Page 3 of Jericho

Damien kicks my legs out from under me before I have a chance to lower to them. It takes away the chance for me to showloyalty to the man and removes any and all goodwill it might've created.

"He's too damn pretty. I think that's what's wrong here," Ivan mutters, shaking his head with a snarl curling up one side of his mouth. "Let's fix that."

As if they're speaking another language only they understand, Damien pulls out a knife. Before I can argue or beg, he slices the knife down the left side of my face. I scream out in pain as blood fills my vision.

I can't recall a single moment in my life that I've ever felt such searing pain.

My throat clogs with the need to cry, something I can't recall needing since I was a child.

I look up, locking my eyes on Aspen, wanting to beg her to defend me, to proclaim her love. But despite the tears dripping from her eyes and falling on her shoes, she doesn'teven look up at me.

"I want him dead," Ivan says. "Get him the fuck out of here."

She doesn't care enough to look at me one last time after her father's declaration. As Damien drags me from the room to my death, I realize that I was her pawn all along. Maybe she has done this before, making someone fall in love with her just to get attention from her dad.

I think I'll love her, hate her, and feel betrayed by her even in death.

Chapter 1

Jericho

"Did you see her?" Jersey asks as my feet hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Who?" I ask as I slip past him on a mission for coffee.

"The woman who Ace brought home," he answers. "Can you believe it? The man was ready to eat Hemlock alive for Zara and now he brought someone back here."

"Leave that man alone. Don't you think he deserves happiness?" I grumble.

I don't like to speak often, much less sit around and fucking gossip about what other people are doing. Talk to me about a case, but whispering about what other people are doing in their personal lives, makes me want to rejoin ICE and spend months in solitude.

"She's pretty upset with everything that happened," he says.

"Wouldn't you be if you went through the shit that woman has over these last couple of weeks?"

He considers this for a moment. If I wasn't looking right at him, I might've missed the way darkness and shadows settle into his eyes.

"You good?" I ask when it's clear his mind went somewhere else for a moment.

"I'm good. Did you hear about Ivan Reese?"

I stop dead in my tracks, the scar running down my left cheek seeming to tingle with just the mention of the man's name.

"What about him?" I ask.

I'm sure Jersey knows about my time with the Reese organization. He was also a part of ICE until the Gatlinburg, Tennessee chapter of the Cerberus MC was created.Ivan Reese was the focus of my first field case as an ICE agent, and I seriously fucked that one up. It left me with the daily reminder I see every morning in the mirror that getting tangled up with people while working a case could cost me my life. Damien Gaines didn't kill me that day like he was ordered. He insisted that I watch from the shadows as he got everything I ever wanted before dumping me on a back road.

The agency wouldn't let me go after him for what he did to me because the case they were working on, trying to take down the guns and drugs, was more important. I almost lost my life and my job that day. I've spent the last eight years working hard to prove it was a rookie mistake, and I could be a good agent.

That is until the opportunity with Cerberus came a few months ago. I peaced out of ICE so fast I left their heads spinning. I was tired of the oversight, politics, and bureaucracy. Cerberus seems like it's going to be a much better fit for me.

"He's dead," Jersey says, causing a rush of emotions and memories to hit me all at once.

I stare at him. Ivan Reese was always considered the head of the snake. He was the boss of a major crime family in Boston, and he ran his organization with a steel fist. I spent months on the inside and never learned enough to take him down. My superiors blame my lack of intel on getting mixed up with Aspen Reese. Although I argued it at the time, there's a good chance she had a lot to do with my inability to see the full picture because it might've meant she went down with her father.

"Heart attack?"

Jersey shakes his head, his smile widening as if he's gearing up to tell a tale more fitting for around a campfire than one blocking the coffee pot.

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