Kings of Chaos by Eva Ashwood
Ash
It’sa hell of an ultimatum Gage just laid down, and I can see the woman struggling with it, the debate playing out on her face. She’s really considering whether she’d rather have a bullet through her head than stop fighting.
I like that. She’s scrappy and never gives up, even when the odds are so clearly stacked against her. Although… I have no idea how she managed to get out of her cuffs down there, and judging from how she was fighting me on the stairs, she might have more tricks up her sleeve that we don’t know about.
Still, it would be a shame for this to end in bloodshed.
I grin at her, putting some distance between us.
“Stop fighting, sweet thing,” I say, letting my voice dip down into the register that usually has panties dropping left and right. “I’d hate to see that pretty head get a hole in it.”
She glares at me like she wants to set me on fire with her eyes, but she stops struggling, going still.
I dust myself off and reach down to adjust my cock, which has swelled all over again in the fight, even though I just went a few rounds with that hot dancer and her sister.
Knox, who’s standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs with Gage now, howls with laughter. “Getting the shit kicked out of you made you hard?” he asks, wiping his eyes.
“Excuse you, Knox. I wasn’t ‘getting the shit kicked out of me.’ It was mutual,” I shoot back, cocking an eyebrow at him. But he’s not totally wrong. Having her pressed against me, feeling all that energy while she struggled to get away and wouldn’t give up… it was damn hot.
Priest just looks blank, as per usual, not letting anyone know anything about how he feels about this whole situation.
Gage looks annoyed, either with me for my ‘antics’ as he calls them, or with the girl for somehow getting free.
Either way, I laugh, not embarrassed about the fact that the fight affected me in more ways than one.
“What about the twins?” Knox rumbles, his thick arms folded. “They weren’t enough for you? I thought one of them was all bendy and shit.”
I shrug one shoulder. “They were alright. Her sister was bendy. A human pretzel with a mouth that didn’t quit. But they weren’t nearly feisty enough for my taste.” I glance at the woman when I say that last part, taking in her outfit and silver hair now that we’re standing in the light.
She glares even harder at me, if such a thing is possible, and flips me off.
“Enough!” Gage roars, a vein in his neck bulging. When he’s pissed off, he’s a nightmare to deal with, and the anger and frustration is clear to see on his face. His hands are balled into fists at his side, and he looks from me to the girl like he’s trying to work out a math problem or something.
“How the fuck did this happen, Ash?” he demands. “Why is she loose?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, grimacing as some of my amusement slips away. “I went down to see her, and she must have already been free. I didn’t let her go.”
To emphasize my point, I hold up my hands in a gesture of innocence. I’m horny, not stupid, and anyone undermining Gage in a situation like this would have to be short on some brain cells.
“Then how did she—” He cuts himself off and looks down at the girl’s bloody hands.
They were already bloody before, when she hit me the first time, I remember. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but now I realize that she must have slipped her cuffs, not giving a shit if she scraped her wrists all to shit in the process.
Fuck. Impressive.
The others realize at the same time as I do what must have happened, and they trade looks.
If anything, Gage just looks even more done with this whole mess than he was before. She’s a threat, and he doesn’t take kindly to those, especially ones who manage to be as twisty and close-mouthed as this girl has been tonight.
I’ve seen that look on his face before, when he decides something just isn’t worth it, and it doesn’t bode well for the silver-haired beauty at all.
“I was gonna give you twenty-four hours,” he says to her, his eyes narrowed and his jaw tight. “But I’m fed the fuck up with this bullshit.”
He lifts his gun, his face going blank as Priest’s usually is. The barrel points right between her eyes, and I know he’s not going to hesitate to kill her. He’ll blow her brains out right here in our house, and then have Knox take care of the remains. Whatever mess the girl was involved in will end with her, most likely, and we can get back to our business.
But for some reason, I don’t want to see that happen.
It’s not like we have some code of honor against killing women. We’ve knocked off plenty of them for getting in our way, since they can be just as deserving of death as men are. But this particular woman? She intrigues me too much to let the mystery of what the fuck she’s after die with her.
Going against Gage is usually a one-way ticket to a shallow grave, but it’s different when it’s one of us, so I step in between them, pushing the gun away with one hand in a smooth motion. I flash him my most winning smile.
“Maybe you should try catching flies with honey next time,” I tell him.
He growls, but I ignore him, putting my back to him and facing the girl. “What’s your name?” I ask her.
“Ghost,” she practically spits. For someone who just had a gun pointed at her head, she doesn’t seem shaken at all. She doesn’t seem all that grateful to me for saving her life, either.
“Sure,” I reply with a chuckle. “And his name is Priest.” I point at Priest, who just raises an eyebrow and keeps pretending to be a mannequin.
I can see that obstinance in the woman’s eyes. She’s not going to back down easily, and she’s not going to give up anything without a good reason… and apparently, she doesn’t think the threat of death is a good enough reason to spill her secrets.
