Pretty Wrath (Knights of Wrath #3)

Chapter 1

WAR

I ’d prefer a funeral. Especially one I had a hand in triggering.

Instead, I’m on deck for an Irish wedding with nine-millimeter undertones.

The C Crue crime syndicate bosses have decreed my friend will marry his girlfriend or give her up.

And he, for reasons I don’t get, chose the former.

There’s plenty of pretty pussy around. He’s a golden boy athlete who can take his pick.

And yet, the guy’s killed for the girlfriend. Twice.

Me, I’m all for killing when a guy’s got it coming. Or if orders roll down from Crue leadership. Or if an asshole’s annoying and I’m bored… But not for a girl. No matter how big her tits are.

I stand in the living room of a hotel suite in Belfast—a city where no one has blown shit up in way too long—waiting with my fists clenched to stop myself from scratching a two-month-old gunshot wound that’s re-opened several times. One end of it itches like a mother fucker.

Pulling back the eggplant-and-gold curtain, I stare out the slider glass. Winter in Northern Ireland is older than recorded history, and its mystery draws me to it. The land carries the weight of centuries in its hills and the dark lines of its stone walls. Bleak and bloody appeals to me.

A knock on the door causes me to mutter, “About time.” I stalk over and yank the door open.

I was expecting Killian Callahan, another Crue soldier, and he’s in the doorway. But he’s not alone.

Killian wears a dark, non-groomsman suit and thrusts out a medical-grade staple remover still in its sterile packaging.

Next to him is chaos in the form of a spoiled female who currently looks disguised as a fucking flower plucked from the royal rose garden. Ashling Patrick is a girl I sometimes want to fuck, sometimes want to kill, and sometimes want to do both to.

At the moment, she’s in full bridesmaid gear.

Her face is dusted with peach and gold makeup, the blond hair’s a mass of fluffy waves, and from the neck down, she’s in a jade satin dress that shows off slim curves and skinny arms that have a hint of definition after what’s probably a year of her lifting weights lighter than my boots.

She’s got the most beautiful face on the fucking planet, but she usually undermines her looks with weird outfits and relentless optimistic cheer that sets my teeth on edge.

I once saw her wear an oversized tent of a blue t-shirt bearing the giant face of an ugly bulldog as a dress.

Under it, she had red-and-white-striped leggings, like a fucking Dr. Seuss illustration.

And when she’s shepherding little kids around, like her nephews, there’s an endless stream of helium-balloon laughter and frenetic hyperactivity from them all, including her.

The first time I met her I was coming off a forty-hour Crue shift that left me with an axe-to-the-skull headache.

I’d been unconscious for twenty minutes when she and the mini-brigade woke my ass up.

The head pain returned like a sledgehammer hitting the back of my skull where one of my mother’s exes cracked it with a pipe when I was thirteen.

The fracture is long- healed, but once in a while, my brain reminds me it hasn’t forgotten the bloody bruise I let someone inflict.

That day last summer, I was fucking furious at having been awakened by squealing laughter, so that first meeting did not go well.

Relations continued to be tense but for other reasons.

The girl tries to get under my skin, and the way I would like to deal with her—by spanking her pretty ass or fucking her into submission—aren’t among the current options. One day though…

Standing in the hall right now, the girl’s sky blue eyes rake over me in my black boxer-briefs. “Formalwear really suits you, War.”

Killian smirks.

I scowl hard enough to intimidate anyone without a death wish, but she’s adopted an unflappable cool lately.

My fingers itch to wrap around her pretty throat.

I could easily scare her with one small squeeze.

I won’t since I don’t want a war with the men who currently consider themselves my bosses. At least not yet.

C Crue leadership has a hard-on for this girl. It’s semi-incestuous and straight-up irritating.

The Crue’s leadership is made up of the three guys who founded it when they left the original Mafia organization they worked for in a blaze of blood and bullets. My uncle Connor “C” McCann, Ashling’s brother Scott “Trick” Patrick and Sasha “Anvil” Stroviak.

Stroviak’s on a retribution list I’ve been carrying for a while. None of the bosses know it. They will find out when he does.

As I reach for the staple remover, the girl shoves a small box into my hand instead, brushing her delicate fingertips against my callouses.

“Give those to James,” she orders before sashaying away.

My eyes follow her until she disappears around the corner to the elevator.

Killian runs a hand through his dark brown hair. “What’s up with you and Baby Patrick? ”

Narrowing my eyes, I shift my gaze to him. “Baby Patrick? What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

Killian, who looks human but often acts like a military-grade murder-bot for all the emotion he shows, stares blankly at me. “It’s what they called her in our neighborhood.”

That’s right, Killian and Ashling grew up together in South Boston.

And since each has a rabid love of fast cars and a taste for lawlessness, they used to street-race against each other.

That is, until one of Killian’s races ended with a guy getting killed in a fiery crash, landing Killian in trouble with the school and the law.

That’s when Killian’s gangster brothers put an end to high school drag races in Boston.

Although I wasn’t in Boston—or even the United States—when that shit went down, I make it my business to know the history of the people around me.

I take the staple remover and stride over to an antique couch in the center of the room. When I lower my six-six two-eighty frame onto it, the dainty legs creak and threaten to collapse. Removing the latest staples holding the edge of the wound closed, I think back to the night the injury happened.

It was actually Killian who placed the first set of staples after a ricocheting bullet carved a groove in my flesh.

Didn’t hurt much at the time, but it’s been a bitch to close.

First, it got infected. Then my workouts caused the deepest part of the wound to pop open.

I was advised to stop my leg workouts for a few weeks, which I didn’t do.

I work out six days a week like a gladiator whose life depends on his body’s strength and agility. Because it has.

