Page 22 of Ripple Effect, Vol. 2

My muscles turn soft, weak. I slow my breathing and rest my head against the headboard, staring down at her when she finally turns her attention back on me.

She lifts her hand where a scant amount of blood colors her fingertips, and frowns. “You need pain to come.”

Yeah. A lot of fucking pain, sweetheart.

I want to string her up on the cross and beat her until she understands that no one touches me, even if I was the one who put her hand there. I can’t, though. I’d never hurt her. Not now.

Lying beneath me with my cum spattered across her face and chest, she’s just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and the fact that she had no qualms about giving me what I needed has just landed her in a very dangerous situation.

The hardening of my body confesses a brutal truth: I’m craving this woman in a way I’ve never craved another before her.

An inky blackness filters inside of my mind, darkening my thoughts—the same darkness that clouds my head with every kill. The same urge that calls to me when I risk losing control.

* * *

Criminals are strange creatures. While on one hand, they kill in a way that sets them back to the Paleolithic era, they find the need to indulge in more refined social pastimes. Through the window of the Italian speakeasy, Marchetti’s long-time henchman, Alasdair MacGregor, sits at a small round table, sipping his wine. The man’s pushing sixty, the only Scotsman known to work so closely with the Italians. Hard to believe he was once Chicago’s most ruthless hitman, the way his hand trembles as he lifts the wineglass to his face and sips slowly. Rumor has it, this guy once got picked up by a rival crime family that tortured him so thoroughly, he couldn’t speak for a good couple years after. Ended up going back and killing the most notorious crime boss in the city before he retired.

Legend or not, the man’s going to die. I’ve been sent on a mission and he’s nothing but a rung on my ladder to the top of the food chain.

In my car across from the restaurant, I wait for him to finish his meal, and for some reason this morning’s escapades with Dylan pop in my head. The very thought of this woman makes me hard in all the right places. The effect she has on my body is dangerous. Not just for her, but for me. I can’t fall victim to the way the woman commandeers my thoughts so easily. And now that I’ve had a taste, I want more. So much so, I can’t fucking concentrate on the file I’m supposed to be reading from the Agency. All I can think about is my hands on her body, balls deep inside her tight pussy. She’s got me obsessed with the replays of this morning with her lips wrapped around my dick and her eyes begging me to come.

Have to stay sharp.

This deal was a bad idea.

Much as I’d love to spend the next two months teaching her how to give me pain while I fuck her against every wall and surface in that house, some bad shit is going down with Alasdair and she can’t be any part of that. I have to keep my head in the game, not locked in some lust-driven fantasy, because I trust no one—particularly the man who’s paying me to take this guy out.

Only thing I can think to do is end the deal. Send her off with a little bit of cash to get by and a warning that if she comes back or goes to the cops, I’ll keep her alive long enough to regret it.

I glance up in time to catch Alasdair rising up from the table. It’d be suicide to go after him in the restaurant. No doubt, at least half the place is made up of bastards connected to Marchetti, including the owners themselves. He hobbles out of the side door to an awaiting silver S-Class sitting in the parking lot.

It surprises me to see the man still drives himself around. With his stature, I’d expect a chauffeur and bodyguards, but that’s what makes Alasdair such a respected man. He doesn’t hide behind others. Shitty that he ended up with such an ungrateful prick as a boss. Like a star player getting drafted by a shit team. Anyone else would go to great lengths to keep the man protected, but with Marchetti, he’s nothing but a sitting duck. A target for greedy bastards like Dorian who aim to annihilate the competition.

Following three car lengths behind, I trail him up West Randolph, toward Fulton Market. The rich colors of the city morph into gritty industrial buildings with fading brick—the old meatpacking district in its heyday. From down the street, I watch Alasdair wheel his car into the drive of a rundown motel, overrun by vines, with a blinking Old West Chicago Inn sign.

He clambers out of the car, up to the door of his room, and I take note of room 116. Not a mansion. Not a sprawling plot of land that he’d busted his ass to own—a cheap fucking motel on the north end of an old processed meat factory. Dylan’s words from earlier, about taking my piece, come to mind as he disappears into his motel room.

I don’t want to kill this man. Up until this point, it’s never been a matter of want—I kill without conscience. I suppose it’s the nature of sneaking up on a man like him. Snuffing him so pathetically, as he sleeps.

He’s killed countless men the same way—it’s how he got his name. I have a name, too. A reputation. And as much as I anticipate the day when someone comes to blow the fucking candle out on my birthday cake, I’d sure as hell want to look the asshole in the eye as he’s doing it.

Ten minutes pass, well after he’s likely settled himself inside the room.

Tapping my finger against the gearshift, I shake my head and throw it in drive.

“Not today, Alasdair.”

6

Dylan

Seven years ago …

I squint against the flashlight that bounces from one eye to the next, pulling me from dreams, while something pushes against my head, holding me in place.

“She’s awake!” A man’s voice, one I’ve never heard before, startles me out of a sleepy state and I suck in a breath.

When he steps back, I notice the white jacket, like a doctor’s, and a name stitched above the pocket that ends with M.D.