Chapter 10 Talon
TEN
TALON
We make it back to the safe house in record time. Rook switched vehicles and doubled back to collect the others from the rendezvous point, leaving just Mara, Jasper, Dredyn, and me.
And one very pissed-off politician’s son, tied up downstairs.
“Should’ve let me kill him in that fucking garage,” Dredyn growls, pressing a hand to his side. The makeshift bandage is soaked through, blood seeping between his fingers.
Mara grabs the first aid kit from Jasper who brings it back from the bathroom, and sets it beside Dredyn who is sprawled across the couch.
“Killing him would be mercy,” she says.
She moves with grace as she places all the supplies she’ll need to stitch Dredyn’s stab wound up. There’s a dark bruise blooming on her jaw and dried blood matted to the side of her hair, but she’s breathtaking.
She places a hand over Dredyn’s, the antiseptic wipe in the other. “Let me see it.”
He hesitates. “That alcohol pad’s gonna burn like hell.”
“Quit being a baby and let me clean it,” she snaps.
Jasper and I share a look and stifle our laughs as Dredyn grudgingly moves his hand. He hisses through his teeth the second she touches the wound, gripping the edge of the counter.
“Who knew the big bad wolf was such a wimp,” Mara says smugly, dabbing the blood away.
“You try getting stabbed by some lanky-ass,” Dredyn mutters, grimacing. “Also, a ‘thank you’ would be nice, once in a while.”
Mara ignores him and looks over at Jasper and I. “Now what?” she asks.
Jasper raises a brow and signs, “We kill him. Simple.”
“Fuck me,” Dredyn mutters as Mara finishes up placing butterfly stitches along his torso. The knife wound was shallow, thank god.
“No, thanks. Not until we’ve all had showers.”
Jasper snorts, but Mara catches his grin as she packs up the supplies.
I drag a hand through my hair, sighing. “It’s not that simple. If we kill him, we’ve still got nothing to leverage against the Syndicate. But if we keep him...”
Dredyn sits up with a wince. “Are we forgetting he murdered Jasper’s sister?”
“I’m not forgetting,” I say. “But maybe he can give us intel first.”
Mara raises a brow. “What kind of intel?”
“The Syndicate Leader. The real one,” Jasper signs.
Mara shakes her head. “They change faces constantly. There are layers of decoys. No one knows who’s actually pulling strings, not even my father.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Dredyn says.
She turns to him, eyes flashing. “You think I’m lying?”
Jasper signs, “fake his death. Send a toe. Burn his face. Anything to give us more time to torture him for Evie.”
“We aren’t killing him. Not yet,” I say again.
Dredyn doesn’t drop it. “I didn’t say you were lying. I just think it’s insane that the goddamn President wouldn’t know who runs the Syndicate, and that you wouldn’t even have a guess.”
Mara folds her arms. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly Daddy’s favorite. I don’t get access to classified intel, I get shoved in white dresses and paraded around.”
“Frame him. Make him look like a traitor to the Syndicate.” He’s tuning out the fight now. Tunnel vision locked on strategy.
Mara tilts her head. “You think you can actually do anything to stop them? I know how much firepower OCK has, but not enough for a fucking revolution.”
“I don’t need a revolution. I need to send a message.” He steps into her space, but Mara doesn’t back down. They’re nose to nose, fire meeting fire, and I watch both of them inch toward a fight they don’t actually want.
I wedge myself between them. “I didn’t claw our girl out of hell just to have you two kill each other.
We’re exhausted; we need sleep. And Dredyn needs to not bleed out.
So maybe, just maybe, we take one night before we plan the next war.
..” I trail off, noticing that Jasper is now out of the kitchen. “Oh fuck.”
The three of us bolt toward the basement.
Chase is still tied to the chair bolted to the floor, wrists locked behind him in reinforced zip ties, ankles strapped to the legs. His head’s lolled to the side, blood crusting over his cheekbone. The once-pristine suit is soaked, ruined.
Good.
In front of him, Jasper stands motionless, his eyes pinned to Chase.
“Jas...” Mara murmurs, slipping ahead of me and touching his arm.
Chase lifts his head, blinks, and grins.
“Wow,” he rasps. “My blushing bride is coming to my rescue.”
Mara scoffs, then slaps him across the face. The sound echoes in the concrete room as his head jerks sideways, lip splitting wider.
“Fucking bitch!” he spits toward her.
“Speak again,” Dredyn growls, stepping forward, “and I’ll let her rip your goddamn throat out.”
Mara holds a hand up. “Jasper is trying to speak.”
“Did you kill my sister?” Jasper asks. We all know that he can talk, but we also know that his choice to not speak is rooted in the loss of his sister.
Because talking then didn’t save her, so why would talking now make a difference?
Chase doesn’t answer him, just smiles.
“Answer the damn question.” I step closer.
Finally, Chase lifts his chin to meet Jasper’s eyes. “She was mine.”
I feel Jasper recoil in disgust at the response.
