Chapter 30
Devlin
I’ve never felt the level of crippling rage as I did when my mate came home covered in blood and filled me in on her night of disaster.
She clearly glossed over the worst of it to try and downplay things, but I’m not stupid.
If Stryker hadn’t intervened, she would have been taken from us last night. Taken from me.
I vowed to take care of her, and she was nearly kidnapped because I was careless.
Maybe I am stupid. Otherwise I never would have trusted her brother to look after her.
Gonna have to put a tracker in that girl. Then no matter what kind of trouble she gets into, I can always bail her out.
The chaos surrounding me helps curb my murderous impulses.
It didn’t take long lurking in the walls at the scene of the crime to overhear one of the cops saying they suspected the men belonged to the human trafficking organization they’ve been trying to nail for months, but every lead they chase down winds up a dead end.
From there, I spent half the night hunting one down, because really, it’s not that hard.
Well, if you don’t have to go through legal channels and proper protocol.
And the rest? Turning him into bait.
“Oh my god, he came. He actually came.”
I’ve wanted to confront this man for damn near fifteen years. But I never really thought about what I’d do if I actually got this far.
Merged with the wall, I watch as the bane of my existence mists into the room, pausing as he sees the dismembered body. Anxiously, I wait for his reaction. Will he be impressed? Notice my careful attention to detail?
Every cut I carved into the bastard’s flesh was meaningful; a parallel of his numerous victims’ injuries, one to represent each.
As soon as I tortured his name out of him and realized he was posted on the Shadow Knight’s job request board?
The opportunity was too perfect to pass up, even if I had to pull a rush job.
My research may have been quick, but it was thorough, down to identifying the type of weapon used to inflict each corresponding wound.
It was an exhausting night, but totally worth it.
Finally, Havoc Knight is going to see that he fucked up leaving me behind. I would’ve been the best asset the guild could have ever asked for.
Instead, he turned me into his worst enemy.
“You’re here, aren’t you? Watching…” Hand on the knife at his hip, he slowly scans the room.
I slide seamlessly from one wall to the next for a better vantage point, saying nothing, heart in my throat. He’s going to see it any moment now. And that unshakable composure he’s renowned for is going to crumble right before my eyes.
He steps past it, and my eye twitches. Five minutes he searches the room, and he misses it by a hair's breadth every single time. On the sixth pass, something inside of me snaps.
“Jesus fuck, are you blind? It’s right. Fucking. There!”
His head whips towards me as I emerge from the wall, storming over and snatching the slim, dark blue flash drive out of the wound in the corpse’s neck.
“Obviously, he only would have come here for a damn good reason; like if someone threatened they were going to the police with proof of his crimes. So he came to destroy the blackmailer and any evidence he had on him. There was a fight, hence the mess, and the killer wanted him to choke on his crimes, knowing it’d be found during the autopsy. Gods, it’s not that complicated!”
“The King of Carnage,” Havoc breathes, a layer of frost coating the hilt of the knife he unsheathed faster than I could blink. “You were beat to the kill?” He tsks his tongue. “I’m surprised you stood by and watched instead of slaughtering them both for the hell of it.”
My eye twitches. “There wasn’t anyone else, I set the scene. Crafted the script and everything, you ungrateful dick, even compiled all of the bastard’s crimes onto the flashdrive to make it easy for police to sweep it under the rug since there was no covering up this one.”
“No, I suppose there wasn't.” He looks around slowly and I stiffen, feeling the judgment oozing out of his pores. I try to picture the room through his eyes, but can’t see the problem.
Sure, the walls and furniture are coated in blood spatter, but those wide arcs are a work of art.
The chicken on the stovetop is burned to a crisp, but I shut off the burner once I noticed the smoke so it wouldn’t set off any alarms or burn the place down.
I practically giftwrapped the case for whatever cop ends up in charge of the crime scene.
Three hundred seventy-two video clips of the rat bastard hurting women.
The fact that his severed penis was burning in the skillet next to his dinner should have been a dead giveaway. But nooooooooooo. Apparently I’m the problem, here.
“At least I don’t sell my soul to the highest bidder.”
