Foxx (Soldiers of Bedlam #3)

Prologue

Aiden

In the thick of combat, there’s no time to think about right or wrong.

There’s only the moment you’re in. You hear the barrage of gunfire and breathe in the scent of diesel and hot gravel as dust whips your face and shrapnel ricochets off the walls.

You block it out and keep running—lungs burning, legs on fire—because it’s drilled into your head: You’re the best, the most elite. You’re a goddamn Navy SEAL.

I’ve looked death in the face countless times, and I’ve pictured mine in excruciating detail just as many.

My life has always been a series of fuck or be fucked.

There’s no room for hesitation and no room for mistakes.

When faced with any threat, the solution is simple. Eliminate the threat and move on.

It doesn’t matter if that threat is equal parts fire and fight. Or a storm of a woman who managed to weave her way through every facet of your life with an intricate web of lies. You don’t dwell on the way she looks at you with those big begging eyes, half crazed, half filled with lust.

The deafening sound of her screams gives me time to think. She isn’t a threat now, bound to the chair in front of me like the feral little animal she is.

My men, my club, the name I’ve worked so fucking hard to rebuild over the last two years cannot be tarnished or ruined by a fucking cop or a spy or whatever the hell she is.

The small vial I hold in my hand promises the answers I seek.

“No… Please…” Her pretty, ocean-blue eyes widen in fear as she cries out, “Please don’t put that poison in my body!”

“Don’t waste your fuckin’ tears,” I mutter as I fill the syringe.

“I don’t want drugs, please!” she sobs, out of control now and yanking at her holds.

She’s a fighter by nature, which was why I was drawn to her in the first place.

I move closer, looking down on her like her own personal reaper.

Black streaks of makeup run down her flushed cheeks.

Her bright crimson lipstick is smeared across her heart-shaped face.

Even now, even after everything I know, I can’t help but imagine how she’d look at me if I tossed this needle aside. The pure desire that would flood those blue eyes as I gripped the long platinum hair at the nape of her neck while I lost my cock to the back of her throat.

Fuck.

I refocus, my jaw tensing.

“Time to help you out with that little lying problem you seem to have.” I flick the needle twice, watching the little air bubbles float to the top as she screams again at the top of her lungs.

Such a pretty sound.

I’ve already told her screaming is useless. No one will hear her. There’s no struggle with my choice, no guilt as she cries. I don’t regret. She knew this about me the moment she chose to seek my chaos.

Her fear grows as I move even closer, plunging the needle into her soft flesh and emptying it without hesitation, watching intently as her screams begin to fade and her fight begins to die.

Her truth and her fight are now mine.

Time to get to fucking work.