“Look,” I tell her. “If you don’t talk, Gage will kill you. He’ll end you right here in the middle of the floor, and the only thing he’ll feel bad about is what it does to the carpet.”
I don’t know if I’m getting through to her, but I keep going. “We don’t give a shit about that guy you killed. We’ve got no vendetta against you for that. We already took care of the body, and we can consider that water under the bridge. But we need to know what the hell is going on and why you killed him, because if it’s some gang war that spills into our club, it’ll be bad for business. You understand, right? We’re trying to protect our interests here.”
Her eyes narrow while I talk, and she looks like she’s chewing it over, weighing her options. Gage isn’t pulling the trigger, at least, so that’s one thing going right.
Finally, the girl sighs. “It’s not a gang war,” she says. “I’m not in a gang.”
“Then why did you kill that guy?” Gage demands, still sounding on edge.
“Because he had it coming,” she snaps.
“Why?”
“He… gave me bad information.” Each word comes out of her mouth slowly, like she’s debating whether she should say it or not. I can tell she’s not going to give us everything, but hopefully she says enough.
Gage frowns, but I keep smiling, taking over. “So it wasn’t just a personal vendetta?”
“It was,” she says. “But he’s not my end target.”
“Then who is?”
There’s another pause, and then she lifts her chin, meeting my eyes with a defiance that makes my cock twitch all over again. “Ivan St. James.”
My eyebrows shoot up when she says that name. Oh shit, this is perfect. It couldn’t be any better if I’d planned it.
I turn to grin at Gage. “See? Maybe she’s not so much a thorn in our side as the perfect solution to our problem.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” the girl demands, folding her arms and glaring at me.
I ignore her just as cheerfully as I ignored Gage before, keeping my gaze on my friend. “This could be a great solution, and you know it.”
“It’s dangerous,” Priest points out, talking for the first time since the girl and I came up the stairs.
“You say that about everything. We live dangerous lives,” I tell him. “Sometimes you have to take a… a calculated risk.”
“Is that what you call it?” he fires back, glancing down at my crotch.
I just grin back at him, shrugging. “Hey, I like what I like.”
“But can we trust her?” Gage cuts in.
“She wants St. James dead, at least,” Knox says. “I trust that. She knocked off some other dude trying to get to him, and you can tell she’s serious. If she wasn’t, she would’ve just told us what we wanted to know in the first place, right?”
“Could be an act.”
“Nah.” Knox shakes his head. “I know a personal grudge when I smell one.”
“So you’re just going to talk about me like I’m not standing right the fuck here?” the girl asks, sounding ticked off.
No one stops to answer her, which makes her lips flatten into a thin line in irritation.
“You were just foaming at the mouth about St. James earlier tonight,” I point out to Gage, even though it feels like it might as well have been another day, considering how much has happened since then. Night has pretty much given up the ghost and turned into morning by this point. “We’ve got someone here already gunning for him. Someone who doesn’t seem like she’s gonna stop until he’s dead.”
“I’m going to kill him one way or another,” the girl called Ghost says forcefully, and when I turn to glance at her, that fierce light is back in her eyes.
It’s not an idle or empty threat.
She means every word of it, and she’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. I can tell that much. She already ripped up her wrists and went up against me unarmed just to get out of our basement, and judging from the look of her, that’s probably not the hardest thing she’s come through to get to where she is now.
I raise an eyebrow at Gage as if to say ‘see?’ and he sighs and grits his teeth. I can tell it’s going against pretty much every instinct he has to let her walk out of here after everything, but he nods in the end.
I flash him a bright smile for his trouble.
“Fine,” he says. “She can handle this.”
“Oh wow, thank you,” the girl deadpans. “I’m so happy you’re willing to let me continue the thing I was going to do anyway. You’re all just too fucking nice.”
Finally, we all turn to look at her. She still has her arms folded, still looks guarded and tired as hell, but that doesn’t take away from how gorgeous she is even a little bit.
“You’re welcome,” I tell her cheerfully. I take a step closer and put a hand on her shoulder, massaging it a little as if that will relieve some of the tension coursing through her.
When she glares at me, I just wink back, flashing her my most winning smile.
“We’re not bad guys,” I continue. “Well… not all the time. We can work together on this.”
“We’re not working together,” Gage cuts in. “She’s going to make up for killing some fucker outside our club by killing Ivan for us. That’s it.”
I grimace, catching the girl’s gaze and chuckling. “He’s grumpy tonight. But the point is, it’s a win-win.”
It’s not quite a win for anyone yet, actually, since there’s still a chance Gage could change his mind and end her right here and now. A long moment stretches by, and I wait to see what he’ll do.
Finally, he lowers the gun, and the tension in the room eases up a little.
“You’re free to go,” he says, jerking his head at the door.