Page 1 of Pretty Ruthless Monsters: Complete Series

QUINN

Detroit is one of those cities that wears a hundred different faces.

Some parts of it are fancy as hell, skyscrapers and designer boutiques and restaurants that cost more than someone’s weekly salary just for one meal.

And then there are parts like this, that show how shitty and run down this city can be.

I get out of the car, glancing around at where we’ve ended up.

It’s broken-down as hell, out of the way and off the beaten path. I could probably count on two hands the number of people who come through this area a day, and it’s probably all sketchy fuckers and drug dealers.

The buildings around where the car is parked are abandoned for the most part, their windows either boarded over or broken and smashed in. Graffiti covers the walls, and the smell of exhaust and garbage sits heavily in the air like a low hanging cloud.

I wrinkle my nose and turn to the members of my gang as they pile out of the cars we came in.

“How should we handle this?” Emmett asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. He turns to look at me, his brown eyes serious.

It’s still a shock to me that I’m the one whose role it is to answer these kinds of questions, even though it’s been a year or so since I became leader of the Enigma gang.

My dad Jonah was the one who handled all of this shit before.

For years, he was the person who Enigma members looked to for answers and leadership.

But now that he’s dead, that falls on me.

And I’ll be honest, it’s been a fucking lot.

I spent my life watching my dad run things, so it’s not like I was starting from scratch, but I’ve learned the difficult lesson over and over again that there’s a big difference between running shit and watching shit be run.

“I’m working on that,” I say to Emmett, shaking myself out of my thoughts and focusing back on the matter at hand. “Give me the rundown of what happened again.”

Another member of my gang, Fallon, steps up. He’s a slightly lower rank than Emmett, who tends to be the one who helps me with higher level operational shit. But he’s scrappy and smart, and he’s proven his loyalty on more than one occasion.

“Paulie, the runner, was attacked out here,” he says, shoving his long dark hair back from his face.

“Right around this area. He was on his way to do a cash drop, but he never made it to the drop point. Got the shit kicked out of him and practically had to crawl back home after they left him for dead.”

“Did you talk to him after?” I ask.

“Yeah, a little. He said it came out of nowhere. He stopped for a smoke and then suddenly he was sucker punched in the back of the head. Before he could recover from that, they all jumped him.”

“How many people?”

Fallon shrugs, scrubbing a hand over his tattooed neck. “He couldn’t say, exactly. Said there were too many of them to count, and it was too dark on top of that. At least three or four.”

I frown, my shoulders tensing as something twists low in my gut.

One or two guys attacking our runner could have been a coincidence or a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ kind of thing.

Gangs in Detroit are territorial as all hell, and even though this turf is ours by rights, that doesn’t mean everyone wants to respect that.

It could have even been random tweakers or something completely unrelated to our business, but that many attackers working together in a coordinated effort makes it seem like it was sure as fuck intentional.

“Did he ID any of them?” I want to know, even though I’m pretty sure I can guess the answer.

Fallon shakes his head, blowing out a breath as the other Enigma members I brought along fan out around us, scanning the area. “Nah. And even if he’d gotten a look at any of them, they knocked him around good. The fuckers probably pounded any usable memories right out of his head.”

I nod because yeah, that sounds about right. Paulie’s a good guy for the most part, reliable when I need him, even if he does have a habit of stopping for smokes where he shouldn’t. But this should have been safe enough. It shouldn’t have turned into a fight on our own goddamn turf.

“Boss.” An older Enigma member named Jasper calls out in a low voice from a few yards away. “Over here.”

Stepping away from Emmett and Fallon, I head over to where I’ve been summoned and see Jasper crouched down next to a dark stain on the ground.

It’s dried and dark, and there’s a lot of it. Blood, no question.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“Yeah,” Jasper says with a low snort. “They got him good.”

“And ran off with the money,” I bite out, my jaw tight.

Standing beside Jasper, I spin in a slow circle, taking in the entire area around us. Now that I’m here, I can get a pretty good feel for what happened.

There are buildings on either side of this street, and it would have been easy for attackers to hide in the darkness of their shadows.

Paulie would have been focused on his cigarette and his task, and it gave them the perfect opportunity to get the jump on him where they could easily box him in.

One of them struck first, then all of them attacked him and left him for dead on the ground.

It turns my stomach to think of one of my guys out here alone dealing with that shit, on what should have been an easy job. Something that’s been done successfully a hundred times or more.

But clearly, someone had it out for my people, and they got away with it in a big way.

My teeth grind together, and I let out a short breath through my nose.

I’ve been doing my best to run the gang well since my father’s death, to make him proud, but there are days when it’s harder than others.

Days when I have no idea if I’m doing the things he’d want me to do or handling things the way he’d think they should be handled.

