Chapter 2
DOMINIC
THREE WEEKS LATER
We were able to trace the location of Ellie’s buyer to a computer in the office of Judge Murphy Monroe.
Ellie’s buyer.
Fuck.
Even thinking those two words has molten rage rushing through my veins, liquefying them. Red specks explode across my vision until they’re all I can see.
I’m not like the others. I don’t surrender to my anger as easily as my friends do. Usually, I’m calm and levelheaded, the voice of reason when even Landon is losing his shit.
But not today.
There’s no Landon to calm us down, to reel us in when we feel like we’re drowning.
A pang ignites in my sternum, radiating through my body, and I swallow around the emotion threatening to clog my throat.
Landon…
But no. I can’t think about that, about him. We have a job to do, and I’ll be damned if we fail.
“Are we sure this is the guy?” Ryker asks, his raspy voice somehow soothing my frayed nerves in its familiarity.
“Positive.” Beckett’s voice is curt, rife with tension. Lines of irritation etch themselves into his forehead, deepening the furrow there. “We need to know what his plans were for our girl.”
Another surge of darkness pulsates through me.
Just the thought of this slimy greaseball putting his hands on my girl…
Breathe, Dom. Breathe.
The voice, oddly enough, sounds like Landon’s.
Fuck, I miss him.
It’s been hell being the leader of this ragtag group the last few weeks. Sometimes… Sometimes I just want to step away from it all, if only for a moment. Take time to process and compartmentalize everything that transpired this past year.
My dad has been calling almost every day since news of Landon spread through the community.
I refuse to answer his calls, but that doesn’t stop the sadistic bastard from leaving voicemails.
He wants to meet with me and Ellie again.
Bring us to another POP meeting. He’s more determined than ever to bring us into the fold.
God, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore him.
The one person in my family I haven’t heard from is the person I’m desperate to—my older brother, Doyle. He warned us that Ellie had been sold, then he went radio silent. For all I know, he’s dead. Or he feigned concern and is actually a part of this scheme. Or he’s—
Nope. I’m not going to think about that, about them. My father and brother have dominated enough of my headspace over the last few weeks.
I need to focus.
“How are we doing this?” Ellie asks, her voice uncharacteristically subdued.
All of us slide our eyes in her direction.
Ellie has changed a lot in the past year, but after Landon got stabbed? After she killed someone in self-defense? She has become someone I don’t entirely recognize.
I still love the shit out of her—that will never change—but the perpetual light in her eyes has dimmed. A preternatural severity now blankets the room whenever she steps inside of it. Her smiles are less frequent, her laughter nonexistent, her jokes few and far between.
She’s a shell of the girl I love.
An almost incandescent anger blazes through me yet again.
POP did this to her.
The Divine One did this to her.
So I’ll find them all—and I’ll kill them.
“Ellie, love…” Beckett begins placatingly, turning toward her. He’s going to ask her to stay behind, and she’s going to refuse. A-fucking-gain.
Ellie ignores him and slips on a pair of black leather gloves. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie—Ryker’s, I believe, though I wish it were mine—and black leggings. A beanie obscures her light brown hair from view.
She looks fierce and determined and so goddamn sexy that I lose my ability to speak.
She has changed, yes, but that hasn’t lessened my need for her. My obsession concerning her.
It has only amplified it.
I crave her darkness almost as much as I do her light. Both are the only things capable of pulling me out of the abyss of insanity I would’ve fallen into long before I met her.
“Do you have your stabby dagger, princesa?” Zane asks, circling her. His eyes are molten as they sweep over her figure, and I imagine his thoughts have probably run in the same direction as my own.
In lieu of a verbal answer, Ellie reaches into her sweatshirt pocket and procures a bedazzled dagger, the hilt encrusted in glittering gemstones.
“Why is that so fucking sexy?” Zane asks, not-so-discreetly readjusting himself. “Am I the only one sporting a killer boner?” He pauses and then snorts. “Get it? Killer? Because we’re about to go murder someone.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say that so loudly,” Ryker hisses, though the parking lot is empty. It’s the middle of the night, and Raymond has already helped Beckett disable the cameras in the vicinity.
“I shouldn’t say boner?” Zane asks innocently, blinking up at him. Then, in a mock-whisper, he repeats, louder, “Boner.”
Ryker pinches the bridge of his nose but stalks away, his hood pulled up tight over his spiky black hair.
Beckett clears his throat and daintily lifts his hand in the air. “I must confess that I, too, am sporting a killer boner.”
