Page 54 of Executing Malice (Jefferson Rejects #4)

DANTE

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I stare, baffled. “What are you talking about?”

Everett raises a hand to stop me. “Let me tell you a little story. That night, I came down to find you in the kitchen.” He glances at Leila. “You were making something.”

“Ramen,” I say.

“Sure. Ramen. All I did was strike up a conversation.”

“You grabbed her,” I cut him off.

I remember that night like it only happened yesterday. It’s a core memory I will have to live with for the rest of my life.

We were in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil. I left her alone for five minutes to run to the washroom. I barely finished peeing when I heard Leila cry out.

“You had her against the counter, your hand under her skirt.”

“She asked me to. She’d been teasing me for weeks strolling around the house in her tiny skirts and tight tops. The night she climbed into bed with me, I knew she wanted me.”

“She tied you down and carved you open like a Thanksgiving turkey,” I correct .

Everett smirks. “Isn’t that what you two call foreplay?

” He gives the cut on my arm a raised eyebrow as if that proves anything.

“I knew the moment I opened my eyes to find her on top of me, her pussy hot and wet against my cock that she’s been asking me to play her game.

The fork, the pencil, all the times she resisted and fought me .

.. she wanted me to force her. Wanted me to stretch her pretty cunt wide and show her what a real man can do. ”

I’m going to kill him.

Again.

For real this time.

Going to make sure it sticks.

I’m going to make sure he never looks at Leila again because I’m going to rip his eyes out and shove them up his ass.

“You left that shit on my car,” Leila blurts.

Everett chuckles. “I thought for sure when I mentioned the pencil at the bank, you’d put the two together.”

“And the rest?” she demands, but I’m more curious when he mentioned the pencil to her. When he was at the bank. “The fabric, bird skull and underwear?”

“The fabric was from your favorite top. We were playing around on the sofa and it ripped.”

“You were holding her down and she was fighting you,” I correct, refusing to let him warp her thoughts with lies .

Everett ignores me. “You found an abandoned bird with a twisted wing. You brought it home, but it unfortunately didn’t make it.”

“Because you did something to it,” I shoot back.

“Prove it.”

I can’t.

There’s a small chance it died from its injuries, but I doubt it. I know to my soul he did something.

He smirks when I can only glare at him. “And the panties were yours the first time I ate your pussy. Did you know you cum in your sleep? Don’t,” he warns when I make to lunge at him. “Bullets are faster than stupidity.”

“Whose body did I bury?” I force out, willing my temper to calm.

“Right, back to our story.” The gun taps against his thigh. “After you sucker punched me and I tried to defend myself, you grabbed a knife and stabbed me.”

There was more to it than that.

I did sucker punch him. Running into the room to find Leila forced face down on the counter with Everett grinding into her ass while working his fingers between her legs, I lost it.

I grabbed him and slammed my fist into his face.

Unsteady on his feet, he crumpled to the ground but refused to stay there.

He was back on his feet, and we collided.

Years of pent-up rage and resentment bubbled over in a fury of fists.

He broke three of my ribs, busted my lip.

I had a shiner that nearly fused my eye shut, but I stayed on my feet.

Stayed between him and Leila even when every inhale sent speckles of light floating across my dimming vision.

I knew I was about to pass out.

I knew if I didn’t end this and I went dark, he would get her. I had to take him down.

There’s no memory of me grabbing the knife. I don’t even know where it came from. It was just suddenly in my hand, and the blade was buried in his side. Blood gushed hot and sticky over my fingers, down his side to coat the filthy linoleum. Everett never even made a sound as he went down.

“I heard you two make plans to bury me as I lay there in a pool of my own blood,” he grumbles with a grudging note. “Playing dead wasn’t so hard when neither of you bothered to check for a pulse.”

We were both stunned.

Neither of us could believe what just happened.

We stood over his motionless frame wondering what the hell to do next.

Leila came to her senses first.

“Grab the shovel from the shed. I’m going to get a sheet and clean up.”

That was it .

The solution was made.

I no longer felt faint, but coursing with a new and terrifying adrenaline. Every nerve hummed with a numb energy that got me to the shed. I found the shovel. When I returned, Leila had draped the body in a white sheet.

“In the time between covering me in a sheet and running around like lunatics, Angel came down to see what was taking so long. See, even though he aged out, we were friends. He still came over to hang out in my room and drink beer and watch porn. He had a thing for the snuff stuff. Really gross, but he’d jerk off right there.

