Chapter 30 Harrison
HARRISON
I take a step back. “Ray?”
Ray grimaces, spitting out a wad of mucus and blood. “How dare you call me that, Ace? How dare you even speak to me in the first place?”
“No. I’m not a card. I’m just in disguise. It’s me. Harrison O’Rourke.” I swallow. “Harry O’Rourke.”
Ray drops his jaw slowly as it dawns on him. “What the fuck?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say, hoping that “old times’ sake” is more than just an expression. “Your old pal.”
He narrows his eyes. “Hardly an old pal. You ditched me after that night at the Dimpsey house.”
Jack stands over Ray, his eyes widened. “I’m sorry. You two know each other?”
I nod. “We were members of the same gang in middle school. Called it the Club.”
“Very original,” Jack retorts.
“We were kids.”
“Yeah, and we were friends,” Ray adds. “Until Harry here got all pussy-footed after things got a little too real for him.”
“I never agreed to castrate a grown man, Ray. That was an awful thing you did.”
Ray chuckles. “I didn’t do a thing. You did it.”
I blink. “But you made me do it.”
“I don’t recall holding a gun to your fucking head.”
I swallow. He’s right. My actions are my own. I was pressured into them, but I could have refused. I didn’t feel like I had a choice at the time, but deep down, I’ve always known that I did. That I actively chose to harm an innocent man to impress my friend.
I never did it again. I devoted my life to healing people from that point on.
But now isn’t the time to dwell on the past.
“How’d you get mixed up with Rouge?”
Ray exhales sharply. “The same way anyone does. Right place at the right time. Or, as is the case with some of us, the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What the fuck does that means?”
He shakes his wrists under my grip. “Let me go and maybe I’ll tell you.”
I roll my eyes. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll let you go.”
He chuckles. “There’s that Brother Harry fire I liked. Where the hell did it go that night? Why’d you have to go all noble out of nowhere?”
“What we did that night was wrong, Ray. You know it, and I know it.”
“We were correcting an injustice.”
“Is that what you’re doing now? Correcting injustices by killing these innocent people?”
Ray scoffs. “Who said anything about killing?”
Jack grabs the plate with the cherry tart on it. “You weren’t going to kill me? Then prove it. Take a bite of the tart.”
“Not hungry.”
“I don’t give a shit.” Jack nudges the plate against Ray’s cheek. “Take a bite of the tart or admit you’re killing people.”
Ray darts his eyes around the room, but a tiny grin soon cracks his face. “Fine. You got me. The tart is drugged. Stuff that’ll knock you out like that.”
“And then, what?” I demand. “You take the body back to Aces and dismember it?”
“Dismember?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve seen the cooler of organs, Ray. Behind the hidden passageway out of the ladies’ restroom at Aces.”
Ray’s grin widens. “Wow, you two really are little sleuths, aren’t you?”
“Not me,” Jack says. “Harrison figured it out.”
“My girlfriend and I,” I say.
Ray raises an eyebrow. “A girlfriend? Finally got over my sister, did you?”
“I got over her the night we stopped hanging,” I say. “Any person who shared their DNA with you was sure to be just as fucked up in the head.”
Ray shrugs. “You’re not wrong. She ended up offing herself in college. Blew her pretty little brains out right in her dorm room. I heard her roommate got the rest of her tuition comped. Some people have all the luck.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was a stuck-up little bitch.”
I blink. How can this man talk about his dead sister—clearly a girl who was going through something awful—in such a callous way?
“And then you met Rouge?”
“At Reg’s funeral, yeah.” He looks up at me, a trace of pain in his eyes. “Really could have used a friend when that happened.”
“You had Corey and Max, didn’t you?”
Ray rolls his eyes. “If fucking only. I guess they learned that, after you left, they didn’t need me either.
Within a year of the Dimpsey house, they ditched me.
Left me all alone. The last living member of the Club.
” He glances toward my left palm, at the pink X scarred into my flesh.
“But you still bear our mark. You’ll never be able to erase what you did to the Dimpseys. What you did to me.”
He lurches forward, taking me by surprise, rips his hands out of my grip, and bites down onto my left shoulder, sending white-hot pain through my body.
Blood trickles down my arm. “What the fuck, Ray?”
His eyes have an almost reptilian glow to them. Like he’s a rabid dog about to rip me to shreds. He opens his jaw and is about to clamp down on my neck when I roll out of his way and land an elbow to the back of his skull.
Jack lands a roundhouse kick to Ray’s gut and then a right hook to his jaw, spinning him around to face me again.
Ray lands a few punches to my belly before I grab him by his hair and punch him in the nose.
Blood gushes out of his nostrils, but he ignores it, pressing forward with inevitable resolve.
He grips the wound in my shoulder, pressing his fingernails into it, forcing a cry of pain out of me as I fall to my knees.
The door to the hotel room bursts open, and I look up just in time to see Bianca gasp. “Harrison!” she calls out. “Are you—?”
But Ray takes advantage of this temporary distraction and slips behind Bianca, wrapping an arm around her throat. He reaches into his pocket with his free hand, produces a knife, and holds it against her neck.
Hot anger laced with blinding fear hurtles through me.
I won’t let her die. I’ll sacrifice myself before I allow that to happen.
“Don’t—” I rasp out.
