Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIOT
The woman in the room doesn’t belong here. She appears to be in her early twenties, with straight posture and dead eyes. The whites of her eyes are dull. Her full lips are down-turned at the corners, creating a permanent frown. A natural pout.
She shouldn’t be here, but not because she isn’t a killer. That I can tell from her eyes alone, but because she’s a woman.
Mother doesn’t recruit female Strays. She says she finds women to be too emotional, but I knew the truth.
Mother doesn’t like competition. Another female presence, another woman to grow feelings for, would throw her real mission off.
It fucks with her desire to be loved, admired—the object of our obsession.
Fighting for boys’ attention is all part of her game.
Female Strays are never real Strays. They are her possessions to sell in her trafficking ring.
Still, here she is with a woman, older than her usual demographic. A woman with the eyes of a soulless killer. Why now?
My gaze moves from Mother to the woman as they converse about how many Strays there are at the corporation.
Mother loves her Strays. In this industry, Strays are the best victims to turn into cold-blooded killers. I had started out as one of her Strays. Now, I’ve moved up to a status only one other person has reached: Son.
Mother has her own ranking system: Strays, Top Dogs, and Sons.
Mother loved me so much as a Stray, she kept me close. Though the title is Son, my place in her eyes is more like an actual dog. That may bother others, to be seen as a dog for a powerful woman, but it hasn’t bothered me.
Not until now. Not until I realized I deserve better; that the Strays here deserve better. Not until I realized there is no way out. Even though it bothers me, I can’t leave her. Not without one of us dying.
I’ve known Mother for a long time. My parents died, or didn’t want me—who the fuck knows—and I was in the foster system until I was fifteen and made my first kill. My first kill was an accident, but it doesn’t change it being my first.
An accidental loss of control changed everything.
The foster father was a drunk, sexually assaulting the girls in our foster group, and I couldn’t stand around for that shit.
I may have low morals, but child molestation is one thing I can’t fucking stand.
It’s one of the few things that makes my skin crawl to the point of setting a lighter to it to get the itching to stop.
As much as I had tried to protect us, it wasn’t enough.
Nothing was ever enough. One day, I snapped and killed both the foster father and the mother.
James and Lea Hartford were found dead by strangulation in their bedroom.
Lea wasn’t fucking innocent like she pretended to be.
She let it happen, and that offense was as great as the act itself to me.
So, they both died that night. With the help of handcuffs, pillows, and a young boy’s anger.
Maybe it wasn’t so accidental. Still doesn’t change anything.
Since I killed them so obviously, I was on the run at fifteen years old.
None of the other kids said anything—not that there was anything for them to tell.
They didn’t see or hear a thing, apparently.
Just woke up to our tormentors dead. The authorities went searching for me, of course, but by that point, Oliver Longstead was dead and Elliot Jay was born.
Mother had found me, stalked me, and trapped me.
She somehow knew I had killed my foster parents. She said she wouldn’t go to the authorities, that all I had to do was to come home with her and my life would be different from then on.
Little did I know, I escaped one monster only to be ensnared by a bigger one.
My eyes drag away from hers and move across the boardroom meeting.
The highest ranks had been called in to discuss the latest hit on the Mayor of who actually gives a fuck, and even though I only took part behind a computer screen, watching the team execute the plan through video footage, I have to be here.
I think we’ve all figured out the real reason we were called here: her.
“Elliot. Elliot,” Mother calls, snapping her fingers in my face as she strolls past. I can hear her and she knows it, yet she makes such a show.
She makes everyone take a seat so she can pace behind us, like a warlord, or a drill sergeant.
The action doesn’t make me uncomfortable anymore, but it sure as shit does some of the other guys.
I loll my head to the side, swiveling my chair so I am facing the table.
My eyes jerk back to the woman who stands a few feet away from Mother, her eyes racing around the room.
She has tawny brown skin, dark brown eyes, and her long dark hair pulled up off her shoulders.
Those damn pouty lips call to me. She has on a long yellow dress, and she’s wearing a pearl necklace on her neck and the The Morrígan Society ring next to the heart pendant on her necklace.
Wait–she’s a member of The Morrígan Society?
Well, that means Mother can’t kill her, then. But that still doesn’t explain why she’s here.
