Authors: Char Marie Adles
She continued to hum her song as she gently pushed the oak door open; it swung inward a few inches without a sound and she stuck her head into the room.
A heavily desk faced away from a large window that over looked the main barns of the ranch and then the training fields beyond. The walls were wooden just like all the others on the main floor, but unlike the others these had pictures hung on every open space. Some of them looked to be a few decades old and some even older then that. Pictures of smiling couples and children over the generations. There was even one of tall Indian man with a feather in his hair smiling slightly in front of a house being built, the ranch house as it were.
Devil smiled, touching the picture.
In fact most of the pictures were of Indian ancestors.
The most recent ones were hung over an ancient computer that had seen better days, coated in dust. There were a few of a pretty, young Native American woman who stood next to another tall and proud white man, holding his hand. They both looked happy together. Then there were pictures of two boys. Many in fact.
Devil knew at once that the pictures were of Mr. Canter and the other boy just had to be his younger brother.
There was one picture however that caught her attention. It was a picture of the young Mr. Canter and his younger brother. They were both grinning at the camera and sporting matching scrapes and bruises. They looked so careless and happy and boyish that it shocked Devil that Mr. Canter had ever been that way. By her best guess he had been about seventeen and his brother twelve.
Devil touched that picture and his smiling face wishing he would smile more. She had a feeling that if he smiled like that now that, that smiled would devastate her and put her on a path she couldn’t recover from. Best not go down that path, she wouldn’t end up powerless like her mother.
She let herself be distracted by the papers littering the desk. Bills to be paid, sale bills, and record books covered the surface in abundant messes.
Devil picked one up and glanced at it. She felt her mouth drop and the cold edge of a blade pressed against her throat.
“Don’t move unless you wanna get cut, you understand me?” a deep voice rumbled over Devil’s head.
She swallowed very carefully and nodded. Quickly she ran through all the things that her adoptive father had taught her and found something that just might work. After all she couldn’t just do nothing. When you were the adoptive daughter of Royal Crown, the Grand Don and king pin of the Russian and Italian Mobs, you had better know what to do. Even if you were only with them for two years.
She spun around grabbing the knife in her burned hand and landed a solid kick to the beefy man’s midsection.
With a surprised grunt he let go of her, the knife completely and doubled over.
Devil was quick on her feet and pounced on the man’s back, grabbed a fist full of long blond hair and pointed the tip of the knife over the jugular in the man’s neck. He almost stopped breathing all together in that moment with shock.
“What are you doing in this house,” she asked with a growl.
“I could ask you the same question, little lady. Who do you work for? What do you want with this place?” he growled back.
Before Devil could reply the door slammed open and Mr. Canter stocked in looking dangerous and demanded, “What the devil is going on in here?” That however was before his eyes landed on the two of them.
“Bingo,” Devil murmured, “and the man gets a cookie.” But she never loosened her grip on the man.
“Boss?” questioned the man beneath her hoarsely.
Winthrop went over to his ranch hand Judd and plucked Devil off of the man’s broad back.
“What in that hell is going on and what are you doing,” he asked her in disbelief.
He was holding her by the back of the neck like a mother of a kitten would do and she felt hopeless and she didn’t like it. The fire flared in her eyes and the look of outrage followed soon after.
“Me? What was I doing? I was saving my own ass! This man was trying to kill me!” she seethed pointing in the man’s direction.
Winthrop looked down at the little hellion as if she were going to spit fire. Judd had tried to kill her?
He looked to the man in question. Judd himself was looking at her as if
he
couldn’t believe it.
Then Devil turned around ready to fight the man who had held the knife to her throat and felt her jaw drop yet again.
“Grange Judd Marshal!” she blurted out like an idiot.
The man under all that blond hair froze, eyeing her carefully. After a moment his
jaw hit the
floor too.
“Devil!”
Devil suddenly found herself spun around than quickly sat back down.
“What are you doing here!”
She smiled a little. “I’m here for a while. What about you?”
“I’m-”
“Holy shit!” Winthrop yelled suddenly making the other two jump. He pushed Judd aside and reached for Devil’s burned hand.
Blood was quickly oozing from her hand where she was holding a wicked looking knife by the blade and onto the room’s burgundy carpets.
As Mr. Canter came rushing towards her she finally noticed the blood and the knife. Slowly she uncurled her hand and the blade dropped to the floor. She watched as even more blood welled up from the deep cut that ran from her palm and up over three of her fingers.
It was surprising how much blood could come from a hand. She felt like giggling. She felt odd and rather tipsy.
“We need to get her a hospital and quick,” Winthrop yelled at Judd. He ripped off his shirt and wrapped her hand.
“No hospitals!” Devil protested weaving like a drunken sailor. “No hospitals…”
As she slipped into a dead faint Winthrop picked her up in his arms and rushed for the nearest truck.
“What’s going on? What wrong with Lady Bird there?” Red asked, jugging up beside his boss.
“Go and watch Lilla,” he ordered the redheaded man.
“What?” Read asked stopping.
“The baby! Go and watch the baby!”
Judd took out his keys and they all piled in his old truck.
He rocked her back and forth murmuring soft comforting words for her to hear and to keep him from wanting to yell at his man to go faster. Every minute that passed it put him more on edge.
