Chapter 6
Alexander
I wake to the sound of someone moaning. I snap my eyes open and freeze. I tilt my head down to see Tatum practically laying on top of me, her hair a wild mess across my chest and her leg is resting dangerously close to my morning wood.
“Hmmmm,” she purrs again as she rubs her cheek against my bare chest. She looks peaceful and undisturbed in sleep. The fact she is quiet and her vulgar tongue isn’t being put to use may be another reason why I find the sight of her sprawled across me so endearing. My train of thought is wrong and I know it, but after watching her for months, I half expected her to be a scumbag like her brother. I’ve never seen her go on a date, hang out with friends or even go shopping for herself. She just lives out of hotels on fast food and works. She’s a creature of habit and something about that surprises me. She’s so young and should be thinking about college and partying, yet all she does is work her ass off for Vivian.
My phone vibrates beside me and I slowly untangle myself from her and slip out of the bed. I check the message and realize I have about twenty minutes to get ready. I fire off a reply to Halo, telling him to bring her stuff to my house.
I could have given her back her things yesterday but I chose to test her, I wanted to see how much she would fight me. Low and behold, she didn’t do what was expected and wore my clothing without a fuss. I head for the bathroom to grab a quick shower. When I’m finished I give my beard a quick trim and debate on shaving the fucking thing off or not, but there isn’t time. When I walk back out to change, Tatum is sitting up in bed and staring at me. I don’t have time to argue with the vexing little shit so I ignore her and make my way to my dresser, I hear her gasp and curse myself. I yank a shirt out of the drawer and pull it over my head.
The only way I know how to get her mind off the scars on my back is to drop my towel. I can feel her eyes boring into me but she says nothing as I finish dressing. I pull my hair into a bun just as a knock sounds out.
“It’s open,” I call out. Halo lets himself in and places her bags and laptop down. Tatum stares at them with an open mouth but it's the look on Halo’s face that stumps me. He looks from me to her, then to the floor beside the bed and that’s when it hits me. He can see her discarded hoodie and pants on the floor. “It’s not what it looks like,” I defend.
Halo scoffs. “Yeah, I’ve never heard that line before.” I grit my teeth and snag my phone off the bedside table just as Tatum says.
“Oh, it is totally what it looks like.” I snap my head toward her and gape at the fucking minx. She smiles sweetly at Halo and bats her lashes. “Don’t worry, he didn’t tire me out too much. All that time in prison caught up with one minute man over there,” she says, nodding toward me. Halo the little fuck doesn’t even try to mask his laughter. I shoot Tatum a scathing look as I storm toward my boy and shove the fucker out the door. “Where are you going?” she rushes to ask as I attempt to close the door.
“Out. You run, I’ll catch you and show you just how well prison didn’t diminish my stamina.” I close the door with the picture of her sitting there, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, to keep me company as I head to the main house to meet the others so we can get to this fucking meeting and the De Santis Cosa Nostra off our asses.
“Do you think they believe that you had nothing to do with the murders?” Halo asks from beside me. I pause around the bend from the house and look at him. He may be the second oldest out of the four of them but he is the one with the baby face. His blue eyes try to hide the worry he feels but I know him as well as I know myself and seeing the De Santis family again has him on edge. He stabs a hand through his short black hair and sighs. “I won’t go back, Alex,” he says quietly.
A whoosh of air rushes from me. I place a hand on his shoulder and bend a little to meet his gaze so he can see the resolution in mine. “I’ll burn the four of those sons of bitches to the fucking ground before I ever let them take you and the others. I swear on my sister’s fucking grave, Halo. I will never let any of you go back there.” My words seem to ease some of his worry but not all of it. The only way to squash it completely is to get this meeting over with. Before we can take another step, my phone begins to vibrate in my pocket. I pull it out and shake my head. Halo nudges me so I turn the screen toward him and he just snorts and continues onto the house leaving me here to answer the call. “Vivian, what a surprise,” I say as I connect the call.
“Alex, I thought you and I had a deal.” She’s trying to disguise her anger but is failing miserably.
