Whiskey & Honey: Crimes of Crimson Valley: Book One Read online

  “Okay, what did she say to you that has you looking like someone just told you your puppy was hit by a car?” Hawk prods after a moment and Kass blinks as if trying to clear a fog from his brain.

  “It… it wasn’t really what she said. It was her tone. The hatred and loathing rolling off her in waves was damn near stifling. She fucking despises me enough to want me dead.” Kass murmurs, staring down at the bottle champagne like it would hold all the answers to his questions.

  “What did you expect? The last time she laid eyes on any of us was just before we started beating the shit out of her to send her parents a message on our parents’ behalf.” Gabe says caustically and it makes the rest of us flinch, because what he spoke was true, but it was still hard to hear it so blatantly shoved into our faces… Again. Winning Honey back was going to be a challenge, one I am not sure even I can overcome with the pull between us.

  “If she hadn’t run off after that night for ten goddamned years and let us explain, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” I decide to arrogantly point out and Hawk glares at me like what I said was a personal insult to him. I realize it was a stupid thing to say before he even pointed out the obvious to me.

  “No, if we had just refused our parents and taken whatever punishment they doled out instead of beating her half to death, we wouldn’t be in this situation. We are all fucking cowards and I am not afraid to admit we all messed up, in more ways than one” He says in a low gravelly tone and I grimace again internally. He was right, like usual, when it came to Honey. We had been cowards. We could have told our parents no and let them do their own dirty work. Instead, we made a girl trust us, then ripped the proverbial rug right out from under her.

  “We might not win her back at all.” Gabe decides to point out the obvious and I grind my jaw together instead of lashing out at him because I know that he, too, is right.

  Honey may never forgive us for our sins, and that broke me.

  I managed to avoid the Red boys each time one of them tried to approach me for the next few hours. It was nearing midnight and I was groaning softly when I sat down on the toilet in the girl’s restroom to relieve myself of all the alcohol I had been slowly consuming over the past four hours since arriving here.

  I am just finishing up and stepping out of the stall to move to the sink to wash my hands when the bathroom door suddenly swings open, slamming into the wall and startling the girl who was fixing her makeup at the vanity and I already know who it is without even looking over. In fact, I pay them no mind as I turn on the sink to begin washing my hands slowly. Internally, however, I am raging. They obviously have a damn death wish.

  “Out.” I hear Gabriel Finelli snap at the woman fixing her makeup and she wastes no time getting the hell out of there. I don’t react when I hear the door slam shut again when she leaves and one of them flicks the lock on the inside. Doesn’t matter. I could easily overpower at least two of them long enough to reach the door and make my escape if I didn’t like the way this confrontation started to go soon. In fact, I kind of wished they would try something. It would feel so nice crushing Silas’ balls with my knee if given the chance.

  Finishing up with my hands, I reach over to the wall beside the vanity and take out a few paper towels without looking at any of them cramping up the already small space in the women's restroom. It was going to be hard to take a few of them down in such close quarters, but I had advantages being such a small woman.

  “Honey-” Silas began in that deep and low alluring tone of his, but I managed to cut him off before his pleading voice did any serious damage to the walls I have built up around my heart and mind.

  “Is this your thing now? Cornering unwilling females who have brushed off all your advances all night?” Keeping my emotions on a tight leash, I meet each and every one of their gazes with piercing detached eyes before finally coming back to the ringleader of their little rag tag bunch of bastards.

  “You need to let us expla-”

  “I don’t need to hear anything from any of you. So, unless you are here to try and beat me half to death again for your parents, I suggest you get out of my way. Fair warning though, I am not the same weak and defenseless thirteen-year-old girl anymore and you just might find yourself surprised instead this time.” I cut him off again in a cool tone of voice and Silas actually flinches at my words and it makes me pause. There is real genuine regret and desperation on his face, but I can’t let him break down my mental barriers. Not again. Never again.