His gaze snaps to me and his jaw flexes. “I don’t take any jobs that I don’t believe in.”
“No, just children that don’t belong to you.”
Frowning deeply, he demands, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“How is Arson these days, anyway?”
His confusion melts away with a vicious snarl. “Stay the fuck away from my son.”
Papa bear’s hackles raise with a ferocity that makes my chest tight.
I can’t even imagine the pieces of shit that birthed me and Arson batting an eye if someone backhanded one of us right in front of them.
To see this level of parental protection from someone not even related to us? It stings, not gonna lie.
I’m glad my brother has that, even if I never will.
Hella envious, though.
It finally hits me, then. There’s no point arguing with him.
I’ve spent far too much of my life trying to get revenge on someone that will never even care that I hate him.
Havoc takes advantage of my distraction and throws a blade. I react on instinct, jerking my head to the side and snapping a hand up to catch the knife. The wraith anticipated it though, and uses that split-second opportunity to mist behind me, planning to drive another knife into my back.
Whirling around, I sweep low to swipe his legs out from under him and pull a blade of my own. The fight is brutal, each of us getting solid blows in, our blood contaminating the crime scene I worked so hard on.
I’m going to have to burn it all to the ground now, the fucking asshole.
My wallet falls to the ground during the struggle, falling open to showcase both my ID, and the picture of Kiara I keep with me always.
My heart stops in my chest as he turns automatically to investigate the movement in his peripherals.
I merge with the floor and snatch it up, hastily shoving it in my pocket.
He doesn’t get to steal her from me, too.
“I don't care how much you hate me, she’s off limits. Understand? “ I snap, heart racing as I watch him frown.
“She?”
My fist snaps out so fast, it catches him off guard, and I land a solid hit on his jaw. “Promise me! You want to kill me? Fine. Come at me bro. But I thought you were better than collateral damage and using innocent people to get what you want.”
His icy blue eyes stare at me in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about, you deranged psycho? I haven’t picked up any new bounties in weeks. You’re the only target on my list.”
With a sigh of relief, I sling a knife into his shoulder. “Good. You already took my brother from me, you don’t get to steal my girl, too.”
“Your girl?” Havoc asks, yanking out the blade and glaring at me. “Dear lord, what woman would actually put up with your unhinged ass?”
“Jealous? You should be.”
Face pulled into a contemplative frown, he raises his hands in surrender and takes a step back. “How about a truce? Our fight stays between the two of us; our families are off limits. No kids, no women, no casualties.”
Well that pisses me off all over again. “Kidnapping a kid wasn’t enough, you had to steal some poor woman to finish off your picture perfect family?”
“Why the fuck do you keep saying that shit?” he growls.
I raise an eyebrow in challenge. “Am I wrong?”
Havoc’s jaw tenses before he blows out a heavy breath. “I didn’t kidnap anyone. I rescued a boy whose family was trying to sell him off to a dirtbag in the skin trade to settle their debt.”
Yeah, rescued him. And left me to fend for myself.
“And yet, you paid their debt and left them alive, running off with the boy into the night. Sounds like you bought him to me. Why not just kill them, collect the bounty, and take the kid anyway?”
“Because those kills were his. When he was ready to face his demons, I made sure they’d be waiting for him. No bounty was enough to steal the closure Arson desperately needed. He may not be my son by blood, but he is in every way that matters.”
My heart skips a beat. “They’re dead?”
He eyes me warily. “Why do you care about them so much?”
All of my retorts die on my tongue. ‘I don’t’, ‘If you cared this much about Arson’s family, why did you never look for me?’, and ‘Suck a dick’, being the top contenders.
The sound of sirens has him whipping his head towards the door, and I jump at the chance to disappear into the floor, popping up in the kitchen long enough to start a quick, high-fuel fire, unsettled and thrown off-kilter.
I watch as he curses and flips the coffee table, glaring at the walls like he expects me to pop out and slit his throat at any moment.
But I won’t… not today. Because if he’s telling the truth?
That he saved our parents’ heads as a present for when my brother became a fully-fledged Shadow Knight?
Maybe Havoc Knight isn’t the monster I made him out to be.