so easily broken, I'd have killed someone you loved so much sooner."
I swallowed hard, choking back the angry, disgusted retort on my tongue. "What are you doing here, Chase?"
He hummed an amused sound and shifted his gaze past me. "Zayden, old friend. We're so long overdue for a catch-up, don't you think? Why don't you come join me for a drink?" Chase stepped back and indicated to the bottle of Scotch on the small table beside where he'd been sitting and shot Zed a sly grin. "We can chat about all the things we have in common now."
The leer he gave me as he said that and the way he ran his tongue over his lower lip left nothing to the imagination on what he thought they had in common.
"How about I take you for a nice scenic drive out to Mortuary Forest and finish that last discussion we had?" Zed offered, his tone hard-edged. He stepped closer to me, his hand resting on the small of my back as his chest brushed my arm. It probably wasn't intended as a possessive gesture, but fuck if I didn't have to bite my cheek to keep from leaning back into him.
Chase had us all kinds of messed up. Which was his intention, no doubt.
"You look surprisingly healthy, pretty boy," Chase commented, ignoring Zed's thinly veiled threat—their last discussion had ended in Chase repeatedly stabbing Zed with his own blade. The same blade Chase had left buried in Lucas's chest.
"Fuck you, psychopath," Lucas spat back at him.
Chase grinned wider. "I take it you found the little care packages I left around dear Aunt Demi's winery, then? Good. At least you know not to test my patience."
"Fuck your patience," I told him in a flat, cold voice. "Those precautions are keeping you alive, for now, but that won't last forever. I'll ask you one more time. What are you doing here?"
Chase's one-eyed stare shifted back to me, and he cocked his head like I was amusing him. "I thought that would be obvious, Darling. I came to offer my deepest condolences on your loss. It's so hard when you lose a loved one, isn't it?" His smirk deepened. "Even harder when you kill them yourself. Then again, it's not the first time for you, is it, Darling? You barely even look like you're grieving."
I didn't blink. I didn't flinch. I gave him nothing.
"If you're wondering whether I attended your funeral, Chase, the answer is no. You were dead to me a long time before I put that bullet in your face." Reaching out, I hooked a finger under the elastic of his eye patch and snapped it back against his face.
He flinched, his hand coming up to bat me away, but I was already moving, heading for the bar.
"Get the fuck out of my club, Chase," I told him over my shoulder. "In case this wasn't clear enough, you're officially banned from all Copper Wolf properties. My legal counsel should be sending the paperwork over today."
There was a long pause, but I didn't turn to look. That's what he wanted, to see any hesitation from me. Any cracks in my armor. Well, he was shit out of luck; I might as well be encased in adamantium for how hard he'd made me.
No, fuck that. He hadn't hardened me like this; I'd done that all on my own. It was just coming in more useful now than I'd ever thought it would be.
"Very well," he finally said in a slightly irritated voice. "But believe me, Darling, you'll still be seeing me around. Shadow Grove is such a nice city, don't you think?"
On that weird remark, he strolled out of the club like he hadn't a care in the damn world. Maybe he didn't. Maybe this was all just... entertainment to him. Chase Lockhart hadn't been in his right mind even before I shot him in the face. Fuck knows what further damage had been done to his brain in the last five years.
Rodney came over to me at the bar, poured three glasses of Red Head Whiskey for us, and exhaled heavily. "What can I do to help, boss?"
I picked up one of the glasses and gave him a small salute with it. "This is perfect." One swallow and the liquor was gone. "Go chat with the girls; let them know he won't be back. Zed, get his image off the cameras and distribute it to the whole Copper Wolf security team so they