Page 1 of Along for the Ride

Prologue

Gentry

Itrudge toward my front door with blood-covered hands and the whisper of a headache behind my bloodshot eyes. I’m exhausted after this hit, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for a week. This one was a real fighter.

When I get to the door, I stop at the unlocked knob and my breath catches. In my field of employment, you can’t help but worry about bringing your work home. Not figuratively, but literally. Eye for an eye. Life for a life.

I don’t have kids to worry about, but I have a wife that I care for at least a little. If she died in a car accident, I’d be a bit sad—I like her enough to possibly even miss her—but if she dies because of a revenge hit, I’d feel fucking guilty.

I draw my gun, wrapping my fingers around the grip as I push open the door. Muffled sounds penetrate the silence, and my mind shifts from murder to torture. If someone is in there torturing what belongs to me, they’ll get the same in return. I raise the gun and step from the dark living room. The bright fluorescent lights above the kitchen reveal something far worse than someone torturing my wife.

She’s bent over the kitchen table, a man standing behind her and thrusting into her.

Worse?

The man thrusting behind her is my fucking brother.

It’s almost like watching myself fucking my wife. If I was a few inches shorter with a lot less muscle, that is. We share the same dark hair, dark eyes, and thirst for blood. We’ve been partners in the business for years, and while he’s always had a screw loose, he’s been the only person I could trust with my life.

Until now.

A blaze of red sweeps across my eyes. Never have I seen such a hue. It heats the blood in my veins until I feel like I’m burning. My focus is less on the hard, rhythmic thrusts of Karson’s hips and more on the loose moan that leaves her lips. A sound I haven’t heard in quite some time.

I holster my gun before I make a loud fucking mistake.

My shadow sweeps over them as I take a step forward, and Karson’s eyes widen in surprise. He pulls out of my wife, forcing her forward when his hand leaves her chest.

“G!” he yells. “It’s not what it looks like!” He looks down at his dick and zips up his pants. “Well, it is, but it’s not what you think!” His tightening throat struggles to push the words through his quivering vocal cords because he knows I’m a fraction of a second away from blowing his head off.

“Honey,” my wife says as she pulls her dress down and reaches out for me.

“Fucking don’t,” I snarl, pushing her to the ground. She hits the tile floor with a squeal and smacks against the cabinets. I throw Karson against the wall, the shelf of spices falling and crashing to my feet. “My wife, Karson? Really?” I lean my weight into him, cutting his oxygen off as my hands wrap around his neck. I envision killing him in twenty different ways, each one more painful than the last.

“Wait, let me explain!” he chokes out as his hand wraps around my wrist. He gasps in front of me. I consider letting him, but what could he possibly say? What could his fucking excuse possibly be? Something darkens his eyes, and I loosen my grip. “She’s cheating on you!”

“Clearly,” I snap. What a bright observation.

Karson coughs. “No! Well, yes. But I mean before me.”

“Explain what the fuck you’re talking about, and do it before I lose my fucking temper more than I already have.”

“Don’t listen to him!” my wife yells from the floor.

“Fuck you,” I say toward her. I turn my attention back to my brother. He better have a really good excuse or I’m burying them both in some shallow grave somewhere.

“Paulina has been fucking around on you for months. I was here for one thing.” He lifts his shirt to expose his favorite blade on his hip. “To kill her for you.”

“Did you trip and fall into her, dick first? What part of killing her involved doing this?” I motion between them with the gun. Paulina lets out a squeal and covers her cheating fucking face. “Do you even have proof that she was cheating, Karson? Do you?”

My eyes narrow on him. The one thing he came for didn’t involve bending my wife over my goddamn kitchen table. I don’t believe him anyway. Karson will say anything to save his own ass. I tighten my grip on his neck until his face reddens above my grasp. He reaches for his knife, and I let him go long enough to rip it away and shove it down the back of my pants.

“I thought it would be fun to slit her throat while I was fucking her. I swear it was just meant to be payback, Gentry! If you don’t believe me, look at her phone!” he pants.

I release him and turn toward the counter. My wife crawls to her knees and leaps for the device, but my arm swings back and rockets toward her face before she can reach it. Maybe she has something to hide after all.

I scroll through her phone, looking through her text messages first. My jaw muscles tighten into writhing knots with each lewd message I read. With each picture exchanged. Nights memorialized in graphic detail. There are even exchanges between her and Karson. In his last message, he tells her he’s going to come by and “take care” of her. Maybe he meant to kill her, but he didn’t have to fuck her first.

White-hot rage fills me, and I draw his knife from behind me and lift Paulina by her hair.

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