Ruthless: Book 2 of the Shattered Chronicles Read online

  Copyright 2018, Ciana Stone

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Ciana Stone

  Cover by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved.

  Ruthless

  Book 2 of the Shattered Chronicles

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Ruthless Copyright © 2019 Ciana Stone

  Cover art by Syneca

  Print book publication March 1, 2019

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Syneca Featherstone

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  DEDICATION

  For my honeyman – always and forever.

  Chapter One

  Mark Samuels came to slowly, dazed and at first unsure where he was. He opened his eyes and immediately raised a hand to shield his face from the glaring sunlight. “Oh fuck!” The realization that he couldn’t see out of his left eye jolted him right out of the daze.

  He sat, trying to force his eye open, with no success. Gingerly, he touched his left eyelid and a spike of pain from that slight contact made him groan. What the hell happened?

  Humiliation as intense as the pain swept through him as the confrontation with Morgan Alexander rushed through his mind. Mark remembered everything until the point she screamed and called him a bastard. That’s when everything went black.

  I’ll be damned. She hit me.

  How the hell did a woman so small pack such a wallop? The idea she’d hurt him like this with her fist was too embarrassing to contemplate. She had to have used something. A bat or a stick. Something. He’d never live it down if anyone ever discovered a woman had knocked him out with a punch.

  Mark groaned again as he climbed to his feet. His head throbbed with every movement and his eye felt like it was about to explode out of his head. He stumbled over to his car, climbed in and turned the rearview mirror toward him.

  Shit.

  Along with his eye being swollen shut, an ugly bruise was forming, starting at his eyebrow and running halfway down his face. With a grimace, he readjusted the mirror, started the car and headed down the long driveway. Just as he reached the gate at the entrance of the ranch, it occurred to him to check the time.

  When he realized he’d been unconscious for over two hours, he sped up a bit. He was already late for his morning report. Mark hurriedly took his cell phone from his pocket to report in. Just as the call went through, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. A split second later, he ended the call.

  The Big Ear as he referred to it, was trained on the house during the entire incident. He had to listen to it before he reported in, to decide if there was audio he needed to delete. Once he was in the surveillance van, he quickly queued the file, clamped the earphones on his head and listened to the exchange between himself and Morgan.

  It took him less than a second to come to a firm decision. He wouldn’t delete any of the audio, but she had definitely hit him with a big stick. Mark hit redial on his phone and as he waited for the call to go through, began to go over the story in his mind.

  *****

  Cassie stopped just shy of the guard station at the towering iron gate that guarded the entrance of Victor’s estate. The house sat a good half mile beyond the gate, its nearly fifty thousand square-feet situated on one hundred acres of sculptured gardens, rolling meadows and forest. Finished in white stucco, its appearance gave the impression of a Spanish palace.

  Victor discovered the estate several years back, right after Cassie started working for him. About the same time, I took that trip to Rome, she recalled. When he first saw it, the estate was occupied.

  That didn’t concern him. Victor liked the place and what he wanted, he got. He made the owners an offer but was refused. His only response to that was to inform them they would soon see the folly of their refusal.

  Sure enough, within six months the family’s fortune took a drastic plunge. Facing imminent financial ruin, they had little choice but to accept Victor’s offer.

  Cassie rolled down the car window and punched the call button at the bottom of a speaker set into a stone pillar.

  “Yes?” A male voice came through the speaker.

  “It’s me.”

  “One moment.”

  The drop-down metal arm rose, and she pulled through, stopping directly beside the guard station. A uniformed security agent stepped outside, to visually confirm her identity. He spoke into his headset. “Cassandra Billingsley is here, sir.”

  A few moments later he addressed her. “He’s by the pool.”

  As soon as the iron gate opened, she drove through and on to the house where she parked near the multi-bayed detached garage. Cassie slowly climbed out, already feeling pain in nearly every muscle of her body.

  She tossed her key fob to the garage attendant, a young man sporting an expensive dark suit and white turban who looked at her with eyes wide and an expression that clearly displayed shock at her appearance.

  “What the fuck are you looking at towel-head?” She glared at him before marching toward the house. She let herself in via a gate in the metal railing lining the breeze-way between the garage and main house.

  Victor lay on a lounge on the opposite side of the pool, in the shade of a sizeable wisteria-draped pergola. Clad in white shorts and a white unbuttoned shirt, he appeared to be sleeping. Cassie tried to walk normally but winced at the stiffness and pain that had already settled into her legs and back.

  She stopped beside his chaise and just as she started to speak, his eyes opened. He took one look at her and laughed.

  “New look?”