“God, why do you have to sound like such a formal douchebag when you talk?” I ask him, smirking to let him know I’m teasing.
“Don’t be jealous of the accent.” Beckett slings his arm around Ellie’s shoulder and shoots me a smug look. “It helps me get all the ladies.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, a hint of defiance enters Ellie’s eyes, eclipsing the impassivity I’ve been seeing since everything went down.
“All the ladies?” She arches an eyebrow at Beckett. “Just how many ladies are you wooing with that accent of yours?”
Beckett doesn’t even flounder, the smooth fuck. He simply presses a chaste kiss to her temple and says, “Only you, my love. Only ever you.”
I roll my eyes so far that I actually see the back of my head.
Ellie smiles adoringly up at him…before the smile quickly fades. She shifts slightly so Beckett’s arm slides from her shoulders, landing limply at his side.
Beckett and I exchange an eloquent look, one that makes words almost unnecessary.
Ellie has been doing that a lot lately—pushing us away. I don’t think she even realizes she’s doing it. A part of me wonders if she feels guilty for being with us when Landon is—
I shut that shit down.
Raymond suggested that Ellie start seeing a therapist, and I nearly busted a nut laughing so hard. What the hell could she talk to a therapist about? POP? The Divine One? Her harem of lovers? Ryker’s fake death? Landon’s stabbing?
Or maybe the fact that Ellie murdered not one person but several?
Now, I wonder if Raymond was right. She’s been bottling up her emotions for way too damn long, and any second now, they’re going to burst out of her in an explosive geyser.
What will happen when they do?
The three of us hurry to catch up with Zane and Ryker, the latter of whom already jimmied the door open.
Darkness and silence greet us on the other side.
The office closed hours ago, but according to our research, the judge has remained behind to finish paperwork. He always does on Fridays, so he won’t have to work on the weekends.
Beckett pulls his phone out, all traces of levity stripped away. He taps at something quickly, his lips firming, and then says, “Security system is now off.”
“Perfect!” Zane rubs his hands together like a psychopath and then skips toward the staircase. Literally skips. I half expect him to start throwing rose petals in a happy glee, like a flower girl walking down the aisle at a wedding.
“Stay between us,” I tell Ellie, though this has been drilled into her head one thousand times before. It was my only condition for allowing her to come.
Ellie nods seriously, for once not arguing, and the five of us move as one. One shadow. One entity. One being.
One heart.
Up the stairs, across the hall, and toward the wooden door with light spilling from the bottom. The blinds on the windows are shut, though I can see the pale pink and white flicker of what appears to be a screen on the other side.
The moans reach us first.
“Ohhh. Oh yes. Harder, baby. Harder.”
“OHHHH!”
Ellie meets my gaze and rolls her eyes.
I place a finger in my mouth and pantomime gagging, eliciting a tiny smile from her. A fleeting smile, yes, but a smile all the same.
The sight makes my chest puff out, masculine pride swelling inside me.
I fucking love it when she smiles.
“We need to be quiet. Cautious,” Ryker begins, his voice a low rasp. “We can’t—”
Zane kicks the door open with a cheerful, “DING DONG, THE BITCH IS DEAD!”
I facepalm, Beckett rolls his eyes, and Ryker looks two seconds away from having an aneurysm.
But Ellie? She giggles. Actually fucking giggles, and it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. It makes me want to kill Zane less than I did before. Slightly less.
Marginally less.
The judge is an older man, with a receding hairline and white wisps that resemble cumulus clouds on the top of his head. His pudgy belly strains against his shirt, and his cock is out, his hand wrapped tight around it.
On the screen, a woman is getting railed by a man who looks eerily similar to him in size and stature, though the face is completely different.
I have no idea if this porn is a product of POP—and the participants are unwilling—but it doesn’t matter. He’s going to die either way.
He signed his death warrant the second he purchased Ellie.
“W-what? Who the fuck are you?” His eyes bulge out of their sockets as they volley from face to face. We discussed wearing masks to this little meet-and-greet before deciding against it.
We want him to see our faces before he dies. To look the Grim Reaper in the face and tremble in fear.
Then his eyes slide to Ellie, and the shock is replaced by something else, something I can’t read. Avarice, maybe. Greed. Or maybe it’s a desire so pungent I actually start to gag.
Either way, the sight has anger blazing up my spine in ropes of fire. I shift slightly so I’m standing protectively in front of Ellie, shielding her from sight.