Page 306 of The Trouble With Bad Boys

“Get rid of them. Now.”

“So demanding. Don’t you want to know what they were?”

“It doesn’t matter because you’re mine.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re twenty years older than me, Kain.”

“But I don’t look it.” Arrogance gleamed in his eyes.

I laughed. “You look like you’re in your mid-thirties. So handsome.” I patted his cheek. “Still, I wondered if we would get along. You’ve seen more of the world than I have. I feared we might not carry on an interesting conversation. I thought after one date, you might want some?—”

He kissed me and drew back. “Stop talking like that. I want you. No one else. We’re having a fabulous conversation. I wouldn’t care if you were twenty years younger or twenty years older. You make my heart race, and you turn me on. All I want to do is keep you safe. That’s what matters to me.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Dinner again tomorrow? I’ll show you how dangerous I can be in the kitchen. Pass the invitation along to your grandfather as well. But I already know what he’s going to say.”

I admired self-confidence in people. But in Kain, it glowed like the sun.

Elation soared in me. “I’ll bring dessert this time.”

Seven

KAIN

“I can’t believe there’s another body,” Godfrey said while staring at the news on the TV screen in my office. “People are calling him the Bleeding Heart Killer.”

“It’s a copycat with a twist,” I said, looking at the image on my phone.

Detective Sean McNally showed me the image because he knew about my past and the similarities of this serial killer to Victor Hawthorne, the psycho who ran a successful business trading human organs while imprisoning kids and forcing them to help him carry out his sick crimes. These details weren’t released to the public.

“Bleeding Heart is trying to scare people.”

“Or send someone a message.” I met Godfrey’s eyes.

“What are you thinking?”

“Maybe Bleeding Heart is trying to frighten people by using Hawthorne’s methods. It can’t be Hawthorne, he’s dead. Bleeding Heart is probably a former follower.” My lips pursed as the image of the explosion resurfaced in my mind.

“Fuck.” Godfrey crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in the chair. “Hawthorne probably had a lot of followers. It’s been quiet all these years. Why now?”

“We can’t predict what a psycho does.”

I stared at the ink on my arm, which captured the underground map of the bunker and the locations of the hidden traps around his cabin and the surrounding vicinity. I’d memorized it every time he sent me out. There were so many tunnels in and out of that place.

“What if he had another place we didn’t know about?” Godfrey asked. What if his followers are finishing what he started?

“Then we do what’s necessary.”

“We fucking kill them,” Godfrey said casually, sounding like a mafia boss. Though my friend was a billionaire running a successful jewelry empire, he could wield power and mayhem just like a crime lord.

All my boys could.

Our past had hardened us, making us men who walked between the lines of right and wrong. The past had given us a solid foundation of what darkness could be. We could navigate that terrifying terrain better than most.

“Right now it’s just a hypothesis,” I said. “Just be careful.”

“I’ll have someone look into Bleeding Heart. See what I can find.” Godfrey’s jaw tightened. “We’ve worked hard to build a life. No one is coming at us. These fuckers want to play. We’ll play.”

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