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Un-Bloody-Fucking-Likely

B efore he got his feet fully under him, Bastard was jerking his pistol toward Hunt. The second guard did the same, aiming a small, backup gun at Hunt’s head while he stalked toward Hunt’s other side, his wary stare flicking from him to the rest of us crowded inside the room.

Hunt was as fast as a damn jungle cat. He stared down the barrel of the gun he’d somehow lifted from the guards, straight at Chase, who contemplated him blandly, just as if there were no pesky, lethal steel in the way.

Of everything that was going down, that unperturbed demeanor was perhaps the most unnerving.

I perched against the foot of my bed, Layla at my side, a hand squeezing Brady’s arm in support. Blood already soaked the shoulder of his scrubs around a bullet hole.

Legs wide and ready to lunge, Griffin stood alone beside the armchairs. Cuts from the shattered crystal and glass dribbled blood along his bare forearms. His nostrils flared, his jaw clenched; he was seconds away from charging again.

Just the thought of him getting shot sent a surge of nerves racing across my body, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.

Bastard’s eyes were pinched so ferociously that he looked one wrong move away from shitting his fancy, all-black, elite-soldier pants that had enough holsters and pockets to make me jelly. His finger vibrated on the trigger, begging for any reason at all to pull it.

“Don’t you hurt him,” Bastard warned Hunt, a subdued edge of panic revealing he considered the billionaire more than just an employer. Was it deluded hero worship? Or was there more to their bond?

“You can’t stop me,” Hunt said with a steady resolve that caused Bastard’s left eye to twitch.

“Oh yes I can. I’ll blow your head open like a ripe melon before you so much as—”

“There’ll be no need for any of that, Jaggar,” Magnum Chase said with a calm that belied the fact he was staring down the hollow end of a semi-automatic.

Chase either had balls the size of a prize-winning stud bull, or he knew something I didn’t.

Jaggar didn’t argue with Chase, chewing the inside of his cheeks instead.

Chase took another step into the room. Another step closer to the gun and Hunt’s unwavering grip on it.

Jaggar openly bit his lip, his finger ever so slightly tightening around the trigger.

“Don’t you dare pull that trigger,” I snapped at him.

He whipped his head toward me, his gun remaining right where it was.

“I see you,” I told him. “You want to do it. But you’d better not.”

“Yeah,” Layla said. “We’ll come back from the dead and haunt your ass so hard that you’ll turn that gun around and point it at yourself and BOOOOM! Pull the fucking trigger.” She wiggled the fingers of her free hand in the air as if stars rained down from the sky. I couldn’t decide why, but then Layla had never been weighed down by trivialities such as making sense.

“Jaggar won’t be pulling any trigger,” Chase said. “At least not today, not now. Neither will Raynar. Men, lower your weapons.”

Raynar lowered his gun in obedience. Jaggar hesitated until Chase arched a perfectly groomed brow in his direction.

With a swallowed grunt, Jaggar unwrapped his finger from around the trigger—but kept it beside it at the ready—and lowered the gun to his side. With nearly as much menace, he kept his glare trained on Hunt, who kept his weapon trained on Chase.

With a docile, patient expression I wasn’t buying, Chase stared back at Hunt, appearing to simply wait.

When moments drew out and still Hunt didn’t fall into line, Chase said, “There’s no need for violence between us.”

“Your guys literally just shot me,” Brady said, picking at the gaping hole in his shirt to peek beneath it.

“Actions cause re actions. You attacked my men, so they protected themselves.”

“By shooting at a bunch of unarmed hospital patients?” Griffin growled with a scowl that was mega-sexy despite the circumstances. “ Trapped hospital patients, I’m gonna add. You’re keeping us here against our will.”

Chase tsked . “You’ll be free to go soon enough.” He gazed upward, where two bullet holes pocked the otherwise smooth stretch of cream directly overhead. “Besides, the ceiling seems to have gotten the worst of it.”

I wasn’t buying his act.

Brady scoffed as if somehow shocked that the man who’d hunted us only to have us gunned down wasn’t overly concerned Brady was once again injured. He sputtered, “You’re a piece of work, you know that? You talk about taking responsibility for your actions while you behave fully fucking egregiously, believing you have impunity. Well, you motherfucking don’t.”

Finally, Chase glanced from Hunt to Brady. “It’s lamentable that you’re injured. It was a completely avoidable result, one I attempted to prevent by telling you that it’s in your best interest to listen to me, not try to kill me.”

