Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

26. Jace

“He has to die.” I said it because it was true, because of all the things I didn’t know, this was one thing I did.

“We can’t kill Daisy’s dad,” Wolf said. “Not yet.”

We were sitting at the edge of the cliff next to the falls, the water coursing faster as it approached the edge. It was too dark to see it — almost midnight — but I could hear it rushing as it spilled into the pool below.

“I’m not talking about Hammond,” I said. “Although he’s on the chopping block too as far as I’m concerned. I’m talking about Calvin.”

The location of our conversation was intentional. Out here, Daisy couldn’t overhear our conversation, and we were still in the practice of protecting Daisy.

Fuck. I couldn’t think about her without getting hard. My fingers still smelled like her pussy, our almost-fuck in the hall replaying in my mind like the world’s hottest porn.

I tried to push it aside, to focus on the conversation or anything at all other than the fact that my need to fuck Daisy was growing to a fever pitch.

I’d been so close. So fucking close. And I still didn’t know if it would have been a good thing or the worst mistake of my life.

And hers.

“Agreed,” Otis said. ”He drugged Daisy. Scared her. Kidnapped her.”

“I’m as eager to get rid of Calvin as anybody, but we have to be smart about it,” Wolf said. “Right now he’s our only connection to Daisy’s kidnapping. We can’t kill him until he gives us the proof we need to send Daisy’s dad away for a long time.”

What was left unsaid was that none of us was eager to kill Charles Hammond. We’d already taken Blake from Daisy, and even though it had felt justified — even though it still felt justified — none of us wanted to be responsible for making Daisy an orphan.

I cracked my knuckles. “Fine. Let’s grab him. Take him to the warehouse. Work him over.”

I wasn’t the cool, calm, and collected type under the best of circumstances, and my pent-up sexual energy wasn’t helping. If I couldn’t fuck Daisy, hurting someone was the next best thing.

“If we kill him, our connection is gone,” Wolf said.

“We know Hammond is behind it.” I couldn’t hide my frustration. Between Wolf’s sense of reason and Otis’ obsessive attention to detail, we’d still be standing around jerking off when we were thirty if I didn’t push to make a move. Call me a hothead, but I was for getting shit done, and by “shit” I meant showing Calvin he couldn’t fuck with Daisy. “What are we waiting for?”

“I’m just saying,” Wolf said. “When Daisy asked if Blake was into prostituting girls, we corrected her, right?”

“Because trafficking isn’t the same as prostitution,” Otis pointed out.

“Exactly,” Wolf said. “Trafficking takes planning. It takes resources. We know the assholes from Aventine were hunting girls in the woods, but except for Alinari, those guys are in prison.”

“So what are they doing with the girls?” Otis asked, like he was starting to understand and thank fucking god because short and to the point wasn’t Wolf’s specialty.

I was past ready to get to the fucking point, or better yet, curb stomp Calvin’s head and call it a day.

“What are they doing with the girls…” Wolf muttered. He looked from Otis to me. “We want to shut them down. Not just take out Hammond.”

I took a deep breath of the pine-scented air. This close to the water, it was laced with the metallic tang of the mineral-heavy river. My head cleared and I started to see where Wolf was going. “They’re being taken somewhere. There’s some kind of system in place, a system for moving the girls, selling them, getting them to their final destinations.”

I hated the sound of it. Hated the idea of a girl like Daisy being sold like cattle, disappearing into the ether to be used and thrown away like a piece of trash.

“Don’t we want to know?” Wolf asked. “Don’t we want to pull it all apart?”

We did. I did. But even more than that, I wanted to expose Charles Hammond.

I didn’t want to hurt Daisy, but Daisy had already been hurt by the secrets and lies in her family. And the truth was, Charles Hammond had always been a smug bastard, looking down at Wolf and me, and even Otis, who had the matching set of parents that assholes like Charles Hammond seemed to think was necessary for people to be normal.

I’d acted like I didn’t care, but deep down, it had fucked me up. First, because Blake had been one of my best friends, and later, because when Charles caught me looking at Daisy, his gaze had gone cold.

And it hadn’t been the garden-variety parental protectiveness either. It had been something else: the man of the house eyeing the housekeeper around the family silver, a rich asshole parking his expensive car and looking nervously at the street kids standing nearby.

It was true that we’d always been troublemakers, but Blake had been right there with us. Daisy’s dad had been blind to the fucked-upness of his own son because Blake had been able to hide behind the smoke and mirrors of the Hammond money, and Charles Hammond had been too fucking shallow to see it.

So he’d blamed us. Had looked at us like we were dirt on his expensive Italian shoes. He’d urged Blake to “seek friends who will bring out the best in you” when Blake had been the fucking psychopath all along.

Charles Hammond looked down on me because I was raised by Mac and the club. I didn’t even have a kick-ass mom like Wolf.

I had nobody except the two guys sitting next to me at the edge of the cliff. Them, and the girl sleeping inside the house at our backs.

She hated me, but she was still mine.

Ours.

We’d made Blake pay when he’d tried to take her from us.

Now it was Charles Hammond’s turn.