Chapter 7 #2
I consider that. If I want my nose clean, less killing is better.
If I had been in this room with the boys, I would’ve said to capture the goons alive.
My boys are too gung ho, too thirsty for violence.
Alexei didn’t need to use batrachotoxin on some second-rate for-hire losers.
He wanted to. Just like Bohnes wanted to crawl around in the filth, Ash wanted to keep the straight razor, and Widow is smirking through a mask of blood.
There are plenty of tricks to deal with the cops. Crimson Crew tricks.
I steal Nisha’s phone from her hand. Predictably, it is Jennifer on the other end.
I feel suddenly like I haven’t been nice enough to Miss Atwell.
She made a mistake with Widow’s thievery at the lumberyard, but then, he’s a very easy man to make a mistake with.
Him stealing the Devil out from under her, I shouldn’t keep punishing Jennifer for that.
“Bring everybody out and block off all the roads leading into Prescott. There’ll be cops comin’ through.
Make sure they don’t get past the barricades until I tell you.
” I reach into my pocket and slide out some gum.
I need it to clear my head. Something minty to push back the smell of copper and lurking fuckboy lust.
We’d have an orgy in here if pathogens weren’t a problem.
Honestly. The violence is arousing. We like committing violence together.
I shove the gum between my lips with a single finger, pointedly not looking at the four six-foot-plus creatures in a worshipful circle around me.
I’m literally wrapped in a fence of aggressive fast-twitch muscle fibers.
My lips quirk. I push the smile down so Nisha doesn’t see.
“No violence?” Jennifer clarifies, like she’s disappointed.
“Try not to get arrested, okay?” I tease back, and she laughs at me like she doesn’t mind either way.
Sure, I’ll post my girls’ bail if they get arrested for something they shouldn’t have (like cutting off their rapist’s balls).
But I really try to keep all of our records clean.
Jennifer will toe the line of the law and keep to the right side of it if she can.
I hang up and meet Widow’s eyes again. It feels like he’s watching me to learn from me, like he’s studying the way I lead to compare it to his own methods. Study hard, King.
“Let’s clean this up as efficiently as possible.” I turn to Bohnes because he’s the expert, and a real leader knows when to defer to expertise. He’s sitting cross-legged on the gore-strewn floor, one elbow on the bloody knee of his pants, chin in his hand, scrolling his phone.
I think one (or all) of my husbands needs anti-psychotics.
Ice-blue eyes lift up to mine.
“Ten bodies is a lot of bodies to dispose of. I’m calling in a favor.” Bohnes’ face drops, going frigid in a single blink. Scary-delicious. My thighs squeeze together, fighting back more of my weird urges. “I hate calling in favors.”
That last line is delivered like what it is: a casual death threat.
“Let’s use the L88,” Alexei says easily, one hand on his hip, shoulder thrown forward.
His own face is a mask of propriety and aristocracy.
I was awed by it the first day we met, and I’m even more awed by it now.
“The car belongs to the Borisov Group trust. It’ll be impossible for anyone to get a search warrant for it. ”
“Ten bodies in an L88?” Widow says with a scoffing laugh, hands on his own hips. He looks…is he enjoying this moment? “Think we could do it? It’ll take at least two trips. How far away is our burial ground?”
“This is absolute madness, you know that?” Nisha says, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me closer to her.
I’m tugged through a gap in the fuckboy chain and all four of them stop talking to look at me.
Whoa. This is mad stalker energy, coursing through my inappropriate little corpse.
Adrenaline. This is way hotter than it should be. These guys are dangerous as fuck.
Just not to me.
Now I’m definitely smiling and so is Basti.
“She’s in love, Nish. Our precious Queen.
” Basti clasps his hands together and sighs dramatically, ignoring the way the men shake themselves off me like dogs releasing their favorite bone.
They redirect themselves to the corpses, each of them lifting a single dead man by himself.
Alexei’s in the thick of it, despite the contamination.
It’s like he sharpens up during crises, big or small.
Getting sucked off by a man while livestreaming to his uncle didn’t faze him. This won’t either.
“Yes, I’m in love,” I agree dejectedly, like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. Feelings are just icky. Nisha rolls her eyes and says nothing. A smirk edges my mouth. “How’s Hype by the way? Are we both in love then?”
Nisha gasps, speechless. Which exactly means she’s head-over-heels for a chick she met three seconds ago.
“Oh my God, you two. You’re both in love.