  “Very funny.” She slowly lowered herself into an adjacent seat. “You didn’t tell me that Alexander bitch is a fucking lunatic.”

  “Lunatic?” he asked and laughed again. “Well, do tell me about this deranged woman.”

  “Sometimes you’re a real ass, you know that?” Cassie glared at him then grunted as she readjusted her position in an attempt to be comfortable.

  Victor knew full well that she couldn’t handle being made fun of or taunted. He didn’t really care whether she liked it, or if it hurt her feelings, but sometimes he took pleasure in placating her, just to throw her off-guard.

  Like now. “I’m sorry. You’ve had quite the trying morning, haven’t you? Let me fix you a drink.”

  “Thank you,” she sniffed.

  He smiled and rose to walk over to a well-stocked bar, built along the back wall of the house, in a large lanai. He chose an eight-ounce tumbler, dropped in two ice cubes and then poured the glass half full of vodka.

  Victor checked to m
ake sure Cassandra couldn’t see him from where she sat, then reached into the breast-pocket of his shirt, removed a small vial and emptied the clear contents into the glass.

  He tossed the empty vial into the trash, topped the glass off with orange juice and after giving it a quick stir, carried it over to where she sat. “This should help take the edge off.”

  Cassandra accepted the glass with a muttered, “thank you,” then tipped it up and drained nearly half of it before she lowered it again. He took a seat and watched as she turned her glass up to her lips again.

  “Want another?”

  “Why not?” She held the glass out to him.

  Victor rarely went out of his way for anyone and serving another was certainly not in his nature, but in this instance, he was amused to do so. Cassandra may not have, yet, succumbed to alcoholism, but he would bet that the day could soon come when she would fall victim.

  Not that he cared. She was useful to him for now but when her usefulness came to an end, well then he’d not care what happened to her. He poured her another glass, not bothering to add fresh ice and took it to her. “Or did you want the bottle and a straw?”

  Fury flared bright in her eyes and he wondered if she’d have the courage to act on it. He smirked when she dropped her gaze, turned up the glass and literally gulped the contents. When finished, she set the glass down with a bang onto the table beside her chair.

  “So, tell me what happened,” he said as he reclined back and crossed his legs at the ankles.

  “Well, I drove out there this morning – to the ranch, that is. I don’t know if it was mentioned to you but we’ve been having problems with interference, and no one can figure out why, so I had our techs install boosters on the property. For a few days it seemed to help, and then the problems reappeared so I decided to go check the boosters.”

  “Why not send a technician?”

  “Because they’re techs and don’t know how to be quiet or not be spotted.”

  “Ah yes, of course, stealth is paramount.” He made note of what he was sure was a lie. If the technicians could not be trusted to be covert when merely checking the status of a device, how had they managed to install the boosters without being detected?

  “Exactly. And they have that beast of a dog. It looks like some kind of fucking dire-wolf out of mythology or something. This time I went prepared with a rifle and strong enough tranquilizers to take down an elephant.”

  “How smart you were to be so prepared.”

  She preened at the compliment and continued. “So, I had just reached the location of the first booster when suddenly, out of nowhere, that beast appeared and charged me. I barely had time to get a shot off and hit him in the chest. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to aim.”

  Cassandra picked up her glass, sucked on an ice cube before crunching it up and swallowing it. “All that time on the target range really paid off. Anyway, the dog collapsed virtually at my feet–that’s how close he got. I had no more looked down at him when I felt a blow from behind. It almost knocked me down.

  “It’s fortunate I have such good balance, or I’d have fallen. I turned and there was that Alexander bitch, standing with this stick raised up like a baseball bat. As soon as I saw her, I rammed the butt of my rifle into her stomach and she went down like a felled tree, heaving and gasping for air.

  “Well, I didn’t think it would be smart to stick around because if she got up, I’d have to put her back down and I know you don’t want her hurt, so I turned and headed for the car.”

  “I’m grateful you put my desires ahead of what had to be your own. Had it been me, I’d have longed to give my attacker a thorough thrashing.” Victor commented and noticed the way Cassandra sat a bit taller as she responded.

  “I didn’t say it was easy, but I knew if I stayed, I’d seriously hurt her. I’d just reached the bank of the stream when there she came, running up with her arms waving all around and screaming like a banshee.

  “I had no choice but to stop her, so when she threw herself at me like she intended to tackle me, I took her down. Hard. But she was too stupid to stay down. I swear to you I wasn’t trying to hurt her, but she wouldn’t give up.

  “I lost track of how many times I knocked her down. Try as I might to avoid it, she took some blows to the face and before long her eyes were swollen so badly, I’m surprised she could see. That’s when I realized I had to end it, so I let fly with a solid right punch to her mouth, a left to her stomach and then a quick uppercut. She flew over backward, out cold before she even hit the ground.”

