Anarchy (Hades, #2)

by Tate James

He turned back to face me, shrugging his hood back to reveal a scarred face, partly covered with a leather eyepatch, and a deranged smile. "You have no idea how right you are, pretty boy."

The asshole who'd initially taken me from Hayden's apartment—one of the security guards from 7th Circle who I'd stupidly opened the door for—hadn't been even slightly interested in information. Just violence.

Up close, I found eye-patch dude roughly the same height as me, but a whole lot broader in the shoulders, where I was slim and toned.

That someone wanted to hurt her. And I'd been glad it’d been me in her apartment instead. Call me a lovesick fool, but I'd happily take all the torture in the world to keep her safe. My mama always said one day I'd meet someone and I'd know. She always believed in love at first sight, my ma, but not me. Nope. I was a cynic... or I had been until I laid eyes on Hayden and my whole world tilted upside down.

Zed was at her side, as always, and for once I was actually happy to see him. Even if he was head over heels in love with my girl.

She was flipping gender roles like nobody's business, and I was here for it.

"If you fucking die now, kid, I'll personally take a trip to hell, resurrect your ass, and kill you all over again."

I don't have the time or patience to be manipulated by your dick right now."

"No. You listen to me, Hayden Timber. I've stood back and watched you push people away and isolate yourself time and time again, making yourself utterly un-fucking-touchable. For fucking years. Now, in the short time you've been screwing Lucas, something has changed, and I for one don't want to see it change back. You care for him. You're

going to the hospital and making sure he's alive. End of discussion."

Cass grimaced when he saw it in my hand , too. "That's one of Phillip D'Ath's blades," he correctly observed.

"Close, but no," I replied reluctantly as we stepped into the elevator and Cass stabbed the button for the seventh floor. "This one was Zed's."

"No, I mean, I really can't. I love MK, don't get me wrong, but holy shit she's loud in bed. I actually got Kody to buy me earplugs this morning on our way over. If I have to hear my friend begging for one of the guys to fuck her ass one more time, I'm gonna puke."

"You gonna let me drive it?" "Wash your mouth out, Zed," I hissed back with disgust. "You can't be trusted not to scratch her again."

He shot me an accusing look. "Chase took him to hurt you, which means he knows you care about the adorable little gumdrop."

"It was Reggie that attacked me at your place," he said, confirming what I'd already guessed. "I checked the video monitor like you told me, but I recognized him from 7th Circle and assumed—wrongly, of course—that it was okay to open the door."

"Sounds like he has a filthy fucking mind hiding under all that ink, and I need brain bleach to erase the pure smut I was subjected to in delivering that letter." Zed gave an exaggerated shudder and slid a freshly made omelet over the island to Cass.

It felt awfully like some kind of pissing contest, and I wasn't here for that.

"I know how you like your bread buttered, boss." What the fuck?

"I'm not asking you for forever, Red," he murmured in that deep, husky voice that all but dripped sex. "But you'll give it to me anyway."

"Get fucked," I breathed in utter disbelief. An embarrassed smile crossed his face. "Uh, yeah, I sure did. With you. In... a supply room at Scruffy Murphy's."

"I should have guessed," she repeated, her slow words deliberate, "when that nice nurse showed up at my house with a Timberwolf tattoo."

look in Sandra Wildeboer's eyes was sharp as a blade. She knew exactly who I was... but how?

"You look like her," she told me, her gaze running over my face with familiarity. "And him. That hardness in your eyes... it's all your daddy."

"We were friends," Sandra told me in a nostalgic whisper, her eyes misty as she gazed at me. I got the feeling she wasn't seeing me at all, but my mom. "Natasha was too good for your father. He knew it too."

"No. He shot her. She tried to leave him, tried to take you and your sister, and he shot her."

"What a smooth motherfucker," he muttered, handing the bag to me.

Inside was a clean set of clothes and a thick packet of wet wipes. Smooth motherfucker indeed, that was one way to show he was thinking of me. Cassiel Saint was really living up to the promises in his love letter.

"I'm here because I woke up alone in my bed with a raging hard-on and an undeniable need to see my woman."

