Chapter 37: Chapter 37

CONNOR/ KADE HAWKINS

PRESENT DAY

“I’LL ALWAYS BE your friend. You made Aunt Tina proud. Your dad is proud”

The five-year-old me stared at the ginger haired woman. Her hair wasn’t honey blonde, that was fake just like her words. Just like her fucking affection for me.

Did you know how human flesh smelled like when subjected to a fiery furnace? Did you know how humans screamed when life ebbed out of their bodies?

Ask me and I would tell you.

The smell of human flesh was nowhere near that of a chicken’s or a pig’s. No, burning flesh smelled like death, had the kind of tang that brought tears to your eyes and made you want to fucking puke your guts out.

The screams of a dying man? My father—the rotting bastard—might have stashed me away in a helicopter that day but every day, every damn night, I could see the flames.

The sickening smell of my mother, my brother and Callan burning alive engraved itself on me for years now. And their screams? They were like an echo forever meant to haunt me for eternity and damn it, I fucking deserved it.

This was punishment.

The blood on my hands at this very second was the only thing fueling me to fucking live.

One fist and my blood boiled for more.

It was always like this.

I hunted them, each and every man involved with my father and it would always end like this.

My knuckles stinging with someone else’s blood on them, my chest howling at me for more, their mocking laughs amplifying the anger that coursed through me like a fix.

The particular piece of scum I was punching at the moment passed out way before I could land another bullet on his right leg.

He was the same piece of shit that had hired Billy Duncan to play pretend in that fucked up little town we lived in years ago and while I had enjoyed breaking his limbs two days straight, the interrogation was going nowhere and I knew it and it fucking fostered the rage till all I could see was red.

I could barely recognize his muggy face as I threw in another punch.

He was messy and I hated messy.

Blood oozed from his cuts, the same drops of blood ruining a perfectly good and expensive suit.

The sound of bones cracking filled the air. My knuckles, his skull.

“Hey, hey, he’s dead. Knock it off”, Ice’s hand landed on my shoulder and I pulled back from the man.

“Clean this up, we are rescheduling the Amato project”, I exhaled wiping my hands with the rag from a nearby steel trolly.

Ice circled the man or in this case what used to be the man. He didn’t flinch, barely showed emotion just like I fucking liked it.

For me it was justice. Justice for all the illegal shit happening while people moved on in their lives without having a fucking clue that people like terrorists, mass murderers and human traffickers existed.

Ice was one of the few men I trusted. Frankly the only man I trusted in this forsaken world. We grew up together—sort of—I was the boss’s son and he was the lad that licked dirt off my fucking father’s shoes.

When we hit puberty, he helped me get rid of my father and there was no easy way of saying that I had murdered my father in cold blood.

Lucas Hawkins had it coming from the start. I might have been a bad fucking seed, might have betrayed my family but I had remorse tattooed on my face forever and the thing about tattoos, they stuck on, they faded but they still stuck on.

Eliminating my father from the world had done everyone a favor. A favor to all the people he caused harm to, the people he killed, the children he killed—my brother included.

As far as inheritance went, everything my father owned, I inherited. Every shit he handled, his mansions, his money all under my name.

Kade Hawkins.

The same Kade that was trying to make himself feel fucking better by pretending to be a vigilante to the innocent.

The same Kade that was trying to bury the ghosts that haunted him by eliminating evil in the world.

“Rescheduling being getting married to a mafia princess just to take her father down? Getting hitched is not for men like us and you know it”

“Nicolas Amato will continue killing if we don’t stop him”, I said my face hard pulling down the sleeves of my white shirt.

“He’s also the psycho that will have your head on the platter if he figures out you are marrying his daughter to take him down”

“A small price to pay for millions of people”

In all my twenty-six years, I had never not even once given a shit about my life. I was the bastard living on this earth on borrowed time.

I never wanted this. This shitty life, all this money that made me feel damn empty. I never pictured this for myself when I stuck a dagger in my family’s back.

I had only wanted one single fucking thing.

To be happy.

To have a brother.

A mother.

A---Callan.

The man who inspired me to be this. To be like him.

‘Good kid’

He always called me that.

A good kid, with so much pride in his eyes it gutted me in the insides thinking about him.

Ice fucking chuckled.

“A small price in our world is getting a bullet in your body or something not destroying your life with a woman who may be just as psychotic as her dead-beat dad”

My life was already destroyed I wanted to say.

“Lucia Amato won’t be a fucking threat to me”

“Whatever you tell yourself to sleep buddy. Not every woman is like the submissives you fuck”

I didn’t stick around for the conversation.

Lucia Amato was submissive and fucking shy. I’d fucking figured that out the minute we met at some bullshit charity event for birds.

