The Ruthless Read online

  The Ruthless

  J Bree

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by J Bree

  About the Author

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  Also by J Bree

  Prologue

  Prologue

  Atticus - Four Years Ago

  “We can’t keep meeting like this.”

  Luca pulls the cap down over his face a little more. “I know. This is important.”

  Crossing state lines is the only way we have any chance of keeping this meeting secret and secure. I left my property on one of my motorcycles, a performance machine that is faster than any of my vehicles. Covered entirely in leather and a full helmet, there’s no way any of the Jackal’s spies would have realized it’s me.

  I’ve been very quiet about this hobby of mine for a reason.

  “As long as you’re sure we weren’t followed… what’s the information? What could be this important that you’d risk almost a decade of work to meet me?”

  He huffs and steps in closer to my body. “The Wolf is leaving the Bay.”

  It’s not at all what I’m expecting from him.

  Not even close.

  “She can’t. She’s fourteen, how can she leave?”

  He huffs under his breath at me. “Fifteen in a few weeks. She’s going to apply for emancipation; she’s gotten a scholarship.”

  I know exactly what he’s going to say now before the words come out of his mouth. Sure, the Wolf leaving the Bay is news I need to know, but it’s not worth the risk to deliver the news personally.

  The Wolf attending Hannaford Preparatory Academy as a freshman with Avery and Ash Beaumont?

  That I need to know.

  “It’s a move against me. The Jackal must have found out about her. Fuck, we’re going to have to move on him now and to hell with the consequences.”

  Luca shakes his head and scratches the back of his neck. “No. He definitely hasn’t, I’ve been over every inch of his plans with him and he doesn’t know. Fuck, when she came and told him she was leaving? He didn’t like that. After his falling out with the Butcher I think he’s spiraling out of control and with the Wolf gone he’s going to fucking lose it. Avery is safe for now, just as long as they don’t… talk about you.”

  I keep my face locked down hard but we’ve been friends too long for him not to know just how worried this news has me. “There’s no way Avery would ever look twice at a Mounty gutter rat. The Wolf won’t hold her interest unless she walks in there and tells the whole school who she is.”

  I hesitate. The girl has always been quiet, reserved, and calculating in everything she does. If I hadn’t seen her in action I wouldn’t believe half the stories about her kills. She’s unrivaled in the Bay, her skill set renowned and highly sought after.

  If you want a blood-soaked massacre you call the Butcher.

  If you want a knife in the dark, never seen or heard until your throat is already slit, you call the Wolf.

  “I could offer to go with her? The Jackal will send men up there after her. I could be another set of eyes for you both and make sure they stay out of each other’s way?”

  It’s tempting but he’s too valuable to me where he is. “I’ll send my own set of eyes. Good work bringing this to me; I’ll take care of it.”

  Luca nods but he doesn’t move away. I don’t want to risk sticking around here for too long, the longer we stay the more we risk being caught, so I clap him on the shoulder and step away.

  “There’s something else.”

  I turn back to look at him and he hesitates before continuing, “The Butcher offered himself to her. The Wolf turned him down, but if things go south… he’s going to come after us all for her death. Whatever calculations you run about this mess, factor that in.”

  He sounds like he’s pleading for her life. “Are you to argue with me if I do decide she needs to go? Have you grown attached to the little orphan Mounty?”

  He meets my eye without any remorse, speaking through his teeth at the rage that still fills him at the memory as he says, “Standing there and watching that psychopath smash her leg to pieces was the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done. You know that.”

  I turn and walk away.

  It wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

  Leaving Avery in a school with the most infamous assassin in the Bay might be, but I don’t plan on leaving the Wolf there for long.

  I will do anything to keep Avery safe.

  Chapter One

  No matter how hard I blink, the murder board I’ve stumbled upon stays the same.

  I stare at it as if there’s still some chance it will magically change and Atticus Crawford, the man I’ve spent the majority of my life in love with, hasn’t been plotting out the deaths of my family, but there’s no changing the facts of what’s right before my eyes.

  Ash is on that board.

  Harley. Lips. Blaise. Every last person that I love more than anything is staring back at me. Aodhan makes sense to me, if anyone wanted my lover dead it would be Atticus. The rage he’d snarled at me in the storage room when he’d found out I wasn’t a virgin had shown his hand a little more than he probably wanted to.

  Ash is on the board.

  There’s a groan behind me again and I remember that there’s a man chained and starving behind the glass there. Jesus H. Christ, I need to get the hell out of here and find my head before I lose myself in the panic at once again having my entire world torn down around me by Atticus Crawford. The Crow of Mounts Bay, the rule follower, the man who built his entire empire by the book and who abhors the dark and dirty parts of the world he’s taken control of.

  Plotting out the death of the Wolf and her family is not by any goddamn book.

