11. Logan
The dull burnin my lats is becoming hard to ignore, even for me. I do it anyway, blocking out the weak part of my awareness that notices it as I continue the steady rhythm I’ve set at the pull-up bar in the gym that takes up part of the first floor of our home.
I work out every morning from 4:10 a.m until 5:59 a.m., and the fact that I’m in here for a second time today would make me furious if I let it.
I don’t like breaks in my routine. But I detest the fact that Maddoc brought that girl into our home.
I appreciate that he heard me out, and drawing blood on Dante helped too. But I still needed this. Something more to calm my rage at the idea of the girl waltzing in and becoming a distraction. A weakness. A chink in the armor that holds me and my brothers—and the entire Reapers organization—together.
I hit two hundred and keep going, but the steady count that I tick off in my brain isn’t working the way it usually does to crowd out other thoughts.
Not thoughts. Feelings.
“Fuck,” I grunt when I should have said “two hundred and one.”
I get back on count. Two hundred and two. Two hundred and three. Two hundred and f—
“Fuck.”
My back seizes up, my muscles locking as I hiss through the sudden spike of pain and then forcefully push it into the background again. I’m in control. Not my body. Not the chaos the world always wants to throw in front of me. Me.
Always.
“Two oh four.” I make it happen. “Two oh five.” I do another. “Two oh six.” And another.
And then my grip spasms, and my left hand slips off the bar.
I drop to the floor with a curse. I’ve been down here for close to half an hour, pushing myself to the limit, but it hasn’t worked. I still feel too wound up to center myself. Too filled with the cold fire that’s been my lifelong companion: rage. And there will be nowhere for it to go if my body is going to fail me like this.
I don’t like that there’s a stranger in our home. Our sanctuary. Our fortress.
I don’t like that there’s a woman here.
Other gangs do that. Fuck around with women in a variety of sadistic ways. Take the ones that matter to their enemies as prisoners. Punish betrayal by using their bodies. Enact retribution by defiling them, destroying them, degrading them.
But we don’t. Maddoc has never sanctioned that sort of thing for the Reapers, and I like it that way.
I have no qualms about hurting others for our own gain. I don’t crave it either. I simply do what’s most expedient. But I can also admire that there’s a certain beauty to the infliction of pain when it’s done well.
But regardless, the less association we have with women, the better. The past proves that.
Mine, certainly.
Maddoc’s, most definitely.
Although I suppose I can see how Dante has yet to learn that lesson.
I roll my shoulders, then my neck, trying to loosen the muscles. I’m tempted to jump back up to the bar and force my body to obey me. There was a time I would have, even if it incapacitated me afterward.
Instead, I close my eyes and take control of my breath. My heart rate. Force relaxation into each muscle group in my body, one by one. I retreat into stillness as I remind myself that there’s a time to demand compliance, but there’s also a time to forge an alternate path.
Watching Maddoc build the Reapers up from nothing taught me that.
Being trusted as his second—moving in here with him and Dante five years ago, just after Maddoc began formalizing the loose association of criminals whose loyalty he’d earned into our current organization—is the single stable touchstone in my life. The only one I need.
I open my eyes, finally under control again, and start methodically tidying up the equipment I’ve been using. Re-aligning the floor mats. Adjusting the weight plates in their rack until each is turned to face the proper direction. Blocking out the fact that there’s still something out of place.
Intrusive.
Riley.
I press my lips together tightly, then force them to relax again. Maddoc’s made a decision, and if I didn’t trust his decisions, I wouldn’t be here.
In the beginning, he poured everything he had into keeping control of the Reapers. Dante and I helped him maintain the power he’d built up through any means necessary, and it forged the three of us into an unbreakable unit.
The three of us.
Only us.
No one else has ever been brought to the house on an open-ended basis like this. Maddoc and Dante have both had women over for their own pleasure, of course, and we have a space here in the basement for those times it’s been necessary to bring people in for interrogations or beatings.
Occasionally, Maddoc will even allow someone to visit this house for a business deal.
But no one else has ever lived with us. He’s never moved anyone else in.
Why now?
Why her?
He should know better. Women can’t be trusted. Of course, no one should be trusted until they’ve proven themselves, and in twenty-six years, the only two people I’ve ever come across who are worthy of trust are the two I call my brothers. But Maddoc should’ve learned his lesson about falling for a woman’s lies the last time he got entangled with one.
Sienna Morgan.