  “Five minutes. Please.” He pleads with me, his expression so vulnerable and I pause again, assessing the rest of their faces. They are all wearing similar expressions of pleading desperation and it actually cracks my barriers just a tiny bit. Pursing my lips, I take a long moment to consider his request before I shrug.

  “One wrong move I don’t like and I will make sure no one ever finds your remains.” I warn and Silas looks a bit relieved and turned on all at once at my death threat and he nods eagerly.

  “You have to know we never meant to hurt you like that, Honey. We are all playing a long game here. Our parents gave us an order and we thought we had no other choice. I am not saying what we did is forgivable, but you being back here in Crimson Valley is dangerous. Our parents are in some deep fucking shit with outside sources not a part of Crimson Valley and their empires are expanding more and more every day. We all need to be on the same side now, more than ever.”

  He finally finishes and I find myself just staring at him, dumbfounded, and completely racked in disbelief. I literally cannot form words right now. So many emotions are raging through me and a few bad ones must show on my face because all four of them flinch back and I can feel anger rising in me like a tsunami.

  “You…” I break off, trying to calm the storm of emotions warring within me right now for common sense. My stupid bleeding fragile heart, the part that is still madly in love with Silas King and the rest of the Red boys, does not care that these boys betrayed me in the worst possible way. “I’m having a hard time understanding when you became so stupid.” I manage to get out after an unnaturally long pause and Silas blinks at me in confusion.

  “What-”

  “You can’t possibly believe I would ever willingly be in the presence of any of you unless it is for public reasons, right? We are not on the same side; we never were and never will be. You chose whose side you were on ten years ago. Just stay out of my way while I am here and you boys won’t have to go down with your parents when I bring this town to its knees.”

  With that, I pull the secret glock I had strapped to my thigh underneath my dress out and point it at Silas with a murderous expression etched back on my face but it’s all just a facade. Inside, I am completely destroyed being in the presence of these boys again, especially Silas. His eyes widen in disbelief that I would dare point a weapon at him but I could give two shits what he thought of me. I was too tired and too drunk to try and punch my way out of this mess. The gun had been for emergencies. I would classify this as an emergency.

  “Be good little Red boys and get the fuck out of my way.” I say and Silas looks like he is going to object and stay put, but then, they part for me like the Red Sea. Without looking at any of them, I kept my gun out and trained on Silas until I reached the locked door. Unlocking it, I slip out and shut the door at the same time I slip my gun back in the holster underneath my dress where it slits up my thigh.

  I’m returning to the main ballroom just as an announcement is being made. I glance around until I spot the show going down in the center of the ballroom. On a raised stage in the middle that somehow was pulled out of nowhere are five actual thrones placed in a row on top of it. Blinking and lost in my brain still from the confrontation with the boys, I miss my name getting called and it takes all eyes turning to me in the ballroom standing in the doorway for me to react.

  “The Order of Red would like to use our annual fall mixer to welcome and initiate our newest council member taking the seat of her recently dec
eased parents. Welcome to the Order, Honey Locke. Come, take your rightful seat with us.” Silas’ bitch of a mother is smiling down at me with that fake smile of hers from her seat on one of the five thrones on the raised stage, her husband standing at her back like usual.

  This is all feeling very medieval-esque and I am trying to hold back amusement and laughter as I slowly regain my wits and begin to move toward the stage slowly. I notice for the first time that it’s the boy’s mothers that are on the thrones as the family representatives and not their fathers. It’s definitely a shock as the last time I was in this town, the wives were just trophies for the big boys that played on the Order of Red. It was part of the reason my parents had been so ostracized after my birth. It was unheard of that the heir for each family seat on the Order be a female. My parents couldn’t have any more kids after me and it wouldn’t have mattered if they had. Being first born, the proverbial crown would be passed to me, regardless.

