Chapter 36
Chapter
Thirty-Six
Reaper
“… a nd that’s what I think, you fucking asshole,” Knight snaps.
I walk into the joint five days later, take one look, and light a cigarette.
This scene is one for the books. I usually run through most things in my head, all the scenarios, but Dante on the floor of the main office downstairs, with Knight standing over him, breathing like he’s just discovered oxygen isn’t one of those in my mental roll.
Not even once has it played out in the internal scenario playbook.
Probably because it’s rare for Dante to get blindsided.
Even rarer that he’s staying down. Not fighting back.
Dante allowed this.
Interesting.
I take a drag on my cigarette and catch sight of the cause of this little act of defiance and violence.
Pretty fucking Liz.
Her hair’s damp, and her cheeks are pink from both water and shock, and she’s in jeans and a sweater and her feet are bare.
We make eye contact right as Dante speaks.
“One. You got one shot. And that’s only because I fucking let you. That shot? The one you took? It’s done and fucking dusted now. So cut the dramatics and keep your fucking holy thoughts to yourself.” He rubs his chin and shakes his head. “We’re the Unholy Trinity, not Holy . Fuck.”
I wait as she drifts over to me. “It’s my fault,” she whispers.
“Everything’s your fault,” snarls Dante, and she flinches. Then he takes the clearly begrudging hand offered by Knight, and lets the kid haul him up.
Me?
I wouldn’t give any chances to a punk ass kid like Knight.
What there would be is blood.
But that’s me.
They exchange a look. Then Dante takes one step toward us. Toward her.
“Everything’s your fault,” Dante repeats. “Except that. I am sorry, Angel. Like I said at the time. It was that or get caught and risk the Council…”
Liz’s cheeks flare red. “I’m fine.”
Knight—fucking Knight—growls.
“No, you’re not. He fucking—” Knight stops, shakes his head. “Not cool, man. Totally not fucking cool.”
Now Dante turns to him, grabs his shirt, and walks him back, slamming Knight against the wall. The man’s out of patience, and Knight’s lucky he’s a member of the Trinity, one of us, otherwise…
The Trinity would be looking for a new member.
The kid’s lucky.
I know that look from Dante.
It’s the look, the one from when we did anything to survive, before we had to part ways as our paths separated. I had things to do, things I wasn’t risking the only person I’d call a friend to accomplish. The only person who’d probably get killed for me.
Some missions need to be done alone.
That was one.
We can sometimes be very similar.
We’re extremely dangerous, just in our own way. He’s the yang to my yin.
It’s still there, this savage and dark version of him. Mine’s a cooler, deeper black where, when I reach it, emotion doesn’t exist.
Except maybe around this dark-eyed girl.
The one who looks and sees the me that Dante once saw.
Maybe she sees more. And I…I feel. With her, I feel. Deep.
It’s overwhelming.
Maybe that’s why she’s standing near me now, like I’m some fucked up savior.
I’m not.
At least, not so most would recognize. Or see.
I’m a killer.
And for her, triply so.
The black humor of the word triply isn’t lost.
I still feel the fury, that dark, viscous and sickeningly violent fury that swamped me when I saw that man push her, threaten her.
I killed him.
I killed him because I needed to, because I wanted to, because no fuck who did that should be allowed another breath.
When he fucking touched her, passion boiled and spat. So the man died.
Here she is, choosing to fucking stand near me like I’m not a demon conjured from Hell.
I’m at the point where I can even say that if Dante did something to actually hurt her, deliberately, I’d kill him, too. And I’d never thought I’d get to that point, especially for an omega.
The way she’s looking at him, how she shifts, even now, reveals to me what happened. And how she blames herself for it.
The only crime I see here is from Dante who’s snarling blame at her.
Sometimes, he’s a real cunt.
“You had your chance, Griffin ,” he says, using Knight’s real name. “Do not make me put you down. You know me.”
I blow out smoke.
“It’s my fault,” she whispers again.
I cut a long look at her. “Stop, Liz. It’s not you.” Then I look at them. “He lashed out. He didn’t mean it.”
Liz makes a small sound. “But…”
She shifts a little closer to me. Maybe she likes warming herself in the heat from Hell that rolls off me. Maybe I need a drink.