She’s the only bad decision I’ve ever seen him make, and when she broke his trust, it ended badly for all of us.
I don’t want to see that happen again… but the cracks are already there.
Dante didn’t just fuck this girl. He was affected by her. I can tell.
And Maddoc?
The calm, calculated demeanor he radiates is one of the reasons I trust him. He knows how to keep his cool in a way that most people don’t, to use his head rather than his emotions.
But this time, there was something brewing under the surface when he looked at her, and I don’t like it.
I force a slow, cleansing breath out through my nose. Then another.
Methodically, I package up the unwanted thoughts and emotions cluttering up my mind and seal them away.Then I turn the lights off in the gym, close the door with a quiet snick, and head up to the ensuite bathroom attached to my bedroom to shower, carefully keeping my mind blank.
Once I’m clean and dressed, I go back down to the main floor. Dante is in the living room, typing out a text on his phone.
“Got a problem,” he says when he sees me, finishing up the text and tucking his phone into his pocket. “I just finished giving Maddoc an update.”
I lean in the doorway, crossing my arms. “The girl?”
“Nah. Mario Ricci.”
A curling heat unfurls in my stomach. Here’s something I can do, a problem I can take care of.
“How can I help?” I say immediately.
Dante snorts, chuckling. “You wanna hear how he’s trying to screw us over before you start planning how to dismember him?”
The question is rhetorical, of course. For one thing, I won’t know if dismemberment is necessary until I understand the scope of the problem Mario has caused us. And even if it turns out that it is, Dante knows me well enough to understand that the pleasure I get out of doling out appropriate consequences to our enemies isn’t based on which tool I use to do it.
It’s about returning things to their proper order.
And all of that is beside the point, because I don’t need him to explain how Mario has attempted to screw us over. I can already slot the puzzle pieces together into a logical conclusion.
“He’s trying to fuck with our money.”
Dante nods. “Yup. He’s fucking stupid, is what he is. He wants to back out of our deal.”
The deal being the fifty thousand dollars that we’ve arranged to funnel through his casino by the end of the month in order to legitimize it enough to put it back into circulation.
“Backing out of the deal isn’t an option.”
Dante grins. “Yeah, that’s what I told him when he said he couldn’t do it. He didn’t seem to believe me, though, so I’m gonna go pay him a visit.”
“We are,” I correct him.
This is what I needed. Whether we leave Mario breathing after the visit or not, the opportunity to right this wrong should be the outlet I need. The one that pushing myself in the gym didn’t prove sufficient for.
We enter the garage, and Dante grabs a set of keys from the lockbox by the door, tossing them in his hand. The Escalade.
I clear my throat.
“Oh, come on,” he says, throwing me the charming smile he usually employs to get into women’s pants. “It’ll be fun.”
I don’t bother answering. I’m not getting into a vehicle with him in the driver’s seat, and he knows it.
I did. Once. And hated it.
Dante drives like he has a blindfold on: wild, reckless, and with a sloppy disregard for anything resembling economy of motion or the strategic use of the roadway.
“Fine.” He groans with a put-upon sigh, replacing the keys to the Escalade. “Worth a shot, though, right?”
“Never,” I deadpan, plucking the keys to the Audi RS7 from the lockbox. It’s the car I prefer when I’m behind the wheel. The one Dante laughingly called “the pinnacle of understated rage” when we bought it and that neither of my brothers ever disrespect me by driving themselves—even though, like all of our vehicles, it’s the property of the organization.
I slip behind the wheel and run my hands over the smooth leather covering the steering wheel, my body humming with the power I’m holding even before I turn the key.
“You know you’re just as bad as I am,” Dante comments as I back out of the garage. “Hell, the speeds you like to push it to? Maybe worse.”
It’s true. I do drive fast. Fast and aggressively.
“It’s not about speed,” I tell him. “It’s about precision.”
“I’ll give you that,” he says with a laugh as I thread through traffic, analyzing the driving patterns around us and overlaying my knowledge of the city’s grid to get us to the casino by the most efficient possible route.
Our destination is on the outskirts of Halston, and by the look of the parking lot, it’s not crowded. Not surprising, since the night is still pretty young and the place is a bit of a shit hole even at the best of times. Its current patrons are mostly the sad, compulsive gambler crowd who’ve probably been here since the sun was high and look pathetic at any time of day… but in my opinion, even more so under the cheap patina of glitz and mystique that the casino tries to put on at night.
