Justice for Violet Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2017 Maia Dylan

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-152-6

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For my best friend who is the hardest working mother of two I have ever met. You continue to amaze me with your never ending capacity for love and just how damn calm you are when your kids spill nail polish on the carpet. Can’t wait for our next girls’ night out! Margaritas on me.

  And to my hubby, who puts up with my girls’ nights out and the fallout that may come from them.

  JUSTICE FOR VIOLET

  Retribution, 1

  Maia Dylan

  Copyright © 2017

  Prologue

 

  DOCUMENTTYPE: Open letter to the people of Chicago

  DISTRIBUTION: All known online and social media forms

  SUBJECT: We are a city at war

  SOURCE: IEH

  There is a plague in our city, an infestation of evil intent that is winding itself around the very fabric of the place we call home, and if we do not take a stand and eradicate this evil, it will take hold to the point where Chicago as we know it, will be lost.

  We hear it in the news every day, and shake our heads in sympathy at the lives this infestation takes. We see it in our streets and turn our heads out of fear for our own safety, and we tell ourselves it could never happen to us. But when we turn our backs on what is happening right in front of us, when we do not stand up to the intimidation and persecution of Roberto Santiago and what he allows his men to do in our communities, are we not just as guilty?

  How many more people have to be killed before you summon the courage to stand with those who fight against this plague? And there are those that fight, and their numbers are growing. Santiago must be stopped.

  By any means. At any cost.

 

  Chapter One

  Jacob Williams used every ounce of speed his shifter ability could give him to get to the front door of Black Ridge House as fast as possible. Seeing as how he was a leopard shifter, he had considerable speed, and made it there before the roar that had broken the night silence from outside had completely died away. His Alpha, Kieran Murphy, was a lion, and his roar of agony had ripped through the house and the forest around them, calling every Black Ridge Pride member in the vicinity to him. Jacob sensed rather than heard the other shifters in the house heading in the same direction. He reached the door first and threw it open.

  Kieran knelt on the drive in front of the house beside one of the black jeeps the pride preferred to use when patrolling. Jacob leaped from the porch and fell to his knees beside his Alpha.

  “Fuck, Jason!” Jason had only just started patrolling, and he and his brother Vernon had been one of the first young leopards Jacob had trained as Enforcers.

  The younger man blinked slowly as his gaze turned from his Alpha to look up at Jacob. “Th-the wounds won’t heal, Jacob.” Jason’s voice was weak, and his body shook, no doubt from shock. He bled sluggishly from two gaping bullet wounds in his upper chest, and Jacob shared a shaken look with his Alpha. “Vernon is dead. I got him in the back. I—I couldn’t l-leave him there. How could I tell my mom that I left my younger brother dead on the streets?” Jason’s teeth chattered, the cold another indication that Jason had lost a lot of blood. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Mason!” Jacob yelled out when he saw his brother heading in their direction. “Grab the medical kit!” Mason jolted with shock, but ran to do as he’d asked. It wasn’t often a shifter with healing abilities required a medical kit, and when they did it was usually bad. This was no exception.

  “It’s okay, Jase,” Kieran said gently as he kept pressure on the wounds. “You brought him home, and we’ll get you fixed up in no time. We’ll find the fuckers that left you there and took Vernon from us.”

  Jason’s eyes slid to Kieran. “They didn’t leave us, Alpha. Santiago’s men ambushed us near the Lincoln Memorial. We were just finishing our patrol and they jumped us. Vernon shifted and attacked, but they shot Vernon, then me. Vernon shifted back. Then they let me leave. The bastards were laughing the whole time.”

  Jacob frowned. “What do you mean they let you leave?”

  Jason lifted up a cell phone Jacob hadn’t even realized he’d had in his hands. “They gave me this to give to you, Kieran,” Jason said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t feel as cold as I did before. Do you think I am starting to heal now, Alpha?”

  Kieran inhaled sharply then leaned down, putting his face close to Jason’s. “You bet you are. You are one of my strongest, Jason, and no fucking bullet is going to take you from the pride. You’ll get better and we’ll find the bastards that did this to you.”

  Jacob watched as the light of life faded in Jason’s eyes and his heart bled for the loss not only of a member of the pride, but someone he considered a friend.

  Kieran sat completely still for a moment, staring into Jason’s face, before reaching out and gently closing his eyes. Jacob felt grief and rage building within him, and he looked around at the faces of the pride who had gathered around them, his gaze falling on his older brother, knowing that the pain and horror he saw on Mason’s face must have been mirrored in his own.

  The sound of a phone ringing hit the night, and Kieran jerked his arm up. The cell phone Jason had handed him was ringing in his hand. Sliding his bloodstained finger across the screen to answer the call, Kieran lifted the phone to his ear. Shifters had enhanced levels of hearing so every one of the pride heard the voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Did the dumb shit die yet?” The smug arrogance in Santiago’s tone came through clear. “I do so hope I haven’t called while he’s going through his final death throes. They can be very entertaining but oh so dramatic, can’t they? I’d hate for you to miss them.”