“You’re fine, Liz.” There’s one thing she does that I pick up on, and I don’t even think she notices. She does it when needing comfort. “Hum or sing.”
“Reaper?”
“It makes you feel better. Calms you.” More than I do, and I don’t have to talk. Though I don’t mind talking with her.
She does, it’s a soft sound, no words, haunting in a way, like it’s barely formed, like it came before speech, and I understand it.
Liz starts to settle a little more as she hums her feelings and it’s good against my psyche. I let it flow undisturbed for a few beats.
Then I take another drag on my cigarette. Their bards are getting boring. Besides, time to end their bullshit. “I have information.”
They don’t listen.
I wait again .
The raid happened five days ago, and I’ve only been back briefly. The tensions when I did return were thick.
Thick and all about Liz. Dante’s ice and anger, Knight’s protective and growling over her. And Liz?
The hum twists into something else, like when I saw her last. The vibrations I picked up. Pent up energy, nerves.
Because after the fucking raid Dante made her get up on stage. And I was there. Every fucking time. In the dark at the back and under the potent spell her singing creates.
Fuck, she was a vision.
One night blonde bombshell, other nights with long, curling red hair. And the slink of her outfits were alluring on their own. Men sat forward for the girl who came on that stage, a little lost, pure innocence, the sex its own hum of sound around her. And Liz?
She would dance a little, and all the fucking punters thought they were in for hot nakedness, a sex show, something new.
They got something new.
Liz stripped off gloves, a top. A skirt, what the fuck ever, down to rivers of soft satin and silk lingerie that showed nothing and lit imaginations on fire.
Little girl lost in too much make up, the wig that changed her.
And then she started to sing.
Her voice is worthy of the name Dante has for her; Angel.
But there are so many angels.
The soft fluffy ones so fucking pure they hurt somewhere in the back of the throat. The ones who cut down the disbelievers and unworthy with a bloody and just sword.
And the ones who fell, and have seen the wrongness of the world, tasted it. Those who’ve looked the devil in the face and walked to tell the tale.
They all have voices.
They all cast spells .
They all come from her.
And when she sings, each and every time I came in over the last five days, including when the club was shut down and Knight got her to work out the moves, helped pick some songs, she controlled every single man.
Every. Single. One.
No one speaks when she sings.
They follow her every movement. Every note.
And while she’s performed the four nights we’ve been open down here, business thrives and grows each night. The crowds who want in are bigger than the night before.
The angel who sings and doesn’t show so much as a nipple.
Thing is, I prefer the wordless song. The power of her hum.
Her elemental magic she has in those notes.
I get a bottle of whiskey that’s sitting on the edge of Dante’s desk and two glasses that are sitting near it. Both clean. I pour a finger in each and hand one to Liz.
I down mine.
She holds hers, and she stops humming, thank fuck. There’s only so much undoing a man can take, and she takes a swallow. Her previously unadorned nails are vixen red. They match the slinky dress and flame red wig from last night.
I wouldn’t recognize her here as that woman up on the stage, which is the point.
Dante and Knight haven’t stopped snarling at each other, and I’m fucking done. I don’t need this and neither does Liz.
Their altercation has been festering since the raid. And since then, she’s filled the place with her scent, and I’m betting she’s fucked Knight exactly once during those five days as the place once smelled like them both.
She hasn’t fucked me. I haven’t been here more than to grab some sleep and her shows. And she hasn’t fucked Dante. Or perhaps he hasn’t fucked her .
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Ghost is definitely here in Starlight City.
Liz has seen him. Just one of the reasons I’m hardly around. I’m the only one who can track him, apart from, perhaps, Dante, but those two…their history.
The man betrayed Dante and Dante isn’t New Testament. He isn’t turn your fucking cheek. He’s fire. Brimstone. The circles of hell. He’s all the stories of vengeful gods and dark warriors.
Ghost is slippery. He’ll play on that.
It’s better if I try and find him.
I have all the players in a row. The ones I think are relevant.
There are people I’ve eliminated. Rival packs who rule other parts of the city, those from other cities. I contemplated them.
There are some who’d swoop in to pick over our carcasses.
And maybe others who’d want our power enough to try and join with another power to take over. Though that seems farfetched to me. We run the city. We rule crime.
