Shawn's gaze stayed glued to me, making my skin prickle with a feeling of being unclean. "We want to speak to the master of the house, not his fucking watch dog."
"Oh, haven't you heard?" Shawn asked, clutching his chest and feigning shock. "Dear old Kaiser fucked up bad. See, he was looking after a little treasure for me. A pretty, pretty treasure with one beautiful blue eye - but he went and let it go. Now, I'm a fair man. All I ask is that people don't let me down when they make me promises. But Kaiser broke his promise, so in reparation for his mistake, he signed this big old house on over to me."
"You're kidding," Fox spat. "Why the fuck would he do that?"
"You'd be surprised what a man might do when he's being given an ultimatum at the end of my shotgun," Shawn said, swinging that gun onto Fox. "For example, if I was to ask you to pick between your life or the life of one of the people kneeling here next to you, I get the feeling you'd be fast enough to sell one of them down the river. If not all."
"I'd die first," Fox said without a glimmer of doubt in his words and Shawn's eyebrows went up.
"Well shit, I think you might actually mean that, don't ya? Even the traitor?" He swung the gun towards Maverick and my heart lurched with every movement of the fucking thing.
"I gave you my answer," Fox replied firmly. "I'd never save my own skin over any of theirs."
“Even though he’s been sticking his filthy Damned Men cock into your girl? Oh – I hope I haven’t just shattered your little heart with that truth, but I did see them with my own fair eyes. Practically humping each other right out in the open, they were,” Shawn pushed, smirking greedily as he waited for Fox’s reaction.
“I told you,” Fox replied firmly, not letting a flicker of emotion show on his face to that taunt. “I’d die before choosing a single one of them to take my place.”
Shawn seemed a little taken aback by the fact that Fox clearly already knew about me and Rick, but he covered it fast enough as he went on with his endless talking.
"Huh. And there was me thinking men like you and me were all the same. But I know full well I'd sell out every fucker and their dog to save my own ass if it came down to it, so I guess we aren't so similar after all. Aside from our taste in women."
Shawn's gaze fell to me again and he inhaled deeply from his smoke before flicking it at JJ's chest.
"You didn't actually say where Kaiser was," Maverick said loudly, drawing his attention again and I knew he was doing it for my sake, trying to buy us some time and keep Shawn's focus away from me as much as possible.
"Oh, where are my manners?" Shawn said dramatically. "If you just look up, you will see the former residents of the Rosewood estate - at least the ones who took exception to my new position as lord of the manor. Plus a couple who just pissed me off."
I tilted my head back automatically at his direction, knowing I didn't want to see whatever was up there but unable to stop myself from looking all the same.
I blinked at the four lumps of meat which had been impaled on the balcony railings above us, some small piece of me recognising what they were even though they'd clearly been left out to rot in the baking sun for days since they'd been put there.
"Christ," JJ cursed as my stomach roiled and the urge to vomit overwhelmed me.
"It's a little hard to tell, but that central one up there is Kaiser's smarmy head," Shawn explained casually. "The scrap of hair to his left was his dear wife - there wasn't much head left to display sadly."
My lips parted as I just stared between the heads he'd impaled there, their features entirely unrecognisable, the skin sloughing from their skulls and rot and animals clearly having gotten involved in their decomposition already. But as my gaze shifted to the head at the end of the line, I sucked in a horrified breath, tears prickling the backs of my eyes as I spotted the white hair, my stomach lurching with grief as I realised who else must have been up there with Kaiser.
Shawn had killed every