” Basti licks his lips. “And so am I.” He puts his hand to his chest, fingers splayed over the red and black flannel of his shirt.
He wears it buttoned up with jeans, like a mountain man.
Every December he dresses like this. “Scarlett. All of that murder-y energy in bed? Must be a riot.”
“Murder-y? You’re sick in the head,” Nisha mumbles, rubbing her fingers against the grow-out on her skull and giving me a look. “What?”
I smirk and cross my arms, knowing that the heavy lifting is better done by someone else. The boss always keeps her hands clean. Been this way for me from the start. I don’t get involved unless I have to. Calling orders is my jam.
“You’re thinking you want, uh, Treasure’s fuckboy to do your hair, too? Don’t lie.” I scoff as she peers at me like I’m totally off my rocker. “You acted like I was crazy for agreeing that the other boys needed their turns in the chair. Did you even look at Widow’s haircut?”
“Firstly, your majesty, I’ll have you know that the fuckboy’s name is Jack. You’ve known him for years now. Secondly…” Nisha folds her own arms, gold bracelets jangling. “You’re right. I want my hair done today, too.”
“We’ll tip well, Jack, promise,” I say, but he only shrugs.
He knows we will and he’s not offended. More than half of the Prescott and Four Corners neighborhoods call him Treasure’s fuckboy.
It’s not an insult around here. “Hey Basti, drag the hose in from out back. Nisha, you want to run to the store for some hydrogen peroxide?”
But that’s only a joke. Bohnes drags in two plastic jugs and sets them down near the door. Scrubbing DNA is his specialty, not mine.
My phone buzzes with a notification, and I pull it out to see that Jennifer’s texted me a picture of the first barricade. Several more follow in quick succession. One of them, indeed, has police cars already waiting at it.
Whatever can the poor cops do?
There just so happen to be a bunch of cars with flat tires blocking all the roads that lead into Prescott.
Entire walls of hot metal and hot chicks, and whoa, holy shit, the only tow truck driver in Prescott (a girlfriend of mine) can’t make it over here cause she’s on a job already.
Did I mention that a lot of the cars have more than one flat tire? And nobody has spares or jacks?!
Also…my girls have a lot of cousins and shit. There are soooo many cars to move, and there are soooo many emergency calls coming in right now from all over Springfield that more urgently require the department’s attention.
Dang, that sucks.
With no cops in Prescott to begin with—courtesy of Mayor Kelly’s cute little political ploys—we have plenty of time to clean up the crime scene and scatter like bats in the wind.
The word ‘exhausted’ doesn’t even begin to cut it.
“I’m knackered,” Ash mutters from inside the shower, choosing a much more pompous sounding word that still doesn’t cut it.
Dealing with ten bodies (hey, it really did only take two trips in the L88 which is nice) is not easy.
Not even with Bohnes’ contact. The guy was a weirdo, another hoodie-swamped monster lurking in the shadows.
His family owns a septic company and runs their own wastewater treatment plant. Ever heard of alkaline hydrolysis? Also known as water cremation? Me neither.
The bodies were reduced to water and bone through heat, and then the bones were ground into dust and mixed with the waste from customers’ septic tanks. It’s a clean burial, but it cost Bohnes all the leverage he had against his contact and their associates.
I told him it doesn’t matter because we’re part of the family now. He’s a tiny bit sulky, clean and naked and sitting on the edge of the bed. Staring at me as he tousles his hair with a towel, that perfect mouth in a neutral frown. The eyes though? Bohnes never looks at me with neutrality.
Thump, thump. The corner of his mouth lifts, like he can see my pulse racing from across the massive, mostly dark room.
I’m sitting on the bathroom counter, waiting for Ash to get out of the shower and Widow to finish drying his hair.
Bohnes is easy to see through the open doorway.
Not so easy to look at though. He’s wearing his undertaker mask tonight, and so it’s the undertaker that’s looking at me like he wants a nasty little fuck. God.
Alexei is posed in front of the dresser, fiddling with a pair of pajamas that I presume he intends to put on.
As of now, he’s just butt naked and unconcerned, his pale skin scrubbed red and raw.
He sets the pj’s on the edge of the bed, digging some fresh gloves from the box on the nightstand and making sure to replace his current pair before he even considers getting dressed.
His prince-blond hair is dark and wet, nipped and tucked into a flawless warrior cut. I bite my lip and tighten my fingers around the edge of the counter. After the bodies were cleaned up and Jack’s shop was hosed down, Alexei, Bohnes, and Ash all had their hair done.