Besides, the Council’s somewhere in the mix and none of them would throw down with those fucks.
And without the might of an organization as strong as the Council, none of them would take us on, not even if they thought they had a small chance of winning. Because networks exist for a reason. Somehow manage to take us down and the network would eat the intruders alive. We might be gone, but someone who knows our ways will step in to protect it all.
It’s convoluted and the kind of shit that bores me, but it’s there, and I get it. I just leave it to the Dantes of the world.
Besides, our enemies would join us before having a thing to do with the Council.
I keep coming back to that .
It’s right, it fits.
Someone like Ghost fits.
The Council and some outside power I don’t know about fits.
Council and Ghost? Fits.
He knows how we work, and he knows how this world works. Ghost’s now an outsider, operating like he’s always preferred, even when he was one of us, alone.
He wouldn’t be above using the Council to get what he wanted and then just disappearing.
If he’s going against us, forming unsavory alliances, then it’s not our power, our money, or our connections he wants.
It’s revenge.
Destroying us.
That’s a double fit for him.
And the Council?
I keep coming back to the President, Candice.
Because it isn’t enough they want a little omega who escaped their grasp until her father died. Not even for that weird ass arranged Council coupling they’ve apparently planned. Hover’s small potatoes. The pack’s small. If there’s an importance to this that I’m missing, I don’t know what it has to do with Liz. There are plenty of pretty omegas who are loyal to the Council that they could offer up.
There is something else.
Something personal or some kind of knowledge she has and doesn’t know.
That’s something I’m looking for, too.
I flicker my gaze around the room once more.
“Get past whatever this is, now.” I don’t raise my voice, but I’ve had enough, and Knight stalks up, pulling Liz to him. “The asshole fucked her.”
He glares.
“You’ve fucked her,” I say .
“He knotted,” Knight grinds out. “He pulled out before he was done. As in before his fucking knot was down.”
Yeah, just as I thought.
I glance at her. Liz’s face is flame and she’s studying the floor. The misery sharpens her scent, and she starts to talk.
“I’m okay, I told him. I’m fine.”
“Of course she is. And I said sorry,” Dante mutters. “I had to, or they would’ve found us otherwise.”
Knight shoves a finger at him. “Then you shouldn’t have knotted. Don’t you lecture me about shit and do…well, that .”
“I didn’t mark her,” Dante snarls.
I pour another fucking drink and down it.
Fuck me for having to play mediator.
“Knight,” I say, “she’s an omega. That can happen, but she heals, and it sounds like it wasn’t carnage.”
“I didn’t…bleed, it just…” She lifts her gaze. “Can we not have this conversation? It’s my body.”
She pulls away from him, from all of us, and stomps off.
It’s just us. Dante and Knight continue to glare at each other.
“You told her my name, man,” says Knight, clearly settling on the less of the evils in the room.
“You’ve been mooning over her like an idiot,” Dante snaps, “so I figured she already knew.”
Knight throws himself into a chair that’s ended up pushed against the sofa. “Sorry if one of us cares.”
“Stop, both of you.” They look at me. “The Council is trying to smoke her out and I’d like to know why.”
“Well, Trevor says Hover Valley’s inconsequential in terms of power, but it’s an important cog in getting a whole lot of scattered packs to come into line. And those packs are on land that’s worth a lot of money in terms of farming, mining and the rest. The wilds, some call it,” Dante mutters.
“Wilds?” I ask .
Dante pushes back his hair. “If Hover Valley was in the hands of the Council then the pack would soon be, too. This Craig hasn’t wanted to play ball. He gets women, he has kids. A mate from the Council is…stable. That’s never floated or inflated any part of him.”
“Except a young beauty like Liz.” Knight says. “She would.”
“So would others.” I frown. “Why’s she so important?”
“She’s on the most wanted list,” Knight says. “Elias’s kid.”
I glance at Dante.
When he doesn’t say anything, I’m forced to add more. “She’s the most wanted man’s daughter, sure. Let’s go there. She belongs to Elias. A rebel back in the day when she was a baby. But she really has nothing to do with that. So why her?”