  “You think you’ve made a fucking point with this?” Kieran asked in a deadly tone, his voice harsh, and Jacob heard more than a thread of the man’s lion in his voice.

  “The point!” Santiago yelled. “The point is that now I have something that makes it possible to kill you bastards. These bullets make you take human form, and they inhibit your healing. If we shoot you in a place that would kill a normal human being, then you fucking animals will die, too. You’ve lost your advantage, Murphy. Now, you have seven days to get the fuck out of Chicago, because if you don’t then it will be open season on every single one of you abominations.”

  Kieran growled low in his chest. “You’ve killed too many innocents already, you narcissistic son of a bitch. This. Ends. You can shove your ultimatums right up your ass. We don’t need your seven days. You want war? Then war is what you will get. I will make you this promise, Santiago—you will die screaming while you watch as my lion eats your heart in front of you. Look for me soon, asshole. I’m. Coming. For you.”

  Kieran crushed the phone with one hand, effectively ending the call. He inhaled sharply, threw his head back and roared, loud and long into the night. Feeling the emotions and pain within him swelling to epic proportions, Jacob was helpless not to follow his lead, and he, too, threw his head back and roared. His pride had lost two of their o
wn, and the loss was felt throughout the entire pride. Roars and cries of pain echoed around them, and Jacob had to fight the need his leopard had to change, run into the forest, and never look back until he had bled the bastards who had done this. But he couldn’t. There was work to do here first before they could avenge their brothers.

  But vengeance would be theirs, and Jacob vowed that he would be standing there in the moment his alpha killed Santiago. He planned to be there to utter the last words the man would ever hear, and he would do anything and everything to ensure that happened.

  ****

  “Hey, chica, where you going so fast?”

  Violet Riccitelli ignored the man’s question, gripped her purse tight to her side, hunched her shoulders a little higher and stepped up her pace.

  “Oh, come on now, chica, don’t be like that. We only want to talk with you.”

  Violet very much doubted that was the case.

  She walked swiftly around the corner and knew that the three men who had started following her as soon as she stepped out the subway exit, made the turn just behind her. The air was cool for an October evening, so there weren’t as many people walking around as there normally might have been.

  Violet saw an alleyway coming up and moved slightly away from the opening, just in case there were more of them, and one was waiting for her in the shadows beyond the darkened entrance. She sped up even further, but as soon as she had stepped clear of the first building, one of the men behind her moved up beside her and pushed her hard through the entrance. Violet cried out as she stumbled into the alleyway.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” she asked in a voice that trembled.

  “Oh, so now you want to talk to me,” the man who had first spoken to her jeered. “You weren’t such a talkative little slut a minute ago, now were you?”

  Violet stumbled back into the alleyway, looking left and right for a way to escape. “Help me! Someone help me, please!”

  The three men laughed and stepped toward her menacingly.

  The Hispanic man in the middle sneered at her. “This is Santiago territory. Ain’t no one gonna help you, chica. It’s not that kinda neighborhood.”

  “This one is pretty,” one of the other men said in a voice that sounded like he smoked at least a pack a day. “The last ones have been pretty fucking ugly. I want this one to stay pretty when I fuck her. Then, we’ll take a knife to that face so she leaves here an ugly cunt like the others.”

  The three men kept advancing in her direction, so Violet kept stumbling backward, making wordless sounds of panic. When she passed the last dumpster and was pressed up against the concrete wall at the back of the alley, her only avenue of escape involved getting past the three men in front of her.

  “There’s nowhere left to hide now, little girl.” The third man, who up until that point had remained silent, spoke this time. “We’re gonna fuck you up so damn bad, your own momma ain’t gonna recognize you.”

  Violet had been huddling against the back wall of the alley, whimpering in fear, but now suddenly stood tall. “Well, yeah, I kinda thought that was the point of the whole push the innocent girl into the dark alley and threaten her routine you guys have got going on. But when exactly are you going to stop talking about it and actually do something?”

  Violet stared at the three men standing opposite her in the alley and not for the first time, wished there was some way to capture the what the fuck looks these assholes got on their faces. Every time it was the same. When the easy mark they had targeted to rob, rape, stab, kill, or mug suddenly stood tall and demanded they stop with the boring diatribe and get to the action portion of the evening, they had no idea what to do. All their threatening witticisms dried up and they stood there with their mouths open in shock, looking like fish out of water.

  She sighed and threw her hands up in the air in a clear sign of frustration. “Come on, boys, I don’t have all night, and I am getting sick of standing in this godforsaken alley. Y’all might be used to the smell of rotting garbage and urine, but me? Not so much. Now, I wore this butt ugly woolen coat to look all non-threatening and an easy mark for thugs like you.” Violet shrugged the offending garment off, and let it fall at her feet, revealing the fight suit she wore beneath it, complete with a whole arsenal of weapons. “God, that thing was heavy. I even put on some fake glasses.” Violet took them off and threw them off to the side. “They really sold the act, didn’t they? But you want to know what really gets me angry? The part of this evening that is going to make what I do to the three of you a whole lot more painful than I might have otherwise, is the fact I opted to stick with my own boots.”

