Beast's Demands (Crude Hill High 3)

His body dripped blood. I’d already taken my blade to him, cut him up really bad.

I’d gotten a text alert while I’d been about to take care of his cock. Ashley came first. She’d arrived at her apartment for the evening. I got to watch her for a few short minutes. No sound. Just the way she toed off her shoes, tilted her neck left to right. She’d been struggling with a knot in her shoulders ever since she got to England.

I wanted to help her ease out the tension, to help her relax, but I was miles away. An ocean away.

Closing temptation, I pocketed my cell phone, moved toward the pool table, and clicked my tongue at the man on top. “This isn’t a good look for you.”

“What the fuck do you want? Huh? You want money? You can have it. I’ve got enough to go around.”

“This isn’t about the money, and I’m really disappointed you’d think that.” I ran the tip of my blade across his nipple. One of them was already gone, removed with the single swipe of my blade.

“It’s about the whore!”

I drew my knife back and slammed it into his gut, twisting the handle as I watched him scream.

“No one talks about her like that.”

Knight groaned. “I’m fucking dead anyway. I can say what I want.” He kept on coughing in between each word. I ignored him and looked at his body, thinking about what I could do to him. The kind of damage I wanted to inflict. Part of me wanted to keep him alive. To have him as my own personal toy to torture at will, but once this was taken care of, I had other business to attend to.

Ashley. She was my business.

“You think you can keep her safe? Men like us kill women like her,” Knight said.

I looked at him, and I knew. My grandfather destroyed women, as did my father, and I’d picked up the game because it was what I was meant to do. I’d fought to be different to the men who called me son and grandson, but I wasn’t. I was just like them.

Without another word, I thrust the knife into his neck and stood, watching the life ebb away.

Knight was a good-looking man. A competition for power.

Not anymore. He was useless. Lifeless. A dead waste of space.

And now, no longer my problem.

By the time the press learned of his demise, he’d have been lost in a house fire to which he set himself as he knew the past would catch up to him. The women who’d been used by him would get the chance to tell their story, and no one would care about the billionaire businessman who lost his life.

He was a monster. Killed by me, a beast.

I cleaned off the knife and took a step back. My men were already pouring gas around the building, preparing to start the blaze.

My cell phone beeped again, and I got the single text to say the news headline had started. The knowledge of what he had done would be seen far and wide.

I’d been playing this game in life according to my grandfather’s rules.

It was time to change it up. Time to be the man Ashley needed me to be.

Stepping out of Knight’s mansion, I smiled. I was about to cause an entire shitstorm of trouble for a lot of people, and I didn’t care.

Chapter Nineteen

Ashley

My life sucked.

Really fucking sucked.

Like, I couldn’t even think of a worse time in my life than right now, not after I stared down at the stick again, read the instructions, and groaned.

“No. No. No. No. No.” I screamed the last no as I reached into the box for another one. The first stick had to be wrong.

Forcing myself to pee again was hard, but I managed to do it, and of course, that test lied as well.

“I’m not pregnant. I refuse to be pregnant.” I couldn’t be. I knew I had a cycle. Life had been crappy, which was why I couldn’t remember exactly when I had a cycle.

Melinda, the woman I worked with during lunch shifts, had asked if I was pregnant. I’d mentioned the sickness bug I kept getting in the morning. Woman must have thought I was crazy or something because I didn’t even put the two together. Morning sickness and pregnancy.

It wasn’t like Earl and I had been cautious. He hadn’t wanted anything between us.

Now, I was on edge. I was pregnant.

It didn’t matter how many tests I tried to use to tell me something different, it wasn’t going to change the fact I was pregnant.

My hand rested on my stomach. A baby. Earl’s baby.

I had to call Emily, but I stopped myself.

I couldn’t tell her. At least not yet. I’d need to see a doctor. It was too late to call to arrange an appointment today. Sitting on my bathroom floor, I rested my head against the wall.