he whispered in my ear, excitedly.
My gaze caught Khane and Desiree first as they stood glaring like they had a bad case of bloodlust.
The surprise was a person. A person I was certain was mine to do with as I pleased if I understood this gift correctly. Chained to a wall inside of a makeshift prison cell, he stood in all black clothing and made a convincing scarecrow.
Liam Vallin’s bulging eyes grew intense when he saw me. The smile on my face was no doubt shining with the sheen of the wicked thrills rolling through me.
“Judging by that look on your face, you thought you had killed me, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t, and I promised myself that if I ever survived death and came face to face with the person that tried to kill me, I would unleash every drop of chaos that resides inside me.”
“Father, I would like to introduce you to Quiet Chaos,” Arjen made the official introduction, giving his father the name I used when I turned into that other person. The evil grin that left me started low before it bounced off the walls.
“We are going to have so much fun, Mr. Vallin. I promise, by the time I’m done with you, you will be able to enter hell and write them a whole volume of encyclopedias on the levels of chaos that’s going to be involved in your slow death.”
Arjen hadn’t given me a birthday gift. He had given it to the part of me that I kept on a chain.
Epilogue
I stood in what I called the common area of Khane and Desiree’s secret dungeon. The faint smell of lingering death loomed at my back, stirring my sense of danger but not waking it fully. There was no doubt that the hell Khane and Arjen had unleashed in this room was still hanging around.
Desiree had invited me over for a girl’s weekend since Khane and Arjen had syndicate business to take care of. Arjen and I kept our word about not keeping secrets, so he told me that he and Khane received an order for a double hit. The syndicate wanted two high-level officials wiped out.
After Desiree had fallen asleep on the couch, it left me alone to satisfy my curiosity about their dungeon. She and Khane were a bit too jumpy the last time I was down here.
Liam Vallin had been transferred to a secret bunker under Arjen’s house that I recently found out about. He’d had to have the area remodeled to be converted into a prison for his father. The Vallin men with their secret houses and underground prisons had me shaking my head at them.
I crept along the expanse of the room, my eyes locking with the torture table before the space that led to a near-invisible hall called my attention. I edged closer to the opening of the hall and stopped, staring down the narrow and dark corridor.
Once I started moving, there was no stopping me. The creepy tight space of the hall sent a chill racing through me, but I had to see what was at the other end of it.
I slowed my steps when I noticed that there was an opening up ahead. A chilling wind swept over me, the breeze sending a low whisper into my ear. I crept closer to the opening and didn’t stop until I was standing at the bars that made up a prison cell.
All movement ceased and I just stood there staring. Standing on the other side of the cell, gripping one of the bars was none other than the conniving snake that had made his way onto my kill list.
“Raymond.” My voice was calm, but inside, I was all rage and chaos.
“Mecca,” he greeted, his expression hopeless. “Are you here to kill me?” he asked, knowing my mentality better than anyone.
“Yes. The shit you pulled could have gotten us all killed. What the fuck happened? How the fuck did you let shit get so bad that you left me with a fifteen-million dollar tab, got your own drug shipments seized, and exposed Desiree as the Bookkeeper?”
He dropped his head, and a hard swallow sounded.
“I lost control. I couldn’t fight what I now know was an addiction worse than any drug could ever produce. I owed the Carrera’s twenty million. Played in their Cyclone games, which had a million-dollar buy-in. I lost the million and went ten million in the hole, and made matters worse by going even further in the