It disgusts me. The stains on the carpet. The smell of cheap booze, stale sweat, and empty desperation that permeate the air.
Theydisgust me. They’ve got no control over themselves, and unlike me, they don’t even try to master their basest impulses.
We head to the back, striding side by side. Mario’s security makes a half-assed attempt to slow us down when we pass through the discreet doors marked as employee only, but they back off quickly when we deploy some of the tools at our disposal to convince them it’s not in their best interests.
Dante gives me a look when we reach the closed door to Mario’s office, reminding me with a single glance why he’s one of the two people on this earth that I trust enough to kill for on his word alone.
I should hate everything about him. He’s the polar opposite of me… on the outside.
But inside?
Dante truly is my brother. We share certain traits that make words completely unnecessary for the two of us to understand each other.
We burst in, and Mario lets out a frightened shout. He scrambles up from his desk, tipping over the chair he was sitting in as he backs away, his face going pale with fear.
Fear is a valid response. Maybe the man isn’t quite as stupid as I’d assumed.
Dante and I slide around the desk with smooth coordination, boxing him in. I slide a small, lethal blade out of the wrist sheath I always wear and hold it to his throat as Dante frisks him, removing a weapon from a side holster.
Just one.
The man is a joke.
A joke whose mouth won’t stop moving.
He’s dripping with whiny excuses and the rancid stench of panic. He fits right in with the disgusting patrons of his establishment… and I’m going to need a second shower once we’re through here.
“If you piss yourself, I’ll gut you,” I inform him courteously, flicking a second blade free from its sheath at my lower back and using the tip to trace the pattern of his intestines through the strained fabric of his dress shirt.
Not to scare him, but simply to map out his vital organs.
The fear is a useful side effect, though.
“N-n-no,” Mario stutters, shaking so hard he almost disembowels himself without my intervention needed at all. “Please. I’m… I’m sure we can work something out.”
I’m sure we can too, but I’ll leave that part to Dante.
And it doesn’t change the fact that if the man defiles me with his urine, I’ll make him bleed.
I always keep my word.
“You’re sure, are you?” Dante asks, cocking his head to the side as he smiles at the man. “’Cause that’s not the impression you gave me over the phone.”
It’s a beautiful smile. So… disarming. How no one ever seems to see the sinister promise of violence-when-necessary underneath Dante’s personable exterior never ceases to amaze me.
Then again, people as a rule are stupid.
And Mario Ricci clearly isn’t the one who’s going to break that rule.
“No, no, you misunderstood,” he babbles, beads of sweat dripping down his face.
One lands on the blade I’ve got at his throat, sullying its shine.
I don’t like that.
“Explain it to me,” Dante says patiently as I slice open the buttons holding Mario’s shirt closed over his bulging stomach, preparing to do what may be necessary given how truly unintelligent the man is proving to be.
I know human anatomy well, but there’s an excessive amount of visceral fat wrapped around Mario’s organs, pushing them out of place. I’m confident I can find the important ones anyway.
“Uh, it’s… it’s almost summer. We’re a… a seasonal business.”
Dante snorts, a signal that Mario needs motivation.
I carve a little divot into his flesh. A placeholder for where I estimate his engorged liver to be. It distracts Dante for a moment, as I expected it to. His eyes track the vibrant line of blood that snakes its way down the man’s stomach.
He smiles.
He does like bright things, and he’s always been partial to red.
Mario whimpers, and Dante’s eyes snap back up.
“What was that?” he asks, cocking his head again. “Pretty sure you’ll need to repeat it for me, Mario.”
Mario swallows, an audible sound that I don’t care for at all. “It’s just that… that we’re not busy enough to launder the full fifty you want right now,” he gasps out when I prod him again. “But, uh, but we can… we can do something for you, for sure. Less, maybe? Don’t worry, Mr. Channing. We’ll still help you out.”
“Help us out?” Dante repeats in a warm voice, that deceptive little smile hovering around his mouth again.
Dante’s got an entirely different set of tools in his arsenal.
Well, maybe not entirely different.
“Yeah, yeah, you know I want to help,” the idiot babbles eagerly, starting to nod vigorously but then stopping as his jowls connect with my blade.
He swallows again, his Adam’s apple catching my eye as it bobs. It’s a tender spot, right in the throat like that, and I mentally register it as another option if I need to carve into him more than I’ve already done.
“It’s just too risky to run fifty-k through right now,” he goes on in a strained voice. “Maybe, uh…” He gulps, then proves that yes, he really is that stupid. “Maybe I can do ten for you?”