“No fucking idea,” he says. “But I’ll play with Knight’s theory. Hot girl, rebel’s kid… Maybe the Council wants to stick it to outliers? Make an example out of her? Then…”
“It’s all conjecture.” I still think the Ghost thing fits. Somehow. “But we have pieces and no connector.”
Except maybe Angel—I mean, Liz—but I can’t see how yet.
“We can go out and bait the hook, see if anyone’s biting,” Dante says, peering at me. “You said you have information. Anything on Ghost?”
“It’s Ghost. He’s definitely in town, in some dark haunts. Seen talking to old school rebels, new ones, and Council, but beyond that? Nothing really, just he’s here, he’s making rounds,” I say. “And he just might fit.”
I need my hands on him.
I concisely outline my thoughts.
“You can find him,” Knight says. “Bring him down, Reaper.”
Knight’s on his feet now. and this time, I approach him. “We’ve done this before. There are fires everywhere. I think they’re distractions. Raids and arrests on small places, people canceling orders. It’s part of a smoke out. Get working on that, find out everything you can. And when we open tonight, be upstairs for some of it. We need you here, Knight.”
“She’s not fucking bait.”
“Tonight, she is. And do me a favor? Get me everything you can on her father, from way back. He was part of a pack. Something happened,” I say, my cigarette down to nothing. I find an old whisky glass and dump it in there. It hisses.
“I’ve looked into Connor Roth.”
“Look into his real name, Elias Enver,” I say.
“I have?—”
“Do it again, Knight. And start with the Alberto pack, where the misfits went. And look for a man and a baby.”
We’re both in black. Dante’s in a three-piece suit. I have trousers on and a long-sleeved sweater.
In between us in the back of the car is a gorgeous redhead.
Liz looks exotic, older, prime material for wet dreams everywhere.
And the tension pulsates with sexual awareness.
Dante runs his fingers along her thigh, parting her thin cloak to take in her dress. It’s a dark, shimmery gold and gives the illusion of nakedness as it paints her body, but shows nothing except expanses of flesh.
I’m fucking hard, and I’m betting he is, too.
“Ready, Angel?” he asks softly.
She looks at him, leaning towards him, her body language full of emotions I don’t think she knows she’s showing, and his is speaking to her right back.
Not that I’ll tell him. He’s not just into denial, he’s actively in denial .
She hums before she speaks and fuck it’s electric, hot. Pagan, and that wordless sound grabs me by the balls. Him too, from the power emanating from him.
She stops but the wordless song still vibrates through bones, heating blood.
“I don’t know what we’re doing. Are either of you going to tell me?” she asks.
“Playing cat and mouse.” Dante’s under her fucking spell and doesn’t see it. He traces the line of her lip with his finger. “Someone’s trying to pull our house down and you’re helping us smoke them out. Knight’s shut the club for a private event. So you’re supposedly performing.”
Her tits rise and fall in uneven, rapid breaths and I can smell that extra bloom of her sweet gardenia scent where it rolls into a more potent and sexual air, announcing her arousal.
Her hum also strengthened it.
She’s dangerous in the way she wraps rooms of men, even women, around her finger when she sings. And the thing I noted is, she doesn’t know it, either. She’s so lost in the song. Once she warms up and once she’s over the hump of self-awareness, the sweet awkwardness of her strip tease that shouldn’t work actually does. The moment her song starts, and she doesn’t have to open her mouth for it to be felt, she’s lost in it, and she flourishes.
It's like peeping in on something you shouldn’t.
A titillation you don’t expect.
Power.
And I’ve never, ever seen anything like it, like her.
Back in the day, we would go to filthy sex clubs, get our fill of the omegas, gammas, and deltas selling their wares. But the betas? Oh, shit, now that was fucking beyond. There was nothing like screwing the ones who wanted their mettle tested, who liked size and pain, and we cut our kinky teeth on those girls .
The betas were the most fun. Because the omegas there were always so beyond submissive. Even if they weren’t in life, they played it, played at that little wife bullshit some alphas get off on. Or the betas who wanted a taste of that style of pure submission.
But we discovered something as we moved through the lowest clubs to the most exclusive.
It didn’t matter how expensive they were—all those sex clubs had that layer of filth, the air of need and desire, of secrets sold and traded. We learned, tweaked the idea of submission, and of what men want.
