Page 100 of The Villain's Beast

I bit the side of my thumbnail. “What happens now?”

Fletcher scrubbed a hand down his face and immediately grunted in pain when he pressed his fingers against the dark bruise beneath his eye. Luca had really laid into him to sell the self-defense thing, but I also imagined Luca had been saving up some animosity toward Fletcher for quite a while.

“Literally now or the long term now?” he asked.

“Long term now.”

“Gideon and I need to meet with Vince,” he said. “Establish a new order.”

“This is all so unbelievable,” I murmured, burying myself back into the crook of Fletcher’s side. “Like a story or something.”

“One of those ones you get told as a child so you act right,” Daren said.

“Clearly worked out well for the two of you,” I teased.

“What now, though?” Daren went on, still half-focused on the door. “In the immediate sense?”

“Gideon and Luca come home.” Fletcher closed his eyes. “And we sleep for a week.”

“I like the sound of that.” Daren’s fidgeting turned unmanageable, and he finally pried himself up off the couch to pace the porch while the three of us waited for Gideon and Luca to make it over. The pace of his footfalls was hypnotic in its monotony, so to keep myself awake, I nosed my way up the side of Fletcher’s throat.

“Even now you’re a horny little thing,” he rasped, tightening his arm around me. “Just like Luca. You’re perfect for them.”

“What about for you?”

Fletcher hummed, hauling me onto his lap. The bags under his eyes were heavy and dark, even through the bruising, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. I supposed none of us had.

“You’re unexpected,” he said softly, closing his eyes as I traced my fingertips across his cheekbones. The stubble on his jaw prickled against my fingers. “But far from unwelcome.”

“Just unconventional.”

Fletcher straightened up and softly pressed our mouths together. “I’d say your fetishes around adrenaline and fear are quite unconventional, Bellamy, but Daren and I are most certainly happy to oblige you.”

The words were like a drug against my mouth, and I leaned into him with a whimper.

“Daren too?” I whispered.

“All of us, somehow,” he promised. “I’m tired of letting people take away the things I want most in life. If they want topaint me as a villain for being selfish and holding onto what’s mine, then I’ll gladly play that part for them.”

“Is that what you did for Gideon?” I asked, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“For years,” he said, licking across the seam of my lips.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing I wouldn’t do for any of you.”

A shiver raced up my spine, followed by the slow chase of Fletcher’s hands.

There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do…

Including cover up a murder.

Chapter 69

Luca

LUCA

Six hours after he’d been hauled in by the police, Gideon North was free to go. While he was being questioned, I was on the phone with my father, who still hadn’t heard the news of Francis North’s untimely passing. I’d save that for another day because I didn’t have it in me to play politics with him. My real family—the men who mattered the most to me—were spread across town, and I needed then back together, first and foremost.