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“You took my money and recruited a bunch of lowlife thugs to go on a robbery spree, didn’t you?”
“NO! No, I don’t know what you’re—” His protest was cut off as Ash’s hand encircled his neck, elevating him five feet off the floor. Ash’s face shifted, his complexion fully crimson now as his eyes became onyx voids.
“You made a big mistake when you came after one of my businesses, Andrei,” he hissed, forked tongue extending to burn at Andrei’s skin. “And now you’ll pay with your life for it.”
The mechanic began to scream as Ash’s grip around his throat tightened, the sickening crunch of bones filling my ears until Andrei’s breathing was no more.
The demon dropped Andrei, his stout body landing into an unceremonious pile on the concrete ground as Ash’s face returned to normal. Reaching into his back pocket, he removed a handkerchief and his cell phone, wiping his hands before dialing out.
“Send a cleanup crew to Andrei’s,” he instructed. “And have Rachel come and collect all the paperwork for the business. It needs to be absorbed into the Corpus conglomerate.”
He disconnected the call and sighed, turning toward my hiding spot.
“You can come out now, Briar,” he said. I inched forward, trembling but strangely aroused by what I’d just witnessed. “I told you to stay in the car.”
“Why did you kill him?” I breathed, staring at the corpse on the ground.
I immediately thought of Lochlin, the guard who had tried to assault me, and somehow, I felt as much pity for Andrei as I had for him.
“He stole from me. Twice,” Ash sighed, striding toward me.
“Is… is that a reason to kill?” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
Ash’s eyes flashed, the corners of his mouth turning inward. “Yes,” he answered flatly. “But that’s not why I did it.”
Confused, I stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.
“He thought he was smart, using my money to fund his heist crew, which in turn went to rob one of my warehouses. At that robbery, they killed one of my workers—an unarmed office worker, a fox shifter. She had just gotten married.”
Controlled rage flowed from him, but just hearing the story sent shivers of revulsion through me.
“Come on,” Ash said, steering me away from the garage. “Let’s go home.”
Home.
But it washishome, notourhome. He said the word as if it was a place we dwelled together, and I liked that.
I allowed him to lead me away, but I couldn’t resist shooting one last look at the lifeless body on the ground, his neck twisted grotesquely where he sprawled.
Ash did the world a favor,I thought grimly, slipping my hand into his.
Chapter15
Ash
Of course I’d sensed Briar following after me from the minute I’d entered the garage, but I hadn’t wanted Andrei to know she was there.
Perhaps a small part of me also wanted her to see what I was and what I was capable of.
And now she had, and she wasn’t screaming or running. In fact, she looked at me with awe in her eyes as we climbed back into the backseat of the SUV and Royce sped back through MacShire toward my estate on the outskirts.
It was easy to read Briar’s thoughts as she processed what had happened. She wanted to believe I wasn’t all bad, but when I now had a body count of two in less than a week, it was hard for a woman with her upbringing to reconcile. It was clear that Barney had done his best to keep any of the harsh realities of the world from his only living child, and I was blowing that up in one fell swoop.
“I really wish you would have stayed in the car,” I said again, knowing I sounded like a broken record. “You didn’t need to see that.”
She didn’t answer me and instead turned to Royce.
“Can you put the partition up, please?” she asked.