But first? We built our trade on places like the one we’re going to.
It’s a higher class, a place where those in power go. Criminal and Council, and everyone in between. If they can afford it, they come here.
For the experience, they’d get in the lowest of brothels.
This is just done up in velvet and cash. Nothing more.
We have five on our list tonight, and this is the one I’ve got down as the hub.
I look at Dante but he just gives me a raised brow. So I explain.
“We think the raid was meant to get to you and put pressure on us. It didn’t, but someone’s fucking with our shit. Someone wants their hands on you. I’ve been putting out fires, dealing with problems, since then. So we think it’s time to go where people talk.” I look at her. “We used to go to places like this, with a woman or to pick up women. And information. It’s a sex club.”
“And you’re our party favor,” Dante says.
I shoot him a mild look that he ignores, and his little twist of the knife in her works.
“Well, you can pick up a girl easily,” she snaps. “Or take one of a million women who’d love to do this and have the experience. ”
Dante wraps his hand around her throat and squeezes and she makes a sound, another wordless note, one that makes my cock twitch. This is hot. And she’s ours. To do with what we want.
And her little protector isn’t here.
If I’m thinking this, so is Dante.
Dante and I push things to the edge. Always have, always will.
It’s still yin and yang, but we push things, sex, foreplay to the edges, sometimes beyond.
She needs Knight’s soft ways with her.
And she needs the rough primal shit from me, the hardcore treatment from Dante.
She’s turned all the way on. Fucking dialed up and ready to come.
He brings her in, kissing her deep, smearing her lipstick, and then he shoves her at me.
Before she can do anything, I push a hand under her short skirt and shove a finger into her hot, wet cunt, take hold of her nape beneath the wig and drag her in, kissing her hard.
While I do that, fingering her, Dante pulls her thighs apart and shoves two of his fingers in her as well. We work her together, stretching her. Now he takes her mouth, tugging one of her tits free.
“Tell me how I make you fucking feel,” he says. “Tell me you’re not ready to crawl over glass for a taste of my cock.”
She moans, and my blood is hot and thrumming as I lean in, angling her with my free hand while we finger fuck her. He ravishes her mouth and I close mine around her exposed, turgid nipple, biting and sucking her.
“And,” Dante goes on, “tell him you don’t want him to chase you down, make you bleed, wreck your ass. Go on, I fucking dare you.”
Liz comes. And holy fuck, the way her cunt crushes at our fingers is almost fucking religious.
He pushes her at me again, freeing her other tit, and I take her mouth in a deep kiss, licking and dueling with her tongue, running mine over her teeth, plundering her mouth deep, as Dante maneuvers her his way.
Liz is gasping, panting, moaning into me. She’s hot and getting hotter, her skin velvet, her body electric.
She starts to come again but Dante releases her, pulling out and dragging my hand from her, too.
“No!” Liz tries to make us touch her again but I know what he’s doing. It’s not my jam, but I like it when she’s so fucking open like this. “Please! I want it. All of it. And you know it…you…you fuck, Dante. I hate you. I need you. Please… Knight would tell you not to be mean.”
Shit. Wrong words.
But I don’t interfere because she’s a fucking vision of depravity right now.
Spread out, everything on display, a woman who’s just been fucked.
“Oh, Angel,” Dante says against her ear, his fingers dancing over her folds. “Your little get out of jail card’s not here. Guess what? He’s to blame for me cutting you off from more pleasure.”
She tries to focus, to sit up. “What?—”
“Your boyfriend’s to blame for hitting me.”
Her eyes snap to focus. “Griffin?”
I laugh. Oh man.
“Don’t call him that.” I pull her top up, aware the car’s stopped. Time to end the fun and games.
“Keep out of it,” Dante says.
I motion my head to the tinted window. “We’re here.”
“So?”
“We’ve got shit to do.” I sigh before making sure Liz is covered. I give her time to pull herself together. “Dante did bad there by revealing Knight’s name. It isn’t his to tell you.”
“Fuck that little prick,” Dante mutters, tugging her skirt down a little more. “Come on. You look like you just got fucked. It’s perfect. So play along in there.”
“And if I don’t want to?” she asks.
“Still play along,” he says. “Angel, we’re here to catch a ghost if we can.”