Chapter 39 Willow
WILLOW
I stand over Jonah’s body, and my heart breaks for him.
I’m glad he got to see his brother avenged before he died, but this isn’t how I wanted it to end. We would have been completely fucked without his help, probably already dead under a couple tons of concrete in that hole.
“Thank you,” I whisper, even though I know he can’t hear me anymore.
Tears well in my eyes as Ransom comes over, wrapping an arm around me. He kisses the top of my head, holding me close, and I let myself lean against him.
“He was a good man,” Ransom murmurs. “And he got his revenge in the end.”
Malice nods. “Some people don’t even get that.”
I know they’re right, but it still hurts to think that he’s never going to get to go home to his daughter. Fuck. Poor Quinn.
“We need to go,” Vic finally says, breaking the silence that’s settled over us. “There’s a lot of cleanup to do here.”
“What the fuck are we even going to do with all these bodies?” Ransom grimaces.
“I’m pretty sure burning this building down would attract way more attention than we want.
Besides, it’s bigger than the places we normally torch, and it’s all concrete.
We brought cleanup stuff, but we don’t have any accelerant either. ”
“We’ll do what Olivia was planning to do to us.” Vic tilts his chin toward the pit where Olivia had us all trapped earlier. “We’ll dump them in that hole and cover them up with cement.”
Malice lets out a savage sort of growl. “Fuck, yes. It’s what these fuckers deserve.”
Ransom grabs the bleach and other cleanup equipment we stashed in the trunk of the car before coming to meet Olivia, and then the guys start hauling bodies to the pit. I do my best to help them clean up, standing the equipment that was overturned back upright and gathering a few stray weapons.
They leave Jonah’s body where it is, coming for Olivia’s corpse last.
I look down at her one last time, almost as if I’m trying to memorize the stillness on her face.
She wore so many expressions in the time I knew her.
So many of them were fake, just masks to make people see what she wanted them to see.
Polished and polite, just a kind, rich old woman.
But something so monstrous and evil lurked underneath.
She was nothing more than a cold-hearted manipulator.
A murderer.
A monster.
“You did well, butterfly,” Victor tells me in a low voice.
“You did,” Ransom agrees. “That shot was clean as hell.”
My hands, so steady when I took the shot that killed Olivia, shake a little now. But the truth is, I don’t regret being the one to take her down. I know Malice promised me I wouldn’t have to be, but when it came down to a choice between her life and his, the decision was incredibly easy.
Relief washes through me when her body gets tossed into the hole, and I watch as Ransom and Malice start filling it with concrete, covering everything up.
Vic and I walk the space, wiping away fingerprints and making sure there’s nothing left behind that could tie us to this scene. He does a few other things as well, and when he’s satisfied, he gives me a nod. I gather the papers Olivia wanted so badly and keep them with me, leaving nothing behind.
Once we’re done, there’s still the matter of Jonah’s body.
“We should take him back to his people,” Malice says. “We can’t leave him here, and they deserve to know what happened.”
We’re all in agreement, even though I’m dreading delivering the news to his crew. Especially Quinn.
Malice and Ransom carry him outside, and Vic’s head swivels back and forth as we leave the unfinished construction site. The street is dark and quiet as they load Jonah’s body gently into the trunk, and we all slip into the car.
Ransom hands Vic his computer, which we brought with us, and the look on Vic’s face almost brings a smile to my lips.
He looks like he’s being reunited with a long-lost friend, and he gets to work immediately, scrubbing traffic footage and anything else that could link us to the Oberon construction site as we drive.
Even though it’s late at night by now, there’s a group of men hanging around outside the tattoo parlor when we pull up into the alley, and they eye us warily as we get out of the car.
I can tell they’re looking for their leader, since even though he refused to involve his gang in his personal vendetta, they knew about his arrangement with us.
“Where’s Jonah?” one of them asks.
Malice opens the trunk and steps back, and a couple of Jonah’s men come forward to glance inside. It only takes one look for them to understand what’s happening here, and they go tense, looking at Malice with angry eyes.
“What the fuck?” the taller man demands. “You son of a bitch!”
Before Malice can say anything, the two of them are pulling out guns, aiming right at Malice. That kicks the others off, even if they don’t know why yet, and they draw on the rest of us, cranking the tension up even more.
