Chapter 3
THREE
Cian
I strode out of the shed as the door slammed shut behind me, and the lock automatically engaged. The soundproofing had worked. Devlin’s voice was nothing but a muffled buzz now.
I didn’t really care what he said about my father, true or not. He’d been trying to get a rise out of me, and it hadn’t worked. At least not that kind of rise. I couldn’t say the same about my dick.
I ignored my most trusted friend, Rhys Callahan, standing guard outside the shed, and stalked to the back of our property.
A bird cawed overhead as I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, and I picked my way through the small, wooded area until the creek came into view.
It babbled along happily, as if the ten minutes I’d just spent in Devlin Walsh’s presence hadn’t shifted my world’s axis.
I’d only seen a few grainy photographs of the Detroit Devil before today, and that hadn’t been enough to get a read on what he looked like. I’d expected some ugly motherfucker with a craggy face and soft body. A hideous man, who made up for his shortcomings by being a murderous fuck.
What I hadn’t expected was whatever was inside that shed. Delicate features. Wide-set green eyes that might have looked ugly on any other face. A full lower lip, glistening from the swipe of a tongue. Dark red hair that had somehow still looked lush despite being sweaty and smashed from the hood.
Devlin Walsh was a pretty boy. Of all fucking things.
I took another long drag. Blew out the smoke. Scratched at my scalp.
I’d think this was my father sending me one last fuck you from the grave, but there was no way he’d do this.
Not when my sexuality was something he’d tried to beat out of me since I was six.
I’d never told him, but he knew. Fucker had been a bloodhound for anything he’d considered a defect. A weakness.
I had never felt that way before. Being bisexual was just a part of me, and I was proud of who I was. But right now, I could almost see my father’s point of view, because being attracted to the Detroit Devil was a fatal flaw in my design.
The creek babbled. A breeze blew. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck and dampened the collar of my T-shirt.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I knew it was Rhys without having to turn around. He didn’t say anything, just waited for me to speak. It was one of the reasons he’d been my best friend since birth. He didn’t fucking annoy me.
When I’d ordered Devlin’s abduction, I’d had a plan.
Avenge my father. Because that’s what we did in my world.
That’s what was expected. After Patrick’s death, our crew had fractured: those loyal to the old bastard, and those loyal to me.
The Patrick loyalists wanted Devlin’s head, and the only way I could prevent one of them from shooting me in the back was to show respect for my father. I had to put Devlin in the ground.
And I’d been content to do that—after I’d gotten as much information out of Devlin as I could.
That had always been on my agenda. Find out what Devlin knows.
Glean the dirt, the secrets, the blackmail.
Whatever I could use. It had been a good plan, until I’d looked into those green eyes and felt his throat work under my grip. And now…
… no. No. I had to stick to the plan. The plan was solid. Air-tight. Iron-clad.
But as I remembered how his Adam’s apple had bobbed under my palm, my cock kicked in my jeans. This was a big fucking problem. Because Devlin Walsh, of all people, had looked at me in a way no one else had ever looked at me.
All my life, I’d been someone people took from—my loyalty, my strength, my name. Maybe even a good fuck. But Devlin’s eyes promised to give.
Maybe this was another trick to get under my skin, to make me think things I shouldn’t about the man who’d killed my father. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck, and goosebumps rose on my arms. I should go in there right now and end him. Just terminate this entire issue.
My face will be the last thing you ever see.
Promise?
The trees lining the creek weren’t dense, so I could still see the back of the shed he was being kept in.
The long yard of our property stretched beyond it, ending in the building we all called “Frank.” It was a Frankensteined monstrosity, half house and half dorm, where most of our crew lived when they didn’t have families.
I caught Rhys looking at me out of the corner of his eye. I’d been quiet too long.
“You have thoughts?” I asked.
His posture relaxed, and he turned to lean against a tree trunk. “He’s not what I expected.” Rhys had been the one leading the crew that grabbed Devlin from his grubby motel room.
“Understatement.” I took another drag from my cigarette. “Can’t decide if he’s playing games, or if he’s right where I want him.”
“Games?” Rhys’s eyebrow quirked.
I thought about how much to tell him. I didn’t keep secrets from Rhys, and he knew me better than anyone, but something about that interaction with Devlin made my tongue lock up.