I gaped at him, fumbling for words. “Are you for real right now?” is what ended up tumbling out. “You fucking murdered us. Murr-durred . If you think for one second we’re going to—”

“Look, Joss,” he interrupted, and Griffin growled. Again, Chase didn’t flinch. He was either impervious to the very real threat we posed to him or he knew something we didn’t. I still felt like roadkill warmed over, and yet I was considering dismembering the rich fuck, limb from expertly dressed limb.

“All of you, really,” Chase went on, glancing at each one of us. “Despite our past or how we met”—Brady barked out an incredulous hah —“there’s absolutely no reason we should be enemies. If you’ll calm down enough to reason the situation through, I think you’ll soon see we can all be on the same side.”

“Un-bloody-fucking-likely,” I snarled.

Chase looked from me to Hunt’s gun, then back to me. “From all accounts, the lot of you are brilliant. Appearances apparently aren’t everything.”

“Since you look like a shitstain,” Layla said, “for your sake let’s hope not.” She offered him her best mean-bitch fake smile, and the asshole actually chuckled.

Chase brought up a hand in what I thought might be surrender before he slid up the sleeve of his shirt to check a watch that sparkled with gold and diamonds. Apparently the man didn’t believe in hiding his obscene wealth.

He dropped his arm to his side. “You don’t get to where I am in life by wasting time. I have what I believe will be life-altering information to offer you, along with a proposal. Would you like to hear what I have to say, or would you like to keep playing games that waste time for all of us?”

“You call shooting me a game?” Brady snarled.

“No,” Chase answered sharply. “I call it avoidable idiocy. The best surgeon in several states is ready to fix you up if you’re finally ready to listen.”

When still none of us agreed and Hunt showed no sign of moving the gun from where it pointed at the billionaire’s forehead, Chase eventually sighed.

“I truly thought you’d all be smarter than this. You perform off-the-charts in every aptitude test known to man. You’re playing with an incomplete deck of cards. Don’t you want to check out the aces up my sleeves?” He flicked his fingers at his sides, but that was the end of his theatrics.

Unimpressive.

His brows rose a fraction of an inch, and his eyes danced. “Don’t you want to know how far your parents’ lies go?”

My muscles tensed. Yes , I very much wanted that.

“Though calling them your parents is quite the stretch.”

Hunt tilted up his chin to study Chase over the gun’s sight. “What do you mean?”

“Put the gun down and I’ll tell you.”

Hunt looked at the rest of us before scanning Jaggar and Raynar. Turning back toward Chase, he told him, “Tell them to pile up all their weapons on that table there”—the one that had once held the water and now lay overturned—“and sit in the armchairs. Then I’ll put down my gun.”

“That’s my gun, actually,” Raynar corrected.

Chase whipped his head toward his soldier. “I wouldn’t remind anyone of that,” he snapped.

Raynar swallowed and nodded with a jerk.

“All right,” Chase started before Jaggar said, “Sir, no, you can’t—”

Chase pinned Jaggar with a stare so ferocious that Jaggar visibly wilted beneath its intensity. “Are you questioning my judgment?” Chase asked with cold calm, and I doubted a question had ever sounded more dangerous.

“Of course not, sir. It’s just that they’re trained and—”

“You will disarm as Mr. Fletcher suggested and take your seats.”

Jaggar and Raynar hopped to obey, though Jaggar was openly twitchy as he took in how Hunt didn’t bother to lower his weapon as they placed theirs out of easy reach.

Chase stared down Hunt’s barrel and waited. What felt like an entire minute passed before Hunt finally lowered his arm to his side. He continued to hold the gun.

“Get help for Brady. Griffin too. Then we’ll talk.”

“I’m fine,” Griffin interjected. “No need.”

But Chase went on as if he hadn’t heard him. “I’ll get them help now, but we don’t wait to talk. There’s too much on the line, and those thieves who call themselves your parents are looking for us as we speak.”

“‘Thieves?’” I echoed under my breath while Layla apparently squeezed Brady’s arm hard enough for him to yelp and yank it away.

Our parents, mine especially, were definitely liars. But thieves?

If the billionaire had been dangling strands of sparkly diamonds or pretty, shiny blades, or the keys to a freaking Lambo, I wouldn’t have been half as intrigued and tempted.

“What did our parents steal?” Hunt asked, a heartbeat before the words could slip from my own lips.

Chase didn’t shy away from the question. He leaned forward onto his shiny, wing-tipped leather shoes to make eye contact with each of us in turn. “They stole industrial secrets, the results of years of experiments, invaluable data that didn’t belong to them. Expensive equipment too, but that’s not the important thing. They stole biological material . My property.”

Meeting my stare head-on as if he anticipated that my mind would be blown wide open, he added, “They stole all of you .”