Ray presses the flat edge of the blade against Bianca’s throat.
“Not one step closer, Brother Harry.” He rakes his gaze over Bianca.
“You really did get over my slutty sister. Moved onto another woman.” He sniffs her light-blond hair.
“She smells the same, though. Just like Regina did before she woke up in the mornings.”
“Ray, please—”
“Shut the fuck up, Harry,” Ray says. “Here’s what’s going to happen now.” His cell phone vibrates in his pocket. “Okay, first off, reach into my pocket and grab my cell.”
“Why would I—”
“Do it, or your pretty little lady friend’s blood will spill all over this tile floor.” Ray grins. “Don’t worry. It washes right off.” His gaze darkens. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
“She’s Bianca Montrose. Rouge’s sister. You can’t lay a finger on her. She’s off limits.”
“Is she?” Ray leans into Bianca’s ear. “I’m going to let go of your right hand now so I can see what my phone says. One unplanned move and I’ll ram my knife right into your throat. Got it?”
Bianca nods, trembling.
Ray lets go of her wrist, and she doesn’t move. I hand him his phone and he unlocks it. “Well, isn’t this interesting?”
“What?”
“Rouge has authorized the use of deadly force against anyone who gets in my way tonight, up to and including her own flesh and blood. Any last words from the little sister?”
“Please…” Bianca murmurs.
“Begging with your last breath? No wonder Rouge thinks you’re so pathetic.” Ray spits on her.
Glaring hot rage fills me, but I can’t move. Ray will sink the knife into Bianca’s neck if I do something. But if I don’t do something, he’ll slit her throat too.
Fuck!
But… I have one tool left in my arsenal. One I’ve already had to use before, on Mr. Rose.
That night when Ray inducted me into the Club, he forced a kiss on me.
Technically, it was my first kiss.
I got hard, and for months I wasn’t sure if I was bisexual or not.
I wasn’t. When a guy’s going through puberty, pretty much anything can get him excited.
But Ray clearly had a thing for me. He forced me to strip naked and swim with him in the river that same night, and I could tell he was trying to sneak glances at my junk.
So I might not be bi, but Ray certainly is.
And I might just be able to exploit his attraction to me.
“Ray,” I say as I casually remove the T-shirt from my body. “Maybe we can work something out here.”
Bianca’s eyes widen, as do Ray’s.
“What?” he asks.
“I think you know what I’m talking about.” In one swift motion, I remove my athletic shorts. Now I’m just wearing the skimpy, tight shorts of my Ace of Clubs uniform. “I know you’ve wanted me since we were kids, Ray.”
“But you never looked at me like—”
I hold up a hand. “What I want is irrelevant. It’s about what you want.
” I slowly walk toward him, take the cell phone out of his hand, and place his hand against my bulge.
I’m the most flaccid I’ve ever been in my life, but hopefully this is enough to get Ray to let go of Bianca.
“So how about it? You let Bianca go, and I let you do anything you want—and I mean anything, Ray—to my body.”
Ray licks his lips as he looks me up and down, squeezing my dick through the shorts. Then he furrows his brow. “But what about Rouge?”
“You’ll tell her you never ran into us. That Jack must have figured it all out and escaped. We’ll be out of your hair forever. Well, all of us, except me.” To seal the deal, I rip off the shorts. I now stand naked as the day I was born in front of Ray. “Is it a deal?”
“Fuck, Harry.” He runs his hands up my chest. “I always knew you’d have a nice cock.”
I paste a grin to my face. “Grew it myself.”
He bites his lip, rubs at the back of his neck, and finally relents. “Fine. But I want your girlfriend to watch.”
“That wasn’t part of my offer.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck. The guy holding the blade to the girlfriend’s throat gets to make the demands. And I want her to watch as I fuck you, come inside you, take you in a way she never can.”
“Harrison…” Bianca murmurs. “You don’t have to.”
I hold up another hand. “Fine. Have it your way.”
Ray twirls his finger in the air. “Turn around. Bend over. Spread your cheeks. Let me see that tight hole.”
I grit my teeth, but then I do as he says. I squeeze my eyes shut. It’ll be over soon, and then I can get Bianca to safety. It’s the only way. The only way.
The only—
The door slams open. A gunshot. I stand back up to see Ray crumpled over, holding his stomach as blood pumps out of it. Bianca stands next to him, her face paler than I’ve ever seen it.
A gun. Someone shot him. But who? Who?
Another gunshot. This time to Ray’s head. Fragments of skull and brain strew over the tiles of Jack’s floor. He’s dead before his body hits the ground.
It came from behind me. But my body isn’t moving. And it isn’t lost on me that I’m still completely naked.
A cool, serpentine voice slithers into my ear. “Sorry about the mess, Doctor.”
It’s a voice I know too well.
The last voice I want to hear right now.
The voice of Rouge Montrose’s right-hand man, the person she trusts more than her Kings, more than Mr. Rose, the one who determines who does and doesn’t enter Aces Underground.
I finally garner the energy to turn around.
My savior is placing a gun back into its holster on his waist, his snow-white eyebrows raised and his omnipresent grin sprawled across his face.
“Chet?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs nonchalantly, as if we’re talking about the weather. “I was bored,” he says. “So tell me, what’s our next move?”