"This. Lucas's uncle with the squeaky-clean background check and the secret arsenal underneath his house. He wasn't an accountant... he was a fucking mercenary."

"Lucas," I said, licking my lips and holding the knife up for him and Cass to see. "Did you know your uncle was in the Guild?"

Fists clenched at his sides, he took two steps closer. "I said, no. No, I will not sit down. Not about this. I'm not goddamn overstepping, Dare, because I fucking love you. Okay? I love you."

"No, you dense bitch. I love you."

Yet all it'd done was resurface my badly patched trauma and thrown me straight back into the past when I was seventeen, naïve as fuck, gaslighted at every waking moment, and abused behind closed doors by my sociopathic fiancé.

The night I'd gone to Zed had been one of my worst mistakes. Not only had he rejected my feelings, making me think I'd imagined our connection... but Chase had found out. And he'd made me pay.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and I knew he wasn't talking about kissing me, because he'd seen the tapes from Chase's room and he knew.

"Wenton Dibbs is dead," I said again, rubbing my forehead. "Chase shot him on the back of his dad's yacht and tossed the body overboard."

"I forgot all about it until just now. I wasn't..." My voice broke, and I needed to swallow. "I wasn't fully lucid when it happened."

"You weren't you back then. The look in your eyes got hollower, deader every fucking day I saw you, and I knew it was because of him. I used to sneak into your room while you were sleeping just to check your pulse and make sure you hadn't killed yourself when it all got too much."

"No shit. You'd flatten his ass. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I think this weird cougar thing you've got going with Lucas is good for you. You’ve changed since you met him, and even though I thought it was Zed you'd been fucking, I knew someone was being good to you. Someone had finally been let in and showed you that you were worth loving. 'Cause you are, Dare. I hope you know that."

"Fine. Zed's going to blow a gasket when he figures out I broke into his fortress and spent the night buried between his woman's thighs." I shot him a sharp glare as I climbed out of bed. "Excuse me? I'm not—" "Aw," Cass wrinkled his nose and stretched out one of his long arms to pat me on the head. "You're still in denial. It's adorable."

"The next time I hear you moaning and panting while you ride some other guy's dick?" He leaned in closer, his face right beside mine as he whispered his threat... or promise. "I'll have to come in and join you." He moved away again and shot me a knowing wink. "Food for thought... friend."

"Uh-oh," he murmured, sarcastic as fuck. "He looks familiar."

"On my way in I spotted him looking sketchy as hell as he pretended to search through the bar stock. It was easy enough to guess the drugs would have been planted recently. They wouldn't risk them sitting there to be found by anyone else."

"Well then, you'll have nothing to worry about. Of course, if you lose..." He hummed as he thought up an appropriate punishment. "If you lose, then you have to learn a routine from Maxine and perform at Club 22 on a Friday night."

"No?" Zed smirked. "Guess you're not so confident after all. Tell you what, if I lose, I'll do the same."

"Speaking of Zayden De Rosa," I muttered, "I made a bet with him. Any chance I can get you to cause a distraction when he shoots? I'm quickly losing confidence that I can win this."

I could feel the intensity of his gaze, and when he cupped his junk—seemingly just to rearrange the crown jewels—I simmered with annoyance. Those bastards had ganged up against me. Somehow, probably while I was outside with Cass, Zed had swayed Lucas over to the side of evil. And Lucas had convinced Cass. Those fuckers were trying to throw my concentration, and it was working.

"Just... nonsense. Shit that makes zero sense at all. I keep trying to ask her about Jack being in the Guild, but it never goes well. She just… yells accusations at me—him—that she won’t let him anywhere near her babies anymore." He gave a frustrated sigh. "I don't know. It sounds totally insane... but if I was an outsider listening in? It sounds like my uncle Jack did something to hurt me when I was a kid."

"How the fuck Dallas accessed these, I have no idea. But it explains a lot... I think? It sounds like Wenton suffered some serious abuse as a kid—no real shock, knowing the Lockharts—but since then has been in and out of psychiatric care with delusions that he was actually his dead cousin, Chase Lockhart."