dad says we only kill the guilty,” she said suddenly. “We only kill the guilty…”

I froze and looked down. “What did you just say?”

But her breathing had evened out, her body sagging as if a switch had been flipped inside of her.

Fuck.

I looked back to the four men on the ground, confused. They only kill the guilty? Why would she think that man wasn’t guilty?

It sounded familiar, but…I shook my head. I needed to get her home.

As soon as I had her buckled in the car, I called Malachi.

“It’s late.”

“What do you know about Marla’s husband?”

He thought about it. “She mentioned him often, but I never met him, why?”

I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. “I need a mass clean-up. I’ll send you the address. I need to take her home, but I’ll be back, don’t remove any bodies until I get back.” It was a long drive, but I didn’t have a choice, I wanted to be in charge of this. I needed answers.

“Don’t touch the bathroom,” I added in.

“I’ll send who I have.”

I hung up and looked over to Rae whose head had fallen against the window, my jacket shrinking her. Fuck, she looked gorgeous.

Four hours later, I was standing in that bathroom again, Zo taking care of Rae, cleaning her up and making sure she didn’t have any other bad side-affects from the drugs in her system.

The four men remained right where they had been, people streaming around me, cleaning up the rest of the church, getting rid of bodies, tracking down those they needed to in order to keep this all under wraps.

There was a clean spot on the floor where my girl had been lying, the piece of glass laying in the pool of blood. She had been clean. They didn’t manage to get their dicks in her before I got there. Too bad they signed their death warrants by trapping her in here.

There had been enough of a struggle for a vase to break though, which is where she had gotten her shard of glass, but other than that? Her phone screen had shattered, and then nothing. There had been nothing. One had attacked, she killed him, I broke in, killed the other three.

“Mr. Ashrin?”

I turned, sliding her phone into my pocket, finding a young male standing in the doorway. “What?”

“We’ve got Josh on Viv. She’s at home with a male. George Mally. No records. Clean. We also found this.” He stepped in, holding out Rae’s leather jacket. “She left it downstairs.”

I took it from him and turned back to the four men, going through her pockets, hoping there was something left of the pills she had taken.

There wasn’t. In fact, she had nothing in her pockets except for a picture of she and Viv from High School. She must have taken this from Viv’s house. Good, I’d analyze it when I got back.

I walked up to the man she had killed and shoved him over with my foot, studying him. He didn’t look familiar. Just a nobody from the city.

My phone started ringing and I answered as I crouched down in the blood to study the man closer.

“What have you found?” Malachi asked.

“Just before Rae fainted, she told me ‘dad says we only kill the guilty’. It was in response to killing one of her attackers. She was high on something,” I explained, grabbing the male’s face and twisting it around, searching for any markings. “Don’t know what. Could be drug-induced.”

It wasn’t, I was sure of it.

“She remembers her father?”

“Only in bursts. She has nightmares about him, hardly sleeps. Now this.” I checked all of his pockets, finding a receipt in one of them. He bought a cheeseburger before coming here.

Malachi was silent long enough for me to move onto one of the other three men. “We’ve been thinking our only options are that her mother protected her from this world or that she was lying, but there is a third.”

I pulled out a string of condoms from one man’s pockets and tossed them to the side. “What’s that?” Mega seemed a bit of an overreach considering the man’s stature.

“You said she had scars across her body. Much like the ones you and your brothers wear, yet she’s out of shape. Her comprehension level, her observation skills are that of her mother’s, yet you say she’s a homebody. Have you considered that she was tortured? Forced to forget this life?”

My brows furrowed. “Forget her entire life?” I stood. “I’ve heard of brainwashing, but that seems impossible.”

“Minds are tricky things, but every mind has a shattering point. Her mother disappeared, as you said. Bard mentioned a game. Maybe this is part of it.”

I released a breath. “What? Let her live to see how it pans out? They hired us to kill her. They’re sending people after her. The poisoned drink, the shipping yard, Max, now this? Why would they do that?”

“Figure it out, Jack. If it’s a game, and the boss is angry at the soldier for letting it go on for so long, maybe it’s time you start to play his way.”

I stared at her. She was freshly clean, curled around her blankets as she slept deeply in her bed, one leg pulled out from under her comforter, her knee nearing her chest, drool dripping from the corner of her parted lips.

Zo had braided her hair back, put her in a lacy black Teddy, and while she did look absolutely ready for my cock, I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

I took in the scars I could see from where the blanket had fallen away, the innocence on her face as she breathed softly. She was so goddamn beautiful.

“What did they do to you?” I mumbled, watching as her body curled and stretched at the sound of my voice.

Zo knocked on the door softly, pulling my attention over. “Hey,” she called as I turned, “I’m heading out to get some sleep. You good?”

I nodded, turning back to Rae. “I’ll call you.” I waited until I heard the front door lock shut before stripping off my own clothes and crawling into bed with her.

I wrapped my arm around her stomach and pulled her into me until her ass hit my hips, her legs stretching, a soft moan escaping her lips as she curled her arms around mine.

I kissed her neck gently, feeling her body relax into mine as if she found some sort of comfort in me. “I’ll kill them all,” I mumbled, her body shaking in need, “every single one of them just for you, Princess. Just for you.”