Ruthless Heir: Prologue

5 years ago…

The mark she left on my forearm throbs as I wipe a splash of blood from my jaw.

This is all her fault.

“Your blood or his?” Tytus asks, pulling his scarlet blade from the body twitching at his feet.

“His… of course,” I growl. The corpse I just created is already deathly still. “Do you think I’ve gotten that careless?”

“I wasn’t so sure.”

With a wry grin, my oldest friend looks over my shoulder, towards our final destination. I reluctantly follow his gaze.

My pounding pulse quickens at the sight of the dark building looming just ahead. By now, its heavy wooden doors are all too familiar. So are the countless black windows. Same with the tall shadowy clock tower.

Even at night, with its empty halls and abandoned classrooms, the sight is enough to make me sneer.

Westwood High.

“Just because this stupid school treats its students like children doesn’t mean I’ve become one. A year of classes isn’t going to change who I am.”

A monster.

“You don’t think it might have softened your edges just a little bit?”

“Fuck no,” I grumble. “If anything, it’s made me sharper. Angrier. More—”

“Reckless?”

He’s not wrong, but I’ve had enough bullshit for one night.

“Let’s do this,” I grunt.

Turning my back to Tytus, I step over the dead guards and reach for the silver handle on the large arched doorway.

This will be the last time I ever open this fucking door again. I should be thrilled. But the cool steel knob only makes the lingering burn mark on my forearm burn all the hotter.

It’s a maddening reminder of why I’m here; of why I have to leave; of why I’ve failed.

Her.

Bianca Byrne.

When I’m through with that brat, she’s going to wish we never met.

But first, I’ve got a mess to help clean up. A mess that I helped create.

A mess that she made even worse.

“It’s just that mark on your arm,” Tytus shrugs, playfully shoving me aside to pull open the door for himself. “It’s got me thinking. The old Gabriel would have gone blind with rage if someone had done that to him. Hell, if you were still the cold-blooded kid I remember, we might be breaking you out of juvie tonight, instead of back into your high school.”

“It’s not my high school anymore,” I remind him, ignoring the rest. As hard as it’s going to be, Bianca needs to stay out of my mind. That spoiled princess has occupied too much of my time already. “… Not that it ever really was.”

That’s the truth. I never belonged here. And no number of lies could ever change that.

Gritting past the lingering ache in my arm, and the metallic taste of blood on my tongue, I step past Tytus and storm inside.

I’m immediately met by my own demonic reflection. The nightmarish vision shimmers back at me from just behind the immaculate glass of Westwood’s pride and joy. The trophy case.

It’s enough to stop me in my tracks. I’ve been pretending to be someone else for so long now that even I’m a little shocked by what I see.

This is definitely not someone who belongs here.

Not with these tattoos, so black that they might as well be endless voids. Not with the drying blood dripping from my face, or with the strong calloused fingers wrapped so tightly around a glistening crimson blade.

Dark locks of wet hair fall over my furrowed brows. Steam rises from every inch of my exposed skin. My broad shoulders lift and fall as I heave with the adrenaline of a fresh kill.

And then there are my eyes.

They glow against the pale moonlight like fractured emeralds. A cursed mixture of hazel and green that could belong to the devil himself.

How did they ever let me into this place?

“So, you’re telling me the girl didn’t even get a spanking?” Tytus taunts, jogging to catch up as I rip my gaze from the trophy case and barrel into the dark hallway ahead. “If it was me, I would have punished her right—’

“Shut up,” I snap.

There’s no room left in my life for Bianca Byrne. I’m already walking on a razor’s edge. One more false step and I could be the next fucker with a blade against my throat.

There can be no distractions.

“Why? You can talk to me, Gabe. There isn’t anyone left here but us.”

“That’s not true.”

I regret my choice of words almost immediately. Despite my failure, despite my anger, despite my shame, I’m still in control of what happens here tonight.

Well, some of it.

Not everyone in this building needs to die. But I won’t be able to save anyone if I’m preoccupied with the girl who’s become my biggest failure.

“Did we forget to kill any of the guards?” Tytus asks, confused.

“No,” I mumble, correcting myself. “But you never know who could be listening…” In the distance, I can hear the faintest echo of a desperate voice pleading for his life. We’re right on time. “Did you cut the phone lines?”