Studying the white railroad-track scars from staples left in too long, I shrug it off. No regrets. Being stronger than the next guy is essential in my line of work. Sometimes I need to kill silently with just my hands.

Killian enters the suite to grab a scone from the breakfast tray. I scratch the scabbed area that’s been driving me crazy. The harder I go at it, the rawer it gets. But even when the freshly-healed part of the wound starts to sting and gives up drops of blood, it’s nothing short of a relief.

“Girl’s an adult.” My tone is hostile as I continue the conversation about Ashling. “Men who call her baby nicknames sound like dickheads.”

Killian’s silence causes me to look up. I meet his bland scrutiny with a hard, flat stare, waiting to see if he’ll take offense and do something about it.

“Are you fucking her?” Killian’s tone is mildly curious. He doesn’t really care. Just like he doesn’t care about the dickhead comment. He gives zero fucks about anything other than his little girlfriend, Raine.

“Who?” J asks as he walks out from the bedroom, dressed in his wedding suit.

Jamie’s the third of our Crue sleeper cell at Granthorpe University. We’re on a school break right now, but as soon as that’s over, it’s back to grinding on the work mission.

“Your cousin,” Killian says, picking up the box the girl dropped off and tossing it to J.

“No, he’s not hooking up with her, ” J says, catching the box. “She’s not War’s type.” J assesses me for a moment, waiting for me to confirm this.

Since he’s not blind, he senses there’s something unholy between me and the girl.

God knows I’d like to slake my lust some night and put her in her place at the same time.

And that place would be with her forehead on the carpet, naked ass in the air, submitting to me in every filthy, depraved way there is.

But I’ve marked her off-limits for now because I’m playing a long game and fucking with Ashling would alert Crue leadership to the fact that I could go rogue at any time.

“He’s right,” I say casually.

No one can know my true motives for joining the Crue. Not until it’s too late .

Popping my knuckles, I resist the urge to scratch the raw scar. “The mouth on that girl would make me smash her to pieces.”

“She’s all right with everyone else.” This observation from Killian makes me want to smash him to pieces.

Which would be a taller order than most. He and I in a violent dance would be a good contest. One I hope to engage in someday.

I’m bigger of course, since I’m bigger than everyone except Anvil Stroviak.

Killian is six-four and solid, and a great fighter.

I’d win in the end, but a matchup between us would be a good spectator sport.

J opens the box and extracts a pair of gold cufflinks.

“I’d say it’s fifty-fifty in terms of who’s trying to push whose buttons between the pair of you.

But it’s true our Ash is a wee bit rebellious when challenged.

Worth noting, though, is that she’s probably still pure as new snow, seeing as she’s under the protection of at least two stone-cold killers. No sane man should mess about there.”

Two of the three. I’m guessing J means Trick, the older brother, and Stroviak whose kids Ash babysits for or some shit. My uncle C always seems more neutral when he talks about Ashling, though he was quick to warn me off.

The day after I met her, C told me, “Ashling Patrick is ten years younger than Trick and was only three when her dad was gunned down. In Trick’s mind, he helped raise that girl, and she’s kind of like his kid.

He referred to her as ‘the baby’ until he had an actual kid of his own on the way.

You feel me? He sees protecting his sisters as his responsibility.

He made it clear from the jump that no one from the Crue, not even Anvil or me, would get a pass if we tried to mess with that girl. ”

Killian glances at my leg, which I’m officially done scratching. I grab a wet rag from the kitchenette to wipe it down before I slap a bandage over the bloody part, so I can get dressed.

Killian’s gaze rises from my leg to my face. “Why’d you show her your gunshot wound if you’re not fucking her?”

What now ?

“I didn’t.” For a moment, I’m bewildered. Then, I think back. “She saw a bandage around my leg when she crashed the house like a hurricane one morning. But I let on that it was a pulled muscle.”

Licking his lips, Killian cocks his head. His gaze shifts to J. “Did you tell her War got shot?”

“Me? No,” J scoffs, dragging out the no with his Irish accent.

My attention is fully on Killian now. “Why?”

“When she saw the stapler just now in the hall, she said, ‘I thought War’s bullet wound was finally all healed up?’”

My eyes narrow. Killian’s girlfriend was home the night it happened. I stopped at their place with my shirt wrapped around the bloody gash, looking for a first-aid kit. “Your girl, Raine, must’ve told her.” My tone is accusatory.

“Raine doesn’t know her. And Raine knows better than to gossip about gunshots.”

J fastens the cufflinks into his button holes. “Ash may have overheard C talking to Trick about it.”

Killian shakes his head. “Doubt it.”

He’s right. My uncle Connor, the head of C Crue, is about as free with information as the fucking NSA. He wouldn’t allow himself to be overheard talking about shootouts.

That means Trick, the analyst, must’ve told Ash himself.

Which is bullshit. Crue business is supposed to stay within the Crue.

Not that I was actually on Crue business when I caught a ricocheting bullet while I was taking a piss in an alley behind a bar.

Literally got caught in some crossfire with my dick in my hand.

Thinking about it still makes me want to kill the shooter and the assholes he was shooting at.

So, Ashling Patrick knows I got shot. Does she know the circumstances, too?

The thought of Trick discussing me with his little sister rubs me the wrong way. I’m none of her fucking business. Or anyone’s.

Telling Trick to watch his fucking mouth would be crossing a line in terms of disrespect, but that’s exactly what I’ll be inclined to do once I’ve had a few shots of liquor tonight. Inadvisable and dangerous. Yet, I can’t rule it out. Depends on my mood later.

I wasn’t kidding about preferring a funeral to a wedding any day.

Let violence reign.