Ashes of Saints (The Dark Alliance #2)

CHAPTER ONE

PARKER

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I smirk as I lean against the open door and think of the woman I accidentally bumped into today on the street.

Aurora Whitlock.

The stunning redhead, trapped in a web she doesn’t know she’s in.

Like a tiny little fly.

She doesn’t remember me, but I see hints of familiarity that she can’t quite place deep inside her eyes. It’s a knowing she can’t quite access.

Something I’m too fucking familiar with.

At least I didn’t kidnap her like Maddox did with Kyra. That shit was messed up.

Still, Aurora isn’t going to run from me. I saw the way her pupils dilated, her nipples hardened, and how flustered she was as I towered over her.

I pulled out all the moves.

I crowded her, smirked as I gazed into her globes like she was the juiciest fucking burger I’d ever seen. My mouth watering.

I wouldn’t say I charmed her, but I’d put money on her pussy being soaked when I walked away.

Good fucking money.

Depending on who this woman really is, Aurora is probably fantasizing about me being her dream man. I’m going to keep letting her think that for as long as I want to play with her.

While I need her.

Then, depending on her level of involvement in the depraved world we both came from, I will break her.

Fuck it, I’ll break her anyway.

I owe her nothing.

I blow out the smoke of my cigar—a habit I need to give up—and stub it out in the ashtray I keep on the balcony of my NYC penthouse. It’s well after midnight, and as I take a few more steps outside, I watch the boats on the Hudson while gazing around Manhattan.

Money doesn’t make you happy, but it empowers you with choices other people don’t have. There’s no waiting or asking permission.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days, in the dark alleys of our boarding school, where we spent nights pummeling one another in our own version of Fight Club.

Girls wouldn’t understand.

We’re different from them at the core of our essence. Boys are filled with testosterone and frustration. I’m not sure we’re suited for society, even in these modern times. Is it really all that different from two hundred years ago when men walked through an old English town in a suit pretending to be a gentleman? Restrained by society and law.

We’re still pretending not to be the animals we are.

Pretending to be what’s expected of us.

Pretending not to be mad at something that our parents, the government, our neighbor, our spouse, the markets silently demand. Even the person in the car in front of us in traffic. That fucker.

Or maybe we’re just angry at fucking everything.

So, it might not have been appropriate for a group of young men to be running our own club with the pure intention of punching the fuck out of each other. But we did. And we spent most nights there. Kids came again and again.

No one was ever forced.

It was our therapy.

I wouldn’t mind turning back time, rolling up my sleeves, bouncing on the balls of my feet and saying (with a wiggle of my fingers) come and get me, you piece of shit. Then beating whoever was a willing victim until my fist, and their face, was bloody.

The trouble is, the person I’m angry with is my father, David Stone. He’s deceased.

Dead.

Six feet under.

Nothing more than a skeleton whose flesh has been munched away at by bugs for years.

I like remembering him like that. It’s a much happier memory than when he was alive. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. The memories of my childhood live on inside of me, keeping me full of rage and hate.

I was exposed to a dark evil that no child should have to experience. Delivered to the people who harmed me by the very man who was responsible for protecting me.

He didn’t.

I’m almost certain he was paid, although I don’t recall seeing it. But my father never participated. Not that I saw. Here’s an interesting thing about memories. The brain is clever—it doesn’t retain things it finds traumatic. It simply says, huh, that was fucking horrible. Throw it out and don’t remember it.

Simply put.

So, I don’t remember certain things.

But I remember enough. I remember the fear, the feelings, the knowledge that this shouldn’t be happening.

Worse, my body remembers, like it has a memory of its own.

Some days, when I feel triggered, it’s the not knowing that terrifies me the fucking most. I want to remember so I can feel in control despite it happening over twenty years ago. Instead, I’m sitting here smoking another fucking cigar, planning revenge.

I got lucky though. When I was sent to at Phillips Academy—a boarding school for rich kids—I met Maddox, Travis, Zayne, and Killian.

We bonded fast and over time learned we’d experienced similar childhoods. All of us have a dark tale to tell and desire to get even with those who hurt us.

My father decided to die, the fucking coward.

But I’m not sad that my path led me to my friends. The Alliance was formed, and we created a code to live by, which was sealed in a blood pact.

Strength in silence: revenge is a patient man’s game. We act in the shadows and never reveal our hand too soon.

Now the Alliance Club is an adult-only club owned by Travis, located at one of his high-end, exclusive golf clubs in New York City. A place we frequent almost every weekend to catch up...and fuck women.

We’re honest men, not good men.

All five of us are busy, successful billionaires, running businesses. In my case, I buy failing companies that I see potential in. Then pull them apart and put them back together again so they’re sustainable.