Blonde, blue eyed, pepped to be the very object of a man’s desire, she was beautiful. We had locked eyes that night and I would never forget the look she gave me.

Her rosy lips parted; a slight gasp escaped her lips; the same reaction I got from women who saw my scar for the first time. Yet it wasn’t the scar that scared her, she was fucking mesmerized with me. Like a kid seeing Disney land for the first time and that had been my way in.

By making sure the princess wouldn’t say no to my marriage proposal. And she didn’t, she hadn’t because her big ocean blue eyes told her I was her prince. That this broken, scarred part of me loved her.

Only she didn’t know she was a pawn in my game and in my life, there was only one motto.

The end justified the means.

Breaking some woman’s heart wouldn’t matter since in the end I would be ridding the world of her monster of a father.

……………

Half an hour later I was parking my car in AMATO industries’ underground parking lot.

Never liked the fucking building but that was the price you paid when your future father-in-law happened to be a murdering bastard with trust issues.

Nicolas Amato needed me—or let’s just say my money and affluence. With one legitimate daughter and no sons, he needed someone just as powerful to continue his legacy which in this case was his future son-in law aka me aka the man who’d ruin him.

Getting out of my car, I sauntered into the lift, my Cavier shades hiding my eyes.

I hated attention.

As if having a scar across my left brow down to my cheek wasn’t enough, bearing the Hawkins name attracted attention from the people who knew my father. Might as well as added in the people who read fucking Vogue magazines that had my face on them because Ice thought it would be good for business.

I whipped my phone from my pants, barely looking at the screen when a small as fuck palm landed on my cheek knocking my shades off my face.

“You pervert!”

A ginger haired five-foot something woman stood in front of me, her dagger like eyes aimed to kill.

God, I fucking hated gingers.

CASSANDRA BATES

“DAD WE ARE not doing this again”, I honked at traffic.

Being late on my second day would only give the narcissistic assholes I worked with at Amato industries leverage to undermine me. Two women being in the HR division gave the men some sort of sick idea that they were better at everything.

Whilst I didn’t want to call Nicolas Amato a sexist motherfucker, the ratio of women to men working at his firm were insignificantly low and I thrived under such conditions. Proving men wrong and showing them that women deserved to be part of the working-class population.

Plus bursting a man’s overinflated ego? That shit got me up in the morning.

“At least consider it”, Jason Bates’ voice echoed through my Auto sedan and I whispered a hushed ‘fuck my life’.

“There’s nothing to consider. He and I haven’t been in touch for years and I think that’s for the best. I wish him luck in his endeavors and that’s as much as I can say”

If he wanted to get himself killed, it was none of my problem. He hadn’t been my problem for a very very long time not since…

“He’s your brother. Whatever feud you two have going on, you’ll have to fucking solve it”

“D-dad...d-dad, I’m—breaking—can—you—hear—”

“Cassandra BATES, I taught both of you that trick. Don’t try to use it-“

I hung up.

He was my adoptive brother. Not my blood brother as my father tried so very hard to enunciate.

Jace ‘Jr’ Asher hadn’t been my brother in a long fucking time.

Brothers didn’t treat you like a precious egg since you were a kid…ok maybe they did but his way of taking care of me was different.

Brothers didn’t make you your favorite dishes when you were sick or hugged you like you were their world.

Brothers didn’t fight off every guy that tried asking you out…again maybe they did…but his way of being overprotective was different.

And certainly, they didn’t know nor were they supposed to know how you tasted.

He was messed up. He was full of trauma and that baggage bad boys came with and I had been with him every step of the way. Delusional. A fucking teenager. In love.

He was my everything till he wasn’t.

‘I shouldn’t have kissed you, Cassie. You are eighteen, too damn young to fall for a piece of shit like me. You deserve better’

‘I love you Jace’

‘I’m leaving Cass. Jason set me up in Miami-‘

‘What about us?’

‘There’s no us. There was never an us. There will never be an us. That kiss was a mistake’

And that was pretty much the last conversation between us.

The only guy who’d made me ovulate for the first time, who’d showed me what having someone to love felt like, who’d kissed me with such passion and intensity that left me weak in the knees was the same guy that left me crying on the bathroom floor with a broken heart.

Since then, I avoided him like the plague. I hadn’t seen him since what? Thanksgiving? Easter? Two years ago?

He was up in Miami following in my dad and his dad’s footsteps.

Security detail they called it…more like wasting your life away with violence and blood.

I hated blood and guns and military men and everything having to do with Jace which was why I jumped on the first flight I could get to New York to start a fresh.

No nagging dads.

No brothers who might have kissed you and left you nursing a broken heart till date.

