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She was a fascination. Laughing and crying through the first movie, enthralled by the second, and asleep before the third barely got past the ten-minute mark. Sleeping so soundly, as though he hadn't told her just a few hours before that he had been trained to kill.
He was humbled by her trust.
At a guess, it wasn't much past six a.m. The fire was nothing more than cooling ash, the TV had switched itself off, and the house was blessedly quiet. His first job was scheduled for nine, but he was not anxious to leave her unattended all day. The midnight deadline Dominic had set was long gone, and Jasper had ignored the texts assaulting his phone, reminding him what was at stake.
She was going to work from here today, he thought. That was the deal. She would stay here and pack up her stuff, ready to go when Braun brought Bodie home. Jasper was looking forward to a few hours at the club, swinging his sjambok and getting her punishment over and done with. He couldn't wait to get her back to his house, even if it did make him nervous. He didn't have visitors over, aside from the Masters every now and then, and it was rare for a woman to cross his threshold.
Moving slowly, he reached out and grabbed his phone. There were two messages waiting among various other notifications. His jaw clenched as he read one from Dominic, sent a few minutes before midnight.
It read simply: Time to come home, boy. Bring the girl with you. Let's talk about the future of the family.
Did the old man believe he was stupid enough to fall for that? He pulled up the second message and almost threw the phone across the room into the dead fire.
I will record the moment I plant my son in the belly of the whore and send it to you, Jasper. When you watch it and lament your failures, be sure to remember I warned you.
The man was certifiably insane. Unfortunately, he was also rich, delusional, and paid his mercenaries well enough they'd probably jump in front of a high-speed train if Dominic ordered them to. Now that the threat was issued, Jasper had no doubts there was already a team in motion. They wouldn't be in Virginia, no. Dominic liked to play with strategies, which meant his team would already be within striking distance.
"Two can play at that game," Jasper muttered bitterly, forwarding the text to Atticus. While he waited for a response, he eased off Anarchy quietly, annoyed he was leaving her sleeping. He'd rather be sliding inside her, rousing her from sleep with an orgasm.
Instead, he was sneaking into the kitchen to make coffee, and plot his father's death. He barely made it there before his phone bleated once with Atticus's ringtone, and he answered in the next breath. "The gauntlet has been tossed."
"It has. We're already on it. According to my hackers, Fairfax deployed three teams early yesterday morning. We located one team of five, and one of four on the outskirts of Phoenix. All nine men have been brought in for questioning, but so far, we're not getting any answers to help us." Atticus didn't sound frustrated by that; his tone was thick with the drawl of a man who'd get what he wanted...eventually.
"And the third?"
"Off the radar. We're looking for a set of twin brothers. Our intel suggests this isn't an outside hire on Dominic's part, J. Of the fifteen children we know he sired and trained for definite, there's an almost fifty percent mortality rate. Suicide for all but one. Of the remaining eight, five split from Dominic's rule."
"Including me."
"Yeah. Three individuals have gone on to be accomplished killers. One female, Tabitha, has gone solo. Last known whereabouts logged as...London," Atticus said after a brief pause. "She doesn't seem to be in contact with Dominic at all. But the brothers, these twins, are locked in tight with him."
Jasper couldn't remember much about his half-siblings. The children had not been permitted to interact with one another. Their rooms had been their cells, with training and recreation times scheduled so that none of them met for more than a fleeting moment, no longer than it took to pass each other in the hallways. Meals were served in their rooms at specific times, and testing was...
He shook his head to dispel the memories. "I can't tell you anything about the others, Att. I'm sure you've dug deep enough into the family records to see what kind of life we all had. Fuck, even if I knew their names, I probably couldn't tell you what they look like. It's not like I've stayed in touch with any of them over the years since I left."
"You don't have to explain anything to me, brother. Not when I've got all the shitty details here on my screen. The Fairfaxes literally wrote everything down. Thousands and thousands of pages of documented abuse against minors. This is the noose that can hang them in court."
Jasper didn't want them to stand against a jury of their peers. One fuck up on the prosecutor's side, and his tormentors would walk free. No, he'd see them dead before this was over. "The twins, Atticus. Let's focus on them so we can eradicate the threat."
No protest from Atticus. "Erik and Gerald. Thirty-one years old. Topping out at five-eleven, two-twenty pounds. Brown and blue. Fuckers got your eyes, brother, but what's in them ain't sweet and light. These two are sharks—cold and dead inside."
He rubbed between his eyebrows at the stab of pain building. To keep his hands busy, he propped the phone between his shoulder and ear, then filled the coffee pot and set it percolating. "The Fairfax curse. Spend any amount of time in that torture chamber and you're gonna lose part of your soul. Day by day, until there's nothing left."
"Looking at these mug shots, they've not got an ounce of soul left between the pair of them."
"They've got records?"
"Assault and battery charges, eight years ago. Served three years each, Coffeewood Correctional Facility. Can't say they've kept their noses clean since their release, but they haven't been arrested. Dominic keeps pristine records, however, and he has..." Atticus trailed off into mutters. "I'm counting sixty-three deaths attributed to them, on his orders. Fuck, everyone from cops and politicians to women and kids."
No conscience, Jasper thought. They were given orders and they completed them, exactly how Dominic demanded. "You've found no trace of their whereabouts?"
"Dropped off the map after they left Virginia. I've made it the team priority to find them, but we need to work on the assumption they're already in Phoenix. They're smarter than the other units Dominic dispatched. The vehicles registered to them haven't left Virginia, unless they've switched plates."
Jasper knew all the tricks. Switch the plates out, stick to cash. Avoid the highways and any roads that might have cameras. "Dominic teaches strategies. He's big on using deception, bait and switch, chess tactics. If brute force won't work, he makes sure we have more to work with. He won't have sent pure muscle for this; he's aware of what I'm capable of when pushed. He's done his research about me—he knows about Avalon, so it's a given he's looked into all the members, particularly those closest to me. Which means he's not in the dark about you."
Atticus's laugh boomed out. "Jasper, don't be stupid. If anyone runs a search on me, tries to hack into my data, I know about it before they're through the first firewall. The only information he can find on me is what I want to be found."
"Good to know. I need to protect Anarchy, Att. She can't fall into his hands."
