Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,273

& Caroline xxx

P.S.

If you do find yourself obsessing over this series and wanna come stalk us, send us abusive messages for all the heartache or even some love (love you too, boo) then why not join the best group of people we know in our Facebook reader group? I promise that the answer to Saint’s question will be in there *squid emoji* …maybe. And if you’re a fan of Niall O’Brien read on for a very special sneak peek at his own story in The Death Club xx

The Death Club Sneak Peek – Check it out now!

I was happy once. Not that I can recall that feeling now.

When the woman I loved was torn from my grasp, I was thrown into the never-ending fires of hell.

But there’s one thing they don’t tell you about men without souls when they’re cast into damnation. Once we make a home for ourselves in hell, there’s nothing left to fear from life. And a man without fear is a man without limits. I hadn't had any limits in ten long years.

Sometimes I felt like an old man, broken by the weight of time and grief pressing down upon my shoulders, though my pa assured me regularly that I was still young. Virile. Had my whole life ahead of me. In fact, he was at it again now, while I tuned him out and watched a pigeon strutting along a rooftop like he owned the motherfucking world. Mrs Pigeon certainly seemed to think he might be right about that if the way she was eyeing him was anything to go by.

"Did you hear me, lad?" Pa's voice bit out, thick with his old Irish accent. There was enough snap to it that I knew he was wishing I was with him in person, so he could clip me round the ear like I was a small lad.

"The line dropped," I replied casually, my own accent more subtle and born from spending years in the homeland as a child before returning here to the states.

My back pressed firm to the window frame as I sat eight floors up, watching the sun rise over the city and waiting for this call to end so I could finish up my job here. Scaling this wall had been no easy feat and I didn’t much appreciate the interruption.

"Like hell it did," Liam O'Brien snarled in that tone he used when he wanted to remind me that he owned me. Owned the whole family. The whole fucking world too, no doubt. And I made myself listen because he was right about at least two of those claims and possibly the third.

"I'll be expecting you home for breakfast at nine. Dress sharp, lad, I won't have you embarrassing me," he said in a tone that brokered no arguments and he'd get none from me. It wasn't worth my time, or my life, pitiful as it was.

"Home at nine," I confirmed, taking my phone from my ear and adding a reminder to it. I wasn't likely to remember that shit even if it was only three hours from now. And when he said ‘home’ he was referring to his mansion of course, my own residence holding no interest to him even if he had known where it was. Which he didn’t. The house which I rented and he knew about lay as empty as the day I’d first signed the lease on it, but what he didn’t know didn’t hurt him. Besides, if he cared so much about the place his youngest son called home, he could have asked to come visit me. Which he hadn’t once done in the ten years since I’d moved. "Anything else I can do ya for?"

"Burnley. Is he dealt with?" my pa asked smoothly.

"About to be," I replied, turning my gaze to the closed window beside me where the man in question lay fast asleep in bed. I hoped he was having nice dreams because there was a nightmare coming his way which he wouldn't be waking from.

"What took you so long?" Liam sneered, the suggestion of incompetence clear in his tone but I couldn't give a fuck about that. I was the most competent man I knew. I just liked to pick my moments.

"I wanted to be certain he wasn't infected," I said with a shrug he couldn't see.

The world was currently held hostage in the grips of the Hades Virus, more than half the population hiding out in quarantine from the sickness that killed