Page 3 of Property of Chaos

Got to be tourists. Anyone who lives here knows the road leads nowhere, ending shortly before the jagged riverbank cuts down to the thin trickle that feeds into the tributary.

I lift my hand with the mail to shield my eyes as the riders tear past, solid men kitted out all in black on an eighty-five degree day.Makes sense—not.The document catches inthe breeze they create, pulling from my fingers as the bikes disappear past my property toward the river end of the rural road.

“Shit!” I spin on my heel and scramble after the mail, collecting one page before trapping the second beneath my shoe in the grass on the roadside.

My joy at recovering the pages diminishes with a wash of cold sweat.The fuck?My gaze falls on the bold words at the top of the page.YOU DID THIS.

My hands shake, heart nearing critical speeds as I lift the second page and scan the details listed in perfectly spaced segments down the page.

No.Absolutely no fucking way am I believing this bullshit. I would have known.Wouldn’t I?

Shit.I may have fucking escaped the devil’s hold, but I sure never made it out of hell.

It’s a trap.It’s got to be. Nothing more than a means to guilting me into returning. No fucking way would Ieveragree to walk my fucking ass back into purgatory, no matter the consequence for me or anyone else.

As long as that man lives, I don’t.

He took enough from me the first nineteen years of my life. He doesn’t get this too.

TWO

CHAOS

Pretty little thing.I eye the girl in my mirror as she scrambles to recover papers from the roadside until the leather-clad shoulder of my VP rudely cuts off my vision. Jinx swerves to avoid a pothole in the dusty road, cursing through the intercom.

“This whole idea is bullshit.”

Fang chuckles, a reverberation in my left ear. “You can’t handle change, is all.”

“Shouldn’t need to change, is what I’m saying.” A soft grunt precedes another, “Fuckin’ shit road.”

“Nothin’ a tip-truck and a roller can’t fix.” I glance in my mirror again, the woman a mere slash against the green scenery.Don’t need the distraction anyway.

Engines growl as our trio slows for the signposted property, the guys dropping back to let me lead us single-file up the long driveway. We should have been here half an hour ago, but Fang figured he had time for a quick dive into Reno’s pussy before we left, not calculating the half hour he’d need to spend afterward hearing her bitch about how long it’s taking to make her his old lady.

Told the fuckhead he should cut her loose before she trapped him into a moral dilemma, but he didn’t listen. And now he has a baby momma with a chip the size of fucking Mexico on her shoulder and a hellion toddler who looks exactly like her daddy.

“Looks like the president of your fan club made it on time.” Fang rumbles another laugh as we circle around the back of the sleek sports car parked in the middle of the yard.

“Fuck up.” I reach up and hold the buttons to switch my headset off.

Marianna Gleeson. Or the Mariana Trench, as she’s known within the club.

Steer too close to her honey-trap curves, and she’ll have you drowning in the dark as the pressure cracks your bones and forces blood from your eyes and nose.

There’s a reason why the bitch took up real estate when we left school.

“Hey, boys.” She saunters over as we kill the engines and remove our helmets. “You ready to take a look at your new home?”

I eye the form-fitting dress that molds to her pornstar body, neck to calf. Off-white. As though she’s set to marry the next geriatric billionaire that she happens across at the drop of a hat. “How’s Doug?”

Her nose crinkles at her husband’s name, fingers moving to twist her flashy diamond wedding ring as she answers. “Alive.”

At age twenty, she married the fifty-seven-year-old mayor in a union that made Anna Nicole-Smith look like a fucking nun. Rumors were the old fuck had years at most to live after a particularly aggressive tumor had left him with a rather unsightly growth off his ribcage. Yet, here we are, ten years later, and the smug prick is still kicking.

Must eat her fucking alive, watching the known pervert waste his fortune on hookers and horses.

“Anyway.” She shakes her head as though clearing the nightmares and turns for her Jaguar. “Let me get the details before we go inside.” Bitch opens the driver’s door and leans across the seat to retrieve a folder on the opposite side of the vehicle.

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