“She loved me. I loved her. That’s the part none of you understand,” Chase whispers.
“You murdered her.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Chase snaps. “You think I wanted that? My father... he said if I didn’t take care of it, they’d send someone worse. Someone who’d keep her alive. Use her. Turn her into leverage against me. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you killed her yourself?” Dredyn asks. “That’s how you protected her?”
“I made it quick,” Chase says, like it matters. “She didn’t even fight when we went down into the catacombs. She followed me, willingly.”
“That’s a goddamn lie,” I say. “She called us, saying that the Syndicate was after her.”
“They were! You don’t get it. I lov—”
“No. You don’t get to say that word. That’s not love.”
Jasper’s eyes are locked on Chase. “You two could have ran. You could have told my parents—we would have protected her. You had choices.”
“No one can run from the Syndicate. Not forever. I was showing her mercy.”
Jasper takes one step forward, and another, then kneels beside him. He reaches out, pressing two fingers just under Chase’s chin, forcing him to be inches from Jasper’s face.
“You won’t get mercy.”
“I did what I had to do.”
Mara’s behind Jasper now, arms crossed over her chest like she’s holding herself together through sheer force of will.
Dredyn walks over to a steel box and pulls out a manilla folder. “Should we start sending pieces?”
Chase jerks against his restraints. “What—what is that?”
“A legacy—yours. One that we have carefully crafted to send to Mara’s father who will have no choice but to report everything in this folder to the Syndicate.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“We absolutely would,” I say. “Because this stopped being vengeance the second you opened your mouth. This is strategy, now.”
“I’m valuable,” he says. “You need me.”
Jasper tilts his head and signs again.
Mara smiles. “He said, ‘You’re not valuable. You’re bait.’”
Chase’s lip curls into a sneer. “You’re just a toy, passed around between three broken boys—used up. I’m glad I never touched you. Even our fathers tried to make it happen, and I wouldn’t fucking stoop to that level.”
Dredyn lunges, but I catch his arm before he reaches the chair. “He’s not worth it,” I mutter.
Mara turns her head slightly, her disheveled updo now falling down her shoulder. “Boys, do you want to play?”
“Go ahead,” he snarls. “Put on another little act, make her beg. That’s all she knows how to do, right? Get on her knees.”
“Oh, you want me on my knees?” She begins to lower herself. “You want to watch how they remade me. How they corrupted me?”
I move behind her, my hand sliding over her shoulder, and she melts into the touch like she was waiting for it.
Dredyn steps in on her left, tilting her chin so she’s forced to look at him. “I missed you.”
“I missed all three of you,” she says.
Jasper stands opposite of Dredyn now, and Mara works fast to undo the buttons on our jeans until all three of our cocks are free. Finally, she meets my eyes, her blue ones burning into mine.
“You look perfect as our personal whore, on your knees,” I tell her.
She takes her lip into her mouth and bites softly.
“But you’ll look better choking on our cocks,” Dredyn says, threading his hand into her hair and guiding her to his length. “Feel the power, Hellcat?”
She takes him into her mouth, sucking deep enough to pull a groan from him. Her hands come up, one wrapping around me, the other around Jasper. My cock leaks into her palm as she strokes me.
“Fuck… look at you.” I breathe. “Let him see what he could never have.”
She pops off of Dredyn’s cock and switches her hand from my cock to his and takes mine in her mouth, her tongue running up and down as her head bobs. Dredyn, his hands still threaded through her hair, pushes her head further down onto my cock.
“Fucking hell, Princess,” I groan. “You’re taking me so well.”
She gets me almost to the edge before Dredyn pulls her off of my cock and onto Jasper’s. His breath hitches as Mara takes him into her throat while her hands pump both me and Dredyn.
“I’m going to baptize you in our filth. Then you’ll really be ruined, won’t you?”
We take over, each of us jerking our cocks while she kneels there, looking up with wet eyes and spit-slick lips.
And then, we come, all three of us, in hot, messy spurts across her face, chest, and throat.
“Put your fucking tongue out,” I instruct, and she complies, taking time to clean each head of our cocks with her mouth, one at a time.
Then, Mara rises slowly and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes bright.
She steps toward Chase, so close he’s forced to look up at her.
“You don’t exist in my world anymore, but taste how sweet it is.”
She smiles, dragging two fingers through the cum shining on her cheek. Then, she shoves her fingers between his teeth, deep enough to choke him.
Chase’s eyes go wide, his throat spasming around her fingers.
“If you bite me,” she says, leaning in, “I’ll rip out your tongue and mail it to your father.”
Chase chokes violently, gagging around her fingers as she forces him to swallow. Only when he’s sputtering and drenched in humiliation does she tear her hand free and wipe her fingers on his ruined shirt with a disgusted flick.
“Take him back to daddy. Let him rot,” she says. “We don’t need him anyway.” Then, she walks back upstairs.
And fuck, I’ve never been more in awe of a woman before.