“What deal would that be?”
“The one where you don’t fucking touch Tate—” Her raised tone and the fact she thinks she can tell me what I can and can’t do grates on my fucking nerves. It took Tatum less than three minutes of getting her shit back to call her boss. Her laptop and phone are bugged, we can see and listen into everything she does on them.
“You don’t call the shots. I held up my end of the deal, I kept your brother and those other fuckers alive and saved you. You got Thomas and I get his cunt of a kid. That was the deal,” I snap, my tone filled with venom and ice cold. It takes her a minute to gather herself before she speaks again.
“Alex, please don’t hurt her.” The pleading edge to her tone does nothing to make me soften. She may remind me of Ellie but she isn’t her. At the start when she first came to visit me in prison, I was floored. She looks nothing like my sister but the way she spoke and how she carried herself… her ambition is what had me seeing similarities between the two. I allowed that to cloud my judgment for a moment and offered my services to keep her and her friends safe. Not only that, I also got Nexus out of the deal. Halo is the best fucking tracker in the country and the fact he isn’t able to find Nexus Valerian is worrisome to say the fucking least.
“She’ll conduct her work for you from here. She will do her job and you will stay out of this, Vivian. You try to sniff around my business or get your boyfriends and brother to put on their bat suits and I’ll place an anonymous tip through to the CIA myself. We had a mutual agreement but we aren’t friends. Don’t ever try to tell me what to do again.” I end the call and force myself not to throw my phone in a fit of anger, Vatican wouldn’t let me live it down if I broke another phone.
Killing used to be my release for all my pent up anger. I earned the name Butcher because of the precise cuts, no medical examiner could ever pinpoint the exact cause of death because I was that fucking good. I don’t believe in numbing the pain of my victims or even giving them a shot of adrenaline to keep them up. I loved what I did but the toll it took on my soul wasn’t worth it in the end. I got out of that life and chose to run straight for a while but the urge is always there. It never goes away and is always present, begging me to let the monster inside takeover and give us both the outlet we need.
“We’re moving out,” Omen shouts. I nod and head inside their place. I slam to a stop on the threshold when I see them all. They are all strapped with firearms and wearing bullet proof vests. Vatican tosses me a vest. I catch the fucking thing and just stare at it.
“Put the fucking thing on and don’t argue. We aren’t taking chances with these fuckers, Alex,” Pope says. There’s an edge to his tone but I can also hear the worry and that is the only reason I don’t argue with him. I pull my shirt off and unlike Tatum, these four don’t balk at the sight of my scars. They hate seeing them and they serve as a reminder of what happened but I never want Omen, Vatican, Pope or Halo to feel any type of guilt over this. I made my choice and I wouldn’t change it.
I secure the vest then pull my shirt back on. All four of the guys are staring at me when I turn around. Vatican and Pope’s brown eyes are dark and swirling with guilt. Omen and Halo’s blue eyes have a storm brewing in them.
“Stop. It’s been fucking years and you all need to get over it. We survived, we got out and we’re here now,” I grit out. They all drop their gazes and return to their earlier tasks, not saying a word. I sigh and scrub a hand down my face. “I need you guys to stop feeling guilty over this shit.”
“How the fuck are we supposed to do that?” Omen snaps, twin fires burn in his eyes, his black hair flopped forward onto his forehead.
“By not fucking thinking about it every time you see my back!” I roar. Halo and Pope both look away but Vat and Omen stare directly at me. “I made the fucking choice?—”
“We would never have let you go through with that shit if we knew what those cunts had planned!” Vat defends.
I shake my head. For years we have been having this same argument and I’m over it, they need to deal with it and let this shit go. “It wasn’t your call to make.” My tone is ice cold and filled with dominance. “Get strapped, we’re leaving,” I clip out, ending the conversation and heading out the front to the car, only to stop dead in my tracks at the sight before me. Two of my guys that patrol the grounds are standing there with their assault rifles aimed at the blonde leaning against the back of my car with her arms crossed. She looks… sexy as fuck. The aviators she wears cover her blue eyes, a white crop exposes her toned stomach, her belly button piercing catches the sunlight and the leather jacket she wears adds to the bad girl look. But what sets it off is the black leather pants with the black knee-high boots that have me picturing her wearing those as I thrust inside her.
