Chapter 14 Malice
MALICE
I’ll fucking kill him.
Possessiveness roars through me like a feral beast as I watch Willow talking to the fucker with the pompous face and annoying laugh.
I could take him out right now. It would be so easy.
He’s tall, but he looks like he’d go down like a pile of wet cardboard if someone threw a punch at him.
These rich fuckers who’ve never had to fight for anything in their lives don’t know how to hold up once they’re out of their depth, and I want nothing more than to stalk over there and snap the guy’s fucking neck.
Willow laughs at something he says, and the fury in me climbs even higher. I curl my hands into fists, my shoulders going tight. Everything in me is screaming at me to go over there and rip Willow away from him.
To bring her back where she belongs.
I stare at her, watching as she talks, my eyes narrowed. She reaches up to tuck a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, and my hand spasms a bit, my nails starting to dig into my palms. I’ve never been good at letting off steam peacefully, and the need for violence is growing in me.
“Malice.” Victor steps up beside me, murmuring in a low voice. “Galvin just walked in. We need to move.”
Fuck.
I drag in a deep breath, and my chest is so tight that it feels like there are shards of broken glass in my lungs. But my brother is right. We’re here to do a job, and it doesn’t include murdering upper crust assholes who get too close to what’s ours.
Although I wish it did.
“Yeah, alright,” I growl, my voice raspy as Ransom comes to stand beside Vic. “Let’s do this.”
Reluctantly, I tear my eyes away from Willow and give my attention back to the reason we’re here in the first place, focusing up as I do.
“Just like we discussed,” Victor tells me with a small nod. He slips a hand into his pocket where he’s got the device we brought with us.
Two days ago, I picked it up from a drop point designated by X.
It’s a little bug that will be used to listen in on and record Richard Galvin, and we have to plant it on our mark before he leaves the gala.
Once he goes, we’ll need to follow him and record him, since the range on the device isn’t that big.
We’ve gone over the plan plenty of times, each taking the roles that come most naturally to us. Ransom and I will create a distraction while Vic does the fine detail work, slipping in and planting the device on Galvin.
We nod to each other and spring into action, moving like a team the way we always do. There’s no need to keep tabs on where Vic goes as he melts into the crowd of people, because we know he’s going to take care of his part in this.
We just have to focus on ours.
Galvin is an older man, tall and well-dressed, and he moves through the crowd, stopping here and there to speak with people. Ransom and I move along with him, cutting through a small group admiring a fucking vase until we’re in front of Galvin.
It has to be subtle, and he can’t know he’s being purposefully held up, so we move with the flow of people until we get to a bit of a bottleneck as part of the crowd moves into another wing. Then we slow down to almost a stop, making sure Galvin can’t get past us easily.
“Did you try the champagne?” Ransom asks, turning to me. “You’d think they would spring for something a bit better at a function like this, but I guess not.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes because there’s no way in hell my brother would know good champagne if it bit him in the ass. But instead, I play my part, nodding along.
“It’s not about the drinks. It’s about the art,” I deadpan, nodding to one of the paintings on the wall near us. “You can’t tell me a chance to see this collection isn’t worth a bit of bad champagne.”
Ransom’s eyes glitter with amusement, but his expression stays serious.
“Maybe.” He heaves a sigh, grimacing. “And I suppose there’s something to be said for the company too. As in, misery loves it when it comes to how bad the spread is.”
“If you wanted dinner, we could have stopped before we got here,” I say, letting irritation creep into my voice. “We’re not here to eat.”
Behind us, Galvin mutters something under his breath, but neither of us pay any attention to him.
We let our fake argument build, our voices growing a bit more urgent, although we keep the volume at a normal level—we need to convince Galvin it’s not worth interrupting us, but we’re not trying to draw the attention of everyone at the gala.
We just have to keep him distracted until Victor gives us the signal that he’s planted the device.
Fortunately, we don’t have long to wait.
Just when Galvin’s irritation at being held up by us seems to be reaching a boiling point, we hear Vic murmur a soft, “excuse me” as he brushes past him and then moves off into the crowd.
