Make Me (The Fox Family Crime Syndicate, #1)

by Summer O'Toole

He’s spent the past ten years hearing about all his co-conspirators showing up dead from the most gruesome injuries. I have to give it to him, he was very fucking good at hiding. But not perfect, and we finally caught him.

He falls to the roof, howling in pain. There’s not an ounce of sympathy in me. Knowing my father must have howled the same way as he slowly lost his mind in solitary confinement.

Officially, he was there for his own protection. He was jumped during his first week in prison. But I never doubted for a second that it was Schneider and his cronies who locked him away so he couldn’t tell anyone the truth.

The truth being that they—the members of Governor Albright’s cabinet—killed the Governor and framed my father. The cabinet wanted to get into bed with the Italians, but Albright was loyal to my family. In one s...

Any resulting pain they’ve suffered at my hands is due to their own shortsightedness. Nobody expected the hot-headed son of Aiden Fox to amount to much. Everyone assumed my brothers and I would fizzle and burn, motherless and fatherless. Drown o...

“Have you heard of death by a thousand cuts? Everyone thinks it’s so literal and pictures a thousand tiny paper cuts or some shit. Do you know what they actually did?”

“The executioner would actually flay small portions of the skin, then amputate the limbs, and the grand finale was decapitation.”

See, unfortunately, the condemned usually dies or passes out long before they get to the amputation. And that doesn’t sound like very much fun.”

“I recently read about this amazing Norse ritual called ‘blood eagle,’ have you heard of it?”

It’s only mentioned a few times in Norse lore, but every time it is, it’s in retribution for the murder of a father. And I thought, ‘ah, how fitting.’”

“He hit his head against the wall of his cell until he passed out.” “Have you ever heard anyone hit their head on something? A table, a cabinet door, anything like that?” His brows knit together, confused, but he mutters a yes. “And it’s loud, isn’t it? So you’d think that when my father smashed his head into a fucking concrete wall over and over, it would make some fucking noise. No?”

“I would ask then, why it took twelve hours for anyone to check on him, but I’m sick of hearing your voice. So, let me cut to the chase. To perform a blood eagle, one must sever a person’s ribs from their spine. Then peel the bones and skin back to pull the lungs out of the body. Get it, blood eagle? The lungs look like bloody wings—quite clever really.”

“I hope you’re praying to the same God that left my father to hemorrhage alone for twelve long hours, because that son of a bitch never picks up.”

I will burn the world to ashes before I allow myself or any of my brothers to succumb to my father’s fate. I promised him as much.

“Ah, shit!” I turn from Lochlan and see a white woman across the street flailing around as she jumps from her chair. Brown liquid stains her pale-pink crop top. My eyes travel down the spill. Her jeans are a pinch too tight, making the sexiest part of her stomach spill out. I try to shake the image of me taking a bite out of that soft flesh and look up at her face.

Light-brown hair is piled on top of her head, loose strands and curls sticking out everywhere. It’s a mess. But when the sun hits it, it glows a beautiful red. The anxiety rolls off her in waves. I can feel it as surely as I feel the wind carrying my smoke away. I wish I were closer so I could see what shade of pink she must be turning.

Lochlan

I dragged a vintage armchair over to the window that has a view down to June Bug Café. It’s hardly rearranging.

He’s the youngest of us brothers and has been stuck with me as the only parental figure in his life the last ten years. That’s given him a lot of leeway when it comes to fucking around and being sloppy, but he’s nineteen now and needs to start acting like it.

I trust Francesca enough to let her fuck my brother. She’s my lieutenant's niece and she knows this world we live in. But she’s a hungry rank-climber. And hungry people are desperate people.

I finish my stretch and then jump out of the goddamn chair because3... There she is.

She’s wearing a burgundy sweatshirt, and I resist the urge to read the university seal on the front. I can find out anything on just about anyone. My connections can do things the NSA can only dream of. But for some reason, I don’t want to read about her in a file. I want to hear it from her lips. I need to drip this budding obsession slowly and carefully, if I don't want to become an addict.

That’s not it. I don’t care about being an addict if she is my drug. I want to draw this out, pull on this string loosely tethering us together, until it becomes so taut it snaps.

I’ve always had a thing for necks. The way they curve gracefully, the skin soft and thin. The way a pulse will flutter faintly until you start squeezing. Then you can really feel it thump under your fingertips.