Dante hums quietly to himself, probably giving Mario the false impression that he’s actually considering it.
He’s not.
I smile… on the inside. Then I remove another small divot of flesh, marking an entry point for Mario’s spleen. I would have stuck with the liver, but this way adds another entrancing line of blood to the pattern already decorating his stomach.
It’s a little gift for Dante’s enjoyment.
Mario makes a satisfyingly frantic sound of distress, which probably means this will be enough.
Then again, sometimes people can surprise you in the most unpleasant ways.
“Ten isn’t what you promised us,” Dante reminds him. “And when you agreed to do fifty, you knew full well how busy your casino usually is this time of year.” He gives the trembling man a pleasant smile. “So tell me, Mario, are you going to keep that promise? Are you going to clean fifty-k for us and make it work like you said… or should we plan on getting the money out of you some other way?”
On the one hand, the smooth tumble of intestines slipping out of a well-placed abdominal cut has a way of enlightening even the dimmest of bulbs. But on the other hand, evisceration is so often fatal that it’s a bit of a calculated risk.
And we do need the money laundered.
Of course, more than that, we need to enforce respect for the Reapers, so it’s a risk I’m willing to take if Mario doesn’t realize the error of his ways from Dante’s gentle nudging. Fifty thousand dollars is a significant amount for our organization, but respect is priceless.
And enforcing it is something that needs to be done at any cost.
For a moment, an unwanted and unwelcome picture of the girl flashes through my mind.
Riley.
Naked.
Holding her chin up and her spine straight as I left her in the guest room Maddoc assigned her.
Sheneeds to learn respect. There was fear in her eyes, as there should be, but not enough. Not when there were other things there too. Things that threaten everything Maddoc’s built. Everything Dante and I have dedicated our lives to keeping in order.
I grit my teeth, then force my jaw to relax as I push the girl’s image out of my mind. She’s a threat, and I won’t rest until I find a way to help my brothers see that.
But ultimately, as I’ve already stated to them, she doesn’t matter.
Right now, dealing with Mario and his transgressions is what matters.
I lock the door on any further mental distractions and focus on carving him up a little more while Dante finishes explaining the error of his ways to him. Luckily, the man keeps from pissing himself. Another shower is already a given, but I’d be annoyed if I also had to burn these clothes due to that sort of contamination.
“We’ll see you at the end of the month,” Dante tells Mario with a warm smile as we finish.
I don’t bother with that sort of pleasantry. I do slice off the silk tie Mario’s wearing and use it to clean off my blades, however. The waste of space owes me for getting his bodily fluids all over my tools.
The blades will need better care once we’re home of course, but I’m certainly not returning them to their sheaths covered in… him. That’s disgusting.
And then, once Mario confirms our next appointment with a nervous jerk of his head, we leave.
Dante frowns as we exit the casino. “He’s the second one to try to fuck us over on a pre-existing agreement like this.”
The second one?
I mentally flip through our recent business transactions as we both slide into the Audi.
Dante’s right. Branson, a piece of garbage who owns some local used car dealerships, was the first. Mario the second. And two is two too many.
I press my lips together tightly, the smooth rumble of the Audi’s engine as it fires up not enough to soothe the cold fury building inside meall over again. Any peace that setting things right with Mario afforded me is gone now that Dante’s reminded me that he wasn’t the first.
True loyalty may be rare, but betrayal is always inexcusable.
Always.
Dante drums his fingers on his knee, looking thoughtful. “We need to look into both incidents a little deeper. And if we throw in that shooting bullshit the other day, that’s… what, three times the Reapers have been blatantly disrespected since April? Because that sounds like a fucking pattern to me.”
“Fuck,” I bite out, pulling out of the casino’s lot and heading toward the freeway.
I need speed.
I need something.
I need the kind of release I have no idea how to find, not when there’s a disruption like this.
One I should have noticed earlier. One that sounds like a pattern to me too. A pattern that needs to be dealt with.
“Three times can’t be coincidence,” Dante murmurs, echoing my thoughts as he looks out the window.
His fingers keep tapping out a rapid beat, telling me without words that he’s just as disturbed as I am. Because he’s right. There are no coincidences. It’s what they fail to see when it comes to Riley, and it always means something’s up.
Something that’s not good for the Reapers.
Something, in this case, that stinks of West Point’s influence… just like the girl does.