And no overbearing mothers.

I managed to snag a space in the elevator the last minute after being sidetracked by the Ferrari in the parking lot.

Gary wouldn’t let me down easy today.

Late by five minutes, God my manager would throw a tantrum starting a speech on how—

The intoxicating smell of patchouli, sandal wood, spice hit my nostrils all at once and the leopard print heels I had worn today threatened to topple me over.

The scent I would have ignored. We were like six in the elevator. Bushy beard at the corner, Red Heels in front of Bushy beard. Then in the middle was the blonde with the fake extensions in her hair that were visible to the human eye. To my right was a guy I had sworn I had bumped into yesterday from the tech department.

Meaning that there were different perfumes mixing in the air at the moment.

Yet the man behind me, I hadn’t even seen his face yet but his presence burnt my back like a hot curling iron. His smell was clouding my senses, shaking my calves. His height, he was tall…

How did I know that?

I could feel his body inches away from me. No, not inches—so damn close his legs fucking touched mine.

I tolerated it.

There was no space in here.

Then he did something that pissed me the hell off.

Taking something from his pocket, he took a step forward and I felt him against my butt.

Flustered, hot, demeaned, I could feel him. The bulge in his pants hugging my butt.

I didn’t have time to think as I turned around slapped his cheek so hard, I might have injured my hand before yelling,

“You pervert!”

His dark shades fell with a ruckus to the floor,

My chest heaved with fury but it died down the minute his golden-brown eyes glared at mine.

Lethal, dangerous, fucking scary.

The scar across his cheek and brow amplified the storm in his eyes.

Everyone around me was too fucking surprised to utter anything.

Instead, I felt like a spider under his boot. Under that thunderous gaze that had me biting the inner tissues of my mouth.

Dark hair like the night, face sculptured by Michelangelo himself, stacking so much muscles in his suit, my assaulter didn’t say shit as he scooted to the ground to pick his shades.

I felt his hot breath hit my legs and I mentally cussed for wearing the knee length ivory silk dress today of all days.

Then he stood up and by now my voice had returned.

“Just because we are trapped in this hot abomination, it does not give you the right to…to—”

“I hate gingers, they are not my type. You are not my type”

As if the elevator worshipped him, the doors parted, he was out leaving his trail of—

“Oh my God. Kade Hawkins was standing right behind us!” tech guy said.

I lifted a brow,

“Kade Hawkins?”

“Future son in law of Mr. Amato, that Kade? You are so in trouble new girl. I would be packing my things if I were you”

Shit. Shit. Shiiit.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Cass you just got here, I love you but this won’t solve anything”, my co worker spoke over the phone, I tip toed into the parking lot.

“I hit him; he deserved it but that man will cost me my job”

“So, you are stalking him to his car to beg for forgiveness? THAT’S worse!”

I wouldn’t beg, more like explain my side of the story.

“I see him. I have to go”

I hung up.

I spotted him, his back to me standing before…the Ferrari, of course Mr. I HATE GINGERS had a Ferrari.

Spoilt handsome ass.

I straightened my dress unnecessarily then I was walking to him. He hadn’t noticed me so it would be easier cornering him.

Two slow as fuck steps and I was standing behind him.

Then he turned around as if he had felt my presence.

The words I had rehearsed left me as I glanced at the concrete floor.

Body. A Caucasian man’s body.

Blood pooling around the floor. Near his shoes. My breakfast threatened to make its appearance up my gullet and out of my mouth.

Two knives jabbed in his chest. Dead.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! He’s dead. He’s dead. Y—You---”

I didn’t get to scream when Dark Knight hauled my body to the floor, his big hands breaking my fall.

Shots echoed in the air. A screeching car sounded.

I was too scared to see shit so I leaned in his chest, his hand at the back of my head shielding me from whatever the fuck was happening.

Then everything stopped.

My heart wasn’t stopping. My body was shaking.

I hated blood. I hated—

“Damn it, Ice. Fuck!” the man whose chest I was clinging to roared and I flinched.

“Y—You…”

“I need you to breathe”, he commanded, jaw ticking, eyes on ole little me.

I breathed but a man was still dead five feet away from us. People tried to shoot us. I almost got shot.

“We have to leave, do you fucking follow?”

No. I DID NOT fucking follow.

“The longer we stick around the higher the chances of getting our brains blown off”

“Our? I—I work here. I-I didn’t kill—”

“They saw your face, they’ll come for you whether you like or not Red”

Red, my name wasn’t…

“No”

“No? I wasn’t offering. It wasn’t a fucking choice. We leave of your own accord or I get you out of here myself”

“W—what does that mean? I don’t-“

“You are stuck with me, whether we both fucking like it or not”

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