I needed to think. Alone. I knew Rhys wanted answers—despite being my best friend, he still expected things from me. Just like everyone else.
I dropped my cigarette butt in the dried grass and ground it out with the heel of my boot.
“Hack and Mads are on Devil duty. Those two, and those two only. They go into that shed to feed him and empty his bucket. Switch his cuffs to the front so he can piss. And I don’t want them saying a single word to him.
No eye contact. Nothing. He’ll try to bait them, but they have to ignore it. ”
Rhys’s dark eyebrows rose higher the more I talked. Maybe it was because I didn’t usually string that many words together, or maybe because my instructions were a little fucking weird. Devlin Walsh wanted attention more than anything, and I was going to withhold it for as long as possible.
Then I blurted out a sentence I hadn’t expected to say, but the words rolled unbidden off my tongue.
“Keep the light on. I don’t want him in the dark.”
I told myself it was part of the torture, but I knew the real reason.
Rhys flinched at the command and he opened his mouth, probably to ask a question I didn’t want to entertain, so I cut him off. “And for the love of God, do not let J—”
A door slammed from across the yard, and both of us turned to see a figure stalking away from Frank. Rhys and I were both moving as soon as the familiar man with dirty blond hair broke into a sprint, the knife in his hand glinting in the afternoon sun.
“Shit.” I broke into a run, and Rhys quickly fell into stride beside me. “Cut him off!”
Jace was a fast little fuck, but I snatched him up just before he made it to the shed door. With an arm banded around his waist, I hauled him off his feet as he went into crocodile-death-roll mode.
“Get off me!” Jace howled, slashing the knife in the air like some amateur serial killer. “I want him to bleed!”
I dropped him and shoved him back with a growl. “Calm down. Quit acting fucking feral.”
Jace’s light amber eyes flashed like wildfire, and he feinted left in a juke before darting right, like a running back.
He was smaller and more agile than I was, and he got the slip on me.
He would have made it all the way to the shed if Rhys hadn’t gotten there in time, scooping him off his feet.
Jace flailed and screeched in his arms, like he wasn’t a full-grown man.
Rhys was undeterred—he didn’t even look angry as he held him in a two-handed grip—while Jace bared his teeth like a rabid raccoon. “Let me go!”
He didn’t let go, and eventually Jace went limp in his arms. Even then, Rhys didn’t ease up, because Jace was a little faker. If we gave him an inch, he’d take a mile. That was when I noticed Rhys’s pale hand dripping blood, and the knife stained with it.
“You stupid fucker.” I snatched the knife from Jace’s hand and pointed the tip between his eyes. “Look who you made bleed instead.”
Jace’s face blanched, and Rhys finally relented his grip. As soon as Jace’s feet touched the ground, his body bowed, head down as he stared at Rhys’s bloody hand. “R-Rhys… I-I’m sorry…”
Rhys fisted the front of his own T-shirt and wiped the blood off. He didn’t say anything, didn’t accept Jace’s apology, which only seemed to make my half-brother more miserable.
“What did you think you were doing?” I asked him. “A knife? Really?”
Jace whirled on me, eyes flashing again, now that his attention had shifted away from Rhys. “Just one little cut. I deserve it.”
“You could have slipped. You could have hit his jugular. And then all of this would have been for nothing.”
His chin lifted as he stared at me defiantly. “He was my dad, too.”
I was reminded every day of how differently Jace and I had grown up.
I’d been born into this life. My mother had been Patrick’s first wife, a strong woman who’d kept her husband’s more violent tendencies in check.
My memories of her were vague, but I knew she’d stood up to my father when he’d disciplined me too hard.
She’d read me bedtime stories. She’d cut my hair, and cooked me good food, and was probably the only reason I was somewhat sane now.
Because I could still remember something good. I knew what it meant to be loved.
But she’d died of cancer when I was six, and then there’d been nothing standing between me and Patrick’s worst impulses.
Patrick hadn’t known Jace existed until he was dropped off outside the gates of our compound at eight years old by his mother, who was about to serve a long-term prison sentence for drug offenses. He’d been small and skinny, probably because he’d been so malnourished as a kid.