Page 1 of Ruthless Reign

The wind rushing in through the open passenger side window of the Bronco was the only thing keeping the flames from engulfing me completely. I flexed my fist, pressing knuckles into my chin as I watched the pre-dawn landscape speed past in a blur of shadowed, muted color.

Finding Becca alive and unharmed at the safehouse was enough to soothe the inner beast, bank its coals, leaving it pacing somewhere in the hellish underbelly of my soul.

But that relief was already fading. How much longer could we expect to protect her—to protect any of them—with an unhinged psychopath like Séamas walking our streets?

Visions of Archer’s wife pounding on Dad’s chest fill my mind. Her angry, grief-stricken features so at odds with the blank, pale ones of her eight-year-old son as Dad told them that Archer wouldn’t be coming home. That she’d lost her husband. Her son lost his father.

My Dad lost his best friend.

It wasn’t until Ma pulled Archer’s wife away that she finally calmed enough to stop striking out, but Dad took every blow she wanted to give and then some. His face would bear the bruises of her assault for the next week or more.

I felt little for Archer’s loss aside from a bone-deep possessive rage that someone—an outsider—could take him from us. He was ours. Ours to protect. Ours to wield.

And now he was gone.

I flicked my gaze up to meet Becca’s in the rearview as Kaleb drove us silently through the Santa Clarita streets, past the Row, and down toward our house. Becca didn’t protest for once. Didn’t ask for us to take her back to her apartment.

“Are either of you going to tell me what happened tonight?” she asked, pressing her palms between her knees, her shoulders hitched high, no doubt sensing the tension in the Bronco.

I turned my attention back to the streets, scrutinizing every alley, every side street, every vacant window. Looking for prey.

Kaleb sighed beside me.

“He won,” he said after a moment. “The fucking bastard has us by the balls, Vixen.”

My upper lip curled back. “Not for fucking long,” I hissed so low I doubted Becca or my brother could hear me over the whistle of the wind filtering into the cabin.

“What do you mean ‘he won?’”

We’d gotten Becca out of there fast, not trusting the Irish madman not to blow the place despite our agreement. Ma and Dad had the others evacuate to their homes with a promise to our inner circle to have a meet tomorrow morning. Apparently everyone needed the time to process. To rest.

I’d disagreed, but Dad pulled his boss card and everyone folded to his will. Gone to hold their families extra tight tonight before the shitstorm of tomorrow.

“He had explosives at the safehouse,” Kaleb said, eyes fixed on the road ahead, hands tightening on the wheel.

Becca gasped.

“Said he’d blow the place if Dad didn’t bend the knee.”

“Oh my god.”

I heard the hitch in her voice, watched her face pale in the side mirror before I had to tear my gaze away from her fear-filled features. It only made me want to rip the head off the bastard even more, and right now I was about three seconds from tucking and rolling out of the Bronco to go find the bastard and gut him no matter how pointless the mission would be.

We’d only been looking for the Irish snake for nearly a month now, what the fuck made me think I’d find him in one night?

Anything would be better than sitting still.

Sitting here.

Having to watch my girl curl in on herself like she might crumple on a dime.

I wanted to tell her she was safe. That we’d never let anyone hurt her, but I wouldn’t make promises I couldn’t keep.

“Dad works for him, now,” Kaleb continued. “Twenty percent of our take on the 1st and 15th of the month.”

…over my dead body.

I scoffed to myself, rubbing a palm over my mouth as my jaw clenched hard.

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