  Violet stuck her foot out and sighed at the sight of the sludge and some kind of dark goop she knew she never wanted to know what it actually was marring the side of the chunky heel of the knee-high boots she wore. “The shoes I was going to wear were fugly as sin, and I just couldn’t bring myself to wear them, and now my beautiful kickass boots have shit on them that I am pretty sure would turn my stomach if I knew what it actually was. And that pisses me off more than you could ever imagine, and the only ones here that I can take my rage out on, are you three assholes. So I say again, enough with the talking. Pull on your big boy panties.” Violet reached behind her and gripped the handles of her custom made fighting batons, pulled them from the two sheaths built into the back of her suit and spun them on the palm of her hands. “And come get some.”

  Chapter Two

  “Christ, Mason, would you slow the fuck down?”

  Mason didn’t alter his stride, but he did turn to glare at his brother over his shoulder, wondering why the hell their mother hadn’t drowned the bastard when they were just cubs. “Jacob, I swear to all that is holy, I’m going to rip you to pieces. If our intel is correct, then the woman Kieran told us to find might be in the alley up ahead, and she’s in trouble. If you don’t move your ass I’ll fucking cut you.”

  Jacob snarled as he jogged to catch up. “Fuck you, Mason, you’d have to catch me first, and we all know who’s faster.”

  “Only in your human form,” Mason muttered under his breath, conscious that there were humans on the streets around them and he didn’t want them to hear the two of them arguing. “When we run as leopards, I own your ass.”

  Jacob rolled his eyes in that annoying way younger brothers had. Mason and Jacob took their role as Black Ridge Enforcers seriously. They had worked their way through the ranks to earn the right to stand at their Alpha’s side, but sometimes Mason just wanted to slap Jacob upside the head, and to be fair he did that often. He knew tonight that would only start a brawl and they would never make it to the woman Kieran said could help them.

  They’d had to bury Jason and Vernon the day before, and the pride had yet to grieve their loss properly. Now Jacob and Mason were out in the streets, desperately looking for some kind of genius who they were told could help them. There were many enemies on the streets of Chicago, but there were friends as well. Kieran had told them about a woman who had helped many of the victims of Santiago’s tyranny. A woman who, according to a few of their allies, had access to a laboratory or team of scientists who could help with the bullets Santiago had fabricated.

  Mason was also pissed off about the fact that before they’d left the house, they’d received another transmission from the group calling themselves IEH. The message was clear. The group called for all of Chicago to stand up against Santiago and take back their city. Although Mason agreed with the sentiment, the retaliation from Santiago and his group of merry fuck ups would be swift and severe.

  “Come on, Mason,” Jacob wheedled. “We are heading in the right damn direction. I just want you to scent the air, and tell me if you can catch the scent that is driving my leopard crazy.”

  Mason pushed away the anger that came with his train of thought and growled at his brother as they rounded the corner, and they were only a few feet from the entrance to the alleyway they had been directed to. “Jacob, I promise, as soon as we save
this woman, I’ll inhale so deep my goddamn nose will bleed, but right now I need you on the same fucking page so that we can find this woman. The informant said she was calling out for help. We need to get to her and take care of the three assholes that are stalking her!”

  The two of them stepped quickly into the alley and slammed to a stop. The scene that met them was so unexpected he blinked slowly a couple of times to check that what he was seeing was in fact real. A tall curvy female with long curly red hair was putting a beating on two men, who were both swearing and cursing at her, while she swung two lethal looking fighting batons with unerring accuracy.

  The two men were wielding knives and threatening the woman with each step. If anything she seemed to be amused by their threats, and if Mason wasn’t mistaken, she was enjoying the hell out of the fight. Mason stepped forward when he saw the two bastards strike out at the same time, and one of them managed to connect with her upper arm. The woman frowned, and looked down at the leather that Mason could see was now wet with her blood.

  “You son of a bitch,” the woman muttered. “I fucking hate sewing. So now, despite all the fun I am having, I’m going to have to end our little dance so I can go take care of it. Which is a shame because I was just starting to think we might have something building between us.” The woman then started moving with lethal intent, and Mason admired the skill and speed with which she moved. She—

  “Mate,” Jacob suddenly growled, his eyes glowing amber as his leopard drew closer to the surface.

  Mason frowned as he tilted his head into the air, inhaled then almost dropped to the ground. Beneath the usual stench of an inner city alley that some obviously mistook as a public restroom, the alluring scent of cinnamon and honey hit him right in the chest. His entire body hummed with recognition of the woman the fates had deemed theirs, and he had to hold himself in check to avoid losing his shit and allowing his leopard to leap out into the open.