Lawless Kingdom (Reign & Ruin 1)

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“What do you think?” Brianna retorted softly.

“He’s going to die,” I stated factually.

“Naturally. It was always going to come to this, so don’t blame yourself. He’s not worth your guilt. We’ve got a lot of shit people in our world, but he ranks higher in my book,” Brianna soothed, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I stepped out of her reach, capping my emotions before they could erupt.

I walked away, leaving them to do whatever it was they were gonna do. I couldn’t save Dax even if I wanted to, and my self-preservation demanded I remove myself from the room before I did something I couldn’t undo.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JUDAS

Emotional responses weren’t common for us.

We didn’t break down when we had every reason to, and we didn’t react to feelings. If we did that, we wouldn’t last long where we came from. People like us sniffed out weakness like sharks could blood in water. All emotion needed to be concealed until you were alone.

That’s when you broke. If you needed to break. I did that a few times when I realized my sister had been sold off into an industry very few returned from.

I’d expected more from Rhiannon. She was new to all this, but then I’d only ever seen her close to tears once, and they hadn’t fallen.

Maybe she was doing what so many of us snuck off to do right then. I would give her a moment but that was all.

“Grab me a towel,” I directed Owen.

“You still using the knife?” Bri asked, smoothing out the plastic in front of Dax.

“That’s my insurance policy. Once we leave Crudele, if Rhiannon ever changes her mind, that’s my ace of spades.”

Bri frowned but kept her mouth shut.

“You shooting or holding?” Gavin asked.

“You can shoot.” I caught the thick white towel Owen tossed through the air. I walked up to Dax and studied his stiff frame. I felt nothing for him but anger for allowing him to be close to us.

He was a betrayer in the end. He’d been the only person who knew where Maisie was and never spoke up. The fucking Clermonts took her away and killed the whole operation two and a half years ago.

They went damn near bankrupt in the process. Or so we thought.

Gavin approached with a silenced pistol in one hand and put a point-blank shot in the back of Dax’s head. I carefully wrapped a towel around the bullet wound to prevent too much of his insides from spilling.

As quickly as possible, Bri used the knife Rhiannon had grabbed to stab him in the heart to minimize excessive bleeding.

Owen came in next, moving the body from the chair and depositing it in a bathtub where it could bleed out as much as it was going to near a drain. He was our trained butcher and would be the one to quickly and efficiently dismember the body.

After that it was simple logistics. Dax’s parts would be packed in plastic and stuffed in cardboard boxes. The boxes would be discarded by the same mules that cleaned up Erin Moore’s limbs and the burnt cadaver Marcus had dumped on our property.

“We got the rest,” Bri said, dropping the bloody knife into a plastic bag. “I’ll get this locked up for safe keeping.”

I nodded and left them to it, going to find Rhiannon exactly where I expected her to be.

She was back in my room, lying across my bed on her stomach, ankles crossed. Her perfect ass was slightly exposed, hanging out the bottom of my T-shirt. She wasn’t crying—thank fuck. She was staring at the wall with varying emotions written across her face.

“Is he gone?” she asked, her voice soft.

“He is,” I confirmed, lifting my shirt over my head.

“Good.”

I was a little taken aback by the relief in her voice. “You sound okay with that.”

“Because I am,” she replied, a thousand different meanings in those three words. I wouldn’t force her to talk or try and play therapist. That wasn’t my thing.

I’d be here to distract her from it. Make it all better for her until the next time I had to break another piece of her reality. And the next.

She rolled over, the shirt rising in the process, exposing every fucking thing below her waist. I lifted a brow and waited for her to tell me what she wanted.

I shouldn’t have been thinking about being balls deep inside her pussy after a traumatic experience. I knew she was thinking the same thing. It’s what made us fit. Not the fucking, though she was the best goddamn thing to ever be wrapped around my dick. We were anomalies, atypical sick fucks who didn’t fit in with societal norms.

Our relationship wouldn’t ever fit in a perfect box. I suspected it would always be a level of love-hate between us, me pushing and pushing, her trying not to bend. We hadn’t even truly begun yet. I had big plans for Rhia and her family.