Chapter 35 Malice
MALICE
Even with all the shit going on with whoever is poking into Nikolai’s death, we still have business to do.
Since the deal with the Donovan gang fell through, we’ve had to work double-time to make sure we don’t lose the footing we’ve managed to claw out for ourselves in our particular niche of the criminal underworld of Detroit.
I left Ransom hanging with Willow in the garage when I headed out a while ago to take some parts from the last car we chopped to a buyer we work with sometimes.
Thankfully, he doesn’t have a stick up his ass about the lies Ethan is spreading, so he’s still happy to do business with us. I sell the parts and take the cash, stuffing it into my back pocket. But as I start to walk back toward my car, I half bump into someone hanging around outside.
“Hey, watch where you’re—” The guy’s voice breaks off as he turns to look at me, and I realize I know him.
“Darius.” I frown.
“Ho-ly shit.” The broad-shouldered man chuckles. “You’re Alexander Voronin’s boy, aren’t you? Malice, right? It’s been a while.”
Just hearing our dad’s name is enough to make me bristle, but I bite back the urge to tell him to go fuck himself.
Darius Ledger was a friend of our dad’s—as much as that asshole had friends, I guess.
They ran together when our father was trying to build up his criminal empire, and I’ve met the guy a couple of times because of that.
Darius narrows his eyes, gazing down the street as if he’s recalling a memory.
“Goddamn. I remember the way your dad used to talk about you boys. How he was gonna raise you up to help him run his empire. You were gonna be the best of the best, all deadly and skilled.” He lets out a low whistle, shifting his focus back to me.
“Too bad you three used those skills to take him out instead.”
My hands curl into fists at my side.
It’s not like it’s some big secret that I was convicted for the murder of our father, but the way Darius is looking at me so smugly sends my hackles up. I don’t like being taunted, especially not by some smug-ass fucker who used to run in the same circles as our piece of shit dad.
“As I recall, you snatched up some of his old business contacts as soon as he was dead, so I guess you should be thanking me for opening up that opportunity,” I say coolly.
Darius ducks his head in acknowledgement of my words, chuckling as he runs a hand over his ash brown hair.
“I guess I should.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth, shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re back on the outside now.
Maybe we’ll get a chance to do business one day. ”
There’s no way in hell my brothers and I will ever do business with this fucker. We work with a lot of lowlifes and criminals, but we draw the line at trash like Darius.
“Yeah, maybe,” I grunt, sidestepping him to continue down the street. He seems like he’d be happy to reminisce about the past all motherfucking day, but I don’t have the time or patience for that shit.
He doesn’t stop me, giving me a nod as he watches me go. I’m about halfway back to my car when my phone rings, so I slide it out of my pocket, check the screen, and answer it.
“Vic. What’s up?”
“Get home. Now,” my twin says, sounding tense as hell. “We need to talk.”
I can tell immediately that something’s up. Darius and his bullshit are forgotten, and I turn away, heading back to my car, forgetting how pissed off I was just a second ago as I focus on the call.
“What’s going on?” I demand.
“We’ll talk about it when you get here.”
“That’s not a lot to fucking go on, Vic.”
My twin’s voice is hard when he answers. “We got a new job from X.”
I frown at the mention of our mysterious benefactor. I fucking hate this arrangement we’ve gotten locked into, and I hate the way X basically owns us now. He treats us like fucking errand boys, sending us to do whatever dirty work he wants, knowing we can’t say no.
And whatever he wants now? It clearly has Vic’s hackles up.
“I’m on my way,” I say shortly and then end the call, sliding into my car and peeling out.
As much as I hate X and the bullshit he puts us through, I know working for him is probably better than the alternative. Prison was a fucking nightmare.
I grip the wheel so tightly the leather underneath my fingers creaks in protest. None of it was pretty. None of it was anything I ever want to go through again.
I’m not going back there. No matter what I have to do to stay out.
When I get back to our place, I let myself in, slamming the door behind me.
Willow is in the living room, and she looks up when I enter from the hallway, but I don’t slow my strides as I pass through the room and head for the stairs.
Still, even though I barely even glance at her as I walk by, it’s like every part of my body is wired to be aware of her.
I can feel her eyes on my back, heavy like a touch, even though she hasn’t moved from the couch.
