Page 2 of Plain Jade

Jade was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t even realize she was being followed until suddenly someone grabbed her. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand covered her face, stopping her from calling for help. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She’d never feared for her life. She’d never been attacked.

She was pulled into a dark alley. Before she had time to thwart her attacker, he threw her against the wall. The collision was so unexpected, she didn’t have time to stop herself, and her head hit the wall, making her instantly dizzy. Her assailant then grabbed her by the hair, making her scream. She tried to stop him. The pain was instant and excruciating.

“Please, stop.”

He didn’t.

She was thrown to the ground and then fear completely took over as he started to push the bottom of her dress up. With it being cold, Jade had worn tights, but he took care of them easily, tearing them as if they were not a problem.

This couldn’t be happening. Jade was a virgin. Thirty years old. An adulthood of useless dates and work. She had never gone home with a man, or shared a regretful encounter.

She fought him off, clawing at his hands, kicking out at him.

“Fucking bitch!”

Jade coughed as he landed a blow directly to the gut. She couldn’t breathe. It stunned her for a few seconds, and then she felt his palm against her thighs, and then she felt like a madwoman.

The man kept raining blows down on her, trying to stop her, and during the fight, he must have gotten fed up with her, because in the next second, everything went black.

****

Braxton had been taking care of other business when he heard the feminine scream. In all his years of fighting, killing, dealing with filth on a day-to-day basis, screams had no effect on him.

He even heard them in the men and women he tortured, all begging him to spare their lives. If they didn’t have a nice price on their head, or if they weren’t so fucking evil, he would gladly let them live. None of them ever did.

The moment he stepped into anyone’s life, they were pretty much fucked. F.U.C.K.E.D. And he was very proud of that fact. He’d spent a lifetime honing his skills. Like tonight, there had been a hundred grand in the thief he’d located. Once he had sent proof to the buyer that he had him, he’d waited further instructions, and that had been simple—make him bleed, make him beg—and Braxton had done exactly that.

No one left his company dissatisfied. He was the best at what he did.

It was also what pissed everyone off. There were a lot of people who wanted to buy his services exclusively. He couldn’t be bought. No one would ever own him. He didn’t take every job offered. Hell, the fuck, no. He did his own work, and there were times he even hunted people just for the thrill of it.

All his life, he’d been training to be this animal, this beast, and he was more than happy to allow it to flourish. He liked to think of himself as a nocturnal creature. The night and darkness belonged to him.

Which is why he didn’t understand his curiosity at that fucking scream. People screamed. They did so in fear, excitement, happiness, pain. Screaming was such a varied emotion, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt, that the scream he heard was one of fear.

A woman was being hurt.

He usually didn’t give a fuck.

But … if on the off chance she was an innocent woman, he had a fucking problem. Not that he considered people innocent. No one was. They were all full of sin, all evil. At least, in his experience.

Women were just as bad as men, if not more so. Most of the women he encountered were crueler than men. Just a fact. He didn’t know if it was true for others, but he didn’t care what other people thought.

One foot in front of the other, something drove him down that alley. The scream suddenly stopped, and Braxton saw what was happening. A man was trying to rape a woman.

He saw her tights were discarded and he couldn’t quite make out the woman’s face as the man had shoved a jacket over her.

“Fucking ugly, useless bitch.”

Now, for some odd reason, that really pissed Braxton off.

“You’re going to rape this woman, and you’re insulting her. If she was so ugly, why drag her down here in the first place?”

The man in question stood and spun around. “Fuck off. This is my piece of pussy.”

Not a good idea. Braxton didn’t like being spoken to that way. He never accepted it. As it happened, he’d kept to the shadows. He smiled and stepped out into the light. He loved the cover of darkness, but now he saw the shock, the fear, and underneath it all, there was revulsion. Braxton didn’t care. He was used to people being startled by his appearance. He’d had many years to grow accustomed to the way people treated him.

“Would you like to say that one more time?” Braxton asked, and was rather impressed with his ability to talk nicely. He wasn’t known for being civil, not after being spoken to like a piece of shit.