Page 14 of Vengeful Valentine

Hawk had nothing left to lose. He didn’t care if they were caught for this crime.

“You two leave. You promised I could be first,” Ace grunted.

The words wobbled as they circulated the room before Hawk truly heard them. He turned away from the man that was now secured to the recliner and took in the sight before him.

Ashmine was strapped to the operation table, Ace standing over her, a knife in his hand.

Except…something didn’t feel right.

“Leave her alive until we have our fill too,” Silas commanded before grabbing Hawk by the wrist and dragging him outside.

Chapter 7

Ace

Two Years Ago

Ace had been looking everywhere for Ashmine. She had been disappearing more and more, and it was starting to piss him off. He had finally gone to the last place he expected her to be.

Outside William’s home. It was a cabin about a mile away from their own.

Except…why were her shoes outside the front door…

“Ace, can you come in here please.” William’s voice cut through his confusion.

“No! Leave him out of this! You promised!” Ashmine screeched.

Ace surged through the door without further delay, his uncertainty morphing to concern.

“What the fuck is this?” Ace growled, glancing around the room.

William rested in a leather arm chair in his living room, a small table to his right with a bouquet of dark purplish blue wildflowers that Ace recognized from outside his foster home.

But something tugged his attention from that curious fact.

Ashmine on her knees in front of William.

“I’m teaching her to be a proper woman. She’s eighteen now, she needs guidance.” William was nearing eighty, his skin discolored, wrinkles etching deep grooves into his face. “I made her a promise. If she’s good. If she entertains me. Then when I die, I will leave everything to the four of you.”

Ace’s lungs constricted.

What had William done to Ashmine? How didn’t we notice?

“Ace, it’s nothing. I just cook for him and keep him company. Do as he asks. Please,leave. Don’t tell the others, they wouldn’t understand,” Ashmine bit out, her head bowed to the ground.

Ace didn’t like this. This wasn’t right.

William curled his lips in the ghost of a smile, it only served to deepen the canyons on his face. “Oh, foolish girl, you think that’s all I wanted? No. I think I have something else in mind entirely. But after this, I’ll rewrite the will as promised.” William gestured to Ace. “You two are both eighteen now. I’ve taken care of you all for the last two years. Don’t you think you want to show me your appreciation?”

An evil gleam Ace hadn’t seen before flickered across William’s eyes.

This man had taken them in when they needed it most…had he just been biding his time?

“I was wondering when you would find us here. You are the prettiest of you boys after all.”

Ace still stood lamely at the living room’s entrance. His shock and unease had frozen him. “Ashmine, let’s go. We’re leaving.”

“Where will you go? You are all penniless and barely legal adults. I pay for Silas’s college classes, for your homes, anythingthat you could possibly need. And besides all that, who would house a bunch of degenerates that stole from me and hurt me in the middle of the night?” William let out a sob. “Officer, I opened my home, and they beat me for it.”

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