Chapter 5
Chapter five
Carrson
I’m in the room I use as an office. Dark bookcases rise behind me, but they hold few books.
The desk I sit at must have been crafted by the same wood-carver who made the headboard in my bedroom.
It has similar grotesque, distorted figures caught in the middle of what might be war… or an orgy. Hard to tell.
My phone dings. I glance down and wince when I see the word Father flash across the screen. Bracing myself, I open the message. It’s in his usual, formal tone. The one he uses in emails, in texts. Like he has a stick up his ass.
Son, I’m hearing rumors you bonded an outsider.
If true, I’m deeply disappointed. This is not just a personal failing, it’s a betrayal of everything you were raised to uphold.
You are an Ashford. Trained to lead with discipline and obedience.
Not weakness. Be warned, there will be consequences when I return. Pray they’re not permanent.
Of course, he knows what happened last night.
The man has eyes everywhere. He probably pays one of the brothers to report back on my every move, every decision, just so he can dissect it.
Judge it. I read the text again, slower this time, my eyes catching on that last line.
There will be consequences. Pray they’re not permanent.
Dread curls in my gut, heavy and familiar.
Defiance has a cost in my father’s house.
The payment is blood, and he always collects.
I throw the phone onto my desk, harder than necessary, and drop my head into my hands with a low, muttered, “Fuck.”
“You look like shit.” Thomson drops the file onto the desk in front of me with a loud thunk.
It’s thick. The manila folder gapes, filled with sheets of paper all neatly aligned.
Impressive since it’s seven in the morning.
Which means he only had eight hours to pull together the information I requested.
“Nightmares,” I mutter, as I rub the heel of my hand into my dry, aching eyes.
Thomson grunts in acknowledgment. He has them too.
I ask the question I’ve asked every day for the past year. “Any news on Rose?”
Thomson exhales and shakes his head. “We don’t even know if she exists.”
I clench my fists and breathe slowly through my nose. “If she does, I need to find her. Don’t stop looking.” I pause, then add a soft, “Please.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment, then sighs. “I won’t. I promise.”
I force myself to let go of the tension, rolling my shoulders back as I shift gears. I nod toward the file. “All right. What’d you find out about pizza girl?”
“Her name is Laurel Turner. Age nineteen, almost twenty. Her birthday is next month. Maybe you can give her a ring for a present?” He raises an eyebrow at me, his lips in a thin line. He’s angry at me, as he should be. It was a bad decision, the one I made last night.
“You know I don’t have to marry her,” I tell him, working to keep my tone even. I’m on edge as much as he is. First that drug dealer last night. The one I killed. Then the girl. It’s been a lot.
“Oh yeah, you’re just bonded to her for the rest of your mortal life.” My best friend, maybe my only real friend, rolls his eyes. “No big deal.”
“My immortal life too,” I point out. “At least according to your father.”
I gesture for him to continue. I’ll read through the damn thing later, every single page, but right now I don’t have time. I need the Cliffs Notes version.
“Her mom, a teacher, died in a car crash when she was young. Her dad was the school principal. After his wife died, his heavy drinking transformed into functional alcoholism.” He raises an eyebrow and says, “Almost sounds like your family except for the mom thing.”
He’s right. We don’t have moms here, but my dad is the very definition of a functional drunk.
Until he isn’t. Then his dark side is unleashed, and my body becomes his personal punching bag.
The outlet for all his pent-up rage. Thomson knows all about that because his dad is the same way.
They’re best friends, our fathers, so we were practically raised together.
Even beaten together. Tied side by side to the stair banister and whipped.
When we were really little, after a particularly violent episode, I remember Thomson beside me as I cried and vomited blood.
We did some serious trauma bonding growing up.
“Laurel seems like she had a pretty good childhood. Straight A’s, active in school and extracurricular activities.
Did a lot of tutoring, mostly underprivileged kids.
A small but tight group of friends. She was accepted into a top college with full academic scholarships…
” Something dark passes over his expression.
His brow wrinkles as he picks up the file and shuffles through the pages.
“But?” I hold my hands up, palms to the ceiling, mildly annoyed. Thomson likes to do this, draw out a story. Make it more dramatic than it needs to be.
“Something happened right before she graduated from high school.” Frowning, he pulls out a sheet of paper and passes it over to me.
It’s her school transcript. I run my finger down a long line of A’s, until I hit the patch of F’s broken by a single C-, probably a pity grade from some teacher with a soft heart.
“Her perfect attendance record goes to crap. Her grades slip, not just a little but by a landslide, and her dad becomes a full-blown drunk. Like the ‘piss your pants and don’t notice’ kind of drunk.
He loses his job, gambles the savings, and loses that too.
She loses her scholarships because of the grades.
They move here. She enrolls in Ashford University as a pre-med major. ”
I steeple my fingers and rest my chin on them. “And now?”
“She’s a freshman, only been here for a month, currently taking summer school.
Back to straight A’s but barely leaves her place.
No friends. No extracurriculars. She works every single day delivering pizza to pay for the crap apartment she shares with her dad, like every day.
” He shrugs like he doesn’t care, but his mouth twists unhappily.
“She’s in one of my classes, organic chemistry.
She must have tested into it because it’s usually not open to freshmen. ”
Of course she is. Thomson is pre-med too.
