Page 45 of Ruthless Legacy

“Boyd,” Archer sneers, “he’s fucking useless. Scarlet, if anything happens like this again, you’ll ring me, you hear me?”

“Right,” I snigger, “because you three have given me good reason to trust you. You’ve tried to alienate me since I arrived. Verity is my only friend, and no one will talk to me after you sent out the orders that I was to be ostracised. Which is it, Archer? Am I one of you or am I the enemy? You can’t expect me to trust you when everything you do tells me to do the opposite.”

Archer releases a breath and nods his head. “You’re right. We’ve given you no reason to trust us, but you are an Ace now and we always protect our own. Promise me, Scarlet, you’ll call next time.”

“I’ll call, but it doesn’t mean I like or trust you, Archer Savage.”

He grins a grin of pure wickedness and I’m not going to lie, it sends my heart into a gallop. “You don’t have to like me to trust me.”

What he does next comes as a complete shock. He grabs me by the back of my neck and pulls my lips against his. He kisses me like he wants to devour me until I’m nothing but dust. His kiss lights me up inside and I respond, pressing myself closer to him. The kiss is frenzied. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. No boy has ever made me feel the things that Archer does, and it scares the ever-loving shit out of me.

I yank my lips away from his and before I can stop myself, my hand makes contact with his cheek, the sound ringing through the empty classroom.

“You fucking kissed me,” I hiss, trying to steady my erratic breathing.

He rubs at his cheek, his eyes lit with fire. “Slap me again, Scarlet, and I’ll bend you over my knee and smack that pert little arse of yours until it’s red raw.”

“Just try it,” I spit. I grab my bag and storm from the classroom, right into the hard bodies of Seb and Rafe. “Get out my fucking way, arseholes,” I snipe as I shoulder my way between them and storm off down the corridor. I’m going the wrong way for class, but so long as I put distance between myself and Savage, I don’t really care.

I find the nearest toilets and I lean my hands on the basin, taking in my flushed cheeks. I’m rocking that just been kissed look. I turn on the tap and splash my face with cold water. I can’t let him get to me. I can’t trust him. The only person I can trust in this world is my brother. Archer looked shocked by the photo though, but maybe he’s just a talented actor. But, if it wasn’t him or any of his little clubs, then that means I have another enemy out there.

Archer

I stalk out of the classroom after Scarlet, but she’s halfway down the corridor. Her hips swaying as she walks, anger radiating from her. I hadn’t planned on kissing her, but she makes me lose my senses when she’s in front of me, being all sassy and disobedient.

“What did you do to upset Little Red this time?” Seb asks with a wry grin. His eyes follow mine and lock on her retreating figure. “You know she’d be easier to control if we publicly claimed her.”

“Check your phone,” I tell him. “Scarlet had a visitor last night. Someone is fucking with her and I’m the only one allowed to fuck with her.”

Seb pulls out his phone, and he whistles when he sees the photo. Rafe leans over his shoulder to get a look.

“Is that blood?”

I nod. “Her room was like this when I dropped her off last night. This hasn’t come from us, so who else might not want her around?”

Seb shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe the grandfather’s woman. I mean, Little Red and her brother are his heirs now.”

I frown. He has a point. Maybe she has hopes to marry Wilbur and produce an heir of her own, but Scarlet and her brother’s arrival could ruin things for her.

“What do we have on her?”

“I’ll pull the file we have on Alexis. There’s also her son. Silver seems to think she needs to be careful around him.”

I nod. It looks like I need to have a word with Silver and find out what he knows. “We need to have eyes on her all the time. Send out the order. They report anything back to us.”

Rafe nods his head and pulls out his phone to send out the message to all our Clubs. The benefit of having Clubs is that they answer to the call and don’t ask any questions. “You know whoever it is might back off if we brought her in. We need to publicly declare her an Ace at some point. No one would dare mess with her then.”

This isn’t what I had planned for her. When she first arrived, I wanted her to feel alone here. I wanted her to hate it here, so much so that she would wish she had never set foot in Hawk Bay. My mind flits back to that kiss. Fuck. Her lips. She tastes like heaven and hell. I’ve never felt more out of control than I do when my lips are tasting hers.

“Okay, we bring her in.”

Seb cocks a brow. “How far are we bringing her in? What about your original plan?”

“I can still bring her in and destroy her when I’m ready, but no one fucks with something that belongs to me,” I growl as we walk towards class.

“I don’t know, man. She fits with us. She’s not afraid of violence. In fact, I think she craves it. She’s loyal. She’d die for that brother of hers. Little Red is everything an Ace should be.”

“She is.” He’s right. “But her father destroyed my family, and I can’t let that go unpunished. Scarlet will pay for the sins of her family.”

“Talking about the Alderman’s. Our contact has the info we requested on Chester,” Rafe tells me. He beckons us back into the empty classroom and we both follow him in. Rafe perches on the edge of a desk. “Chester was involved in the bullying of a girl at school that led to her suicide. Wilbur pulled him out of the school, deciding he needed to keep a closer eye on him.”

“Fuck,” Seb exclaims. “The bullying must have been bad for her to end things.”

“We monitor him,” I order. “I don’t trust the cocky shit or the way he looks at Scarlet.”

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