“Of course,” Tytus nods. “And I have the jammer drone hovering about a hundred feet above the clocktower. Even if Drago and his crew have left anyone alive, they won’t be able to call for help until long after we’re gone.”

“Good.”

“Is there anyone else we need to worry about?”

“No.” I quickly lie, but my gaze stays vigilant. Anyone could be hiding in these tall, deep shadows; listening, waiting to expose all of my lies.

If they’re smart, they’ll keep hidden until after we’ve left. Because if they don’t, not even I will be able to protect them.

“This way.”

Clenching my fists, I lead Tytus towards the gymnasium.

The closer we get, the louder the terrified wails become.

I recognize the anguished voice all too well.

The bastard is finally getting what he deserves.

“Are you ready?” Tytus asks, as we turn around the last corner.

“Always,” I sneer.

Ahead, the big royal blue doors of the gymnasium stand out like a sore thumb against the plain grey walls. It doesn’t matter how thick they are, though. Agony seeps out into the hallway like a chilled greeting.

Drago has started his interrogation, and his victim is already wailing for mercy.

He won’t get any.

Not from him, and definitely not from me.

With a single shove, I push my way into the gymnasium.

For a second, the pleading howls stop, and the only sound is the slow creaking of the gym doors as they shut behind us.

“Nice of you to join us,” Drago says from up ahead, breaking the silence. He doesn’t bother to turn around. The man understands our blood lust well enough to trust that we would never leave a threat un-gutted.

“Didn’t think you’d show up,” Roz quietly teases as we join the group.

Everyone has gathered around the collapsible bleachers at the far side of the gym. Everyone except one poor, damned soul.

“How could we miss this?” Tytus smiles back.

“You weren’t busy at the burn ward?” Roz smirks, her sharp eyes cutting through the darkness towards me.

By now, everyone knows what happened this morning.

“Are you two done?” I sneer, brushing by them to take my place at Drago’s side.

“He’s just upset because he’s going to have to leave his girl behind,” Tytus whispers to Roz.

“He’s upset because he failed,” Drago interrupts. His deep, gravelly voice slashes through the stale gymnasium air like a whip.

We all go quiet.

“I’m not upset,” I try to reassure him. “I’m pissed off.”

“Same thing,” Tytus jokingly coughs, unable to help himself.

Drago doesn’t seem to mind. He’s always liked me best when I’m angry. But being furious about a failure is different than being enraged with everything else.

I’ve never failed this badly before.

And it’s all her fault.

Bianca Byrne. Daughter of the don who killed my mother. Princess of an empire that belongs to me.

She was my target. My prey. My chance to prove myself. But the stubborn brat wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I pushed her.

And now, I’m going to have to wait to make her pay for it.

But this isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Someday, I will get my revenge. No matter what it takes. She will be punished. And I will enjoy the hell out of it.

Until then…

“… I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again…” a shivering voice drifts down from the darkness above our heads. “I promise. Just let me go. Please… just let me go!”

The tense silence surrounding us is shredded by the return of the pathetic groveling. This time, though, the whimpers coming from above aren’t directed towards Drago.

They’re directed at me.

“Look him in the eyes,” Drago orders me.

He doesn’t have to ask twice.

With a twisted sneer curling my lips, I look up at the man who was first responsible for getting me into this gilded prison.

Albert Winchester.

He’s hanging from the rafters, a noose tied around his throat. The only thing keeping his neck from snapping are the half-folded bleachers—they pin his shins against the wall, crushing his legs, but keeping him alive… for now.

“Hello, Principal Winchester,” I nod, venom lacing every word.

“…My dear boy… please,” he croaks. “Talk some sense into your father… He’s gone mad… I promise, I—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I roar, all of my pent-up rage fuming out into the empty gymnasium. Still, even in the heat of it all, my forearm throbs, and my attention drifts back to what happened this morning.

No. Fuck off. That’s over. You’ll deal with Bianca later. Stay focused.

“I’m not the boy’s father,” Drago reminds the disgraced former principal, his deep voice eerily calm.