“Hurry!” Winthrop yelled finally, both frantic and frightened at the site of so much blood soaking the shirt that he had placed around Devil’s hand.
That’s all it took for Judd to floor it at ninety miles per hour to the nearest hospital.
What is a strange day,
Judd thought with a rueful smile.
Strange in deed.
…
Groggy and still half asleep Devil cracked open a sleep crusted eye and looked around her. She groaned with remembered pain at seeing herself in a white hospital room. Past memories of the agony she went through in rooms such as this assaulted her and she closed her eyes. The needles, the stitches, the blood and worse of all the pain that that came again and again and-
“Devil? Are you awake, in pain?”
The softly whispered voice pulled her back out of the memories and she opened her eyes again. She blinked blurrily at the man staring at her and realized it was Grange.
He had once worked for her adoptive father Royal Crown as a hit man, before that he had been secret Military Black OPS.
Devil shook her head and slipped back off to sleep.
…
Winthrop wanted answers and he knew just who he was going to get them from. He cornered Judd in the room next to Devil’s so she could sleep.
“How do you know her?”
Judd thought for a moment on that then smiled a little at his boss. “She once sang a song for me. Well,” he said with a grimace, “she stopped me from committing suicide when she was a little kid.”
Winthrop felt a little lightheaded. “Go on.”
Judd smiled then. “She was kidnapped after her parents died and she ran away. Her dad was a high roller and a drunk, with a bad mind. Her dad owed my old boss Royal a lot of money and they didn’t know he was dead and gone three weeks before they took the girl. She was locked up in the dark for three days in a basement and fought her way out. After that she was taken to the boss. He liked her spunk and adopted her when she was twelve. I met her a year after that when I came back from my last mission in the war. I did somethings and I landed up in the hands of Royal and in his basements with a job offer. She has seen a side few people ever will. He’s a ruthless man, but he is truly like a real father to her. He loved her very much and would have killed any man who touched her.”
Winthrop felt as if Judd had run his over with his truck. Just when he started to think that he had the girl figured out he finds out that he knows nothing!
“You mean she was the daughter of a drug lord or something,” Winthrop asked numbly.
Judd place a hand on his shoulder giving him a look of sympathy. “For a man who used to be a mercenary you aren’t taking this well and the next part isn’t going to be any easier, but you should know. She isn’t the daughter of a mere drug lord. Her father is Royal Crown, leader and Grand Don, of the Russian and Italian Mafia.”
The ride back to the ranch later that night could be described in one word according to Devil.
Hellish.
Her pain meds had worn off and the ones she had just taken hadn’t kicked in yet. Her hand was throbbing with a vengeance of fury fit for a roaring tornado. Pulses of stinging pain shot through her fingers and she winced. She was groggy and grumpy and utterly drugged out of her mind with her sleeping pills from the hospital. They had to put her out for the stitches.
The silence in the cab of the truck was bugging her as it grew awkward. She turned to look up into the pale face of Mr. Canter and reached her free hand up to poke his cheek.
“I know you don’t like women and all, but no need to turn glum just because you’re holding me in your lap. I could have sat by myself ya know. I already said I was sorry,” Devil grumbled at him crossly.
He didn’t say a single thing but he took her hand in his and paced them on his knee.
It said nothing, yet it said everything at the same time. She knew that something was wrong with him and it was something that was eating away at him inside. She could tell by the pained and hollow look in his silverish blue eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning at him.
Winthrop said nothing but glanced down at her gravely and then looked back
out the window as his mind ate
away at him.
She was a daughter of two mobs and the mother of his brother’s child. It didn’t take long for him to put two and two together. They had said his brother had died in the cross fire of a gang shooting, but it may have been more then that. Devil could every well have been the reason for his brother’s murder.
Yet as he glanced to the now sleeping woman in his arms he found he couldn’t believe that she had had anything to do with it. His heart felt tight at the feeling of seeing her hurt. She already had a hard time trusting people like he himself did and he couldn’t see her as a killer.
He brushed back a loose lock of hair from her forehead. No, she wasn’t one and he was just making trouble. Her past was just that, the past. Yet there was some doubt…
…
Three.
That was the number of days she had been ordered to stay in bed and rest. It was also the number of days she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Mr. Canter and she was pissed.
The saying ‘hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn’ was about to get a new meaning. Especially when that woman was a Devil.
It was well passed bed time for everyone, but she didn’t care. She stormed out of her room stomping down the stairs to the main level of the house. She found him in the office and the sight that greeted her eyes pained her more then he would ever know.
He was setting in the chair looking at the pictures on the wall with a bottle of whiskey in his hand that was already half empty. Devil didn’t miss the three already empty bottles on the desk.
His long hair was messy as if he had run his hand through it a million times. And who knew? He might have done just that. His strong cheeks and chin were cover in stubble that made him look as if he hadn’t shaved in days.
His eyes moved sightlessly over the pictures as he took a long slow swig of the whiskey.
A memory of Devil’s father flashed in her mind and caused her to wince. Her father had been like this many times after he had drank to much. Then he would turn to the nearest person and start to beat them till they were broken on the floor. The person had always been her. Devil had made sure of that so he would hurt her mother or her little sister Lily yet that hadn’t stopped him the last time-