Blood Runs in the Family | Liam
Blood Runs in the Family
Liam
Jax yells something in Greek as he runs after the woman on his motorcycle, following his brother, who is deliberately letting her get further away from us.
I can recognize what he's doing—he doesn’t want to kill her himself.
If you ask me, it seems we have a lot of things in common with these guys, and it’s not just the fact that they are Nathan’s long-lost cousins.
“What the hell, man?” I complain, looking at Mike, who’s riding right behind them.
“Don’t look at me, I don’t speak Greek. Ask this guy,” he says as he speeds up and passes both Jax and Xander, leaving his boyfriend to answer the question for me. He is positioning himself directly behind the woman. Someone needs to get between them before Mike kills her too fast.
“I don’t speak Greek either! Why the hell would he look at me?” Nathan complains, trying to hold onto Mike’s waist as they ride together. I don’t know, man—probably because those crazy dudes are your family.
“You’re the Greek one,” I point out as I pass the brothers myself, now trailing directly behind my cousin.
“Barely! I only know three words, and none of them were included in whatever the hell he said,” Nathan yells back at me.
“They are your family,” Mike points out as he reaches for the woman’s hair, but luck seems to be on my side because he fails to grab her.
“Estranged family—I just met the guys,” Nathan complains. “I am not fluent in Jax yet.”
“I don’t think anyone is fluent in Jax except maybe Xander,” I point out as I reach my cousin. I grab his t-shirt as a warning, causing him to slow down on reflex. Nathan gives me a scolding look, but I ignore it.
“What the hell, man? Why would you do that? I almost fell off my fucking bike,” he yells at me, but I don’t care. I speed up and place myself directly behind the woman who’s still trying to escape us.
“Why are you doing this?” She questions, but before I can even think of a reason, Jax replies on my behalf.
“Because it’s fun. Besides, you stupid bitch, I made sure you deserved it. I saw what you did to your daughter. I saw the files. Everything.”
This is new. Mike never cares about that.
He picks women strictly by looks. This time, it seems like he allowed Jax to help with the selection.
The woman still fits the profile of the ones we usually hunt; however, the fact that she is an abuser, as Jax just implied, makes me believe the brothers will soon start a game of their own.
I will admit, as much as I dislike the guy, I do appreciate the fact that this time our victim isn’t so innocent.
It makes me feel better about participating.
It eases up some of the guilt that eats me alive after a game—or during it, most of the time.
Yet the thrill of the hunt is enough for me to continue participating. It’s fucked up if you think about it.
Mike, Nathan, and Jax pass me on their bikes and get between me and the woman. I give up and slow down, watching as Alexander does the same, until we are riding side by side at the same speed.
“He called her a cunt and told me she’s getting away,” he explains. “I was letting her escape for a reason,” he admits, but his voice is low enough that no one other than me could possibly hear.
And now I understand. He doesn’t want her dead. It’s not like it is for the guys. He is not enjoying this. I am not sure why he is even participating.
Mike and Jax are now working together while Nathan is holding onto Mike for dear life, and I can see why Xander told me yesterday that his brother and my cousin are a little too similar for this game’s sake.
Jax is behaving like a lunatic, and Mike is joining him in his madness.
At least this time I don’t have to worry about hiding the damn body after they’re done with it—Xander supposedly has it covered.
The woman screams as she runs, trying to avoid the two motorcycles closing in on her. I pick up speed and join them, causing Jax to fall behind as I position myself directly next to Mike’s motorcycle.
She tries to push herself to run faster, but stumbles and drops to the ground. Both of us immediately kill our engines—it’s too fucking early for the game to end, and this time we have company. We have hunted enough women to know how this works. We aren’t ready for it to end so soon.
She sees the quiet moment as an opportunity, scrambling up from the dirt and sprinting off again.
This time, she doesn’t look back. She takes a sharp turn, and I see her form disappearing between the trees.
We’ve been hunting for so long that it’s easy to predict their movements.