“Of course. Not officially,” Winchester coughs. “I’m sorry, I was just—”

“You were just shutting the fuck up,” I remind him. “We didn’t come here to listen to you apologize, Winchester. We came here to stop you from doing something very fucking stupid.”

“I know it was stupid,” Principal Winchester sobs, his head dropping for a moment, before the tight rope around his neck reminds him that he can’t afford such a luxury. “I was desperate. I should have come to you first.”

“Why didn’t you?” Drago asks.

Looking down at my boss’s bloody hands, I see a familiar coin dancing through the slits of his fingers. An ancient Slavic silver piece. He’ll leave it here after this is all done. A calling card to our enemies and our friends; a wicked reminder of what happens to those who dare cross us.

“I was scared,” Winchester rasps, his voice shaking almost as intensely as his limbs are. But even that trembling pauses when he sees Drago look over to his second-in-command, the despicable Kuba Krol. It only takes a stern nod from our fearsome leader to seal Winchester’s fate. “No, wait!”

But the cruel bastard Krol doesn’t take orders from anyone other than Drago.

Pulling down on a wall-mounted lever, the dark serpent closes the folding bleachers another few inches.

The cracking of Winchester’s shins is barely audible over his ear-splitting wails.

It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But it’s not because of the gruesome scene. I’ve witnessed worse.

It’s because of the noise.

We’re not alone here.

There’s at least one more person cowering somewhere in these shadows—probably just around the corner of one of the blackened hallways outside, or under the littered desk of her shabby basement office. Someone who couldn’t be talked out of coming to do her job here tonight, no matter how obvious I tried to make my subtle hints.

It’s someone who doesn’t deserve to die. Someone whose death might almost make me feel bad, if I wasn’t already growing numb again.

My forearm throbs as I clench my fist and look up at the grown man crying above me.

“That’s enough,” Drago commands.

Just like that, the bleachers stop moving.

“Please, please, please…” Winchester whines. Cowardly tears trickle down his red cheeks, mixing in with the blood dribbling from his lips.

“Gabryjel wasn’t here to hear your confession earlier,” Drago says, his tone remaining cool and callous. “Why don’t you repeat what you told me. Remind us why you’re here tonight.”

“Because I did something stupid,” Winchester sniffles.

“And what was that?”

“I betrayed you.”

“How so?”

I already know the story, but Drago’s cruelty is on full display. He loves playing with his food before he tears it to shreds.

“I… I…” The pain is visible in my former principal’s mangled face, but everyone in this room—him included—knows that this will only get worse if he doesn’t comply. “I tried to sneak back into my old office,” he admits. “I was going to decrypt the secret file that got Gabriel into Westwood. The file that holds all of his secrets…”

“And why were you going to do that?” Drago pushes.

“To cut a plea deal with the cops.”

Once more, Winchester drops his head, but this time, he lets the rope dig into his raw throat until he’s coughing up blood. Anything to look away from Drago’s soul crushing glare.

But he doesn’t only have to worry about my boss anymore. The reminder of what he’s done sets off an eruption inside of me.

“Cut him down,” I growl through gritted teeth. “Let me kill him with my own hands.”

“You’d have to get through me first!” Krol shouts from his place by the wall.

But I’m done with being teased, especially by someone as despicable as Krol. The sneer I shoot him is filled with pure hatred.

“I’ll kill you both if I have to,” I bark back.

“Easy now, young prince,” Drago growls. “You’ll get a chance to redeem yourself… eventually. But it won’t be tonight.”

“At least let me make the creep suffer a little bit,” I press.

“Don’t blame him for your failure, Gabryjel,” Drago warns me. “This is nobody’s fault but your own—even if this whole farce was really over months ago. If anything, you should thank Mr. Winchester here for ending it all now, before you could make a further fool of yourself. It was already getting painful.”

“Painful?!” I snap. The rage pulls my glare away from Krol, away from Winchester, and towards the man who once saved me from a life of destitution. The man who adopted me from the streets, who forged me for power, who promised me the world—but only if I did his bidding. “Look what that bitch did to me this morning,” I sneer, holding up my forearm so that he can see the red and torn skin that cuts through my black tattoos. “She needs to pay. So does her father. So does everyone who’s benefitted from their brutal reign.”

