Page 44 of Vicious Souls

“You passed yourself off as a boy. In a disguise. I wouldn’t exactly call that honest.”

I purse my lips, looking at him with flat eyes. “You know why I had to do that.”

“I know. Tell me why the Savages were after you that night at the club?”

I rise abruptly, my defenses on high alert. We’ve been through this before, but he either doesn’t believe me or thinks there’s more to the story.

“I already told you, Dante. I had never seen them before that night.”

“So who would possibly put a two million dollar bounty on your head? Who wants you dead, Kingsley?”

“I. Don’t. Know.”

The thought that someone wants me dead forces a hot rod of fear to circuit through my bloodstream. I’ve never even been in the States long enough for someone to develop a fixation on me, let alone a murderous one.

“Think, Kingsley. Who have you pissed off? This is important.”

Dante is starting to get agitated, like he needs answers and he needs them now. Little does he know, I’d like some myself. Especially when it’s my life on the line here. I’d like to help him, but damned if I know who’s got a contract on my head. How would I know something like that?

“You think I like walking around knowing there’s a bullet out there somewhere with my name on it?” I ask him.

“You need to…”

“Dante.”

Marco comes into view, an unforgiving look on his face as he addresses Dante. He looks from his friend to me, and I know whatever he is going to say is going to change the direction of this conversation. I can also see that Marco probably heard the tail end of the conversation and isn’t too happy about what his ears picked up on. He leans into Dante, whispering in his ear, while Dante stands unmoving, his eyes cemented on mine. He has a way of looking through me, piercing my soul.

When Marco finishes, he turns with his friend to face me, giving me a tight smile before he leaves Dante and me standing alone.

“We’ve found the men who attacked us,” Dante informs me, in one of his rare sharing moods.

“And?”

“I have to go.”

I pull at his sleeve as he turns to walk away. Dante stops walking but doesn’t turn to face me, his head lowered as he waits for me to speak.

“Let me go with you.”

“Absolutely not,” he says, whirling around so quickly, he almost knocks me over.

“You haven’t even healed properly,” I remind him.

“Have you thought of your three questions?” he asks me, his question so out of the blue, it takes me a moment to understand that he is referring to his promise to answer three questions honestly and without a trade. He offered me that almost two weeks ago, before he was shot, and I had all but forgotten about our deal. It seemed that he hadn’t.

“Now’s not the time for that,” I tell him.

“It is. Because I have every intention of coming back to you and finishing what we started.”

40

DANTE

My men have done a good job of capturing the members of the Savages MC who have been wreaking havoc on our lives. They find them in an old rundown studio which has seen better days and better tenants. The studio is strewn with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, the defectors having taken over the space and wrecked it beyond what constitutes minor cosmetic repairs. It was a good two hour drive away from my home, and for a second, I question the necessity of trekking that distance myself to deal with the situation, then decide it is absolutely necessary, if only to put Tomas Wojcak in his place myself.

When I arrive at the location, Tomas Wojcak is strung up by his arms, tied to an overhead beam in such a way that I know his arms will probably fall out of their sockets before we have a chance to put him out of his misery. The front of his shirt is filthy, stained with blood, and his jeans low lying against his wide hips. He is a sorry sight if ever I’ve seen one. Though I refuse to feel even a smidgen of regret or sorrow for his predicament. He has done enough to earn himself a seat at this table. He has brought about his own destruction, and now I will see to it that he gives us what we want before he suffers a miserable death and is flung into a pauper’s grave. Or maybe we can feed him to the sharks.

I watch the man from across the room, a dark fury awakening within me. I work my jaw back and forth in anger as I remember what he’d nearly done to Kingsley. He had his hands on her. He had meant to rape her, maybe even kill her. He would have had I not stepped in and trained my gun on him. Back then, I hadn’t known who he was. Nor had he known who I was. I wonder if he had known who Kingsley was all along? Regardless. He had touched her, in places it should be illegal for a man to even look at if he doesn’t have consent. I almost break my jaw with the way my anger is consuming me. I would make him pay for touching her. Even before she meant anything to me. Even before she was mine. Way before I decided she meant something to me and that I would make her mine. He would pay for that indiscretion.

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