Page 5 of All's Fair in Love & Chaos
“We aren’t going to get anywhere with you talking to me like that, babycakes, and you know it. Try again.”
I grab the phone from my shoulder and tap the top of it against my forehead while I take a deep, controlled, steadyingbreath. Sebastian is a lot of things, but patient isn’t one of them.
“Seb, I am opening my laptop right now. Will you please give me the Cliff Notes version while it wakes up? I would be so thankful.” I give him my best rehearsed, most fake voice I can muster, even though I want to shake the shit out of him for not quickly getting to the point.
“Much better, love. He’s currently back on the compound surrounded by the rest of the brutes. But my guy says that this murderer?—”
“Vigilante.”
“Right.Vigilante, has made such a dent recently that it’s put everyone on edge. All the presidents in the area are meeting to talk shop about what to do about the big bad wolf slaughtering all their sheep. Tomorrow.”
I laugh at his analogy. While Seb talks, I navigate to my email and open up the file. Sure as shit, the man responsible for my family’s death is looking back at me. I’ve spent countless hours staring at his face, memorizing his features as he’s aged over the last decade, waiting for the day he screws up and I can cash in. He’s never alone, always traveling with his men. Like a pack of hyenas, they’re always together. I guess guilt will make you paranoid and untrusting. If he’s even capable of feeling such emotions.
Could I get the jump on him with a few of his men around? Probably. I’ve done it before to men bigger than him. But I don’t just want to kill the president of Hell’s Heathens. I want to prolong it. Slowly starve him, make him hurt, bring him back from the brink of death, only to push him right to the edge again. I want to make Camden Young beg to be put out ofhis torment. I’ve waited a long time to get vengeance, and I can’t fathom that I could finally have it at the tip of my fingers.
I study his face, the sharp jawline covered in light two-day scruff, his high cheekbones, and the dark features of his eyes. A tiny twinge flutters somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach. I push it down hard, refusing to let a human piece of me rise up. The innocent girl who had ambitions and dreams and hope for a beautiful future died right along with my family. And Camden Young and his Heathens are responsible.
“Your guy is on the inside?”
“Yep!” he smacks, popping the ‘p’. “He’s a member of another club, said all the presidents are meeting, no entourages allowed.”
“You’re sure this is legit? I’m not walking into a trap?”
“Baby girl, do you think Seb would do that to you? I don’t just love anyone, and unfortunately, I happen to love you. You know too much, so I have to keep you.”
“Like that time you called me to take you to the ER because a pickle got stu?—”
“Nope! No! I thought we promised not to talk about that?” he interrupts. Sebastian and I met in law school and became quick friends, even sharing a studio apartment for the last few years of school. He went on to become a bigshot attorney, and the only thing I took away from criminal law is that it’s fucking pointless and built by design to protect the guilty. There is no justice served. No peace that comes to survivors even if the criminal is proven guilty. Nothing can take away their pain. Nothing can bring them the peace they once had before it was so brutally stolen from them. I would know.
My first kill was an accident. I was walking to my car after grabbing a bottle of wine from the convenience store, rounding a corner, when a voice floated on the wind, a familiar Irish lilt that had the hairs on my arms prickling.
“Yeah, it’s over. Fuckin’eejits, the lot of ’em.” There’s a long pause, and I can’t help but move closer to the dark alley the voice is trailing from, something dark and primal calling me to him. “Yeah, I hear ya, I’ll try not to be so messy next time. But the girl had a big mouth, even stuffed with me cock, she wouldn’t be quiet, had to do somethin’.”
I fucking knew he did it, but with no living victim, no witnesses, and no hard proof other than Coner Kelly showing up on CCTV footage leaving the bar with her, we had nothing to charge him with. There was no DNA found and no concrete proof. But Coner sat in front of us, smug and nonchalant, answering our questions with such passive regard to what we were implying, that I knew he was guilty. Coner is a ranked member of the Druids of Éire Motorcycle Club, a group similar to the one that was responsible for taking my family from me. They reject modern-day societal rules and instead live by their own brutal code of brotherhood that somehow convinces them it’s okay to be a sadistic, evil fuck.
They have no business walking this earth.
Especially not if the judicial system isn’t going to protect innocents and seek out justice. If there is even such a thing. I chose law school so I could put men like Coner behind bars. But the fantastical dreams of a little girl who thought she knew how the world worked have been crushed by reality, and my goals have pivoted.
“Oh, she was a tight, wee thing. Lass squealed like a baby pig when I fucked her. Dinna mean to choke the thing to death, but shitehappens. It’s no worry, they got nothin’ on me. I’m still clean as a whistle.” Coner’s laugh hits my ears and caresses over my body like a thick, heavy disease.
The rage that bubbles at the pit of my stomach surges forward, a heat washing through my veins and igniting me. He hurt her. An innocent woman. Raped and took her life with his own hands. The fear she must have felt, the pain as he violated her body and murdered her. My vision darkens at the sides, narrowing everything around me.
They have no business on this earth.
I’m moving before I realize it, pulling my pocketknife out of my purse and flicking open the blade. Coner’s back is toward me, giving me the advantage. The next thing I know, I’m on his back, slicing the blade of the knife across his throat, ear to ear, pressing in with all my strength. The wound gapes open, blood rushing forward like a dam breaking. Coner silently gasps, his sounds coming out as muffled gurgles as he drowns in his own blood. He slams us back into the brick wall, pain shooting up my spine from the impact. When Coner sinks to his knees, I finally let go of his shoulders, stepping around him as he grasps at his neck, his eyes wide with fear. As I watch the life drain from his eyes, his body collapsing onto the ground in a pool of his own blood, I realize I’m smiling.
The world has one less evil sonofabitch now.
Diddisgust with myself wash over me? No.
Was I consumed with guilt? Also, no.
Maybe I’m no better than them, but at least I’m purging the earth of evil rather than inflicting it. It was in that moment that I realized I wouldn’t make a dent in ridding the world ofthese evil men as a victims’ rights attorney. But I could like this. Coner Kelly was my first, the only man I’ve killed without leaving the mark of Willow behind on his cold, dead body.
“So, what’s gonna be your plan? You gonna, you know, do your thing?”
“Oh, I’m going to take care of it. But this time I’m going to do it slowly.”
