“No one sees the good in themselves first, Birdy. We see the shit we loathe. Take it from me, I know what makes someone bad and worth hating, and you’re far from it.”

“I’ve done bad things in my life. Things you don’t know about.”

“You ever killed someone with your bare hands?”

“No.”

“Then whatever you did, it isn’t so bad.”

He listened to her breathe for a few minutes. He was still hard as a rock, but the need to jump her had long eased. He was comfortable with her like this. He felt whole, and life seemed to matter a hell of a lot more all of a sudden.

“Did you ever find out anything about that man?”

“Not yet.” Yet another lie. He wanted to be honest, but truth be told, the more in the dark she was about it, the better.

Remy reflected on the day he’d taken the guys to the bunker. The place was a fucking write off. There was no way he could clean that blood up without burning the whole place down. Logan had whistled in amazement and Fritz had nearly doubled over from the stench of the dead man – although, in Remy’s eyes, Fritz didn’t smell any better.

“What do you wanna do, Reap?” asked Logan.

“We’re gonna strip him,” Remy answered, quickly packing away Sara’s clothes in a bag to take back to her.

Logan and Fritz exchanged looks of disgust, but they didn’t complain. They’d done much worse as far as they were concerned.

“I’m gonna need a lot more booze for this shit,” Fritz muttered. “You nearly took his head straight off.”

He’d have preferred to keep him alive. Torture methods in the hands of Remy had always proven… effective. He could make a mute chimp sing long and hard with the right tools. Only this guy was massive and, in the moment, the attack had been so sudden with the clear motive to kill Sara, all he’d wanted was him dead.

After they’d stripped every piece of clothing off, Remy began inspecting every inch of the man’s body. He was looking for a mark. All he was seeing were tattoos of skulls and pin up girls.

“Check this out,” Logan said, kicking at the dead man’s leg.

Remy looked at the man’s shin. There was a black inked in square of a tattoo covering most of it. He gritted his teeth and angrily stormed to the other side of the room.

“Whatever he is, he’s not no more,” frowned Fritz.

Remy had hoped for a tattoo of an emblem – something to give away what gang he was affiliated with. The man had inked it over completely in an effort to hide his roots. It’d been an increasingly popular trend as of lately. Men that went up the ranks to become assigned killers were obligated to hide their markings so it wouldn’t get back to the gang they associated with if shit had gone sour.

“He’s obviously a Scorpion,” Fritz stated as he walked over to where Remy stood. “Who else would want to target that girl?”

“There’s no way Jaxon would send someone to kill her,” Remy refuted. “No way in hell. Besides, he wanted her for himself. It wasn’t the Scorpions.”

“Who else could it be?”

Remy had no fucking clue. They transported goods to ganglands in other cities and towns, and everyone operated peacefully as long as demand was met. With the Jackals doing all the cooking, they were essentially untouchable. They offered the best around, eliminated any competition and controlled every transport company this side of the country. Who would want to target the girl?

He hated himself for letting his guard down. He wasn’t even meant to be at the bunker that day. He’d had errands to run, business debts to settle…

Whoever it was had found out about its location, but, fuck, he was certain he hadn’t been followed during the trips he made there. How?! But most of all, why?

That was a question that continued to plague Remy’s mind. He held her to him long after she’d fallen asleep in his arms. How could one little lady frighten him so much? If something happened to her… No, no. Nothing was going to happen to her. He’d make sure of it.

Her tears had long dried, but her nose was stuffy. She breathed quietly through her mouth. He rested her on her side and nuzzled his face into hers, taking in her intoxicating scent. He wondered why she’d cried like that. What would have crossed her mind in that moment to ruin what would have been the best night of his life? In the far reaches of his mind he knew the answer to that already.

Jaxon.

“Hey Remy?” Sara’s groggy voice stirred him out of his reveries. She was still awake, though her eyes were closed.

“Yeah, Birdy?”

“Why do they call you Reaper?”

Remy pressed his lips hard against each other. Fuck, he hated that name. With a sigh he said, “It’s short for Grim Reaper.”

Silence.

“Why do they call you it?”

“Why do you think, Sara?”

She opened her eyes and roamed his face inquisitively. “Is it because you… kill people?”

“No,” he replied. “It’s because I’m good at killing people, and they never get away.”

He saw a blaze of horror in her eyes and quickly rested his hand over her cheek, soothingly rubbing his thumb over it. “You don’t ever have to be frightened by me. I would never hurt you. The men are scumbags anyway.”

“Do you…” she hesitated. “Do you like doing it?”

Remy’s inhaled sharply as he admitted, “No, Birdy. I don’t. I hate it. I hate it every single time I do it. I hate the way they look at me. I hate their screams. I hate the fucking blood on my hands afterwards. I fucking hate blood period.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Remember the first night in the bunker I told you I wasn’t a monster?”

“Yeah.”

“I lied.” Yeah, fucking admit how shit of a man you are. “I’m the worst of them. Even though I’ve known them for as long as I can remember, I officially joined the Jackals when I was sixteen, did what I could from the ground up, was willing to take on more work than I got. Early on they’d noticed how effective my skills were. I do the dirty and no one gets away unpunished. It’s like fear mongering – it sends a message not to cross us. Nobody climbs the club’s ranks at my age without doing the things I did. The club’s all I’ve known.”