Could he feel my heartbeat?
Did he know what I was thinking?
Did he feel me like I felt him?
My breath hitched when I twisted my neck to look at him. Preston’s usually empty gray eyes were sparkling with more life than I’d ever seen. It was so mesmerizing that I couldn’t look away. Not even when he began fucking me. I locked my eyes with his and watched bright, silver flecks dance around. When he slammed deep inside me and roared out his release, it hit me.
He wasn’t dead inside. He’d just never had anyone breathe life into him.
Even the villain of the story had a heart, and I was starting to wonder if Preston Whitley’s heart was…me.
The rippling waters of Cherry Lake didn’t give me the same sense of nostalgia that it did my brother. For Parker, this beach reminded him of family outings and childhood fun. I assumed that was why he’d started bringing his kids here.
Personally, I thought one was too young for picnics—they’d barely figured out how to use a fork—but he insisted and even dragged my ass out here a few times.
Don’t get me wrong. I had fond memories of this place. None had anything to do with water, sand, or laughing children. For men like me, Cherry Lake was good for one thing—shopping. Tourists flooded this place in the spring, and it was a prime setting to pick someone off from the pack.
Many college girls decided they wanted to vacation in Florida to avoid bigger crowds, which made it so easy to lure one away. A couple of drinks with the promise of a good time, and they were putty in my hands. The only good time to be had was mine, of course. They made their choice. They would’ve been better off in Miami. Now, I wasn’t saying the city was a safer place to go—I knew a couple of guys who trolled that turf—but I wasn’t there.
The screaming cries of wide-eyed girls—and occasionally guys—were my nostalgic memories of Cherry Lake. There were others, though…
My eyes wandered over to a large oak tree with a dip at the base of the trunk.
Most people wouldn’t notice where the bark had healed over. They wouldn’t know what caused the wound either. But I did. The image of Chet covering his face was as vivid today as the night I bashed that prick’s head in.
Nash wasn’t Ryker’s only friend. He was just the hardest to get to.
Wanna see absolute defeat. Watch a grown man’s face when an eleven-year-old takes them down. The pathetic bastard never saw me coming. Who would suspect a child? It wasn’t like I killed two more of his friends a year before—they were still considered missing. Not him, though. I displayed Chet’s body in the middle of the town square.
That was a personal ‘fuck you’ to Ryker Hudson.
Logan’s dad was a lot of things. An idiot wasn’t one of them. He knew who did it. I think the sick fuck found it entertaining. It was his own game of ‘who would be next.’ I wouldn’t have been surprised if the fucker took bets.
My only regret was missing the opportunity to take that motherfucker out. Logan pulling the trigger was an easy pill to swallow. I could sleep at night knowing that the prick’s son was the one to end his miserable life. Let’s face it. If anyone deserved to gut him, it was Logan. But to find out that Lou was the one to put the final nail in his coffin—that shit wasn’t right. Ryker got off easy.
I’d have impaled him with the same pool cue he used on my sister. But I had to settle for fucking with Nash. He didn’t like the cue. Neither did his wife. His son I killed quick, a mercy killing in my eyes. Maybe I’d bring Nash here one day and impale him on that fucking tree.
But that could wait for another day. Nostalgia wasn’t what brought me here.
I glanced down at the video open on my phone.
Mr. Ace of Spades decided to send me a good morning text. The familiar face lying in the sand was the only thing that stopped me from deleting it. Ned Callaghan left Tico for dead, but he didn’t carve the raven into his chest.
That was someone else, someone who decided to share their handiwork with me. What he did to Tico didn’t piss me off, nor did the text he sent my brother. If anything, he helped me out in that department. Parker now understood what would happen if he kept ignoring the beast clawing at his gut. But what made my fists ball was the sheer ineptitude of this asshole.
He’d been in Ashen Springs for at least a year and couldn’t leave an obvious enough sign for me.
No.
He had to send me recordings of his handiwork because his crap ass hints weren’t perceivable. If he were using someone else’s mess to create his own, he could’ve at least left a distinct calling card.
My eyes fell back to my phone, following the slice of a bowie knife cutting through flesh. Why start with Tico? He had no ties to The Order or me. We had no idea the kid existed.
It didn’t make sense.
If I had to guess, I’d say Tico was nothing more than convenient—wrong place, wrong time type of thing.
There was always the chance that Mr. Ace of Spades was working with Ned Callaghan, but I doubted it. Harper’s old man spent years planning his revenge, and he might’ve succeeded if he hadn’t teamed up with Ryker. That was Ned’s downfall. The chances of him bringing an outsider in on his plot were highly unlikely. And that was what Mr. Ace of Spades was.