  Chin up and the train of my dress swishing against the marble floor beneath me, I take the few steps up on the side of the stage until I am standing upon it. All eyes are on me and as I step in front of the only empty throne on the stage, I take in Hawk’s, Kassim’s, and Gabriel’s parents. They haven’t changed at all, if anything, they appear crueler and more ethereal than they ever have before, especially the women.

  Hawk Rhodes is the twin to his father and it’s almost eerie to look at the older version of his handsome son. This is how Hawk will look when he got into his fifties. Tall and he would appear lanky if not for the muscles clearly bulging beneath his suit despite his age. Whereas Hawk had dark brown short, cropped hair with streaks of sun kissed blonde throughout, Mason Rhodes was more on the silver side and he kept a beard whereas Hawk didn’t appear to have one, favoring to look the baby he really is out of all of us.

  The only resemblance he had to his mother, Alison Rhodes, was the keen golden-brown eyes. His were more on the golden side of the spectrum more than hers and his eyes didn’t have that hard glint within them like hers did. The woman looking like she was sizing me up to rip me apart with her bare teeth and the smile she flashes me as I assess her is anything but pleasant.

  Next down the line skipping over the Kings were the Daegden’s. Kassim was an attractive mixture of both his mother and his father and that was the way with the Daegden genes. Their Japanese American roots were strong in the blood line and with each Daegden that passed through the Order of Red, the attractiveness only got stronger. I’m sure if Kass ever married, he would have to choose an attractive Japanese woman to rule by his side. The Daegden’s were strict on blending lines. It just simply wasn’t aloud.

  Asuka and Haruaki Daegden were a force to be reckoned with in the looks department. They were the epitome of regal elegance and they were the one family out of all five that sat on the Order council that looked like they actually belonged here. Asuka doesn’t even look at me. It wouldn’t surprise me if the woman never speaks to me despite the fact I now hold a seat on the council alongside her. She was just that stuck up and old school in her ways. Kassim had been a shock to her when he had started rebelling against her when we were kids. His father had always been the type to sit back and let his wife run things, same with Clarke King. It wouldn’t be a huge shock if Asuka and Rebecca were the main ring leaders here inside the Order of Red.

  Dismissing the petty Daegden’s, my eyes finally reach Penelope and Roman Finelli. While Penelope was the one seated on the throne, Roman was front and center before her instead of at her back like the other wives’ husbands and he was staring at me with an intense unreadable expression on his distinctly Italian rooted handsome face. The Order seemed to like diversity when it came to the families sitting on its council and I was sure that had something to do now with the outsourcing Silas had made a vague mention of earlier in the restroom. It would only be natural if the Order members started to delve in the criminal side of things outside of Crimson Valley to expand their empires.

  Explained what had gotten my parents killed.

  If my mom and dad hadn’t agreed with how the Order had been proceeding with growing Crimson Valley and dirtying their hands with things that they shouldn't be messing in, it would make sense that the Order played some part in outing my parents and subsequently dragging me back here to basically be a new Locke puppet for them to control.

  Well, fuck that.

  “Thank you for the honor to carry on the Locke Legacy within the Order, Council Member King. I will do my best to make my parents proud.” I say, voice ringing out loud and clear across the silent gathered crowd and the cruel smile Rebecca King and Asuka Daegden give me almost makes my skin crawl, but I refuse to be intimidated by these people anymore. These motherfuckers chose the wrong girl to mess with when they took my parents from me and I would prove that they were the ones behind my momma and papas so called ‘accident’.

  Rebecca gestures for me to take my seat on my parents’ throne and I do my best to hold back the revulsion it causes me at feigning all these niceties and I obey and take my seat on the cold hard chair, crossing my ankles over each other and taking a look out over the crowd for the first time since coming to stand up here.

  I spot Finley right where I left him with Des and I sigh in relief that they are unharmed and that the Red boys are on the other side of the ballroom. I knew how Silas felt about Des and I didn’t want to cause my old friend any grief with this war between the Reds and I, despite the fact he says he wants to help me in any way he can. He can’t mean that though. Silas has already run him into the ground once when we were kids. I don’t feel like putting Des through that shit ever again and I would do my best to keep him out of this.

