Page 80 of Vile Bastards
I turn to look at him. Usually, I pay him as little attention as is humanly possible. He has a weaselly face with a terrible nose job, dirty blond hair, and dark blue eyes. Girls seem to like him (or his money), and he’s cocky as hell with little in the way of personality or talent to back up all that bravado.
But the Prescott track?
Do I want to go?
Of course I want to go.
But I fucking can’t.
Chet gestures the newly entered goon over to stand in front of him, taking another sip of his drink before setting it aside. He then reaches over to grab his suit jacket, extracting a knife with a serrated edge.
Before I can figure out the proper response to Cody’s question, Chet is thrusting that knife into the stomach of the man standing in front of him. The guy grunts and stumbles back, but Chet just grabs him by the shoulder and stabs him over and over and over again until the man collapses, bleeding copious amounts of crimson across the floor.
I’m stunned.
This is the first time I’ve seen Chet Archer get his hands dirty like that. He sighs and tosses the knife onto the carpet beside the body, waiting for his other goons to drag the corpse from the room. A trail of blood glistens on the floor, and a pair of maids rush in with a bucket and a set of rags, scrubbing furiously.
This isn’t their first time at the rodeo.
Chet holds out his hand and another maid springs forward to put a wet cloth in his palm. He carefully cleans his fingers off, tsking his tongue as he studies the crimson stain around his nail beds.
I seem to be the only person who’s disturbed by any of it. Well, me and Ernest perhaps. He switches out his tumbler for the bottle, holding it by the neck and downing several long swallows before he gasps and tucks it between his legs.
“Why do you do things like that, Chet?” Ernest asks, and I see Chet stiffen up slightly, glancing over at where the police chief is sitting.
“If you had the balls to do what needed to be done, your son would’ve been found by now. I don’t accept failure from my men, and neither should you.” Chet lifts his blue eyes up to my father’s, and the two of them share a silent exchange of information.
“That man was in charge of locating Bryson with no results.” Jonas moves into the living room, and his eyes immediately fall to me. I realize then that I’m sitting forward, that my eyes are too wide, that my knee is quivering.
I make myself stand up, gaze drifting down to the maids on their hands and knees, scrubbing vigorously and doing their best to avoid drawing the attention of anyone else in the room.
Chet smiles at me and gestures at the pair of them.
“Take your pick, Aspen. Have them both.” He turns over to his son, Cody, as my stomach churns and I know exactly what Aspen would do in this situation.
“I’d grab that blond by the hair; I’d drag her upstairs and I’d—”
I put my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, gritting my teeth so hard that pain rachets up into my skull and down my neck. I force my hands back down with a gasp and open my eyes to see Jonas staring at me. He sighs and takes a sip of his drink, tucking his left hand into the pocket on his slacks.
Luckily, Aspen had his fair share of crazy. I’m not doing anything Jonas hasn’t seen before.
“You.” I snap my fingers at the blonde and move past her in the direction of the stairs.
“We hittin’ the track on Friday night or what?” Cody calls out to me, but I ignore him.
The last thing I want to do right now is draw my father’s attention back to Scarlett.
The blond maid follows me upstairs to the guest room that Aspen preferred. This room almost cost me my cover when I first came over here and Chet offered me use of it. There are so many rooms in this hall, and I chose the wrong one.
Luckily, it was Cody who called me out on it, and he attributed it to my being drunk.
“Same deal as last time,” I tell the maid, reaching into my pocket and drawing out a wad of cash not dissimilar to the one I tossed onto the counter at the market. When Widow threw it back at me, I nearly lost it, nearly opened the door to the Cobra and took my Ruger out so I could shoot him.
A juvie brat with no family, no money, no connections, no influence.
How dare he disrespect me like that? How dare he think himself better than me? How dare he refuse money when he obviously needs it?
