Page 53 of Hades

A kind of desperation of which he’d never felt before slithered like a serpent through his skin, he didn’t feel in control. He’d set the rules of this game and he was the one who had lost and now he was filled with rage.

Grabbing a fist full of her hair he yanked hard enough to have her neck hurting as he put it in an awkward angle. “You came for him. You belong to me, your fuckingmaster, do you understand?” quietly spoken through his teeth, fury tasted like bile rushing onto his tongue.

Ungrateful fucking women would always bite the hand that feeds them.

Her sad words fell on deaf ears.

He made her scream.

He made her cry.

He was mean and aggressive. Deliberately sadistic bringing her to task over something she shouldn’t have allowed.

Oh, he saw the irony. It was glaring and bright, a bulb offuck youin his face, showing him just how little his power had mattered while his naughty slut did the impossible for a nobody. For once he didn’t glory in her heartbreak, didn’t lap at it like it was a bowl of heavy cream, it didn’t warm his chest. He wanted to hurt her, and hurt her good. Just likeshe’d hurt him.

Her fear was no longer the balm for his soul. Just like that, it was gone.

Dark and vague, his eyes watched her crumble under his tyranny.

He felt nothing. His chest was empty.

For an hour he had her where he wanted her, at his mercy, begging to die. Begging to live.

Sweet music was now ash under his feet. Toys must be punished, that’s how it goes. If he lost, then she lost, too.

An hour after that the Irish prospect was meeting his maker decades too early. His life snuffed out by Hades hand.

His mother wouldn’t be having an open casket.

Not with the bullet hole decorating his temple.

A torrential downpour of madness began to creep in that day and as the weeks passed by it only became worse.

Worse for the girl more than ever.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Death knocks three times.”

He’d fucked up.

He’d felt it most of the night since he got back into town hours ago. It was a sticky unease he couldn’t shake, a restlessness he couldn’t figure out. But it all came to pass a few hours later.

Hades had stupidly left his club carelessly unguarded. What with the biggest deal yet with the mafia to ferry Russian girls into the states weekly instead of every six months, this was going to be his highest pay cut and it meant his greed took his mind off home and what might be conspiring behind his back.

It gave the Renegade Souls space to plan a raid.

Any other time he would have been prepared for a fight because it seemed he’d waited years to kill Marinos, he would have gloried in it. It was a long time coming between them, all the years they’d verbally fought, trying to get one up on each other, Hades pushing at the restraints of power to throw the middle finger at that cocky bastard who thought he ran the whole damn state. Yeah, it was a long time coming.

But when they came at his place in the dead of night, infiltrating the club he’d built as his fortress for the last seven years, none of his men were ready for it.

When death knocks, oftentimes the timing isn’t right to open that door.

It was the foreboding sense Hades felt in his gut that night when instead of sleeping, he was in the office breaking up an assortment of coke to go to different dealer’s tomorrow night. The turnover was fast, and with the summer coming he wanted to capitalize on the influx of tourism and outdoor events in the area.

His greed saved his life that night.

He heard them first long before he saw any of the RS men.

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