She looks like a regular civilian. I wouldn’t guess this woman had killed four officers and a rando on Mother’s shit list, but she has, according to Mother’s rambling about—my eyes dart to the digital clock on the wall—fifteen minutes ago.
I guess others may say the same about Brother and me, but it’s…
unusual when it’s a woman. Her body doesn’t carry heavy muscles like the mens’ in this corp do.
Her muscles are lean, and I can see them, but it doesn’t make her masculine.
They make her more feminine, if anything, and it doesn’t quite make sense.
I glare at her as her eyes meet mine for the third time. Of course, her eyes don’t dart away like a normal girl’s would have. She continues to stare at me, this time openly and unwavering. Who does she think she is? Does she even know who she’s standing behind?
“Nevermind the boring stuff. I’ve gathered you here for our next assignment. This one is going to need all of our best hands on deck,” Mother explains as she makes her way past her chair to the right of Enyo and to the whiteboard behind the table.
“We are putting together a tea party,” she says excitedly, clasping her hands together.
“Do you really need us to have a tea party, Mrs. Jay?” Tom, one of our newest teammates, asks. His brows furrow as some of the others snicker. They should know better than that, but maybe the new Stray has made them relax. Fatal mistake. That’s why they will forever be Top Dogs and never Sons.
Though, I wouldn’t wish being a Son on any one of them.
I remain silent, watching for any signs from Mother and the new girl.
Her eyes haven’t left me, and yet I’m not completely annoyed by it.
She better hope Mother doesn’t catch her.
Mother doesn’t do well when others are interested in her Sons.
Ask my first and last girlfriend, Clair Letover. She’s dead because of it.
Diora. I watch her chest rise with an inhale and her smooth skin entices me to touch her. She already gets on my nerves.
Mother’s eyes narrow before she picks up a pen, clicks it open, and throws it hard enough to land in Tom’s arm. From across the room.
“Not that I ever need to explain myself, but I need as many hands as possible on deck for cleaning up. These deaths won’t be bloody, thanks to Diora’s extensive knowledge in herbs and teas, but we will absolutely not be doing the clean up of ten bodies by our two selves.
Will we, Diora?” Mother says as Tom does his damndest to hold back his flinch and not reach to the pen sticking out of his forearm.
I sigh, tearing my eyes from Tom and catching Brother’s scoff as he leans back in his chair shaking his head.
“Details Mother, time, place...” Enyo asks.
“Yes, well, we will plan those as we get well acquainted with one another,” Mother says, eyeing Diora who raises her eyebrows as she tears her eyes away from mine.
“Is the girl necessary?” I ask, finally giving Mother the recognition she craves so much.
This comment earns me a glare and if I was close enough a smack up-side my head but I am across the table and way out her reach. She’s also out of pens.
“Yes, if you were listening Elliot, she will make our jobs much easier,”
“And less fun it seems,” I quip.
“This isn’t about fun, it’s about money.” Mother rolls her eyes. “Our first meeting will be tomorrow morning, seven am sharp. If you’re late you better hope you’re dead.”
With that, she floats out the room without her new Stray, and the rest of us remain seated. She wants us to get to know the new Stray, and we can’t leave until we do.
“Dear, please have a seat across from Elliot,” Enyo orders in his silky smooth voice as he stands to take control of the meeting. He always followed Mother’s orders to a T, and I wonder if that is what made him the first Son.
“Have you ever killed anyone, sweetheart?” Hank, one of the other Strays, says, a laugh hanging off his words.
It pisses me off how dismissive he is of the girl, but I can’t pretend I hadn’t been wondering the same thing.
The one thing I’ve learned over the years is to never doubt Mother, but she brings in the most innocent looking girl, who barely reaches my chin and is maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, and she’s supposedly as dangerous as a room full of highly trained and desperate men?
“Five,” she mutters as she smoothes her dress down as she takes a seat. She doesn’t blush, she doesn’t smile, she just stares. Directly at me.
Diora doesn’t flush under the gaze of seven men, known hitmen on top of that.
I narrow my eyes as I meet her gaze once again, and she puts me in a trance. Somehow, it’s just me and her.
“Who?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Josh Panko, Kyle Montery, Lewis Karplie, Orlando Jones, and Paula Montry.”