Body Tox (The Bodies duet #1)

Chapter 34

S on of a bitch.

There were no written rules, of course, but an assassin wasn’t supposed to fall for their fucking target.

You’re in too deep, Ballard…

We were going to take down the agency, but how was that going to work when I would be more focused on keeping her safe?

She couldn’t be part of this fucking fight. She needed to be safe, or none of this was worth it. The woman lived her life in a damn gilded cage, and she was finally free of it all.

She still had a fucking stuffed animal.

I walked down to the basement, and I needed to drag the stinking, mangled corpse of ole boy Alex out of there before he started to stink. When I got to the door, I noticed it was open, the chair still on its side, and the pool of blood abandoned.

What.

The.

Fuck?

Where was the abusing dickless scumbag?

“Son of a bitch!” I punched the concrete wall and felt the blood leak down my fists.

This was even more reason to not let Echo join this fucking fight. I couldn’t take the chance of that man touching her again. He’d be out for revenge after what I did to him.

How was he even alive?

I’d castrated him, waterboarded him with his own blood, and left that man a whimpering dickless mess.

There had to be someone else here. My blood ran cold. If there was someone here, that meant Echo wasn’t safe. I dropped the bag I brought down, the fabric blending into the congealed puddle of blood on the ground.

“Echo!” I hollered, racing up the stairs.

I couldn’t hear her, not a damn sound except my pounding heartbeat.

“Echo!” I shouted again, taking three and four steps at a time.

A sinking feeling welled in my gut, which made me feel physically weighed down.

“Echo,” I tried again. We’re not alone!”

She had to hear me.

I finally got to the staircase, and my words bounced off the ceiling as I called her name again and again—but there was still only silence.

I threw open the doors to the main hallway, and my heart sank. She was there.

Held in the arms of a robed fuck, and there was a line of other robed fucks beside him. Both sides, at least twelve.

Echo looked at me, her eyes pleading for me not to do something stupid.

“No,” I said flatly.

The main-robed figure stepped forward, dragging Echo beside him, a gun jabbed in her side.

“What do you want with her? That isn’t godly to kill another soul, is it?” I yelled at him.

“Spoken of the man who tortured and left a man for dead just hours ago, son.”

I laughed. “I am not your fucking son! What is with you creepy fucks wanting me to call you Daddy?”

The man in the robes lifted his head, the black robe falling back and revealing the man beneath it.

It was the headmaster.

“Asher Ballard, why don’t you ask your girlfriend here if I have that right?”

I furrowed my brow, unsure what he could mean.

Echo looked away, tears pooling in her eyes.

“Echo...?” I said hesitantly. “What is he talking about?”

“Your woman decided to snoop into my clients’ folders. She revealed some important secrets about my business, including one small detail I was sure she’d disclose to you. However, I suppose your choice of lovers isn’t as faithful as you’d like them to be.”

I glared at the old man. The beastly rapist who tortured Evangeline and made her take her life was here, holding my Little Wraith hostage.

“I am your father, Asher Ballard. Evangeline is not just my prized breeder but your sister .”

I faltered, my mouth opening and closing, looking to Echo, who…stayed silent.

Angie was…my sister?

This monster is my father?

“You were never the brightest, were you boy? A shame, though. You were the best retrieval method of getting twice the profit for my breeders.”

I tried to get my brain to catch up to his fucked up words.

“I…what?”

The headmaster shook his head with disappointment in his eyes.

“I own you, Asher Ballard. You work for me. I contracted you to go find my breeders for my program, give you the heroic notion that you saved them, only to collect the money from their happy fathers and reclaim the girls once more.”

I…

“I suppose you can still refer to me as the Debt collector if you like.”

All those women I’d saved…were used as breeders?

“What the fuck do your riddles mean, old man?”

He laughed. Gripping the arm of the figure beside him and pushing them to the floor.

“Ask her yourself.”

I reached forward to the fallen person. Their cloak fell off their head and revealed bright blonde hair.

She looked up, meeting my eyes, and the big swirling pools of blue stared back at me.

“Evangeline…” I said silently. The woman before me, the friend I buried all those years ago.

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

Evangeline’s tears dripped free of her blue eyes. “I am so sorry, Asher. I truly am.”

I didn’t see it until it was too late. Echo screamed and jolted forward, her arms wrenched back like a rope hooked to a tether.

A gun was pulled out from the folds of black robing, shaking in Evangeline’s pale grip, and then…

Boom .

The shot rang off the walls, and I fell, hearing Echo’s scream pierce the air as I hit the ground.

My ears were ringing, a line of blood welling underneath me. It covered her name, blurred it, and hid it in a sea of red.

“No!” Echo screamed, and I watched her fight with everything she had.

She kicked, bit, and wrestled in the arms of the robed figures. She took down a good number of them, but there were just too many.

She was fighting to get to me. Tried to save me from drowning in my own blood.

She…wasn’t fast…enough.

I was sinking.

My Little Wraith was all I could see. Her beauty brought a smile to my face as I coughed on the blood bubbling from my lips.

“I love you, my Little Wraith.” I choked, so upset at myself for not getting her to safety.

Evangeline walked away, her tears falling from her eyes into the pool of my blood.

“No! Let me go. I will fight you every second of my life if you don’t let me save him. I will never stop,” Echo warned, an anguished rage lacing her tone.

Everything felt like I was underwater. There wasn’t any pain, just slow certainty and a soft warmth spreading in my body.

“Be still, child. I have plans for you that death does not fit into as of yet,” the headmaster chided, and she continued to buck and fight to get to me.

“I will let you take me! I will do whatever you ask. Whatever you want, it is yours…” she begged, tears sliding down her cheeks. “But you have to let me save him. I swear I won’t fight you. I will bring a blade to my own throat, just please…don’t let him die. If you don’t let me help him, I will spend every last moment on earth until I kill you.”

My beautiful Wraith looked lethal, with absolution and promise in her gaze. “And I will fucking succeed, no matter how many lives it takes to do so.”

She reached forward and cracked the neck of the robed figure beside her, their body dropping to the floor in front of the headmaster. Her threats were waning in and out of my ears, my heartbeat a weird hitch that felt like a butterfly’s wings.

“Fine. I don’t have the energy to fight you every day for my plans.”

Echo was running to me, her beautiful body a blur in my wavering vision.

“Don’t you fucking die on me, Pretty Boy,” she said, her voice breaking. “You don’t get to die.”

I couldn’t feel her hands. I couldn’t feel anything but the warm cloud spread through me, a vibration that beckoned me to sleep.

I smiled at her. Her beautiful face was going to be the last thing I saw.

My Little Wraith brought my death after all .