  For the next ten minutes I sit and listen to Rebecca go on about upcoming events and meetings going on for the Order for the last three and a half months until the start of the new year. Things the Order has planned to change and things to expand throughout Crimson Valley. I am mentally carving out Silas King’s heart when Rebecca starts talking about opening a new seat for vote at the start of the new year on the Council and my head is whipping towards the woman so fast, I damn near gave myself whiplash.

  “I know that we have been five ruling families within the Order of Red here in Crimson Valley since the beginning of time, but some of us in this town are starting to see what adding an outside sourced council seat could do for us in the growth and expansion of our great town.” Rebecca goes on and it takes everything in me not to speak, not to demand what the fuck this bitch was playing at in changing the laws of this town that have been in place since our founders.

  The Order of Red has always and would always be just five families. Those archaic laws should not be able to be changed, even if it was taken to vote for the whole town. There were certain lines the Order was never supposed to be able to cross. It shouldn’t surprise me that this was happening right now. Unrightful harm against a ruling Order member or their family was also strictly against the old guidelines set in place way before anyone still alive in this town was born, but here we are. I had been beaten within an inch of my life by the Red boys all those years ago to send a message to my parents and literally days before the ten-year anniversary of that awful night, they’re mysteriously killed in a car accident while on their way to dinner. Yeah, I don’t think so. I refuse to believe any of the shit they’re trying to sell.

  “Nothing is set in stone yet, but the family petitioning for a seat on the Order will be properly introduced at next month's Thanksgiving Festival which will be held here in the town hall as always, so attendance for all elite residents of Crimson Valley is mandatory. The head of the House will have a speech prepared for the whole town to hear and that will kick off the campaign for the vote that will be held on New Year’s Eve.” Rebecca continues, having the nerve to toss a snide look in my direction and all I can do is grind my jaw hard so I didn’t blurt out any obscenities at the stupid cunt for this direct violation of our sacred laws. Let me get my fucking hands on this
new family trying to take a seat on the Order Council and further the agendas of the sadistic bastards that sit on the board.

  “Go, now, and enjoy the rest of your evening. Order be Blessed.” Asuka booms out in an even and authoritative voice and just like that, the crowd of impeccably dressed elite disperse and move away from the raised stage we are all on. Asuka and Haruaki are the first to their feet to leave the stage and they sweep past me, the woman pausing for a moment in front of me with a smirk on her flawless face and speaks softly yet clearly, “For your sake, girl, I hope you have stronger wits about you than your mother did.” And with that, she climbs off the stage before I can even reply to her backhanded threat.

  Gritting my teeth to keep my temper in check, I rise to my feet to move off the stage so I can grab Finley and return home and get these damn shoes off my feet, but then Rebecca is calling me over where the Finelli’s and the Rhodes are gathered around her throne where she is standing tall and proud, her cold gaze assessing me unnervingly. Moving to the gathering of Order families, I dip my head to each of them and clasp my hands in front of me so I didn’t appear confrontational. I needed these people to believe for now I was compliant and I wasn’t a threat.

  “We have your first task for you as a sitting council member here on the Order, Miss Locke.” Rebecca begins in a chilled tone that damn near has me shivering. I hated this woman with a passion. I don’t say anything, just wait for her to continue on. “We have a mole running inside CVU amongst the outsourced staff members the state sent in to help run our educational departments. We believe he is operating out of the Science department which just happens to be your forte, does it not?” She raises a brow at me and I nod.

  “A position recently opened up for a second Advanced Physics professor at CVU and it would be the perfect cover for you to infiltrate the department there and find out who the mole is and reveal him to us.” I wasn’t sure if this was fate or not, but it kind of freaked me the fuck out that I had been earlier contemplating applying to CVU for a cover for being here in town and now, I am being presented with this job as my first initiation task into the Order.