Page 1 of Wicked S.O.B.

Chapter One

Quinn

Fade In

I’ve lost control.

Again.

I’m beginning to think I never had it in the first place. For almost half my life, revenge was my only anchor. I lived, breathed, slept, and dreamed it. With that satisfied, I’ve lost my rudder. I’m swimming in a sea of uselessness without a compass.

I go through the motions of running a multibillion-dollar empire, now completely under my control, with the same ruthless efficiency I used to take down my father and stepmother. But making money brings me no joy. It never did, if I’m completely honest. Sure, I like the nice things and security my wealth has brought me. Anyone who claims money and power are completely evil is a fucking liar.

But craving them the way my father did, to the extent that he destroyed the one person I loved the most in the world? Yeah, that needed answering.

He’s paying for it now. I wanted him to get a life sentence. I wanted his life taken away completely the way he denied my mother hers. He got twenty-five years without parole. It’s one of the many things that has the power to unbalance my day. I’ve been told I should learn to live with it. Accept it and move on.

Fuck that.

He’s breathing. She’s not.

A little over a year ago, I thought I wouldn’t make it to my thirtieth birthday. I’m twenty-nine now, and that belief still lingers. Months of therapy and two psychologists later, I’ve barely made a dent in plugging the churning black hole that is my mind. The first shrink rapidly concluded after four consultations that he couldn’t help me. I wholeheartedly concurred with that assessment.

The second shrink persevered for a little longer before he, too, wrote me off. To his credit, he didn’t come out and say the words, but I could see it in his eyes. When your shrink stops taking notes and stares at you with barely concealed horror, you know it’s time to move on. Or give up.

I was all for giving up after that. I’m too fucked up. Too broken. Hell, I was the guy who fucked his shrink for years just so he could deliver the justice she ultimately deserved. That probably gives me a lifelong immunity against being helped by those who practice that profession. Maybe I would be better off with an exorcist. Or in a fucking straitjacket. Electroshock therapy?

Fuck if I know.

What I do know is I’m beyond redemption. I would’ve gone as far as to embrace that hopelessness had it not been for her.

Elyse “Lucky” Gilbert.

A five-foot-six, curvy blonde with an hourglass figure and eyes that see too fucking much. A hazel-eyed siren whose sole purpose, possibly oblivious to her, is to keep me from tipping over the edge into my abyss.

Where the need for absolute retribution held me together for the better part of a decade and a half, now it’s her. She’s the reason I live and breathe and make it through my day.

But for how much longer?

I don’t know when I finally accepted that our time together would be shorter than I’d hoped. It was a truth I didn’t want to accept before. And why should I have? I am the selfish, jealous asshole who doesn’t take defeat lightly. But even I have come to realize there are some lines I can’t cross. And dragging Elyse down with me to my ninth circle of hell is one of them. I’m not selfless enough to have released her, though. Not just yet.

Maybe I’m waiting for her to wise up to how broken I am and take the decision out of my hands. Even then a part of me hasn’t ruled out taking her with me anyway.

Something inside me, perhaps the heart she believes I have, mourns the fast-approaching time when that decision will have to be made one way or the other. It would be nice if that mourning were only internalized, though. But no. I don’t fucking take things lying down, remember?

Take tonight for instance. All is quiet around me now. But it wasn’t half an hour ago. Hell no. I focus on the view in front of me, refusing to stare at what is behind me.

The whiskey glass in my hand trembles as I lift it to my lips and gulp a mouthful of amber nectar. The Macallan goes down smooth as ever, but it comes nowhere near soothing my ravaged insides. I drain the glass and wait for a hint of a buzz.

Nothing.

Jesus. Do I have a drinking problem on top of everything else? Who knows? Who the fuck cares?

What was it the latest therapist had recommended?

That I need to find myself. What a fucking joke.

I’m Quinn Blackwood. Billionaire? Yes. Lover? Yes. Useless asshole? Unfortunately, hell yes.

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