He’s the smartest of all of us, but that’s not why he’s in those classes.
It’s because his father is a doctor, head of the National Institutes of Health, and so he will be too.
That’s how it works. Just like I’ll be a member of Congress one day, only my path is different, because if I keep succeeding like I have, if I keep working hard, I might just end up in charge of the whole damn country.
Mr. President. The commander-in-chief. That’s the goal, or at least the goal everyone thinks I’m working toward.
I have other goals too, hidden ones, known only to me and Thomson.
“Find out what happened to make her go off the rails like that,” I command. Thomson nods and makes a note in the file.
“Did you notice her before? This Laurel?” The name tastes strange in my mouth.
I prefer Tiger or Kitten, something with claws.
I flash back to how she lashed out at Jackson last night, the venom in her grimace.
The rage in her eyes. She was pretty vicious for someone clearly out of her element. Even I can respect that.
“Kind of. I had the vague sense she was smart, because when a teacher calls on her she always knows the answer. But she never raises her hand, and she’s good at blending into the background.”
“Great.” I toss the paper onto the top of the pile. “She’s hiding secrets, has some kind of tragic backstory, and is a closet genius.” I cover my eyes with my hands and groan. “Why couldn’t she be low-maintenance? Easy to manipulate. I could hide her away and forget all about this.”
“I don’t get it. Why did you bond her?” Thomson flushes red. He really is furious. “Jesus, Carr, what the fuck were you thinking?”
I huff and send him a glare that makes most of the brothers scurry out of the room, but not Thomson. He just crosses his arms and glares right back. He’s savvy enough to never act this way in front of anyone else, but when we’re alone all bets are off.
“I was thinking I had already killed enough people that night.” I sneer, adding, “I was thinking it was the only way to stop the murder of an innocent woman. She was just trying to deliver some pizza, for fuck’s sake!”
He puts his head in his hands, closes his eyes, and massages his scalp.
“I get that you were trying to protect her, but God, do you realize how much more danger she’s in now?
The sisters are going to go batshit over this, especially Sam.
Every Jackal will be out for her blood, thinking that hurting her is the same as hurting you.
Can you imagine how bad Silas Creed will want her? Your father—”
Without a word, I hold up my phone so he can see the latest text. He scans it silently, reading it line by line. By the end, his eyes are so big they practically swallow his face.
“Well, that’s ominous,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re lucky he’s out of town right now. Otherwise, he’d kill you. Then kill her. Then kill you all over again just to make a point.”
He sounds like he’s exaggerating, but we both know he’s not.
My father is one scary motherfucker.
“Father’s out of the picture for now,” I say, in an attempt to calm Thomson—and myself—down. “As for the rest, I’ll put security on her.”
“How will she handle that? Being followed around twenty-four seven.” He raises his head, looks at me. “How was she last night? Did she freak out?”
“I had Jackson and Stevenson hold her down, strip her.” I duck my head, not wanting to see his response.
“What the fuck, bro, seriously?”
“I needed to know she couldn’t hurt me. Needed to make her feel vulnerable. To establish dominance.” I wince as that comes out of my mouth.
Always establish your dominance.
The second rule my father taught me.
Thomson hears it too. His sigh holds a hint of pity, and I hate it.
“I had no other choice,” I finish weakly, even though I wholeheartedly believe the words I’m saying.
If I hadn’t bonded Laurel Turner, she’d be dead.
Buried in the cornfield with the rest of the bodies.
***
An hour later, I head back into my bedroom, nodding to Stevenson, who guards the door.
“Not a peep,” he tells me.
Laurel is still asleep, tangled in the sheets like she had a restless night.
The blanket is pushed down, revealing her naked chest. Like the bastard I am, my eyes go straight to her breasts and linger there because they’re fucking perfect.
Not too big. Not too small. Pink nipples, the kind that probably taste like candy, the type that make my dick instantly hard.
Fuck.
I need to get laid. It’s been forever since I went to one of the whorehouses my father owns two towns over, but in the past year I’ve soured on them.
The thought of sticking my dick into a woman who’s probably been screwed by my father and his flunkies or by any of my fraternity brothers is so revolting it turns my stomach.
Add in my growing suspicions about the women who work there and who they really are, and there’s absolutely no way I’ll go ever again.
No thanks.
I thought I’d be fine being celibate for the rest of my life, but this naked woman in my bed is tempting me in the worst possible way. Before I do anything I’ll regret, I pull the sheets up to cover her.
Look at her face, not her body, I tell myself.
That’s not helpful because she’s actually rather pretty.
Long, wavy brown hair. Tan skin, either naturally or from being out in the sun delivering pizza.
She has a scattering of freckles across her nose.
It’s her lips, though, that make my dick stand up straight for the second time in two minutes.
Her lips are a wet dream come to life. Fucking voluptuous, rose-colored, full, and pouty.
The kind designed to be wrapped around my cock, sucking me down.
I could drown in those lips, die with them pressed to mine.
Fuck!
Why can’t she be ugly?
She hates you, I remind myself. Can’t stand your rotten guts with very good reason. You think she wants to make out with a killer? Have sex with a murderer? Fall in love with her captor?
Better to have her hate me, better for both of us, I decide. Then those lips will never touch mine, and all my plans can go forward like they’re supposed to. Just like they would have if she’d never stumbled into my life.