Page 88 of Scars Run Deep

Son of a bitch.

I cut in quickly, “That won’t be possible. She’ll be with me.”

“What?” Killian asked. His gaze darted to Jonah. “I figured on you and Jonah partnering if we’re gonna divide and conquer.”

“It will be me with Aurora.” When he moved to protest, I shot him a look. “You need it to be me.”

To contain her darkness.

With mine, basically.

But it was actually more than that.

It was a safeguard.

It had to be me with her, in case that fucker, Lance, showed up and decided to obliterate our Option 2 agreement and make a move to take her and steal her away into the shadows.

The hell I was going to let that happen.

But it certainly wouldn’t be an easy feat to stop him.

Lance “Revenant” Carlyle had a reputation for a reason. He was the best of the best. Hell, even my father, the almighty fucking Carson Monroe, considered him an actual threat. So much so that he’d been actively searching for him for years because he was so fucking worried about what he could do to the Infidels empire. And to him personally.

But while my father made it very well known exactly what he was capable of, and his power plays and numerous shows of force were publicized among the criminal elite and the underground alike, I didn’t operate the same way. People knew enough not to cross me, but the things I’d done were buried beneath rumor and legend, the truth obscured as a result. It painted me in an unpredictable light amongst the Carson and Revenant types.

A wild card.

Somebody impossible to pigeonhole.

Lance thought he’d acquired what he’d needed from his deep dive into me.

I smiled to myself. All that research had been wasted.

Because everything I’d accomplished, acts I’d committed, demons I’d unleashed… all of that had occurred under heavy shadow. In the dark of fucking night. Either no witnesses, or said witnessed having been swiftly silenced.

The rumors and reputation I’d crafted so well had been enough to sustain my position at the top of the food chain in Hexwood.

But, much more importantly, it had halted my father in his tracks many a time.

The moment I’d left the proverbial family home and gone out on my own, I’d begun crafting that reputation, learning well how to blend reality seamlessly with smoke and mirrors.

As such, he didn’t know what he was dealing with and Carson Monroe didn’t like unknowns. And acting on unknowns was a whole other thing.

It was part of the reason he’d left me be here in Hexwood.

Right up until Aurora had come into the picture.

His obsession with her, which I now knew the roots of, had transcended a lot.

It made it more dangerous than ever, but it was also something I could use, that I might even be able to go as far as to class as a weakness and an in against him.

The same went for Lance.

But the problem was, I wasn’t above it either.

It was fast turning out to be a convoluted shitshow.

It was also a catch-22 situation, because if she hadn’t come into my life and if I hadn’t let her in to see my good side, she never would’ve come to trust me, and I wouldn’t have the intel on the dollhouses and be about to strike at the heart of the Head Infidels.

---