“Don’t worry, the panties and bra match today,” she calls out just as the four guys come up behind me. I push my lips to the side to keep from smirking, this girl is crazy with a capital C but the sex appeal on her is fucking real.
“Now all I’ll be wondering all day is what color they are,” Halo mutters.
The devilish smirk on her face is pure sin and I know she is about to tell him what color they are so I cut in before she gets the chance. “What the fuck are you doing, Miss Lawson?” I growl.
She waves her hand as if she is talking to a friend. “Stop with the Miss Lawson , I think we can use first names now, Alex, since we slept together.” The four guys behind me all begin sputtering and barking questions. Adrian and Phillip even start lowering their guns and shooting me questioning looks. I grind my teeth and stalk toward the little hellcat who is beaming at me. I wave the guards away as I grip her arm and drag her around the front of the car. “Nice to meet you!” she calls out to Phillip and Adrian, both of them chuckle in answer. I shove her against the front of the car. She grunts and tries to push forward but I pin her in place with my body. I reach out and push her sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing her eyes burning with anger but there is no masking the lust I see in them.
“You think this is a game?” I snap.
“You’re the one who said you always win, Alex. I’m just evening the playing field and proving to you that you're not invincible.”
I lean down and grip the back of her head, tangling my fingers in her locks as I brush my lips against her ear. A shiver works its way through her and I relish in the knowledge that she isn’t immune to my nearness. “Get your ass back to my house. I don’t have time for your shit today.”
The fucking hellcat throws her arms around my neck and pulls me in closer so she can mimic my move. I detest admitting that her lips on my skin have me heating the fuck up and my cock leaping to attention. It’s been a long time since I have had this type of reaction to a woman and it’s unnerving to say the fucking least, especially considering who she is related to.
“I’m not the type of girl you just leave behind,” she purrs. I tighten my hold on her hair and relish in the hiss that escapes her. I’ve learned that she likes the feeling of my beard against her skin and I’m not above using that to my advantage, so I brush up against her face. A small mewl escapes her before she clamps her mouth shut.
“And I’m not the type of guy you can push around and play games with. The news articles you found about me were all true.” A gasp escapes her and she stiffens against me. “They called me The Butcher because of how much I loved carving through the flesh of my victims and got off on sawing through their bones with their screams of agony to keep me company as I worked. Want to find out how they felt in their last moments?” I hear her gulp. She begins to tremble in my hold and I know she is starting to realize that her life really is in danger now.
“I scoured the internet, I read everything there is to know about you. I bribed the cops for your case files.” Her admission shocks me, not once did Halo tell me she had some cops in her pocket. “You never hurt a woman.”
“Want to be the first?” I ask as I pull back just enough to look her in the eyes—we’re so close our breaths are mingling. Her blue eyes search my own, trying to decipher if I’m bluffing or not. She won’t find what she’s looking for because I haven’t even decided if she will be my first or not.
“Why do you want to hurt me?” she blurts out quietly. The way her eyes widen tells me she never meant to voice that question aloud but she can’t take it back now.
“Because the pain of my victims tames the monster inside me and gets me off,” I answer.
“If the only way for you to get hard was to kill someone then why are you hard for me right now?” Before I can answer, Omen appears beside us. I can see the disgruntled look on his face from the corner of my eye. He can think what he likes, his worries aren’t my problem.
“Prison was lonely, don’t flatter yourself.” Her jaw unhinges as I push back from her and turn to Omen. I climb in the car with the four of them following my lead. When Vat starts the car Tatum still doesn’t move, she spins around and places her hands flat on the hood of the car and glares at me through the windshield.
“You leave me here and I’m running!” she yells. I lull my head to the side and nod at Vat. He slams the car in reverse and plants his foot. Tatum stumbles forward and manages to right herself before falling face first into the ground as we speed away, leaving her standing there in our dust, screaming.