Scarlet Disaster by Colette Rhodes

Chapter 21

I wanted to laugh at my own ridiculousness for thinking I could have one last nice day together without everything turning to shit, even though I knew they were keeping secrets. Of course there were more secrets. Of course whatever possessed Nate to run out of my house like I was a witch trying to put a curse on him was also a secret that they were suddenly all in on.

Of course to all of it. It all seemed so inevitable.

I could see Brooks and Gabriel following behind me in their SUV through my rearview mirror, but I was doing my best not to focus on that.

I wasn’t going to let Nate’s paranoia about Frank that the other guys seemed to have bought into get to me. There was nothing to worry about.

My phone was shoved somewhere in the bottom of my bag on the passenger seat next to me and it was buzzing constantly, which was weird, but maybe I’d scheduled a social media post and forgotten about it. Or maybe it was Ria checking in on me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nate had immediately tattled to Ria and her boyfriends that I was leaving. I didn’t really understand why she was on Team Nate when it came to all the Frank stuff, but she’d dealt with a persistent ex of her own, so maybe she was just projecting a little.

I had no idea what had gone down between Ria and her ex—she never wanted to talk about it—but Frank wasn’t anything like that guy. Well, maybe a little, since they were both liars. But that was definitely where the similarities ended.

Frank wasn’t even my ex! He was a jilted lover at best.

God, had it only been this morning I was flirting with Brooks and Gabriel in the hot spring, thinking I was a total badass? It felt like years ago.

I pulled into the driveway, pausing until I found the remote for the garage door and clicked it open. It didn’t feel as good as I thought it would coming back here. My phone buzzed so incessantly, I began to worry that there was some kind of emergency happening, and felt around in my purse for it, pulling it out as it continued to vibrate. Weird. No calls coming through. Just so many notifications that the display was starting to glitch. I switched it off just to silence the buzzing and threw it back into my purse to deal with later. I was probably due for an upgraded model.

I could almost feel how quiet and lonely the inside of the house was from out here. It was even worse now I’d been getting rid of all the stuff inside. Bigger and emptier.

“Lou!” Gabriel yelled as I drove into the garage. I glanced at the rearview and noticed he’d gotten out of the vehicle and was sprinting after me, a panicked look on his face. Weird. I parked in the garage, and he was there the moment I opened the driver’s door, trying to urge me back in.

“Go, Lou. Go! You can’t be here.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked with a nervous laugh. I slid out of the seat, pressed right up against Gabriel’s front since he wouldn’t take a step back. “If this is some ploy—”

A low, vicious growl cut me off, making me freeze in place, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

“Fucker,” Gabriel muttered, sounding a lot less terrified than I was. “Get out of here!” he snarled, looking somewhere behind my vehicle at the still open garage door. I turned my head slowly, trying and failing to remember everything I knew about dealing with wild animals, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of an enormous dark gray wolf standing on the threshold of my property. Its teeth were bared, ears pinned back, body low to the ground like it was ready to rush us.

This was not a happy animal.

It took a step towards us and Gabriel immediately shoved me behind his back, moving with impressive speed. “Fuck off back to where you came from. There is nothing for you here!”

I was obviously hallucinating, because it almost looked like the wolf nodded at me. Like it was communicating with Gabriel that it was here for me.

Oh my god. I was seeing things. This would be a great time to faint, I decided. I welcomed the sweet nothingness of oblivion.

Faint!

Apparently, I couldn’t faint on demand.

The animal took another step and I glanced at the side door that led into the house, just a few feet away. Gabriel seemed to notice it at the same time, sighing heavily.

“We’re being herded, querida,” he grumbled. “But I won’t risk you being attacked.”

“Herded?” I repeated hoarsely.

“Into the house. Where Frank is waiting.” Gabriel spat his name in disgust and the wolf growled ferociously again.

Frank had… pet wolves?

I could hear more snarling from outside the house, and Gabriel released an impressive string of Portugese that I’m sure was all curse words. “There’s another one herding Brooks inside too. He won’t risk… he’ll go inside quietly.”

“Then let’s go inside,” I breathed, clasping my hands together to stop them from trembling. I wanted us all together. The idea that Brooks was out there, facing down one of Frank’s trained wolves made bile rise in my stomach.

The wolf in front of me made a strange chuffing sound that almost sounded like approval. Thoroughly unnerved at the reactions it seemed to be having to my very human words, I gripped the back of Gabriel’s shirt, tugging it lightly to get him to move.

He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat as he walked sideways towards the internal door, keeping me behind him the whole time.

