Page 37

CHAPTER 37

WOLF

Despite being twenty-two years old and standing at six-foot-seven, my father has brought me into his office to lecture me like a child.

He stares at me from his seat behind his desk. His blond hair and skin are far fairer than mine, but his yellow eyes match my own. They’re a gift from the original “Wolf,” my great-great-grandfather who first sold the Little family that story after he betrayed his best friend Lester Little.

Old Netta Little can’t be blamed, though. It’s easy to convince a grieving woman of something when she trusts you, when there’s proof—fabricated proof, but still, the Wolf is born.

“Has she accepted your proposal yet?” he asks.

“Not yet, but she will,” I tell him, and I’m sure of that. I’ve been circling her too long and know her too well for any other eventual outcome. She’s one solid push from leaping into my arms herself.

I’m not a man who’s been told no often. My father trained me from a young age to take what I wanted without reverence for anything but our family secret. He taught me how to kill, not just as a defense of that secret, but how to enjoy it. With that monstrous reputation and some pressure, we’ve kept the people in this area carefully toeing the line and not asking dangerous questions for generations.

He wanted me to enjoy the hunt. To be the Big Bad Wolf on this mountain like his fathers before him. He named me Wolf after our own invented legacy—Red might not realize it, but that’s actually my given name. My life is my cause, and while I didn’t kill most of her family, I did inherit the responsibility of finishing them off.

“You’re out of time.” His tone is filled with disappointment, but I see the truth behind it. He’s impatient and short-sighted, and he wants to enjoy my win while he can still claim it as his own.

“Like hell I am.”

I’m closer than I’ve ever been. I’ve fucked her senseless twice now, showing her just how good life with me will be. She’ll come around, just like she’s been coming around my cock, and so what if the union is forced? She’ll forgive me in time when she realizes I’m what’s best for her.

He looks up at me, and his thoughts may as well be written across his forehead. This wasn’t what he had in mind when he gave me a choice on how to handle Red years ago. I was twelve, standing over the corpses of her parents and brother. Red hid, crying in the closet, thinking we didn’t know where she was.

Kill her or keep her, Wolf, but she’s yours. End her family line how you see fit. He never expected me to pick option two.

He had a good enough plan in his own time. He befriended her father and had an affair with her mother. He had every angle to get close enough to find what he needed, but like always, he’s not good at the long game. His impatience killed them.

They were already dead on the floor when he handed me a knife and went to find the deeds himself. He was so sure they were stowed away inside the cabin. He was wrong, and he’s lucky I didn’t have the heart to kill the pretty hiding girl before he realized his error, or we wouldn’t still be here now, living off what we manage to steal from the Littles.

My obsession was born. Ten years have passed and he’s no closer than he was that day. We never found the deeds, but it won’t matter when Red’s my wife. That’s not his problem, though. He's watching my loyalty divide right in front of his eyes. She’s become something more than a war prize, more than a pretty pussy to steal from the enemy or a tool to end an old family feud.

“You know what she’s been doing?” he asks, and of course I do. Isn’t he angry that I follow her more than I do anything else?

He pulls out some paperwork, and I try to ignore it, but he spreads the pages in front of me. His elegant script covers them, and I lean closer to see what it says despite my disinterest. Someone beats you enough times, and your first instinct is to listen to them whether you like it or not. Red’s Granny comes to mind and there isn’t a single part of me that regrets ending her. If anything, I should have done it slower, but I didn’t want to wake my Muffin after that beating.

If I allow myself to think about it, I’m incredibly burdened by all the ways she’s suffered for my family's greed. The knowledge that I’ll spoil her to death once she’s my wife takes the bitter sting off.

“I haven’t been with her every moment,” I say.

My eyes move across the pages. It’s a long-winded list of the issues she’s caused recently, the questions she’s raised, and the dollar signs associated with keeping it all quiet—dollars we ripped directly out of her hands.

“You got paid for the cop, and she dumped the body,” I comment. “You really are against earning your own money, huh, Father?”