This woman is going to hide. She isn’t strong enough to outrun us on bikes, and she certainly isn’t smart enough to find her way out of this forest.
Personally, I prefer a maze for this kind of thing, because forests get messy.
But the brothers thought the woods behind their house would be a great location, and now that we’ve been chasing this woman for the last hour, I think I agree.
It’s endless. Even though the rules have changed slightly this time—she has to reach the road at the far edge to gain her freedom—I doubt she will.
They rarely do. It’s not for a lack of trying.
It’s because this game isn’t designed to allow them to escape.
It’s only made for us to enjoy. They are dead from the moment Mike picks them as one of our victims.
Especially this time, I doubt she would be able to find the road anyway.
Earlier today, Mike and I tried to find that road, just like we always do before hunting in a new town: learning the hunting grounds.
It’s one of the rules that keep us from getting caught.
We learn the grounds we hunt in so well that if anything happens, we can escape as fast as possible.
However, we got lost five times before we eventually called Jax to pick us up.
If we couldn’t find it in broad daylight, I doubt she will.
And before you think that’s just because we’ve never been here before, she hasn't either. Jax and Mike went to the next town to grab her. She didn’t even know this place existed until she was drugged, tied up in the middle of the woods, and forced to listen to a set of rules recited by Alexander.
Which is also new, because usually we choose victims in the same town. The brothers have been introducing new factors to the game, and I don’t enjoy this at all. I hate change. Routine is what helps us remain undetected by the police. Changing things can become our downfall pretty quickly.
Nathan wanted his cousins involved, though, and since they’re professional hitmen for some shitty rich guy, it seemed reasonable enough to indulge him.
Just this once. Our good boy never asks for much, and Mike kept pouting at me like a puppy in his effort to convince me it was fine.
Eventually, I caved. Because let’s face it, I am not the one calling the shots anyway.
Jax and Mike selected the victim, Alexander took over both my role and Nathan’s for this hunt, and I’m just following along like a dog.
Which kinda kills it for me. I like planning the hunts.
With the lack of planning this one needed, I found myself sightseeing and wandering around town.
It’s a big town, which is unusual for us.
We usually prefer to hunt in places that are barely on the map, making sure no one will really figure out women are vanishing until we are gone.
Nathan met his cousins online. He connected with them by accident on social media, and he wanted to meet them.
Because both myself and Mike have lost our families, we do value the idea of needing at least one family member in your life.
So, we allowed it. It’s not like it could hurt us.
When we decided to come here, though, there was no talk about a hunt.
We were simply visiting. Taking a break.
That was until Jax learned about our hobby and got a little too excited.
It wasn’t long before both sides were sharing secrets.
The brothers told us about what they actually do for a living, and we told them what we like to do to pass our time since money isn’t a problem.
By day three of being here, Jax and Mike had been organizing the game, Alexander and Nathan were bonding over whiskey, and I was left thinking maybe it’s time to ditch them and explore the world on my own because things were becoming a little too "organized murder" for my taste.
And I will admit, the lack of things to do made me bored out of my mind.
“You idiots let her escape!” Jax screams as he approaches us on foot.
I chuckle because this fool doesn’t get it.
We’re still idling on our bikes with the engines off, giving the woman room to run a little further.
It’s a psychological tactic we learned a while ago: if you let them believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, they get hopeful.
And hopeful women run faster. But Jax seems to be restless, and for that, he reminds me so much of my cousin.
“We didn’t,” I explain in a calm voice, which seems to make Jax more restless than before.
“Do you see her anywhere?” Jax asks frantically, scanning between the trees like a hound trying to find her.
He doesn’t need to, though. I have never lost sight of her from the moment we stopped.
Unlike the professionals here, I don’t need to be laser-focused to know where she is going.
It’s one of my skills that has helped us remain undetected for so long: attention to detail.
“Calm down, brother. They’ve been doing this for a very long time.
If Liam says she didn’t get away, then she didn’t.
” Alexander places a hand on his brother’s shoulder, and I watch the wildness in Jax instantly settle.