“Fucking Frank,” he muttered under his breath. Hadn’t they only briefly met once at the bar?

“Manners,” Frank chided, his voice filtering through from the living room. Surely he wasn’t talking to us? “Come and join me and your friend here.”

Fear made my feet heavy, and I desperately wanted to just stay where I was, hiding in the mudroom off the entryway, but that fucking wolf appeared again, snarling and encouraging us forward.

I mentally sent an apology to Nate for every time I’d dismissed his warnings about Frank. That was my bad. I’d definitely own that.

As we got further into the house, I finally spotted what I’d been slow to see originally.

Everything was broken. Smashed up like the shelf in the entryway, or shredded to ribbons like my coats that hung off the now broken hooks. Even the walls, the beautiful freshly painted walls that I’d worked so hard on, were decimated. How had my walls been ripped up? The windows were smashed, no piece of furniture was intact. It was all… destroyed.

And it absolutely reeked of… piss? Disgusting.

This wasn’t normal revenge. It looked and smelled like wild animals had gotten in here. The same wild animals who had attacked my home a few nights ago.

These wolves weren’t wild though. The one snapping its teeth at Gabriel and I seemed unnaturally aware of what was going on, and it was fucking terrifying.

Maybe they had AI chips in them or something? Frank was rich. Rich people did weird things.

The back door slammed open as Gabriel and I got to the living room, making me jump. “It’s Nate,” Gabriel murmured quietly, and I was scared to speak to question how he could possibly know that.

Brooks was already in the living room, glaring at a second wolf without a shred of fear in his eyes, and he immediately moved behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and sandwiching me between him and Gabriel. I couldn’t even see Frank standing there, but I didn’t particularly care when there were fucking wolves either side of me with teeth that could rip the skin off my bones.

One growled at Brooks, and I swear he growled right back.

Nate stormed in from the kitchen with all the grace of a vengeful bull, wearing just a loose pair of sweatpants.

“Not just your girlfriend, apparently,” Frank said as Nate spat curses at him.

God, how had I never noticed how slimy Frank’s voice was before? It was like oil going down my spine.

“Scarlet, my pet,” Frank called. “Come here.”

“Scarlet is not your anything,” I replied coolly, encouraging Gabriel to move aside just enough so I could at least see who I was speaking to. “Did you do this?”

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

“I’ve been busy. You should have listened to me, Scarlet. I thought it was… sweet when you claimed to be playing house with the cougar,” Frank rambled. “But I watched you the other day, bring another wolf into your domain, and I have to say, I did not like that. Not at all. I felt the need to leave my own mark on your home, though I had to recover from injury first.”

“I’ll give you a real injury this time,” Nate growled, making me jump.

“Perhaps I could have been patient with you today,” Frank continued. “But you reek of him, and him of you. It displeases me greatly.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked exasperatedly. Cougar? Wolf? Injury? “Also, could you fuck off? I have stuff to do. A house to fix up because someone destroyed it.”

Brooks pressed himself closer to my back, shoring me up. I was grateful for his presence because despite what I was saying, I was fucking terrified, but I needed my fake confidence right now or I’d collapse.

The ripped as fuck bodyguards boxing me in were making me a little mouthier than I probably should have been.

“I did warn you,” Frank sighed heavily, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Nate.

“Don’t do it,” Nate snarled before flicking a look at Brooks. “Get her out of here,” he hissed.

The wolves on either side went down on their haunches, their steady growls increasing in volume.

“My friends don’t much like that idea,” Frank drawled. His eyes focused on me and a shiver of fear ran down my spine because it seriously looked like they were glowing. He grinned, and… had his teeth always looked like that? They were so sharp.

“Fuck!” Nate yelled, moving to shield me, but it was too late. Before my eyes, polished, put-together human Frank exploded out of his clothes in a blur of black fur and vicious teeth, and there was a FUCKING WOLF flying through the air towards me.

Wolf. A fucking wolf.

An actual fucking wolf.

Before the snarling, snapping, actual wolf could rip my face off, Nate stepped forward and punched it in the face. In its wolf face. Punched the wolf in its goddamn wolf face.

Wolf Frank crashed into the wall with an infuriated growl, before darting out of the open door, howling. Like a wolf.

“Shit, is that a camera?” someone asked, but the voice sounded a million miles away because Nate spun to look at me, his emerald green eyes glowing, skin rippling slightly like the muscles underneath were contorting.

“Do you have big scary teeth too?” I heard myself asking before someone grabbed hold of the planet and spun it faster than usual. A lot faster. And turned all the lights out. Maybe turned the sun off.

And then there was blissful nothingness.