  There’s another groan, this one loud enough to startle me out of the processing haze I’ve gone into while trying to figure out exactly what the fuck is going on. I take some very quick, but very careful, photos of the murder board and what little of the man I can see with his back turned on me through the glass, and then I take to the stairs as quickly as I can.

  They’re just as steep and narrow on the way up as they were on the way down.

  This was not how I planned on getting back into my cardio routine, but I’m still in impeccable shape, so I only really have to worry about watching my step and not falling down the severe incline. Breaking a leg or my freaking neck wouldn’t do any of us any good.

  Only Jackson has some kind of a clue about where I am, and I’m not sure he’d send help with all of the threats I’ve been sending his way. Illi would probably beat the truth out of him, but by the time he’d figured out that lead, I could be dead.

  Or worse.

  I might need to send the creepy asshole hacker a muffin basket or something just to be sure he’d send out the cavalry for me if this type of thing happens again.

  It occurs to me that I might be panicking, just a little, but at least it’s keeping my mind busy while I make it up the godforsaken steps and into the dark tunnel again.

  I call Aodhan the second I have a signal on my phone.

  I desperately want to call Ash,
but even in my panic I know that it’ll only make things worse, and this… situation cannot possibly handle anything worse.

  Aodhan picks up, his voice drenched in worry without having any of the gory details yet. “Queenie? Why is the line so bad? Where the fuck are you?”

  I take a deep breath and force my voice to stay calm and even. “Are you done with… whatever you needed to look into? I need a pickup. Now.”

  “What’s happened? What the fuck has that asshole done this time?” Aodhan snarls, and I would get pissy at him for jumping to conclusions, but… I’m too busy trying not to peel my own skin off in disgust over the state of whoever the hell is chained up back down the stairs. Every time I blink, I can see the bones sticking out from under his skin.

  “I need you to get Jack to pick me up. It’s either that or I’m calling a cab and risking it. I… I found something. I found something, and I need to get out of here right the hell now.”

  I know I sound shrill and panicked, but I don’t think Aodhan has ever really heard me like this before. He’s heard a lot of different things come out of me but freaking the hell out over my entire life being a lie is not one of them.

  “The same place he grabbed you earlier? Done, he’s on his way now. Do you need me to come back, Queenie? Fuck it, I’m coming now.”

  I try to get my voice calm again. “No, no. I’m fine; I’m not in danger. Don’t come and… don’t call Lips yet. I’ll call her once I’m out of here.”

  He grumbles under his breath, the calls of gulls behind him. “That’s not fucking helping, Queenie; if you need to get out of there this bad then something has happened, and I’m not leaving you out there.”

  There’s a sound down the tunnel and I pull the phone away from my ear as I try not to disgrace myself. I will my feet to be silent, because I can’t stop walking, not even to avoid someone seeing me leave. This sort of frenzied escape gives me flashbacks to my childhood terror at the hands of Senior and for that alone I might never forgive Atticus.

  When the sound stops and no one rushes down the tunnel to kill me, I put the phone back to my ear to find Aodhan freaking out.

  “Avery fucking Beaumont, if you don’t answer me soon I’m putting a Molotov cocktail through Crawford’s fucking window, so help me God!”

  “I’m fine; I thought I heard something. Please tell me Jack is close?”

  There’s cursing and an argument down the line between Aodhan and Illi before finally, Aodhan mutters to me, “He’s close, Queenie. He’s breaking all of the fucking road laws to get to you. I’m finishing up here now, but we’re over an hour away. Jack… Jack won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I believe him, but that doesn’t help the panic in me, desperately needing him here with me so I have something stable now that once again Atticus has turned everything upside down.

  It kills me to hang up the phone but Illi’s snarling is clear and I don’t want to distract Aodhan from… whatever the hell they’re actually doing. I mean, I know what they’re doing because that tape of what happened in the Jackal’s lair is out there somewhere, hanging over our heads like a freaking guillotine blade. But I don’t know the details of who they’re paying off or cutting to pieces… and honestly, I couldn’t care less.

  I just need it gone.

  My phone buzzes again but instead of the reassurance from Aodhan that I’m expecting, I find a text message from Jackson.

  Are you dead? I’m about to put in an Amber Alert for you with the Wolf.

  An Amber Alert—even when he’s supposedly concerned, the idiot is still making light of the situation.

  I take a full minute to reply, the wording carefully chosen.

  No need, I’m alive just like the man in Atticus’ basement. You wouldn’t happen to know who he has chained down there, do you?

  His reply is much quicker.

  Queenie, you know damn well I didn’t even know there was a basement. How the fuck am I gonna know about Crawford’s secret prisoners? I should’ve known he had a secret freak fetish hidden under all those fucking suits.

  I still don’t know for sure if I believe him; my trust isn’t easy to win and Jackson has already broken it once before.

  Another message comes through.