Ransom is already in Victor’s room when I get up there, and as I step inside, I find my brothers with their heads together, reading the message that Vic has up on his computer screen.
They glance my way in unison, and Ransom looks as tense as Victor sounded on the phone.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demand.
“Shut the door,” Vic says.
I do and then come closer, folding my arms.
The message on the screen is from X, and it starts the same way all the messages we get from him do.
“I’ve got a new job for you, blah blah, fucking blah,” I mutter under my breath.
But then my eyes scan down more, and I stare in shock at the picture of Willow that sits beneath the text. It’s definitely her, no mistaking it…
And the instructions say that X wants us to deliver her to him.
I quickly scan the rest of the message, trying to block out the sound of blood rushing in my ears as my pulse speeds up.
This is the first time one of X’s little tasks has hit so close to home.
Usually, it’s shit we don’t know anything about and don’t want to know about.
Random acts of arson, theft, and other dirty work like that.
Now he’s asking for someone we know.
Someone in our fucking home.
Anger fills me, bitter and raw. I curl my fingers into fists, glaring at the screen until the image of Willow’s face blurs a bit. Everything in me is screaming no.
No, we won’t do it.
We can’t do it.
Those protective feelings that I’ve been trying to ignore claw up my throat, demanding that we keep her safe.
Whatever X wants her for, it can’t be anything good.
It can’t be anything she’ll walk away from in one piece or with her sanity intact, and Willow doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this mess.
Not any deeper than she already is, anyway. She’s already at the fucking center of our attempt to cover up what happened at the brothel.
But on the heels of that thought, I remember the vow I made to myself in the car on the way back home.
I can’t go back to prison. I almost fucking died at the hands of a gang that targeted me in there. I had to close down all my empathy and emotion and harden myself until I was barely human just to survive.
Getting soft is a weakness, and this girl makes me soft. How many times have I held a gun to her head, seen the chance to end this all, and not taken it?
Ransom was right when he said that we’re not going to kill her. He was right when he said that I won’t do it. That I can’t do it.
And that makes her a weakness. For me, especially.
The silence in Vic’s room is thick, all of us locked in our thoughts for an interminable moment. Then Ransom breaks the stillness, saying what we’re all thinking.
“What the actual fuck?”
Vic sighs, his long fingers tapping on his leg. “My thoughts exactly. We’ve never had a job this… personal before.”
“What the hell does this mean?” I ask, glaring at the screen. “What does he want her for?”
“And beyond that,” Vic murmurs, “what does it mean X knows? Does he know she’s living with us, or is this a random job?”
“No fucking way,” I snarl. “There’s no way this is random. Out of all the girls X could have asked for, why her? He has to know she’s living with us.”
“It’d be a hell of a coincidence otherwise,” Ransom says, then grimaces. “Could this have something to do with Nikolai?”
Vic shakes his head. “It’s very unlikely. We’ve been dealing with X since before we even knew who Nikolai was, and if X knows about what we did and wanted to use it against us, he would have done it already.”
“Yeah, good point. But that just leads back to Malice’s question: what does X want her for?”
Vic’s fingers do their tap, tap, tap thing against his legs, and I can tell he’s trying to get his thoughts—and feelings—in order.
“It could be a test,” he says after a moment. “He knows we have her, and he wants to see how deep our loyalty goes. Maybe he doesn’t know the reason why she’s been staying with us, but he clearly assumes that she matters, and he’s trying to see how far we’ll go when he tells us to.”
I scowl at the prospect of that because it makes sense. And I hate it. “We already jump when he says jump. Why the fuck does he need to test us?” I demand.
“Most likely, it serves two purposes,” my twin murmurs thoughtfully. “One, it lets him see just how far we’re really willing to go, and two…”
“What?”
“He probably does actually want Willow. She has a certain value.”
My brother doesn’t spell it out, but we all know what he means by that.
In our world, the world where bad shit happens to good people, pretty young girls go missing all the time.
Especially if they’re untouched. People like Nikolai, disgusting assholes with particular fetishes, pay good money for virgins, so that they can get off on being the ones who pop their cherries and break them.
We’re all thinking it, but Ransom is the one to say it, a look of disgust on his face.
“He wants to sell her. She’s product.”