My fists are clenched so hard that I’m suddenly not so sure if the blood dripping from my palms is mine or someone else’s anymore. When I get like this, there’s no controlling myself.

My fury is endless.

“You want revenge on a teenage girl for burning your arm with a bit of coffee?” Drago asks, raising a dark knowing brow in my direction.

“I want revenge on her father for murdering my mother—because that’s what Ray Byrne did, right? He killed my mother.”

“That’s right,” Drago nods, before turning to look back up at the hanging Principal. Winchester is sobbing. Blood and tears cascade down his crooked body as he fades in and out of consciousness. “And the girl was supposed to be our way into his inner sanctum—it was supposed to be how you got your revenge; how you earned your inheritance; how you fulfilled your destiny, and how I fulfilled mine. But instead of making her your slave, you made her your enemy.”

“It was a stupid fucking plan,” I blurt out.

“No. You just failed,” Drago shrugs, unbothered by my outburst. “I will say, though, I’m almost impressed with the girl.” Out of the corner of my eye, I notice him take a quick glance down at my flexed forearm, almost like he can see it throbbing. “Ambushing a man like you… hell, even if she doesn’t actually know who you really are, there’s no denying your nature, or how you look, or how much older you are than her. For a sixteen-year-old girl—especially a sheltered princess—to confront the almighty Gabryjel… hmm, it could be mistaken as admirable. Still, her courage is telling. If our enemy’s weakest link is that fearsome, our revenge won’t be so easily taken.”

“It wasn’t an ambush,” I grumble, my raging mind forcibly pulling me back to that maddening moment in the hallway earlier today.

There’s just no fucking way Bianca did that on purpose.

Over the past year, I’ve stalked her closely enough to know her routine. She gets a hot cup of coffee from the cafeteria almost every single morning. She also takes that very same route to her first class nearly every single fucking day.

It’s why I was passing by that same way. At that exact same moment. It had become part of my routine too. A part of my day that I came to dread, because it represented my growing failure.

I was supposed to seduce her.

Instead, I made her hate me.

Every day, I got the same loathsome look from those crystal blue eyes. I received the same shock of brilliant auburn hair as she turned her chin up at me. I felt the same stab in my chest as she stormed away.

You aren’t good enough for me. And you never will be.

Fuck. Maybe I’d just learned to dissociate from it all. Maybe I’d shut off my mind just to cope.

Maybe that’s why I was distracted.

Maybe that’s why she was too.

Because the more I allow myself to think about it, the more confident I am that her little ambush was just an accident.

As tough as Bianca Byrne pretends to be, as hard as she tries to act, for as much as I’ve put her through—both on purpose and… by accident—I’ve always been able to see the truth hiding behind her hateful blue eyes, because I can see them glaring at me every time I close my own.

She’s a sheltered little princess from a big ruthless family.

Her father may be a savage brute, but he’s also managed to shield his naïve little daughter from the most twisted truths of our cruel world.

If I get my way, I’ll shatter that shield and shove her face right into the depravity of it all. Into the darkness. Into the fires of hell. I’ll make sure she sees it all before I put an end to her spoiled reign.

“Please… please…” Principal Winchester’s whimpers leak through the stale, tense gymnasium air, and I’m yanked out of my own thoughts for just long enough to turn my anger back towards him.

“Why are you stretching this out?” I ask Drago. “We know what he was doing. Kill the rat and let’s move the fuck on with our lives!”

Really, I just want to see Winchester dead. The man has screwed me over more than just once now, even if this is the first time he was truly trying to.

“I want to know if he’s told anyone else about you, or our plans,” Drago says, his tone encased in ice. “He can’t die until we know if there’s anyone else we need to go after.”

“We should go after his replacement next,” I sneer.

Principal Ryerson.

That’s the fucker who called Bianca’s parents after our little incident this morning. He sent her home and took away my last chance to amend my yearlong fuck up—not that I had really had any chance to.

I was just too fucking angry. Hell, I still am. At Bianca. At myself. At Principal Ryerson. That asshole should have stayed out of it, just like we paid this asshole to.

Shit. But would Winchester really have done anything different from his successor?

Yeah. He might have tried to blackmail Bianca into doing something disgusting, just like he did to those other girls…

Fucking hell.

