Page 9 of Prohibited

Evelyn Whitlocke when he knew her. But the same woman nonetheless. The papers had gone completely mad for the marriage of two members of Tulsa’s aristocracy, both living the high, glamorous life in New York City.

He’d burned the paper out of sheer, blind jealousy when it came around a couple of years ago and he figured that would be the last he’d ever hear of her until her obituary came up in the paper.

Then, rumors the last couple of months. Her name being repeated alongside Walter Stanley’s, a development that made him far angrier than he might have ever admitted, but he said nothing to anyone. What should he care who she was fucking now? Of course she would choose a man who had become their mortal enemy.

He tried not to think about her, ever, but sometimes he failed. Especially on long, lonely nights when he’d had too much applejack and he ached for the innocent, blissful nights they spent together among the rose bushes and the crepe myrtles.

The memories came at him now, fast and hard, a break in a dam that he couldn’t hold.

Hot nights and hotter kisses. Summer lust burning them both up until everything imploded.

After all this time, this was how she came back into his life?

Alex had just stood there and watched with his arms folded, one hand thoughtfully stroking his chin while he watched Ryan carve the truth out of Barnes. His blueeyes snapping with a cold fire, body vibrating with barely contained ecstasy.

It wasn’t lost on Ryan, the irony of one of his mistakes surfacing while he faced down another.

Now, one of those mistakes leaned against the wall next to Ryan, watching him while Ryan wet a hand towel and scrubbed at the splatters of blood across his face and his chest, bare because he’d stripped down to keep himself tidy while he made a mess. He tried not to see Alex studying him out of the corner of his eyes, tried not to feel a strange fire coiling in his belly.

Grief made men do crazy things, think crazy things. That was all.

The heat of his righteous anger drew back some, like a tide of lava, and a cold core grew in him while he thought about what he’d done to Barnes. He didn’t get off on cutting into people like Alex. A part of him was repulsed, choking on the sounds that Barnes had made. Crying like a baby by the time Ryan put a bag over his head and knocked back the hammer of his revolver.

Another part of him felt like a god. It wasn’t a sexual pleasure, but that barbaric innate human inclination for violence bred into his bones by virtue of his species. Those two parts at war in him. The soft side that shuddered at the thought of human suffering. And the other part, the part that thrived on it.

Maybe he was just fucked up. Maybe he was just as fucked up as Alex.

This wasn’t the first time he’d killed a man and it certainly wasn’t going to be the last. The things he had seen and done in the War swarmed up to the forefront of his mind. It all became a confused jumble. Sandy Barnes. Nameless Germans. Screaming. Pieces missing. Ryan’s finger pulling the trigger. Ryan’s hand holding the knife. Blood everywhere. The smell of death. Scorched flesh.

Screaming.

The sound of a match being lit startled him out of the sucking cesspool of darkness threatening to drown him.

Alex laughed softly and touched the match to the end of his cigarette. He lingered close by, voice low and purring as a lover’s.

“Impressive” he said. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and released the air in a long ribbon of smoke.

“Shut up, Alex.” He twisted the hand towel, forcing the excess water out of it and then set it aside.

One white finger came out and stroked his shoulder. “You missed a spot.”

Ryan grabbed him by the wrist, causing Alex’s face to shut down and his eyes to narrow into cold slits.

“Don’t,” Ryan said, voice deadly quiet. “Save it for Lindsay.”

“Lindsay.” Alex smiled, looking amused. “You can see why he wasn’t invited to this meeting.” He pulled his arm free with no resistance from Ryan and then pushed away from the wall. He paced into the center of the large black and white bathroom. Spare, but elegant. Sufficient for the patrons of the Crystal, should they need to relievethemselves, vomit, or fuck someone over the sink. “He does have a tendency to put a damper on the more fun things in life.”

It was true, Lindsay objected to the… messier jobs. He’d always been compassionate. Clear headed. Stubborn. He may have been a thief and a criminal, but he had his own code of conduct. Ryan admired him for it, had always valued Lindsay for his ability to balance the rest of them out. There were times when they might have run as mad as a pack of wild dogs if he hadn’t been there to reel them in. But it was also incredibly obnoxious at times. Because sometimes, things needed to be done in the name of justice He and Lindsay simply didn’t see eye to eye on what those things were at times.

“You’re the one I have to rely on to be practical now,” Alex said, narrowing his eyes at the bathroom floor.

Now that Tommy was dead.

Ryan looked at Alex’s profile in the bathroom mirror and his stomach folded in on itself. It felt strange to be here with Alex. Without Tommy. Alex’s eyes following him, always. This strange, intense fascination. He’d done his best to ignore it the last two years. Now it stood in the room, as big an elephant as Tommy’s absence.

His mother was dead. His grandfather. Tommy.

And this is all he was left with from his broken family.