That’s the signal, so after another moment Ransom and I stride away too, leaving Galvin free to continue on into the other wing.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to make sure he hasn’t noticed anything strange, but he’s already admiring another piece of art, having no idea that he’s been bugged.
Ransom and I do a quick loop around the room before meeting up with Vic, who gives us a subtle nod.
“It’s done,” he murmurs. “Now we just have to stay until Galvin leaves so that we can tail him.”
I nod, since that was the plan from the beginning.
Now that the first stage of the job is done, my attention immediately snaps back to Willow, just the way it always does.
I glance back over to where she was standing before, but she’s not there.
I don’t see the guy she was with either, and I narrow my eyes as a fresh wave of possessive fury fills me.
If I find the two of them together somewhere…
He really will be a dead man.
“Keep an eye out for Galvin,” I mutter to Ransom and Vic. “Let me know if he makes a move.”
Before they can say anything, I stride off, looking for Willow.
There’s a need under my skin, burning and insistent. It’s primal and possessive, and it won’t be satisfied until I see her.
I make my way around the room, scanning the crowd for her soft blonde hair or a flash of her jade green dress—the dress that hugs her delicate body so fucking perfectly that it makes me want to kill every fucker in this place just for having seen her in it.
For a few moments, I don’t see her, and my mind starts to churn with thoughts of what I’ll do to that asshole she was talking to earlier if he’s somewhere alone with her.
But then something draws my attention upward, and I look up to the second level of the new wing.
There’s a walkway on the second level that surrounds a massive open area in the floor, bordered by a thick marble railing.
It allows people on the second level to look down and see those beneath them, and vice versa.
I spot Willow up there almost immediately, tucked into a little nook by the marble railing, gazing down over the crowd below. And she’s alone.
Good.
Seeing that she’s not talking to that other fucker anymore eases some of the crushing tightness in my chest, and I head up the stairs quickly.
I keep to the carpeted runner that covers the walkway, muffling my footsteps, but as I come up behind Willow, I can tell the second she notices me.
Her posture changes, her shoulders stiffening up, and I’m certain she knows it’s me.
She’s just as aware of me and my brothers as we are of her, despite her insistence that she wants to pretend shit is over between us.
I move in closer, coming up to stand behind her, my chest almost brushing against her bare back. When she doesn’t move away, I lean down, dropping my head so I can murmur in her ear.
“Who was that man you were talking to?”
I don’t exactly mean for it to come out like an accusation, but it does anyway. There’s a hard edge to my voice, agitation still churning under my skin.
“It’s none of your business,” Willow whispers back, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead.
“That’s not true.” Her scent invades my nostrils as I breathe her in, and it feels like a fucking drug. My voice drops low as I add, “Everything about you is my business. It became my business when you begged for my cock. When you let me put my mark on you.”
She goes even more tense as she takes in those words, and I can almost feel it when she swallows hard. She doesn’t turn to look at me, and her fingers curl against the thick marble railing like she needs to hold on to something.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been looking into tattoo removal,” she mutters.
That grates on me, making my chest ache as if someone has punched a hole through my ribs.
I remember the almost savage pride I felt, looking down at her and seeing that mark above her left breast. The thought of her wanting to remove it makes me want to pin her down and mark her all over again—more permanently, this time, in some way she can never erase.
I don’t just want to mark her body.
I want to leave a brand on her soul.
I step in even closer so that we’re actually touching. I can feel the heat of her body where the dress she has on dips down in the back, showing off skin, and I wish we had fewer layers between us. I want to lay claim to her right here and fucking now.
“You’re lying,” I hiss, letting my lips brush the shell of her ear. “And even if you did get that tattoo removed, you can’t erase the mark we made on you that easily. We’re under your skin… just like you’re under ours.”
Willow sucks in a breath, which only has the effect of pressing her back even tighter against my chest.
“Yeah,” she says, and it comes out strained and bitter. “You want me to be your good little slut.”
It sounds like a curse, with the way she says it, but her words go right to my cock all the same. It throbs in my pants, and even though I know I’m supposed to be playing the part of a distinguished gentleman tonight, I feel more like an animal as the need to claim her rages inside me.