He would never admit to it, but he’s a far worse businessman than his father before him, or his grandfather before that. We’ve lost a lot since he’s been in charge, and his obsession with being the one to end this once and for all has cost us not just money but also connections.

“You’ll watch your fucking mouth, Wolf. You might not think so, but I’ve got some lessons left to teach you.”

I just stare him down. I don’t think so. I tell him with my glare. I haven’t bitten back yet, but he should remember that I’m capable.

“You need to kill her. It’s been too long, and she’s causing too many problems. Toss a dart, and you’ll hit pussy. You don’t need her.”

If this was about pussy, that would be true, but I’m not obsessed with her looks or how her body feels alone. I’m obsessed with her fire, her willingness to chase me down again and again, the fact she cares more about her family than she does herself even though they are dead and she’s still alive. I’ve never seen that before in my life. I want it for my own.

“I don’t need you either, yet here I stand,” I tell him.

His face turns red, and his fist clenches. He wants to hit me, but he’s realized recently I’m stronger than him. If I decide to turn on him, it won’t be a fair fight.

“Grimm Groves is mine,” he insists, but it’s only his because of the lies.

Grimm Groves belongs to Red Little, whether she knows it or not, and it will continue to be that way unless she says yes to marrying me. Then it will be mine . He’ll never get a chance to enjoy my win. I won’t let him.

“You know where those deeds are, then, Father? This whole game can finally end?”

“You haven’t looked hard enough. You haven’t tried hard enough,” he insists, but if I haven’t, neither has he.

“I’ve searched every inch of both those cabins more times than I can count. I’ve searched for holes and caves. Hell, Redley doesn’t even know about the—” I stop myself before I keep speaking. We never mention what we’re stealing, ever. You never know who’s listening, and it wouldn’t take long to ruin everything we’ve worked for.

“She doesn’t know anything about them . She has enough moonshine out there to run quite the business and the still, yet all she cares about is killing me and her chickens. She’s harmless, and if you kill her without those deeds? Someone else will find them .”

“Maybe she knows something we don’t.”

“She knows nothing.” I’m sure of that. I’m the one who told her the Wolf story isn’t true. “She still believes I’m an inhuman monster.” She doesn’t.

I’d be worried he’s getting paranoid in his old age, but he’s always been this way. When you lie, cheat, steal, and kill as a way of life, you tend to expect the worst of everyone. I don’t. I know we’re the bad guys. I’m okay with that. I actually enjoy it.

He grits his teeth because he knows it’s true. There isn’t any way around it. We don’t have anything without those deeds, and this century-old family feud will continue brewing. Hell, we’ll both wind up in jail if things go really sideways.

“Don’t make me regret giving you a choice, Son.”

“Don’t act like your choice comes from your benevolence. You don’t have any options but to be patient unless you find those deeds yourself, and last I checked, you couldn’t find them even while you were fucking her mom.”

His fist hits the desk, and I know I’ve pulled the pin out of a live grenade. My father is a nastier creature than me. I’ve never been sick enough to please him. While I love to kill and take pleasure in it, I still care for some things. I know that he doesn’t. My mother, for example. She was nothing to him, and he enjoyed tossing her away, but I loved her. I’ll never forgive him for that. He’s harder than me in so many ways.

“I told you to watch your mouth, Wolf. Remember, you’re not the only monster lurking in the woods alongside your little girlfriend. You might regret not acting sooner.” His threat has testosterone pumping through my system, the need to fight and defend what’s mine.

“You’re not going to touch her. You don’t have what you need yet.” My confidence is a bluff. I’ve seen him act in his own disinterest before if he had a special chance to be cruel.

“We’ll see about that, Son. We will see.”

“Are we done here?” I ask, skin crawling to get the fuck away from him.

“For now,” he agrees.

As I’m leaving the room, the doorbell rings. Our maid, Hilda, looks up from her task, intending to answer it. She’s busy, though, so I wave her off and get it myself. We have visitors occasionally, but very seldom unexpected ones. When I open the door, I find the prettiest face in all of creation.

What the fuck is she doing here when my father is dead set on killing her?