I’ve made a lot of money, but not a lot of friends in the process. The media loves to make me the bad guy for taking people’s jobs while I shake out the cobwebs and problems. What these noisy fuckers (aka journalists—I’m not a fan) fail to understand is that the redundant jobs wouldn’t exist if the company completely collapsed.

What part of failing business do people not understand?

It’s no different from your own bank account. When money runs out, there’s no more to employ people.

No money.

No job.

Fuck, it melts my brain to have to keep explaining this over and goddamn over.

So, I take these companies and make the changes the original owners or executives should’ve made in the first place and make them profitable. Then—louder for the people in the back—start hiring when the budget allows.

Usually more people.

The right people.

In the right roles, so they don’t mess up the company again.

It’s not goddamn brain surgery.

Fuck me.

As you can tell, I’m angry about a lot of things. I don’t have much patience. I always have to be in control and I hate to lose.

I rarely do.

And I’m driven by a need to avenge the little boy who didn’t have the influence, power, and money that I do now. Aurora is the first step in my plan.

Listen, I could be more of a monster.

I was... fuck , I hate saying the words. I know I live on the edge. I was groomed. Groomed to be a sexual toy and one day a predator.

They told me I was a good boy and helped me choose other kids when they were brought in. My father said I would be in charge of this one day.

“I don’t want to.” I responded when I was seven.

He slapped me so hard I fell over and my face was bruised. The next day, Dad told Mom I fell down some stairs.

I was taught to do as I was told and not have a point of view about what I did or saw. Day by day, year by year, I became numb even while the flame of hate flickered deep down inside me.

Had it gone on longer, they might’ve succeeded in completely putting out that flame.

But they didn’t.

Fortunately, my grandmother discovered what my father was doing, and I was sent away to Phillips Academy.

If only it was as simple as all that sounds.

That I’d lived happily ever after.

But that’s not how abuse works. There was no therapy. No open discussion about what I’d been through and having him arrested. No sobs and anguish at the loss of my innocence.

Nothing.

Grandma, a stoic woman, was worried about the shame it would have on the family if the information got out. Her side of the family came from old money, and it was ingrained in her DNA to protect our reputation.

I can’t hate her for it— her actions saved my life.

While my mother sat in shame, Grandma paid for me to go to boarding school and confronted my father behind closed doors. All I heard was the yelling and smashing of glasses.

So that’s me: rich and angry as fuck.

From the outside, I look like a privileged white guy with more money than God. That’s the thing about assumptions, isn’t it? They’re packed with bullshit and stories the viewer made up.

A fantasy.

Suffering can be very visible or invisible.

And who’s to say which is worse? It’s not a fucking competition, but trust me, nobody would choose my childhood. I might have grown up in a big fancy house, but I’d trade that for poverty and parents who loved and protected me any day of the damn week.

To others, it appeared that my father and I were close. He took me with him wherever he went.

But he didn’t take me to baseball games.

Or the zoo.

There were no museum visits or cruises on the Hudson River.

My memories haunt my dreams, but I do remember one thing very clearly. A little girl with strawberry-blond hair and bright green eyes.

Aurora.

She was at least five or six years younger than me and wasn’t allowed in the area of the house where the parties took place.

Parties.

When she’d appear in the doorway, her mother, Mary-Anne, would lose her mind. My father would berate her for letting the girl out of her room.

I immediately despised her.

Why was this little emerald-eyed girl special?

Why did he not protect me with the same passion and care?

It wasn’t until I was older that I wondered if he was her father. I’d never seen David and Mary-Anne intimate—they both clearly liked fucking little kids instead.

So, I was left with this vision of Aurora as this saint that they saw had more worth than me, while I was told to pull my dick out or bend over.

One night, Dad raced to the door, picked her up in his arms, and closed the door behind him.

Like he should have done for me.

Taken me away from the horror.

He never did.

I will never understand why. We had money. He had enough power for a man who had married into my mother’s family. Why did he do it?

I’ll never know.

My father had died of prostate cancer before I left school, but now I have Aurora, and the doors to the information I seek are once again open.

I hope he’s rolling in his grave, freaking the hell out at what I’m about to uncover. Because if there is evidence and a way to discredit his name and destroy anyone else involved, I will do it.

Including Aurora.

She was unaware, as a young woman, of what was happening in the adult’s room. That doesn’t mean she isn’t aware now. Back then, I watched her take in, with those huge green eyes, all the depravity while confusion and horror crossed her face.

Did I feel bad? No.

Not when Mary-Anne or my father would soon scoop her up and whisk her away to safety.

While I was trapped in hell.

I simply did, and still do, hate her.

I’ve never stopped thinking about Aurora and why the green-eyed saint was protected and I wasn’t.

Over the years, I’ve searched for her, wondering if she was my half sister or being groomed to take over the organization from behind the scenes. It could’ve happened while I was at boarding school.

It’s taken me almost ten years, but now I’ve found her.

Now I get to decide how this plays out.

Said the spider to the fly...