Chapter Twelve
Deacon
They say if you smell something burning when there’s no smoke, you’re going to die. The only thing I smell is disinfectant. And it’s fucking rancid. The only thing I see is blinding white light, and the only thing I hear is the constant beep of a machine.
It’s entrenched in my head and swirls around my gut like a constant companion. Only he’s a fucked-up jester who mocks me with every breath I take.
Is this me paying for my sins? Well, the joke is on me, then. I spent my whole life training for this position. Killing hundreds of men was my initiation to earn the respect as one of the heads of the Ursid Syndicate. Because that’s what we are. That’s what’s in our blood. We’re killers.
Our descendants believe in personal deliverance, which is why our syndicate is the most powerful in the world. We don’t have assassins to take care of the people who are in our way. We are the assassins ourselves. And in our line of business, there are always people standing in our way who need to die almost every other day.
But it took one minute, and now I can’t sleep at night. Guilt ravishes me, and I can’t fucking undo my past. I’m stuck here, and I fucking hate it. It’s been a year since I last killed someone. As if stopping who I am would be enough to repent. It’s too late for me now.
Callen and Mason have been taking care of business while I merely exist. But even Mason is going through something right now, so most of the business has fallen on Callen’s shoulders.
We’ve been trained to be emotionless, and now we don’t know how to handle our personal fucking business.
Life is a stupid thing, and then we die. I’m ready to die. But I’m also an arrogant bastard, and I won’t go looking for it. Thousands of men will sell their left nut for a chance to blow my head off my shoulders.
But no. Death has to come to me silently, un-fucking-provoked, and be goddamned conclusive if it wants to stand a chance against me.
That’s all happening inside my head because I’m also fucking arrogant enough to never voice or show my weakness to civilians, and anyone outside of Callen Andrews and Mason Blackstone is considered a civilian.
I used to live off the fear I created, the tremor my name ignites, and the power at my feet, but it’s the same fucking thing over and over. More power. More money. More death.
Like now.
Livia Daniels.
Twenty-three years old. Her father is a shifty lawyer. Her mother fell off a balcony at their home when she was thirteen.
And now she’ll have to die.
There was never a time when all three of our phones went off at the same time, but it happened, and it happened while we were with that piece of vermin, Kirill Yenin.
There is only one reason our phones would go off at the same time.
An intruder.
And now she’s in our lair. Trapped and at our mercy, until we decide her fate.
From the control room in the basement of our house, filled with monitors covering every inch of the cottage, it took us about ten minutes to learn everything there is to know about the dark-haired girl trespassing on our property.
Livia Daniels doesn’t know this yet, but she’s dead based on who she is and who she is connected to.
But there is something about her that brings out the hunter in us and makes us want to play with our prey for a little while before we end her life and throw her body away.
Or keep her.
We’re pushing for a confession we don’t need. It’s blatantly obvious that we’re stalling. We could”ve just made her eat the ricin and carried on with our lives.
But there is just something about her...
It happens slowly, as I watch the girl on camera. My cock twitched the first time I laid my gaze on her with fear rampant in her dark brown gaze as she tried to figure out what was happening, while her lips quivered uncontrollably.
I can see the way her mind is working now and how she’s analyzing the situation, and it doesn’t matter what computations she comes up with; she knows she’s reached the end of her existence.
Her fear is the sweetest thing I’ve seen all my life. That thought jolts the fucking breath out of me. She made me feel something.
Callen and Mason beside me are thinking the same thing. We’re wired the same way. She’s affecting us the same way.
She trembles as she removes her clothes. Her hair is tied up, and the rest of her dark chocolate tresses hang down her back. The oversized track pants and hoodie she wore hid her body well enough.
My gaze travels over her soft curves. Her skin is smooth, glossy, and fragile. I could so easily break her. Her body, that is. Her mind will take a little longer because she’s oddly defiant as she faces death.
She hates that we made her take off her clothes for us. She hates us. It makes Callen and Mason chuckle a bit. But not me. I don’t even give her a half-grin.
My eyes drop to her nipples. Perfect little studs in handfuls of cushiony, soft flesh. Her waist is tiny, and the flare of her hips makes my blood heat.
The candy-camouflaged drug she just ate would make a person with a prostate and a dick feel as if their dick was going to fall off if they didn’t stick it into a hole and fuck it until their dick does fall off. The sheer panic and adrenaline alone will be enough to kill them. For her, it’s non-fatal and works differently.
Watching her writhe in that tight, hot body of hers and seeing the soft gleam of perspiration coat her skin as her breasts swell is sublime. But fuck, that tiny wet pearl drop on her nipple makes me lick my lip unconsciously.
