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The logical thing to do here would be to kill her. We could mess around with cameras, watching her and waiting to see if she fucks up and rats us out, but it would be so much easier to just cut her throat right here and now.
I could trash the place, make it look like a break in. Murders like that happen every day in Detroit, especially in this part of town, and no one outside of her family and friends would probably even think twice about it.
It would absolve Malice of having to be the one who killed her, and Ransom wouldn’t have to see it.
I bring the knife closer to her skin, almost touching the soft, pale flesh of her neck. It would be so easy. One slash, and she’d be bleeding out in her bed. I could slip away and then erase any traces that I was ever here.
But then her lips fall open as she shifts slightly in bed, a soft sigh falling from between them. My eyes are drawn to the soft pink bow of her mouth, and my cock twitches a little in my pants.
Irritation rises in me, hot on the heels of that brief flash of arousal, and I force both reactions down, breathing through them. Clearly, I’m due for my usual beat-off if something like this is affecting me.
I only let myself feel arousal on certain days. I set aside time to jack off three times a week, the same way I make time to do laundry or clean up the kitchen. Outside of those times, I don’t feel it, and I don’t let myself feel it.
Getting turned on by the sight of this girl is unusual and unplanned, and I hate that. I really fucking hate that.
The way her hair falls over her pillow and the way my gaze keeps drifting back to her neck and her mouth make me want to kill her even more.
She’s a distraction and a liability, and we don’t have time for either of those things.
My fingers curl tighter around the knife’s handle, and I narrow my eyes, willing myself to do it. To cut her throat and be done with it.
But I don’t move.
Something stops me, and after a few seconds, I let out a sigh and put the knife away.
My eyes flash over Willow’s body one more time, and then I turn my back on her.
Killing her wouldn’t make sense anyway.
We agreed to leave her alive, and going against that would cause disorder in our family, which none of us want. So instead, I make sure there’s a camera in every room of her apartment, then I pack up the rest of my things and leave, locking the door behind me.
The drive back is quiet, the streets nearly empty at this hour, even in a large city like Detroit. When I get back home, Malice is still up, sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey almost half empty in front of him. He doesn’t have a glass, which means he’s just been swigging from the bottle.
His right forearm looks red and swollen in places, and I can tell he’s been working more on the tattoo he’s been giving himself lately. It’s one of those hobbies he picked up while he was in prison, up there with learning how to speak fluent Russian.
I know the language as well, thanks to my father forcing me to learn it, but I never really speak it unless I’m talking to Mal. Ransom knows a little—enough to pick up if we’re talking shit about him in Russian, at least. He can understand more than he can speak, but there’s no real reason for him to know more.
“It’s done,” I tell Malice.
“Good.”
He leans back in his chair until he can reach the counter behind him. His fingers hook around two lowball glasses, and he leans forward again, bringing the metal legs of his chair back down on the floor with a thud.
He pours two fingers of whiskey, then passes one glass across the table to me.
I barely glance at it, shaking my head. Malice and Ransom never have any issues indulging when they want to, but I don’t drink much at all.
“For Mom,” Malice says, before I can turn it down.
We both know I can’t say no to that.
“For Mom,” I echo softly, picking up the glass. The amber liquid glints in the light as I swirl it, and I hold the glass in my hand for just a second, letting myself think about our mother and how much I miss her.
Malice raises his own glass, and I lift mine as well, in a silent toast to the woman we loved so much. Who loved us so much.
We both knock back the whiskey, and it burns all the way down.
Malice slams his glass on the table and sighs. For once, he doesn’t look angry at the world, just a little tired.