The truth is, this isn’t the first attack on a runner of ours in the past couple of months, although this one was definitely the worst. The others were minor scuffles, and the runners made it back with scrapes and bruises at worst. Paulie got it bad, and as far as I’m concerned, this is proof that it’s becoming a pattern—which is a huge problem.

Emmett steps up next to me, glancing around like he’s trying to make sure there are no threats lurking around. We have safety in numbers at the moment, but I’m grateful for his vigilance anyway.

“So what do you think?” he asks.

I drag my fingers through my teal colored hair and roll my shoulders, trying to let go of some of the tension that’s clinging to me.

“It feels targeted,” I tell him, speaking my thoughts out loud. “We’ve got Paulie laid up with bruises, cuts, and fractured bones, and a missing bag of money on top of that. This was planned. Someone’s got it out for us.”

He nods, sighing heavily. He’s twenty-eight, only four years older than me, but he looks older than that as worry pinches the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s starting to look like that. A couple of random incidents could be explained away, but…”

“Yeah.” I nod, not bothering to finish his unspoken sentence when he trails off. “Now we need to start thinking hard about who’s behind all this shit. I want it stopped before it gets worse.”

Emmett nods again, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s not like fighting over turf is new in this city. And with what happened with your dad…” He shrugs. “I’m just saying, they might think we’re weak enough to pick off right now.”

I bark out a harsh, humorless laugh. “Yeah, I had the same fucking thought, but I don’t know if that’s what this is. I mean, I was expecting shit like that right after he?—”

My throat closes around the words as memories of seeing his body laid out, a bullet hole in his torso, rise unbidden in my mind’s eye. It’s still fucking hard to talk about it, even a year later.

I shake my head sharply, annoyed with myself for letting my emotions get the better of me for a moment. “But why would anyone wait this long if they wanted to come after us?” I ask, finishing my thought.

Emmett clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Who knows? But I can think of a few gangs that might want to try to shake things up if they think we’re still going through a rough time.”

“Like who?”

He starts listing names, ticking them off on his fingers. “Ruby Riot, the Princes of Carnage, the Hurricane gang—and that’s just off the top of my head.”

I nod, mulling that over. He’s right when he says there are any number of other gangs who might try to challenge us right now. That’s just how things are in this life. Getting to the bottom of who the fuck it is isn’t going to be easy, but we have to start somewhere.

I can feel the eyes of Emmett, Fallon, and the others who came with us today on me, all of them waiting for orders. I’m lucky that they respect me enough to follow me, that they don’t question my orders and they place the same trust in me that they placed in my dad.

But at the same time, it’s a weight of responsibility on my shoulders that I’m still learning how to carry.

There’s no time to dwell on that though. Not when my people could be in danger just doing routine money drops.

“We need a lead,” I say, dragging my gaze away from the blood stain on the ground and glancing around at the men I have with me. “Widen your search of the scene and look for anything the attackers might have left behind. Anything that seems like it doesn’t belong here. Fan out, and be thorough.”

They all nod and peel off to do as I say, spreading out in all directions and leaving me alone on the sidewalk for the moment.

After a second of getting my head back in the game, I step forward to do my own search.

About half a block away, at the corner of the street, there’s a big, abandoned warehouse.

It’s been empty for long enough that it looks more like an amateur art project than a place that was used to store materials, covered in graffiti and splashes of paint.

There’s smoke damage all along one side of it, as if someone tried to burn it down at one point, but the old pile of bricks only got singed.

I step into it through the broken door, keeping my head on a swivel as I go. The building is big enough that it could easily have hidden a bunch of attackers, and the view from the grimy windows shows the spot where Paulie went down pretty well.

A vantage point, maybe .

My lips curve into a frown at that thought.

This place could’ve served as a solid vantage point and hiding spot, but for the attackers to use it that way, they’d have to have known that Paulie was likely to stop at this exact point for a smoke.

The business we use for money laundering is another half mile up the road, but this is a good middle ground. Somewhere they wouldn’t be seen.

That means it’s likely they knew what route he would take.

Did they watch him on a run or two before making their move? Why?

I bite my lip, frustrated by my lack of answers to those questions, then start poking around, looking for anything that might stand out as more than just trash left behind by random vagrants.

I find piles of plastic bottles and some broken needles in a heap, but not much that looks fresh. It’s all covered in a fine layer of dust, but I keep digging, pushing a rotting wooden crate aside with the toe of my boot.

There’s a dark smudge on the cement floor beneath where the crate was, and I’m about to lean down to try to ascertain whether it’s another bloodstain—but before I get the chance, the hair on the back of my neck rises, a prickle of awareness shooting up my spine.

I’m not alone in here .

Everything in me goes on high alert, my heart kicking against my ribs. Almost before I’m conscious of having that thought, I move on instinct, whirling around and putting up my hands to block a pair of strong arms as someone tries to grab me.