It’s as if his brother’s touch is enough to calm his demons down. Like Nathan’s is for Mike.
“We’re just feeding her the illusion that she’s going to escape.
It makes them run faster when we start chasing them again,” Mike adds with a grin.
He is glad to share the secrets of our game with someone, as if he was waiting all this time for the opportunity to connect with someone besides us on this level.
Perhaps he sees the same similarities I see in Jax and himself.
Maybe he has found parts of himself in Jax.
Jax turns to Nathan as if looking for confirmation.
“He’s right. She just hid behind that tree,” I interject, having tracked her movements the entire time they were talking.
Not that I needed to do that—I knew she would hide somewhere not too far.
She is already exhausted, and she knows finding the road is impossible in the dark.
She will choose to remain hidden until sunrise, with the hope that we will obey the rules and let her try another night. We won’t.
“Gentlemen, let’s move. We have a woman to catch,” Nathan announces, hopping onto Mike’s motorcycle, since both of them have been off the bike for a while now. “Come on, pretty boy, you’re going to be my backpack for the rest of the game.”
I chuckle as Mike huffs and climbs on with clear annoyance.
Since we don’t wear helmets on most of our hunts, I can see every emotion playing out across his face, even when he tries to hide it.
My cousin is cold and a little insane, but whenever he’s angry or annoyed, it might as well be written in neon lights across his forehead.
I climb onto the back of Alexander’s motorcycle instead, leaving mine behind.
“What the hell?” He mutters, but I lean in and whisper in his ear before he can complain.
“We both know neither of us is going to kill her. I’d prefer not to get lost trying to avoid doing it.”
He simply nods and heads toward the tree where I spotted the woman.
He doesn't need any more explanation because we think alike. He knows that when the game reaches its peak, I’ll slow down on purpose—I’ve been doing it for years.
And somehow this man has figured it out from just knowing me a few days.
I doubt the guys ever noticed, but he did.
We speed toward her spot, and the moment she hears the engines roar, she takes off again.
Just like every woman before her. But now she believes she actually has a chance.
In her mind, if she was clever enough to lose us once, she can do it again.
Sweet, sweet hope. She is delusional. She isn’t getting away even if she tries.
Filled with adrenaline, Mike stands up on Nathan’s moving motorcycle, and as they draw close to Jax, he leaps onto his bike instead.
“Seriously? Those two are going to spill her blood in the next ten minutes. I’m taking bets!” Nathan yells back at us.
I laugh. “He’s not wrong.”
“I told you they share a lot of similarities,” Xander points out as he eases off the throttle, keeping us a bit behind—far enough to let them have the kill, but close enough to watch. Smart man.
“Fifty bucks sound good?” I shout back to Nathan, playing along with his bet.
“I’ll take that action,” Xander answers instead.
Nathan drops his motorcycle and follows the two men, who have now abandoned theirs.
The woman is pinned back-first against a thick tree trunk, trapped.
Both men stalk toward her slowly. I can see her chest rising and falling in rapid, desperate gasps as she tries to catch her breath.
Tears stream down her cheeks, and her face contorts in terror as Jax reaches for her.
“Come here, sweet girl,” he coos, dragging her against his chest. “Such a pretty girl, don’t you think, Mike?” He shoves her toward him.
Mike catches her, drawing his knife in one fluid motion and pressing the flat of the blade against her throat.
“Indeed. Very pretty,” Mike says, using the edge of his blade to push a strand of hair away from her face. “Such a shame you’re about to die, princess.”
He shifts the blade, pressing the edge into her skin. The woman stammers hysterically, trying to reason with him. “Please! I’ll do anything! Please, just let me go!”
Nathan’s harsh laughter fills the quiet clearing. “She’s delusional,” he comments, just as Mike’s knife carves a deep line across her throat.
Blood spills down her neck like a crimson river.
“Told you,” Nathan says with a sinister smile.
Just like that, another game comes to an end—and with it, another life is lost.