Get tricked into putting a time limit on her imprisonment, then threaten to kill her and her father if she tries to leave. Or tries to shoot you again.
His advice for Waylon was simple—but nontransferable in his cousin’s case—so he didn’t bother to say it out loud.
But that method had been more effective than any other tactic Hades had tried, including that fake game of Russian Roulette every night. He’d been looking for glimpses of the woman who’d tried to kill him that early spring morning, but she’d yet to show up.
Persy had become an exemplary handmaiden. No more fighting. No more trying to defend herself. She did what he told her to do, without hesitation or complaint. Over the years, Ellie had even taken to calling her The Persy Device because of her habit of sitting or standing nearby, like a serene statue, until he asked her a direct question.
Hades couldn’t disagree with the label. But she was an Echo device with a five-year timer going.
He hated that he could practically hear her counting down behind her now ever-placid expression. Almost as much as he hated how the other bikers looked at her as she passed by them, their faces slack with blatant want.
But they couldn’t have her. She was his. At least until the five years were up.
There was absolutely no reason he should still be so obsessed with her. He knew she wouldn’t dare to so much as look at another guy, so why did a weird territorial jealousy flare up whenever he watched her walk through a room?
He tracked her every move. And sometimes, late at night, when his dick was throbbing, he thought of telling her to suck it, just to see how she’d respond.
He preferred to believe he hadn’t followed through on that urge because he wasn’t interested in getting his dick sucked by a Delilah who’d only been setting him up for murder when she claimed to want him.
But in the dark of night, he admitted it was more because he preferred to think of her as Schrodinger’s cat.
Maybe the old, defiant Persy was still in there. Maybe she wasn’t.
In any case, he preferred to suffer than find out. And he refused to let himself dwell on his reasons for that.
“Why is she wearing scrubs?” Waylon demanded as soon as Persy came to a stop in front of them.
“She didn’t want to wear the outfit I brought for her,” Persy answered, her expression unchanging. “So, I let her borrow Doc’s scrubs.”
Waylon frowned. “Did she ask you for help escaping?”
Alarm bells went off in Hades’s head. He hadn’t considered that. Other than Doc, a medical resident, who only bartended at the roadhouse on her days off, Waylon’s woman was the closest in age, intelligence, and education to Persy. And she was essentially Waylon’s captive.
He couldn’t help but wonder if his own prisoner felt sympathetic toward her.
But Persy’s eyes barely flickered as she answered Waylon’s question. “No.”
There was no indication at all that Persy was lying. But the alarm bells continued to go off. A lot quieter now, but still there.
Waylon might have continued to interrogate her, but two dumb-as-shit prospects chose that moment to come on to his new old lady.
Aaand cue the bloodshed.
Waylon put one guy on the floor with what had to be a severe concussion, if not the kind of brain damage that would have his mama feeding him through a straw for the rest of his life. And the other one he shot point-blank in the face before dragging his new woman upstairs to the fucking rooms.
There were a few gasps and screams from some of the other women in the roadhouse. But Persy watched it all from a seated position beside him without so much as a flicker of reaction. Not even when Waylon came back downstairs ten minutes later and put a couple of bullets in the unconscious prospect.
No need to worry about brain damage. He was dead now.
“Clean that up,” Waylon ordered one of their own prospects. He snatched up the bottle of Glendaver Bourbon their resident country trap star, Griff Latham, had ordered for the table.
“Let me get you a whisky glass,” Rowdy offered. He was one of Griff’s barnacles. Hyena had never been on a ship in his life, but that was what he called the Reapers who doubled as members of Griff’s entourage. Or as Hyena put it, “hung off his nuts.”
Waylon ignored the offer and poured what had to be at least five fingers of Glendaver Bourbon into an empty beer glass. Then he knocked it back, his expression tight and annoyed. Like killing two bikers wasn’t enough of an outlet for whatever was going on inside of him.
Yeah, Waylon was a Fairgood, through and through.
And so was Hades.
