Omens (The Triad 3)

SCARLET

“I’d like to introduce you all to my boyfriends!” I exclaimed to my family members who were sitting quietly on the sofa.

“Boyfriends?” Tristan asked, the humor clear in his voice.

“I’m not really sure what else to call you,” I told him, genuinely trying to think if there would be a better term of endearment. “Dick daddies?”

Seb burst out laughing, doubling over and eventually falling back on his ass to sit on the ground.

“Better than cinnamon roll,” he said with a wink.

“Family, dick daddies. Dick daddies, my fucking family.” I gestured between the two groups of people. One my blood relatives, and the other my adopted family.

“Nice to meet you,” Elliot said sarcastically. “Scarlet, care to fill us in on what happened here?”

“One measly fucking leak,” Motshan groaned from behind me. I turned around to see him sitting there with his shirt off and Niamh cleaning the wound on his side. He had been lucky. A single shot, in and out. Missed anything of importance on its way out.

“He’s been dealt with,” Niamh said.

“And these six lucky people are the family members who were in the house the night of my birthday.” I turned my attention back to the people sitting on the couch. “My cousin Tommy, my uncle Adrian, my other cousin Daniel, one of my father’s friends Marius, one of the guards Tobias, and the woman I used to call a nanny, but her name is Alina.”

A whimper escaped from Alina’s mouth, and I cocked my head towards her. Walking over to her, I pulled the gag from her between her lips and smiled down at her. I had killed a lot of people in the last hour, and I wasn’t done yet. I was still on a high, and I couldn’t wait to see her eyes turn lifeless right in front of me.

“Something to say, Alina?” I asked her, my voice wavering with the raw adrenaline running through my body.

“I didn’t—” she stuttered, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to let it happen,” she cried, her chest beginning to heave with sobs. “I didn’t want to let them kill you. They threatened Jacoby, Scarlet.” Her voice cracked as she said her son’s name.

“I think a lot of people would probably agree with you that that was a perfectly acceptable excuse,” I said, squatting down so that I could be at eye level. “But I tend to not be on the side of someone that doesn’t have my best interest at heart.”

“Elliot, babe,” I said, turning towards my favorite broody boyfriend. “Do you have a gun I could borrow? Mine are all out of bullets, I’m afraid.”

Alina began to pray as Elliot smiled and lifted his shirt, showing off his pretty muscles as he unclipped a pistol from his chest and handed it over. When our hands met, his fingers grabbed mine, and he looked me in the eyes with an intensity I hadn’t seen from him before.

“Be sure you want to do this,” he said, his voice quiet but serious. He leaned in so that his mouth was almost flush with my ear, his lips brushing hot against my flesh. “Killing people who you once thought of as family is a lot different than killing those you never had a connection with in the first place. You’re going to have to shut off a part of you that you may not get back.”

He pulled back, and I let his words sink in. He was right, and I could tell from the sincerity in his voice and the look in his eyes that what he was saying, he was saying from experience. One day, I’d like to hear that story. The story of how he became the man he was.

But in that moment, I knew what needed to be done.

“That part of me was shut off a long time ago,” I told him, taking the gun from his hand and making my way back over to Alina.

“We’ll make sure Jacoby is well looked after,” I told her, pressing the barrel of the gun to her forehead. She continued to pray in Romanian. “Right, Motshan?”

He looked up and nodded, glancing from Alina and then back to me.

“Iti promit.” I promise.

Alina looked at him, nodded, and then looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“Ma rog sa-L gase?ti pe Dumnezeu.” I pray you find God.

I laughed.

“Eu sunt Dumnezeu.” I am God.

I pulled the trigger, and blood sprayed as her head fell back, her body slumping over the back of the sofa. The other five men that sat next to her seemed surprised.

“You all seem shocked,” I said, pulling the gags from their mouths.

Uncle Adrian spit at my feet.

“Dirty bitch.”

“That’s not very nice, Uncle Adrian. You just spat on Sebastian’s favorite pair of boots.”

“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” Seb asked from where he was still sitting on the floor.

“They were your favorite,” I said, pretending like I was thinking real hard on whether or not to let him handle Adrian. “Permission granted.”

He stood and sauntered over to me, his jeans slung low and his T-shirt clinging to his hard torso. Fuck, he looked good. I had always had a thing for men in jeans and bare feet. Not that I was a feet girl, but there was just something sexy and relaxed about that look.

He kissed me on the cheek and then crouched next to Uncle Adrian, flipping his switchblade open and staring at the dried blood there from his earlier kills. I was wet just watching him. The anticipation of getting to watch him kill again was the strongest aphrodisiac.