Ready to give in?
I almost pushed back until he threw another shard of a memory at me, pain searing through my body. I didn’t even know what I was looking at but tears streamed down my cheeks, the scene invoking an emotion so visceral that I leaned over the edge of the tub and chucked the contents of my stomach.
Tapping out, Finn. You win.
SAMAEL
Finn was getting wilder with his choices, his inhibitions less restricted. There were definite attributes to Slash’s MO but this was chaotic and free where Slash kept his work to a very manufactured image. Finn was obviously having fun while killing those he deemed problematic. He was both angry at us and in love, showing us what we could be together if we just let ourselves go.
His words, not mine.
Unfortunately, leaving this scene to be discovered as another work of The Unknown would point right back to us four. Finn must have known that which was why this scene presented an entirely different challenge than the last one. It took a sick kind of person to enjoy the kind of carnage I had been left with.
It was me.Iwas that sick bastard.
A sinister smile slipped onto my lips as I messaged a few contacts and the clean-up crew I usually used for shit like this, glad for the loyal men I worked for. Brent was no longer on that list because he had been running his mouth of late, telling me that Finn was no longer the man I had fallen in love with. However, if Finn and Killian were much closer to the same person than Dark and Daemon, I had already fallen in love with this crazier version.
If someone made me choose, it would be the four of them,notBrent. After all, Brent had never offered to suck my dick as a thank you.
I tried to make sense of Killian’s expressions when he stumbled from the room. Embracing him had been my first reaction until I realized that he didn’t usually act like that. He froze or he hid. He shook or tuned out the world around him. There had been a hint of a smile on Killian’s face the entire night, including when Slash and Aeron had dragged him out of the club. I had wanted to tell him that it would be okay, that we would work with Finn but maybe this wasn’t all Finn’s doing.
There was a slight possibility he was playing chess when we were playing checkers.
I didn’t like that.
“King, yo, we’re almost done in here. What do you want to do with the girl?” Heath asked, a thin smile sitting on his lips. He was a sturdy man a few years older than me, one of my neweremployees but loyalty as strong as they came.. I stared at the girl who had been mostly put back together, a few of my guys wondering how the fuck we were going to make it out of here. The bartender had seen Killian leave with Aeron and Slash and I assumed the third participant had made her way out moments before we showed up.
This girl had to leave, walking on her own two feet to draw suspicion away from us but that meant bringing in help I hadn’t asked for in years.
“King, just call her.”
“Already did.” We didn’t have time to waste, not with the room rental’s time limit running out. With ten minutes to two am, we had less than twenty minutes to finish. If this place wasn’t clean enough to pass an amateur detection, we were cooked.
It wasn’t going to be perfect, but it would work.
I texted her a reminder, a petite woman sauntering in through the door ten minutes later. My men shifted to stand in front of Killian’s coworker before realizing who she was, their jaws dropping at the near-identical persona. She was wrapped up in a similar dress, her hair mussed around her shoulders, makeup faded and running down her face to play into the idea she had been thoroughly fucked in this room. As long as no one looked too closely, everyone would believe she walked out of this room.
“Damn, they almost look identical. How-”
I shut Heath up with a glare, shouting my commands with mere gestures, gestures that weren’t meant to be ignored. Heath and my other men wrapped the dead girl up and made their way to the back. Three others were still scrubbing the blood from the carpet and changing out the lounge cushions. Only a network like mine could remove evidence like this without detection. A few guards had been paid off at the back entrance, club-goers guided away from the room at the back of the hallway.
The woman sauntered over my side, “It’s been a while, Merchant.”
“Don’t fucking call me that, Lace. Just act the part.”
“Do I even get to drink a little? You know, to sell the whole drunk act?”
“I don’t pay you to drink. I pay you to act.”
She sighed but did as she was told, flopping against my side so that I had her full dead weight. Of course, Lace was going to be a bitch about it but it would help sell the whole thing. A grunt tore from my throat as I picked her up, resisting the urge to strangle her pulling that shit. I waited a few more minutes for my men to wrap up, watching as they slipped out the back door before I descended the stairs, Lace’s head bobbing in my arms.
The bartender glared at us, eyebrows creasing. I squeezed Lace a little tighter, giving her the signal to put on a performance that would fool everyone in this dark crowd. “Goddamn it,” She slurred her words as best she could, and hopefully it wasconvincing. “Put me down, you caveman. When I agreed to tag-teaming, I said nothing about manhandling.”
The bartender’s jaw dropped. “Tag… teaming?Her? I’ve seen her go home with the most-”
“We just need water. I need to get her home.” I abruptly cut him off. If the bartender looked too closely, he would notice the difference between the women. Lace’s acting skills also weren’t great. We had minutes before something stupid came out of her mouth.
The bartender produced a glass, inspecting Lace as she stumbled out of my arms and to the edge bar. With my hands free, I tossed the keycard to the private room and handed her the water.