  Should I start rifling through his fucking sock drawers and find out who it is? Whatever you need, I’m good for.

  My gut reaction is that I don’t want him to start looking into Atticus, but that is all about protecting the man I’ve spent more than half of my life chasing and obsessing over.

  Ash was on that board.

  Ash and Harley, Lips and Blaise—it doesn’t matter how much I love Atticus, I could never blindly trust him and lead us all to our deaths. My mother did exactly that; she trusted Senior even when all the warning bells were screaming in her mind, because it was too damn scary to face the monster who had lied and stolen her heart.

  I will never do the same.

  Impress me, Coyote. Find the man in the basement and maybe I’ll trust you again.

  I’m not expecting him to take it seriously, especially since the Jackal is dead and his place as an ally isn’t really in question outside of my family. No one knows about his little indiscretion of handing information over to the Devil without telling us about it.

  Or the fact that Nate was very obviously related to Lips.

  But his reply back to me actually… impresses me.

  I’ll have it to you by the time you wake up. There’s nothing I can’t find, and I’m not having the Wolf’s Queenie underestimate me.

  I wait inside the tunnel until Aodhan’s text comes through saying Jack has arrived and I’m safe to walk out of the dark space. I would never admit it, but I was this close to calling Ash and making him wait on the line with me like some sort of security blanket. That would have been the stupidest idea possible but calling him when I’m worried or, frankly, terrified is my default. He’s always the first person on my mind, followed very closely by Harley and Lips.

  He’ll always be the other half of my soul, the person I shared a womb with, and the brother who took on the world to keep me safe. Nothing will ever change that.

  His photo was on that wall.

  I think I could have handled it if it was only Lips’ photo up there. It makes sense for Atticus to be looking into her, while he’s not a member of the family she’s still a threat on the board to him, but to find Ash there? Harley too?

  I’m not sure there’s an explanation that he could ever give me that would be able to explain this away. I’m not sure I can ever trust him again… those fragile foundations we’d built up after I found out he was the Crow smashed to pieces all over again.

  I can’t fucking do this.

  I stumble a little over my own feet as I walk out of the tunnel opening at the edges of the trees, lucky that I’m wearing flat shoes for once in my life, and Jack lurches toward me with something close to horror in his eyes.

  “Fuck, Avery, what the fuck happened to you? Are you hurt? Fuck, I need to call mo rí.”

  I have no clue who Maury is but I just want to get the hell out of here. “It’s—I’m fine. Did Aodhan say… can I stay with you until he’s back?”

  I feel pathetic falling over my words like this, but I don’t think I realized how shaken I was until I saw Jack.

  He helps me into the car, buckling me in when my hands shake too much to do it myself. When he’s back behind the wheel and weaving his way through traffic, he calls Aodhan through the car’s Bluetooth.

  “She’s white as a fucking ghost and shaking like a leaf; where the hell am I taking her? Home?”

  I can hear Illi’s voice in the background, snarling at someone, but now that Jack is here, I’ve become too numb to really focus on it. It’s as though the adrenaline has seeped out of me and now I’m a shaking shell of myself again.

  How the hell has Lips lived like this all her life?

  Aodhan covers the mouthpiece and answers something back, then says back down the l
ine, “Take her back to my loft; the Butcher has backup heading to the city now. Put her on the phone.”

  I need to keep myself together so they don’t go charging into Atticus’ fortress-like mansion before I can figure out what the hell is going on, so I swallow around the dryness in my mouth so my voice comes out without the panicked and breathy quality that I’d used before. “I’m here. Honestly, I’m fine to go home until you’re back.”

  “No. No, whatever the fuck that asshole has done means he doesn’t get to fucking know where you are. No one knows about the loft so you’ll be safe there until I can get to you.”

  His voice clear and vibrating with rage, Illi calls out, “Listen to him, kid. Get your ass somewhere safe because I’m ready to fucking bleed half the city out after this goddamn night. Whatever that fuck, the Crow, has done has moved him from my shit-list to my to-kill list.”

  I swallow because those words should terrify me but… if that board really is his, and who else could it belong to, then I’ll have to vote on whether he lives or dies.

  If he’s targeting Ash, he can’t live.

  I might not be able to live with myself for voting against him, but I also couldn’t live knowing I’d saved his life for him to then kill my twin.

  “I’ll go to the loft. I’ll stay there until we know what’s going on with… everything.”

  Jack nods, his eyes still on the traffic in front of us, and Aodhan murmurs something reassuring down the line again. “Call the Wolf. Stay on the line with her while you wait for me; she’s been pissed and ready for an update for hours.”

  I agree and Jack hangs up. My fingers are numb where they’re curled so tightly around my own phone, barely registering it buzzing in my hand with messages from my family. They have no idea what’s happened, only that Aodhan has had to remove me from Atticus’ care once again and they’re out for his blood.