I liked that about him. He gave no fucks about anything.

Well, he found me there on the floor, and I knew I had one chance to get out of this alive. I stabbed him, but I was smart, I cut his damn throat, dragged his body in my spot and I hid while you two bundled him up and carried him out.”

“You killed your friend?” Leila gasps.

“There’s no such thing as a friend in our world, sweetheart,” Everett mumbles.

“There are only predators and prey. I know he would have done the same given the chance. Plus, being eighteen, out of the system and a worthless delinquent with a rap sheet a mile long, no one gave a shit when he went missing. I took his place in the gang he was running in. I was stronger, meaner and more resilient than he was, and they loved me. I built my life from the bottom and now, I run the organization. I have friends in all manner of places. Friends who helped me keep an eye on you, little brother. Because I knew, if anyone were to find Leila, it would be you. Guess I was right. Also,” he peers at Leila, “just so you know, I made sure to go back and deal with Dad for what he did. That whole situation was between me and Danny. He had no business touching you.”

“What did you do?” Leila whispers.

“Dealt with him,” he answers shortly. “He won’t be fucking anything ever again.”

“You did that for me?”

The quiet murmur has the back of my neck prickling. I would recognize that little purr anywhere. But the fact that it’s aimed at Everett has my stomach knotting.

Everett grins. “I don’t play around. He took you from me. I wasn’t going to let that slide.”

“What did you do?”

She’s flirting with him. It’s taking everything in me to keep from reaching for her and shaking her until sense rattles back into place.

“You don’t need to worry about the details. Just know that I will make you a queen if you come with me. I will give you everything you want. You’ll be by my side when we take over the entire country. ”

I don’t understand what’s happening. I know Leila’s upset with me, and I get it, but ... does she actually want him? Is this the life that appeals to her? She wants to be some mob man’s side piece? Everett won’t keep her. She is just an obsession he’ll get tired of and discard. Possibly kill.

“Leila,” I begin.

But she jerks away from the hand I extend to her. Her soft features harden into one of hate and disgust.

“Don’t touch me.”

What little is left of my heart crumbles to ashes as I watch her scoot around me like I’m some rabid dog that might attack her.

She doesn’t stop glowering until I drop my hand. She keeps hers protectively tucked behind her to stop me from reaching for her.

“She’s made her choice, Danny,” Everett practically purrs. “She’s mine now.”

“I haven’t made any choice yet,” Leila counters. “Tell me what you did first.”

My brother laughs. “I keep forgetting you’re not like other women. You enjoy hearing how I lured him with the promise of a fresh, young pussy, fed him Viagra to get his cock hard and cut it off with garden shears. Had to tie him down first. There was blood everywhere. Boners are gushers.”

“Then what? ”

“He got himself to a hospital. They had to operate to get his severed junk out of his ass and reattach it, but last I heard, he wasn’t using it anymore.”

Leila smiles, slow and sweet. The kind a girl gives a guy offering her flowers.

“You did that for me?”

“Of course.”

To my eternal dismay, she starts towards him.

Her tight little outfit filthy where I had wrestled her to the ground not twenty minutes ago and fucked her.

There are leaves and twigs caught in her curls and blood streaking her legs and soaked into her top.

She looks beautiful and perfect, and devastating as she leaves my side and hurries to my brother.

“I’m not picking you,” she tells him coyly. “You have to convince me.”

Everett groans even as he makes to reach her.

Leila giggles and dodges his fingers. “Not yet. I want to get out of here first.”

The sight of my Leila standing next to Everett, peering up at him like he’s the only star in the sky burns into my brain. Sears my soul. It ignites a rage and sorrow so deep in my very being that everything hums.

“You’re not going with him.”

Both stop staring at each other to fix on me like they just remembered I exist.

“I don’t want you,” Leila throws back with a fistful of knives that drive straight into my gut.

“Too fucking bad,” I snarl through gritted teeth. “You’re not leaving me.”

“Jesus, Danny, that’s no way to talk to a lady. She’s made up her mind. She’s chosen me. You need to accept that.”

The ground beneath my feet shifts as I brace my weight. My fingers curl, cracking the knuckles.

“Get away from her.”

Everett takes a long, slow breath and closes a step between us. “You lost. Deal with it.”

“No, fucker, you lost.”