She doesn’t understand what’s about to happen to her. But when she has to squeeze her breasts to fill Mason’s bowl with her milk—and we can see everything since there’s even a camera camouflaged into the table—it’s clear what she’s capable of. If she were given the chance and a weapon, she’d gladly take us out. She has that kind of strength about herself. She also wants to survive.
Seeing her rub her pretty clit on Callen’s chair bewitched us. Callen, who controlled the vibrations of the chair with a remote, played her perfectly. He knew when to turn it up or lower the oscillations, so she would press herself harder against the wood. Fuck.
Now she’s in my bed, only one hand is cuffed while we decide what to do with her.
The cottage is somewhat sacred to us. It’s never been breached in the hundreds of years of its existence, and it goes back to our first ancestors, Bernard, Barrett, and Bruin Ursid, merchants by day and mob bosses by night.
The men whose bloodline made us what we are today. Their propensity for violence and their cunningness to execute it without anyone ever knowing it was them are in our genes. We’re the kings of the Ursid Syndicate because we’re better than everyone else.
We know our history. We know that Bernard, Barrett, and Bruin were purported to be bear shifters. Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s our origin story, and we respect it.
When our three ancestors died immediately after losing the love of their lives, a servant who first tried to sell their story and who was then considered possessed by the devil in England fled to America. He found the cottage and took care of it, keeping everything as it was, as an ode to his masters.
He did so for two years until Bernard, Barrett, Bruin, and Goldenia’s three sons were old enough to inherit their family’s substantial wealth and take care of matters. They were curious and traveled to America to find the cottage where their parents had fallen in love, and that’s when they met Alfred Winston.
Since then, the cottage has been regarded as a treasure for the Ursid family. Alfred Winston was the first official caretaker. Over the years, many others were awarded the task of taking care of the cottage.
Everything inside was to remain the same. But it was also the place where their sons decided to keep the Ursid family’s most treasured possession and where it still resides today. A rare painting that would be considered priceless and the most valued Ursid family heirloom ever. It was a painting of Goldenia and her three husbands.
If it were ever taken from us by the right people, that painting could be used as a bargaining chip to reduce our power and wealth to next to nothing. To an Ursid, that painting is who we are.
And now we have a little intruder who, in an instant, turned our lives upside down when she stepped into our vision.
I can’t stop watching her as she tries to get herself released from the handcuff on her wrist. She became frantic after we told her she had to wait for us. She clearly does not want to meet us.
I watch as she tosses from side to side, thrashing around, as if she could pull herself free of the cuffs on her left wrist. But she’s also very conscious of us watching her, evident in the way she tries to keep her legs closed, which is impossible given that she wants to get herself released.
And when I catch a glimpse of the wetness that is still seeping from her pussy, just like her breasts are still leaking milk, she makes me want to touch her.
Wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze until her sleek, gleaming body struggles against me, gasping for air that only I can give her. I want to fuck her the same way, until she struggles to take me and gasps for air as I tear her apart. And then I want to watch her breathe as she looks at me, giving me her whole life to do with as I please.
My body aches like it has never ached before. My cock is so hard now that it pains me, and suddenly I’m convinced I need her.
We need her.
Fuck.
She’s so fucking innocent that when we breed her, she’ll cleanse me of my sins because she’s an angel, and nothing I give her can break her or taint her.
Mason runs his hands through his hair, and a deep, heavy sigh drops from Callen’s chest as we watch the girl on our monitor. She’s indescribably perfect. And we’re reacting to her the same way.
We’ve never been influenced by a woman this way before, and yet she’s nothing but a young girl. She’s so out of our league, she doesn’t even exist on our radar.
It suddenly becomes crystal clear why we didn’t kill her on sight when we know exactly who she is and who she’s connected to.
We’re going to keep her for ourselves in whatever capacity we choose whether she likes it or not. In our beds with her legs spread open every minute of the day for us or chained in a cell with her legs spread open for us every minute of the day.
Still, no matter all the depraved, fucking obscene ways Callen, Mason, and I will fuck her, we won’t be able to take away her innocence because it seems to be in her soul, and her soul belongs to us now, whoever she is, whatever connections she has.
Discovering that Livia Daniels’ mother was a descendant of Alfred Winston—and that took us by surprise because it was something we didn’t know—was one thing. It could also explain how she came to know about the cottage. And maybe her intentions were pure.
But finding out who her father was and who she was going to marry was another thing. Was she there to steal their painting? Probably.
The girl whose breasts we made leak into Mason’s bowl, whose sweet pussy juices stained Callen’s chair, and who was currently leaving her scent on my bed… is Kirill Yenin’s future bride.
Despite how conclusively she needs to die, we’re taking her. All of her. Her body. Her life. Her soul. And her name. She just became the bride of the Ursid Syndicate.