Does she want a knight in shining armor to sweep her away like a princess in a fairy tale? I can’t be her knight. But I can be her king.

Prey and Prey

Harlow

While I’m certain he has not seen me, I am less certain I’ve seen anything. I follow him around from his apartment to a cobbler to a sandwich shop. He stops to chat with the bodega owner and seems to be best fucking buds with every barista and bartender in town. But even when I spend twelve hours watching his every move, I don’t learn a single thing about him except that he only drinks espresso like some pompous asshole.

Currently, Cash has been waiting outside this ice cream shop for the past five minutes. He’s not smoking or talking, so I don’t know what for. His dark sunglasses hide his eyes, making me wonder where he’s looking. His form-fitting, white dress shirt’s sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, and his hand tattoo stares back at me, taunting me. His neckline has fallen open, the top few buttons left undone, and his tattoos crawl up his chest. If I’m lucky, he’ll poison himself with all that ink.

I recognize one of them from the first day outside the apartment. Judging by the familial look, these are his other two brothers. And the four of them are chatting and laughing and walking into the ice cream shop… Fox family fun day at the ice cream store?

I have to consciously remind myself to breathe as I pretend to peruse the chest of ice cream. It goes against every survival instinct screaming inside me to turn my back on a pack of wolves—Foxes.

I keep my head down as I eat my ice cream, but I’m always scanning their table in my periphery. I struggle to make out their words over the bass-filled pop playing in the shop. I’m straining my ears to hear them talk about football, cars, and The Office. That can’t be right. Maybe they're talking in code and Michael Scott is the street name for a new drug. Doubtful.

I’m about to take the two-mile walk from The Fox’s Den to my apartment to clear my head and start thinking sense, when I noticed someone taping a paper to the window from the inside.

But my curiosity and desperation get the best of me. Help wanted

Looking for front-of-house staff, no experience needed.

The conversations that matter, the proof that matters, is behind closed doors. The cops have to worry about things like probable cause and warrants. But I don’t.

Cash

3 Hours earlier

It’s amazing how committed she is to these shitty disguises. In fact, I find it kind of adorable the way she thinks a baseball cap or pair of headphones could ever do enough...

I’m not a man to do things in halves. If something is worth doing, I’m going to do it with my whole chest, with every weapon in my arsenal. It’s why I was able to step into my father’s shoes at twenty-four and quadruple his already-impressive empire in the last decade. When I set my mind on something, it infects my bloodstream, becomes part of me.

She leans back, sinking into the couch, and narrows her dark-brown eyes at me. I just know I’m gonna hate whatever comes out of her mouth next. “Who is she?” There’s no point denying it. Stella can read me better than just about anyone. Except Finn, he’s got some weird, psychic shit going on, I swear. And the last thing I want is her to go on a spiel about how doe-eyed and lovestruck I seem.

The weird fluttering feeling low in my stomach—that I’m starting to learn is in fact metaphorical butterflies—happens again. I know this because I googled it to make sure there wasn’t anything medically wrong with me. “Actually, she’s stalking me.”

“And tell the pretty lady about to come in and order that you’re out of bowls. Make sure she orders a cone.”

I wonder if she can feel my gaze rake her skin the way I yearn to do with my teeth. Her supple thighs are on exhibit in jean cut-offs. The dimpled skin below her ass has my dick swelling.

I figured she isn’t interested in sleeping with me…yet. That’s not her reason for tailing me anyway. No, she wants to keep her distance. She’s more interested in what I’m doing than who I’m doing. My main guess is she thinks I killed someone close to her. Father, brother, boyfriend…a righteous anger burns my skin at the thought of any other man touching her. Suddenly, I’m hoping it is the boyfriend and I’m glad he’s dead. Because she doesn’t know it yet, but she became mine the moment she spilled that coffee.

So I gave her an opportunity she couldn’t resist. All four Fox brothers. If she’s following me for revenge, I’m sure she’s considering going after one of them. If there’s one thing people know about the Foxes, it’s that we are fucking feral when it comes to family.

When we get up to leave, I have to nearly bite my tongue off so I’m not walking out of here at full mast. Though, part of me wants her to see what she does to me. Wants her to imagine the cock straining my jeans, straining her pussy, stretching her, filling her, fucking her so hard and deep she’ll never be able to forget the feel of me.

Amanda Jones

Harlow

“Dark, dark brown. Make me a different person.” Several hours later, I’m staring at my new reflection.