Malice lifts his hands, his jaw clenched.
“We didn’t do this,” he says in a low voice. “It was—”
“Why the fuck should we listen to anything you have to say? You show up here and talk Jonah into taking on this job, and now he’s dead.”
Malice’s jaw works, every line of his body taut. Defusing situations like this isn’t his strong point, and I can tell he’s getting tired of having a gun pointed at him. My stomach ties itself into several tight knots as I glance between the brothers and the Enigma gang.
Fuck. Please don’t let this end badly. Not after everything else that’s happened tonight.
Malice glances at Ransom, and the younger Voronin brother steps up as much as he can without getting shot.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he begins. “You know he agreed to help us, and we didn’t betray him. It was—”
The back door to the tattoo shop swings open before he can finish, and Quinn comes out. She takes in the scene and then comes over to the car, looking down into the trunk.
My breath catches, a lump growing in my throat. I wait for her to fall apart or start screaming at us, accusing us of killing her father, but instead, she takes a deep breath. When she looks up, there’s pain in her eyes, but there’s something like resolve there too.
Her entire demeanor changes, her expression hardening as if she’s aged several years in just the space of a few seconds, and there’s a commanding glint in her eye as she turns to face her father’s men.
“Stand down,” she says quietly.
“But, Quinn, they—”
“I said stand down!” she barks, her voice cracking like a whip.
“They didn’t do this. My father…” She falters for just a second, then starts again, her voice gaining strength.
“My father went of his own free will. He had a chance to take down his enemy, the woman responsible for Casey’s death, and he took it.
He knew the risks before he went. It was important enough to him to go anyway. ”
There’s a moment of loaded silence, but Quinn doesn’t blink.
She doesn’t waver or back down at all. Finally, the first man who spoke to us drops his head, a gesture of both acquiescence and respect.
He shoves his gun back in to the waistband of his pants, and one by one, the rest of the gang members put their weapons away too.
I exhale a shaky breath, glancing quickly at my men before stepping forward. They usually take the lead when we deal with groups like the Enigma gang and the Kings of Chaos, but in this moment, I feel like I should be the one to speak to Quinn.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I can never express our gratitude enough. He saved our lives. We’ll always owe that to him. We owe you.”
She nods, her eyes glinting in the light that filters into the alley. She’s tall too, just like her dad, and I have to tilt my head a little to meet her gaze.
“Thank you.” With a tiny gesture of one hand, she motions for the two men who first looked into the trunk to approach. “Bring him inside,” she instructs. “We’ll deal with funeral arrangements tomorrow.”
The men nod and carefully remove Jonah’s body, supporting it between them as they bring it inside.
The remaining gang members fade back a little at another gesture from Quinn, and it strikes me in a rush that she’s just become their leader, stepping into her father’s shoes.
I haven’t heard it confirmed with words, but I can see it in the way she acts and in the way they treat her.
“What happened?” Quinn asks now that we have more privacy. “How did he…”
“He saved our asses,” Ransom tells her, his voice solemn. “The plan was fucked from the beginning, but we didn’t know that. We were caught flat-footed, and if it hadn’t been for him, we’d all be dead right now.”
She swallows, running a hand over one of her tattooed arms as if trying to banish the goosebumps scattered across her skin. “So he got his revenge in the end? Olivia Stanton is dead?”
Vic nods. “Yes. Dead and unable to hurt anyone else again. He was instrumental in that, and he got a chance to spit on her corpse before he fell. He got his closure, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Good,” Quinn murmurs. “He hated her so much for what happened to my uncle, so… so at least I know he got to see her die before the end.”
It’s impressive, how good she is at keeping her shit together. She has to be hurting inside, feeling the grief of losing her dad, but she’s keeping her tough facade up. Even still, there’s so much pain in her eyes, and it breaks my heart to see it.
I lower my voice a little, wanting these words to be just for her. “He told us to tell you something. Right before he… died.”
She swallows. “What was it?”
“That he loves you. Those were his last words.”
That seems to be the thing that breaks through the new mantle of leadership she’s wearing. Tears glisten in her eyes, and she closes them for a second, dragging in a few deep breaths.
“Thank you,” she whispers.