Smolder (Georgia Smoke #6)

• Nineteen •

“My little brother has had his switch flipped.”

Sebastian

The cry of pain that met my ears did nothing to appease the increasing darkness spreading through me. It was as if I no longer recognized myself. That the man I knew was standing back and watching the transition take place and doing nothing to stop it.

I stalked through the underground tunnel toward the sound. The smell of Thatcher’s cigarette smoke met my nose before I reached the door leading into the room where they had Vinson Shelton strapped up. His wrists were tied together and pulled up tight from the chain that hung from the ceiling. There was some blood on his face, but not much. Yet.

His eyes swung to me as I walked all the way into the room, and I saw the anger flash in them at the realization that I was behind this. I was glad those eyes looked nothing like his daughter’s.

“Is this about Royal?” he spit. “What did that little slut do?”

I didn’t stop walking until my fist slammed into his nose, causing it to spray blood as he let out a pained howl.

Thatcher chuckled behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at any of them.

“Call her one more name, and I will slice off your goddamn dick and shove it in your mouth until you choke on it,” I warned him.

“Shit,” King muttered behind me.

“Oh fuck,” Wells drawled. “I told you not to—”

I turned around and headed toward him. He stopped whatever he was about to say when he looked at me.

A hand wrapped around my arm, and I jerked it back, ready to slam whoever had just touched me into a wall.

Storm’s eyes met mine.

“Deep breath,” he said. “Take a deep fucking breath.” He glanced back at Wells. “You either shut the fuck up or leave.”

“What is wrong with him?” Wells asked.

A deep cackle came from across the room. “My little brother has had his switch flipped.”

I swung my glare to Thatcher.

He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it out to me. “Go ahead. Burn him. Enjoy it. You know you want to cause him pain.”

“Broke my nose,” Vinson said in a garbled voice behind me.

“Oh, he’s gonna do more than that. I can see the manic gleam in his eyes. You can start talking, or he can unleash all the crazed shit building inside him on you. Either way, I’m entertained,” Thatcher told him.

My gaze narrowed when I saw Teller standing in the corner, wide-eyed as he watched me. Turning back around, I studied the man in front of me. Blood clots covered his mouth and down his neck. His eyes were starting to swell. Neither made me feel peace or even a shred of satisfaction. The creature controlling me wanted anguish, torture, agony.

“You bruised her. Left your handprints on her skin.” I seethed, moving back to him. Rage rolled off me as my breathing got heavier.

“She was in my face! She bruises easy! Whatever she said, it was a lie!”

A loud, animalistic sound filled the room, and I faintly recognized it as my own voice as I grabbed his arm and twisted it unnaturally until the crack of his bones met the wail that tore from his chest.

“He’s gonna kill him,” Storm warned.

“It’ll take more than that to kill him.” Thatcher’s voice sounded amused.

I ignored them as I grabbed his other arm and did the same with it. Except this time, Vinson’s head fell forward, and there was no sound but the breaking of his bones.

“Is he dead?” Teller asked.

“No, dumbass. He blacked out from the pain,” Wells replied.

“You done? Because we need to get answers from the motherfucker before you kill him,” Storm told me.

My chest rose and fell fast as I walked over to the other side of the room and placed my palms against the wall, trying to calm the violent craving taking over me.

They were right. We needed answers.

Then, I could kill him.

If she ever found out, she would hate me. He was a bastard, but she loved him. He didn’t deserve it. Not her love. I wanted him out of her life. I wanted to protect her from him. But at what cost was I willing to do that?

If she hated me, I wasn’t sure that I could survive it. What I’d felt earlier with her in my arms, clinging to me, had fed some fucking beast inside me that I didn’t think I had control over. This thing … it needed her. It needed what she’d given me.

“What has he said so far?” I ground out through my clenched teeth.

“Not much,” Thatcher replied just as the flick of his lighter went off.

“We need him conscious to talk,” Storm said, pointing out the obvious.

“That’s easy enough,” Thatcher said.

I heard him walking, his boots heavy on the concrete floor.

A cry came from Vinson, and I dropped my hands and turned around to look at him. Thatcher was holding his lighter in his hand, grinning like a psycho. He liked to burn those we tortured when they went unconscious.

“Ah, he’s awake. Now, talk, before I let my brother break all the bones in your body since that seems to be his thing as of late.”

