Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning

“Fucking spit it out,” Beast said.

“I hear you have a girl in your possession,” Rhys replied.

“And?”

“And Ekwensi is willing to sell us oil-rich land if we trade. The idea of an American wife appeals to him.”

“Unacceptable.” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he knew it. Unacceptable? No, it was a perfectly acceptable idea. In fact, it would solve the problem he and Rhys had been working on for the past five fucking months. It was a great idea.

Coughing, Beast looked down to the asphalt, then looked back to Rhys just in time to see him quirk a brow. Quickly he added, “What I mean is call The Institute. Get one of their women and trade her to him if an American is all he wants. The woman in my possession has already been sold.” The lie came quickly and with purpose. Frankie hadn’t been sold; in fact, because Beast had despoiled her she was pretty much worthless to them. He’d wasted her value and thrown them into debt. He didn’t bother thinking about what it meant to lie, though. He waved a hand flippantly, gesturing that the conversation was over.

Rhys still hadn’t moved. His hand gripped the hood of the car.

“What?” Annoyance singed Beast’s tongue like hot peppers, or maybe that was the fire starting inside of him.

“He wants a royal,” Rhys explained.

“Did you inform him that America doesn’t have any fucking royalty? Maybe you should point him in the direction of your motherland.” He hardly ever spoke to Rhys—or anyone—this way. His voice was edged and impulsive. There were many things the Beast was known for—cruelty, a callousness so severe it bordered on evil—but all of those things were begat from dispassion and apathy. He barely recognized the stirring in his gut, let alone knew what to do with it.

“Someone important,” Rhys continued, narrowing his eyes a bit. “A concubine of the Family might work. Even then, it’s a long shot. We’d have a better chance sending an actual Pavoni woman.” Rhys’s tone was even, collected and Beast wondered distantly why his own voice didn’t match. He was always calm and collected, always cool.

“I’ll think about it,” Beast said. He then looked pointedly from Rhys to Emilio, signaling their meeting was over. He didn’t usually end meetings early; he worked into his sleep. There was something happening inside him, though, something that made him fuck up business over a slave. He had to figure out what it was and destroy it. A fractured leader is no leader at all.

Rhys lifted his hands, dropping the subject and backed away. Emilio jumped up, suddenly interested.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Emilio sputtered. “But what about the governor? And the Wolves?” At the question, long, curling brown hair and crystal blue eyes flashed into Beast’s mind. Just as quickly, the image vanished and Beast looked back up at the warehouse, staring at the worn wooden front. He exhaled.

Fuck.

He was to meet his Wolves that night. He looked back up to the warehouse, thinking about the men waiting inside for him. The car kept running, its exhaust sending puffs of hot smoke into the cold air.

At last, Beast said, “Both can wait a day.”

“But—” Emilio started but Beast slammed the door shut. Emilio jumped back, a stunned look on his face. Beast afforded Emilio certain luxuries he didn’t with others, like probing, annoying questions. He needed Emilio happy and compliant until he was in place, but there were limits.

The car pulled away from the docks and the water shrunk in the distance. The sun was setting in a deep tangerine, the only color there’d been all day against the whitewashed winter day. It lit an orange streak of fire across the iron blue Hudson.

Beast sat back against the leather of the car, trying to quash Rhys’s words. The Pavonis might treat their women like shit, but they had a code: only they got to break the pottery. It wasn’t so much about chivalry as it was about property, a fact easily attested by the bruises ghosting beneath a veil of foundation on all Family women’s skin. Beast most certainly couldn’t take one of the other men’s wives or daughters and still expect to stay in charge. There were already those who viewed him as a usurper.

Selling Frankie was the best idea, Beast knew that. It would greatly improve his earnings and might actually allow him to step on the skulls of the assholes nipping at his heels. This was the second time he’d been given the opportunity to sell her and the second time he’d fucked it up.

When Beast got home, Nikolai stood in the hallway, eyes ever unflinching. In the boy’s hands was the Beast’s nightly dinner: a black coffee and an apple, complete with a knife for slicing. Beast shed his coat for him.

“I gave her breakfast,” Nikolai started with austere soldier-like reporting, as if noting what he saw on the battlefield, not in a bedroom. Nikolai took the Beast’s coat and he traded the item for his dinner. “And lunch as directed, Boss, but uh…” As Beast was walking away, Nikolai’s tone made him pause. He turned around to see what could possibly choke Nikolai up.

“But?” he asked.

“It ended up on the floor,” Nikolai replied swiftly.

“Did it?” he asked, but the question was rhetorical. “Maybe that’s where you should put the food from now on.”

“Yes, Boss.”

On his way back to the office, Beast passed by Frankie's room. Formerly a guest bedroom, he’d redecorated in the hours it had taken to acquire Frankie. He’d had a few options for where to house her before sending her to The Institute and while they’d been making the trek from New Jersey to New York, he’d considered them all. The most obvious was to place her with all the other women waiting in the storage boxes by the river, but that hadn’t sat right for some reason he didn’t wish to investigate.

He’d contemplated putting her in a hotel, and even booked a few, but still, he found himself hiring a decorator and getting the bedroom redone quickly and efficiently.

He paused, staring at the white wooden door. He should have sent her to the river, should have shut her in a box and then she would be at The Institute, out of his hair and not complicating his fucking life. He blinked then continued farther down until he passed his own door. He was nearly up the stairs and at his office, when he redoubled back. This time he found himself staring at his own door, because just beyond two inches of painted wood, Frankie slept in his bed.