  “And she never landed one blow?”

  “She’s not much of a fighter, Victor. I checked to make sure she was breathing and turned to pick up my gun and then, of all the bad luck. After all I’d gone through without getting a scratch on me, my foot snagged on a vine and I tripped and ended up rolling down the damn bank into the stream.

  “Talk about being pissed. I was so angry I didn’t pay attention as I got up and I slipped in the mud and fell again. This time I hit my head on a log that was lying partially in the stream. It must have been one hell of a hard knock because the next thing I knew I was waking up. I was out three if not four minutes.”

  Victor nodded but made no further comments. Cassandra reached for her glass and tipped it back to let the last ice cube slide into her mouth. Then she looked at Victor. For a brief second their gazes met, then she averted hers and pushed into a standing position.

  “I need another drink. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Victor watched her walk to the bar, thinking to himself, quite the tale, Cassandra. He pictured the story the way she’d told it. Knowing her as well as he did and her narcissistic nature, he had no doubt she’d elaborated quite a bit to make herself look good.

  Victor chuckled to himself. He’d give her credit for being a vicious and vindictive woman, but despite her story and her inflated opinion of herself, she was not an accomplished fighter.

  “She must be a mess,” he said as she returned and lowered herself carefully into her chair. “If you’re what the winner of the battle looks like.”

  “Yes,” she puffed up slightly. “I did a number on her.”

  “And did you manage to deliver the thumb-drive as directed?”

  “Oh, I forgot. When I got back to the car, she’d taken it.”

  Her blatant lie didn’t go unnoticed. An unconscious, half-dead woman made it to the car ahead of you. Miraculous. “Then everything worked out perfectly after all, didn’t it?”

  “Piss off, Victor!” Cassandra barked, went pale in the face and apologized. “I’m sorry, it’s just that it’s been a bitch of a morning and–and I just lost it for a second. How is the drug coming along?”

  Victor found it quite amusing the way she tried to turn his attention to something besides herself. It was particularly entertaining that she was so interested in the progress of an experimental drug, of which she was an unwitting test subject. “There are problems to be worked out.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “It appears there needs to be a constant level of the drug in the subject’s bloodstream for the effects to remain stable. If the levels drop they overcome the effects and thus are no longer malleable and subject to outside control.”

  “So, why not just increase the quantity or frequency of the dosage?”

  “Yes, we considered that. The problem lies in that the amount of the drug a body can stand has not yet been accurately determined. If too much is administered, there are–shall we say–unfortunate complications. However, enough about that. There’s no need for you to concern yourself with such matters. I have other issues to discuss with you.”

  “Like?” She sat up a bit straighter.

  “Why your trip to Andrews County. You did say that you’d been directed to keep an eye on Cord Alexander, did you not?”

  “Yes, but how does that fit into our plans? I thought you wanted him dead?”

&n
bsp; “Let me explain.” Victor reclined back and placed his hands together, in front of him. His fingertips formed a temple with his index fingers grazing his bottom lip. He considered his words before speaking.

  “The orders you received from the Agency fit perfectly with my revised plans. You’ll go to Andrews County, per orders. But instead of keeping an eye on Alexander, you’ll make sure he experiences a series of what we’ll call, unfortunate events. You won’t end his life, but you will cause him a considerable amount of distress. Physical and mental.”

  He paused and looked directly into Cassandra’s eyes. “Rub your face.”

  “Huh?” She absently rubbed at her dirty face. “What?”

  Victor was pleased the drug had taken effect in the time his scientists predicted. “After you take care of Alexander, you’ll return and inform your superiors that he managed to escape your watchful eyes with some terrorist or other. I’m sure you can come up with an appropriate name. That effectively places Alexander on a new and exclusive list. The terrorist watch list. Along with the FBI’s most wanted.”

  Victor stood, stripped off his shirt and walked over to the pool. Just as he started down the marble steps, he turned back to her. “Questions?”

  “Just one,” she groaned as she stood and walked over to the edge of the pool. “What about her?”

  “Her?”

  “The Alexander bitch.” She fairly spit the words.

  With a smile, Victor walked down the steps into the cool, sparkling water. “Leave her to me.”

  Chapter Two

  Cotton Creek

  As Morgan reached the outskirts of the city, she slowed. Maybe she should have gone home and changed before going to Cord’s office. Thanks to Joe, she at least had a clean face and hands, and she’d rinsed most of the dirt from her hair, but her clothes were a real mess. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Cord’s probably standing on his head waiting on me to get Juan’s computer set up.