Vinson’s eyes were almost closed from the swelling, but he managed to glare through the slits. “What is it you want to know?” he asked, struggling to breathe.

“I thought you said it was the grandmother losing her memory?” Thatcher said as he looked over at me. “Seems he’s going too.”

“Tell us all you know about the Dancastles and their dealings with drugs. Are they moving the laced crack that is causing all the hallucinations and cannibalism?” Storm asked him.

“Don’t know nothing ’bout hallucinating and cannibalism,” he grunted.

“What do you know? And keep in mind, if you lie, you won’t walk out of here alive,” Storm told him.

I was holding my breath. Not for the fucker’s sake, but for Royal’s.

“His son, Merce—he moves cocaine and ecstasy through the club scene. He has people working for him. He supplies it, and they get it out there. That’s all I know.”

“And how do you know that?” Storm urged.

“Because he dated my daughter,” he spit. “He wanted me to start selling it in the bar. I didn’t want to do that, so he had me make some drop-off runs for him. That was all I did. He paid me a nice chunk for it too.”

Thatcher cut his eyes at me, and without him saying a word, I knew what he was about to ask. My hands fisted at my sides, and I braced myself. It had to be done, although I refused to believe a word he said.

“And what about Royal?” he began. “Was she involved? Does she know anything?”

Vinson slowly turned his head to look at me. His broken arms hung at odd angles at his sides. The blood was still trickling from his nose. He would tell her I had done this to him. She’d hate me for it. I couldn’t have that. The only way to silence him was to kill him.

“They were fucking. What do you think? Of course she knew.”

Blind fury exploded inside me as I shot across the space between us. My hands wrapped around his neck, and I squeezed, wanting to shut up his lies. End whatever shit he was going to accuse her of. Make him go limp and lifeless. Hanging here, no longer a threat to Royal.

I heard voices in the distance and felt hands grabbing me. Pulling me. It all seemed far away. I was detached from it. Nothing mattered but the man in front of me as his face turned a bright red and then blue.

Suddenly, I was jerked back hard, and my hands were ripped from Vinson Shelton’s throat. I fought against the hold on me, but I couldn’t get free.

“FUCKING LIAR!” I roared.

“Is he dead?” I heard King’s voice behind me and realized he was one of the ones holding me.

Thatcher stepped forward and stuck his cigarette between his teeth, then grabbed the little hair on top of his head, lifting it to place a finger on his neck, in search of a pulse.

“It’s weak, but it’s there,” he replied, letting the head flop forward again, then glancing back at me. “You almost got him.”

“I left you down here to oversee things,” King told him.

Thatcher shrugged. “Probably shouldn’t have.”

“If we let you go, are you going to stay back? We aren’t done with him,” King said to me.

I wanted him dead.

“She had nothing to do with it,” I snarled.

“We can’t trust him, but he can give us the information we need to find out the truth. But he has to be alive to talk. The more he talks, the more we can weed out the truth.” King told me what I’d already known, but I didn’t give a fuck.

“If she helped with the sale of drugs, she didn’t know about the laced crack. She’d never be okay with that,” I said, although I wasn’t positive, I wanted to believe she was everything she appeared to be. The girl I’d spent time with was real. But I hadn’t known her long enough to be one hundred percent sure.

“Let the fucker live, and we can use him. This was your idea—to take her father and bring him here and keep him until we get all we need out of him. It’ll help lead us to the proof we need on Dancastle,” King reminded me.

I wanted Royal free of all this. I didn’t want to lie to her. It was eating me alive inside that she didn’t even know my name.

I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted her to know me. Not some made-up version of me. I wanted to pursue her, not use her. To do that, I had to find another way. Vinson was the other way.

“I can’t be here when he talks,” I said, knowing I’d kill him next time.

“No shit,” Storm replied.

“Sebastian.”

King’s tone made me tense. I didn’t like it. There was a warning edge to it.

“It might be best if you step back. Keep your distance from Royal Shelton. This has gotten personal for you, and that’s an issue.”

I stared at him. The urge to shut him up didn’t overtake me. Although the tightening of Storm’s hand on my arm meant the others weren’t so sure I wasn’t about to snap again.

King had sounded like my father. Something he would say to me. Something I was going to be told once he got word of this. He would keep me from her.

But hadn’t I already known that was going to happen?

I nodded and pulled my arm free of Storm’s hold, then left the room without looking back.

“Let him go and cool off,” my brother told them.

Yeah, let me just go do that.