I had no doubt after seeing her in the cemetery—and several times after, though she didn’t see me—that out of all the wars I’d be facing, Keely Ryan would be the bloodiest for me.
Call it a fucking hunch, but she was a strong girl with a sharp tongue, and she didn’t seem to know the meaning of the phrase “back down.” Even though I was taller than her, and much wider, she still told me she wanted to punch me in the face. If she’d had that bow and arrow of hers? I knew she was capable of bodily harm. She didn’t seem to have a filter, nor did she know how to control her temper.
In the months after meeting her at the cemetery, I followed her and Stone, just to make sure that their relationship was moving in the right direction. He was putting the fucking charms on her, and if she wasn’t eating them up, I’d allow Stone to call me a bastard for the fun of it. She had convinced herself that she was falling for him. She even agreed to visit his family in Louisiana after the New Year.
She fed her family some bullshit story about going on tour with the archery place where she worked so she wouldn’t have to tell them that she was going to meet Stone’s family—a collective bunch of cops, except for one cousin who was a firefighter. They called him the oddball of the family. (Ha ha—so fucking cliché.)
It was a lover’s quarrel after the trip came and went and the fiery Keely didn’t ask Stone to meet her family in return. She gave him some bullshit excuse about needing time. His patience was getting thin, and I knew before long, he was going to take matters into his own hands and “accidentally” run into one of her two brothers who lived in New York. The other two lived with her parents in Scotland.
Scott didn’t like when he didn’t get what he wanted, when he wanted.
We had that in common. Maybe that was why he loathed me. We were too much alike, but on two separate sides of the law. Heroes sometimes walked the line of villain to do what was right, though Stone didn’t see it that way.
It was much easier to connect the dots once I hired her brother, Harrison (or as I preferred to call him, Harry Boy), as my personal attorney. He was a smart fella, a good head on his shoulders, but with one major downfall—he had fallen in love with his sister’s best friend, a poor girl named Mari. I mean that literally: The girl was dirt poor, and she refused every offer of help Harry Boy offered. He couldn’t get his head out of her clouds, so when I started to question him about certain aspects of his life, it was easy to paint a clear picture.
He knew who he was working for, yet he did it anyway, thinking he could convince Mari that he was the man for her. I could’ve told him he was squandering his time. She looked at him like a brother, but men in the throes of love can’t see through the rosy-colored glasses they wear.
It worked out for me, though. All of my chips were falling into place. Every village I’d decided to pillage was mine for the taking. But I was a superstitious son of a bitch, and I believed two things: nothing is ever free, and nothing that looks or feels easy is ever that fucking easy.
One of these wars was going to kill me.
If I were to wager, the fatal blow would come from the fiery redhead, the archer. Her arrow coming straight for my heart would be the last thing I saw before hell came to collect me. But before she claimed my heart, I was going to claim hers, if it was the last thing I ever fucking did. And then I was going to smile at Stone as the life drained from my face.
I had no true quarrel with Harry Boy or his sister, but when it came to Keely Ryan’s feelings or my own, she’d have to contend with what life was about to hand her.
Me.
Not that it mattered, but I wanted to know what I’d be getting in this one-sided deal, and that was the reason for our meeting at the cemetery. From the moments I spent with her, I was sure of two things: She wouldn’t become a