Page 43 of Eden's Joker

“You abducted me?” she asks, but it’s also a statement. I nod anyway.

“You were just leading me on all this time,” she says and there’s no question in her voice just something that sounds a lot like pain. “It was all just a lie.”

I want to nod again, but somehow can’t.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because of what your daddy did to me,” I say and bring the chain to her neck.

She raises her hand and I’m afraid I’ll have to fight her to put the chain around her neck. But she doesn’t slap the chain away. She slaps me. Hard enough to make my eye water slightly.

“You fucking asshole! You’ll pay for this.”

I should slap her back, but it’s the last thing I want to do. So I just shake my head and begin wrapping the chain around her neck and her wrists. The way she doesn’t fight me makes me think maybe this is exactly what she wanted from me in the first place, but the hardlook in her eyes as I look at her again tells me I couldn’t be more wrong. I secure the chain with a padlock and use one end as a leash. The set up is making me hard. The steel in her eyes is too. Maybe she’ll be harder to break than I thought. Good. I love a challenge.

“No, sweetheart, you’ll be doing the paying.”

She gasps, her eyelids fluttering in what’s probably fear, and doesn’t speak again.

I led her out of the room and up the stairs. The compound is eerily quiet now that all the guys are gone. I smell fresh blood in the family room. It’s coming from the three traitor Devils that will now never sing their secrets again. I’d have kept them alive, but I always did hate rats.

Eden is walking docilely behind me, the sound of my breathing and the chain rattling once again the only sound I hear.

Until we reach the courtyard and Ruin leaps at me, murder in his eyes. But he stops dead as he sees Eden on a chain behind me.

“What the fuck is this?” he asks.

“This is my message to the Devils,” I say. “You tell Ice that I have his daughter. And that I’m taking her somewhere he’ll never find her.”

I command my men to ride before Ruin has time to fully process the message. But something in his gaze tells me he’s not surrendering yet.

The noise of all the bikes starting around us soundslike an avalanche crashing. I continue leading Eden to the van waiting for us.

“And what?” Ruin yells after me. “What’s your demand?”

I stop and grin at him over my shoulder. “You just tell Ice I have her and he’s never getting her back. That’s my message.”

I turn back, but not before I catch Ruin leaping towards me. He’s too quick, there’s nothing I can do, and I deserve the handcuff chain he now has wrapped around my neck. I should’ve anticipated this. It’s how it is with killers, which he certainly is. They’ll never stop until you kill them. And I’d do that in a heartbeat if I didn’t need him to bring that message to Ice.

I’m just about to tell my three guys who are all pointing their guns at him to let him live, when Eden’s firm voice rings out.

“It’s fine, Ruin,” she says. “Release him. I’ll go with him. No one has to die for me. This was my mistake.”

Ruin obeys, because he probably heard the same thing in her voice that I did. A command. Who knew my little lamb had such sharp teeth? Ruin releases me and I get her in the back of the van with Scorpio’s help, which I don’t need. And then we’re rolling.

“Your mistake, huh?” I ask her. “And I guess you think you’ll correct it by yourself.”

If her eyes were a knife, I’d be bleeding to death from the look she gives me. “I will.”

Regal like a queen. No sacrificial lamb anywhere in sight. I almost wish she had a chance against me.

But she doesn’t.

25

Eden

Tyler stayed in the uncomfortable back of the van with me for a long while. After promising I’ll correct the mistake of trusting him, I refused to speak to him. The bumpiness of the road was nearly unbearable at the start, but soon the road beneath the tires evened out and my nausea subsided. Not so the headache that started between my eyes when he woke me up and only got worse after everything that happened.

---