Page 27 of Ruthless Rebel

“Then I’ll speak to you soon,” he tosses back, turning on his heel and heading back towards his office without another word, as if hewere desperate to get away, leaving Josh and I alone.

Yet my focus remains on Lincoln, or I should say on the empty space he has just vacated as if my mind is willing him to come back, for what, I’m not sure, but with no such luck, I turn to find Josh Peters staring at me. Feeling a little like I was caught stealing, I turn without saying goodbye and head to the comfort of my own office, wishing I could just leave for the day, but as I slump down at my desk, my eyes flick over my calendar, finding Miss Banks’ name taking up my entire afternoon.

With a sigh I shoot Eliza an email to order me some lunch, and check not just Elle and Cassie’s trackers, but Marcus and Zack’s too, not surprised to find them all lit up together alongside, Helen, Arthur, Lily, and Logan’s, which should make me relax, but if anything it only increases my tension about being away from them. My eyes linger on Logan’s name longer than necessary, mildly wondering how he feels about being on the other side of the world to his boyfriend, but before that thought can take place my phone rings and I am forced to focus back on work.

The next hour is spent catching up on emails and barely eating my lunch, before all too soon Eliza is knocking on my door and leading in the second obstacle of my work day, Miss Sierra Banks.

Miss Banks smiles at Eliza in thanks, her history with her ex-husband not jading her as much as you’d imagine, as she storms her way into the room and takes a seat in front of my desk.

“Mr. Donovan, it’s good to see you again, thank you so much for changing things around for me on such short notice,” she beams, her eyes trailing over me in a way I have become accustomed to with women since I was fourteen years old.

Swallowing the bile that threatens to force its way up my throat, I slip my mask onto my face and smile back. “Not a problem at all, Miss Banks, I’m happy to help,” I lie, pushing awayfrom my desk to retrieve her file from the cabinet that sits in the corner of my office.

“Your assistant said you are heading on vacation next week?” She questions from behind me, and I nod as I rifle through the drawer looking for what I need.

“Yes, I am attending a friend’s wedding which is taking me out of town for the week,” I reply mindlessly, snatching up what I need, and heading back to my desk.

“I wish I was escaping out of town, especially given my current situation,” she sighs sadly, and I can’t say I blame her, being stalked by someone you once loved must be a tough pill to swallow, yet she takes it in stride.

She reminds me of Elle in a way, fierce and still full of fire, but if you look close enough, you can see the darkness in her stare that circumstances have caused her. It makes me want to make her ex-husband pay, it makes me want to make every man that has ever hurt a woman pay, and for a moment my mind flashes to Lincoln and how he spends his nights. Is this how he feels? Enraged and helpless, and just so sick of letting evil men win.

Sierra is still speaking, but my mind is lost to Blackwell until I catch just the tail end of her sentence. “I mean five murders, it’s just so scary.”

I shake my thoughts away as I force myself to focus back on her. “Murders? What murders?”

Her sad smile softens. “Oh my, didn’t you hear? Five men have been killed, slaughtered really, and the police think we might have a serial killer on our hands.” She reaches into her bag pulling out a newspaper before handing it over my desk for me to read.

My eyes scan the page quickly, the words sending anger through my veins, as I read about the five scumbags, all with a criminal background against women who have been erased from the earth. It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s happened to them, just the inside knowledge of a Rebel with a vendetta.

How the fuck could he be so stupid?

We know better than to leave a trail of crimes behind for anyone to find, or at least I thought we did, but as I stare down at the article I can’t help but feel stupid for thinking he could handle his so-called bullshit mission.

With Sierra’s eyes still burning into me as she watches me take in the words on the page, I have to push down my rage and shake my head softly. “How unfortunate,” I grit out, folding the newspaper and passing it back over to her.

“I know, I mean what kind of monster could do such hideous things to another human being?” She replies, sadness coating her entire being, but her words have that anger flickering inside of me once more.

“Well they weren’t exactly innocent, and monsters aren’t born, they are made, so maybe the person who is doing this was raised by someone even worse,” I snap back, my usual polished persona I save for clients slipping ever so slightly.

A flicker of something flashes in her eyes, but it’s gone quicker than it came as she smiles sadly, “Oh I know all about monsters, Mr. Donovan, it’s why I’m here after all.”

It’s that sad smile, and those eyes swimming with memories of darkness, that have me scaling back my anger and focusing back on the work at hand. I apologize quietly, before pulling out her file and showing her some of the things I uncovered about her ex-husband and his movements. We go over the places he has followed her to and how, and some precautions and actions to take to ensure we can bring this before a judge and get him criminally charged with stalking.

The meeting lasts almost two hours, bleeding into the late afternoon, and the entire time my anger remains simmering just below the surface, counting the seconds until she leaves. So much so that the moment she exits the building, I am already turning and storming towards Lincoln’s office.

When I blaze through his door he startles slightly behind his desk, as the door ricochets off the wall and slams itself shut again, closing us inside. Not that I’d care if we had an audience for this, I already gave him a warning a couple of months ago, but clearly he didn’t listen.

I walk around his desk, his chair turning toward me with every step I take, a look of confusion in his eyes until I am on him, slamming him to the floor and pinning him beneath me. “I warned you,” I seethe. “I fucking warned you, Blackwell, at Arthur’s party I told you to contain your rage, to stop what you were doing before it was too late, but you didn’t listen, did you? I thought you were better than this, smarter than this, and I definitely thought you were more adept at covering your tracks.”

I’m panting by the time I have finished speaking, and Lincoln’s eyes are wild with an emotion I can’t quite put my finger on as he smirks, “Well as much as I love the compliments and being pinned beneath you, Dark Prince, do you care to elaborate as to what the fuck you are talking about?”

Pushing off him, I scramble back to my feet and lean down to his computer, tapping away until the news article appears on his screen. I feel his presence behind me, as I snatch the monitor pushing it towards him. “I’m talking about this,” I snap, but his focus is already off me and on the screen, his eyes rapidly scanning the words in both confusion and wonder.

I watch as he reads the entirety of the article as if he is committing it to memory, before he straightens back to his full height beside me and shifts his gaze back to mine. “You think I killed them?”

A scoff leaves me before I can stop it. “Do you expect me to believe you didn’t? Five men consisting of abusers and rapists, Lincoln, are you really going to stand there and lie to me?”

This time it’s him pinning me, his desk pressing into the back of me as his body crowds into my space and he curses darkly, “I might be a vicious and evil monster, a murderer, but I have never once fucking lied to you, Asher.”

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