Neither of us see it coming until the resounding crack of metal crushing bone echoes through the silence. The light in Everett’s fist goes sailing, spinning in the air before falling into a pile of nearby leaves. The gun follows with a clatter that is muffled by the second blow.

Then the third.

My brother is face down in the dirt, body twitching with every plunge of Leila’s arms driving our flashlight into the back of his crushed skull.

Blood and chunks of scalp fling off with every arc, spraying Leila.

Splattering across the ground. Brain matter oozes from the hollow cavity of where Everett’s head used to be.

Then she stops.

Silence rings as loud as the crunch and crack of her victory. It hammers in the air, coiling with the frantic beating of my heart.

Beautiful face speckled, hair matted, Leila drops the weapon with a resounding clang next to the body. It rolls away from her, smeared in matter and chunks of dark hair. Next to it, her chest rises and falls as rapidly as my stomach while my brain tries to process what just happened.

The scuffle of her feet as she turns to face me, green eyes too bright in the residual filter of light, pounds too loud between my ears.

“Dante?” she whispers.

I stare at her, too numb for proper words.

She rubs her hands on her skirt, leaving streaks of my brother across the fabric.

“I had to,” she starts. She nibbles anxiously on her bottom lip. “He was going to shoot you. I...”

“Leila.”

Her name.

It’s the only sound in my head. The only word I know. It pulses in my skull, courses through my veins .

“I love you,” she murmurs.

That breaks the invisible chains keeping me rooted. I stalk towards her. Barely three feet and she’s sprinting to me. We meet somewhere in the middle where I scoop her up and she locks her legs around my hips. Our lips meet in an angry collision. Her arms crush my windpipe as she holds me prisoner.

“I’m sorry,” she pants in between assaults. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Fucking you,” I growl, dragging her to the ground right there, right next to my brother’s leaking corpse. “Need you.”

She doesn’t stop me. Doesn’t pull away. She lets me drive home inside her. Lets me assure myself she’s still there. Still mine. She holds me, kisses me. Tells me again and again she loves me.

“I’m sorry,” she says again while I lay slumped over her, face buried between her blood-smeared breasts. “I had to get closer to him. I had to make him believe ... I’m sorry.”

I raise my head and take her mouth. I ignore the tremble in them, the tears in her eyes, as I push my cock deeper and kiss her like I hate her.

“You’re not leaving me.” It’s not a question.

It’s a fucking warning.

A threat.

“Never.”

I fuck her harder, cock full of righteous indignation and a limitless supply of cum I’m going to drown her in .

“You’re mine.”

She nods even as her eyes roll back in her skull. “Yours ... yours ... Dante, please...”

I pump faster. Harder. I crush her in my arms, bruise her mouth as I swallow her orgasm because even that is fucking mine.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers for the hundredth time while we lie in a sweaty, sticky mess of tangled limbs under a canopy of stars.

I refuse to dislodge my cock. Refuse to give her an inch of freedom as I alternate between catching my breath and fucking her. I’ve lost count, but I’m not done.

Every time I think about her looking at me with that hatred in her eyes, every time I hear her voice ringing between my ears, telling me not to touch her, I’m hard. It’s like my body is trying to purge the last hour from my soul.

“Never again,” I warn her.

She rocks her head side to side. “Promise.”

I raise my head and peer down into her face, into her soft, green eyes. My fingers close around the smooth column of her throat, and squeeze.

“Say it.”

“I won’ t—”

“No.”

Fingers tighten an inch.

“I’m sorry—”

Tighter.

“No.”

Her pulse hammers beneath my palm, a frantic little bird, but she’s staring up into my eyes with trust she really shouldn’t have when I’m barely in control.

“I didn’t mean—”

“No!”

She gasps. A weak sound as I cut her airway.

“I ... I love you.”

My hold relaxes.

“Again.”

I make her repeat it over and over again until it soothes the holes she cut in me. The chunks she stole. I know tomorrow, I will understand why she did it. Why it was necessary. I will accept she might have done the right thing, smart even, but not now. Not when the hurt is so fresh. So raw.

“I love you,” I tell her because even furious and frantic, that will never change.

“I killed your brother,” she whispers.

“I don’t care. I was going to kill him myself.”

Her small fingers brush my cheek and slide back through my hair. “We need to get rid of the body.”

She’s right, but I’m not ready to let her go.