For some reason, the thought fills me with a whole new wave of rage. But this sudden onslaught of white heat is different to what I was feeling before.

It’s more protective.

She’s mine to torture, and no one else’s.

“Please, Gabriel…” Winchester mumbles. “I’ve only ever tried to help—’

But I’ve had enough. All of my fury—in both its new and old form—turns to focus entirely on him.

“Shut up, you disgusting fucking predator,” I sneer. “Maybe you should have kept your dick in your pants around your underage students, then you would have never been fired in the first place. You would have never been charged either. And then you would never have had to even think about crossing us to make a plea deal with the cops!”

In response, Winchester coughs up some more blood. But the formerly dignified middle-aged man isn’t done speaking yet, even if the smartest thing for him to do now is shut the fuck up.

“My boy… I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you… I… I tried to help…” A deep sigh escapes his dripping lips. “Your mother, she was—”

Before he can finish—hell, before I can even interrupt him—a thunderous crack fills up the dark gymnasium.

The sound is so loud and close that it makes me jump back.

“What the fuck…” I mumble, looking up.

My ears are still ringing as I slowly realize what just happened.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Drago standing up straight, his right arm extended. In his hand is a smoking gun. The barrel is pointed up at Albert Winchester.

A fresh bullet hole has appeared between the former principal’s all-white eyes.

Dark blood gushes from the wound. It stains Winchester’s pale face, before pouring down onto the bleachers.

“What happened to keeping him alive until he answered all of our questions?” I grumble through the ringing in my ears.

“He’d talked enough,” Drago sneers, the first bits of emotion gnawing through his scarred face. “You three stay here and clean up this mess. If you can, make it look like a suicide. Krol, come with me. Everyone else, meet us back at the base.”

With those simple commands, Drago shoves his smoking gun under his belt. Then, he drops the blood-stained silver piece from his fingers. The Slavic coin clangs against the hardwood, rolling on its sides as he marches away.

Krol follows closely behind, as does everyone else.

Before long, it’s just Tytus, Roz and I. We stand side-by-side in the empty gymnasium, staring up at the dead body.

No one moves until the coin stops spinning.

“How the fuck are we going to get that fucker down?” Tytus finally complains, breaking the stunned silence.

“The same way they got him up there,” Roz shrugs.

“And how are we going to make a man with rope burns around his throat, and a bullet hole in his forehead look like someone who committed suicide?”

At that question, the two look at the only one of us who has any personal knowledge of the dead man.

Me.

“We just have to give the authorities an excuse,” I grumble, still reeling from what just happened.

Why the hell did Drago shoot him?

Winchester was about to say something about my mom… but what?

“An excuse for what?”

“An excuse to rule this a suicide,” I sigh, trying to focus. “They’ll have to shut down the school… Parents will demand an explanation. No one on the board will want to admit that this kind of thing could happen here. Same goes for the cops and the security firm who’s men we massacred outside. We only need to do enough to let them write this all off as a violent murder-suicide—the dying breaths of a disgraced member of their community—no matter how contradictory the actual evidence is. The people who live in this sheltered area would never dare face a problem like this head on, not if they don’t have to.”

That seems to work for both Tytus and Roz.

Without another word, they nod, then immediately get to work.

But I’m frozen in place, glued to the floor by a whirlwind of uncertainty.

What the hell is going on?

I’m in danger of losing myself to the darkness, when something snaps me out of it.

My forearm.

The burn mark pulls me back down to earth.

Fucking hell.

That girl.

“It was a stupid plan, anyways,” I hear Tytus suddenly shout from the far wall. Pulling on the lever, he extends the bleachers out so that Roz and I can recover Winchester’s mangled corpse.

“Yeah,” Roz shrugs, clearly trying to comfort me. “Drago just doesn’t understand these spoiled rich girls. He thought they’d be like the women we all know and love—you know, the street walkers who crawl over themselves just to get in your line of sight.”

“There’s only one girl in my line of sight,” I sneer. “And she’s lucky I haven’t already pulled the fucking trigger on her.”

Neither Roz or Tytus seem to hear me.

“Hey, those street walkers crawl over themselves to get to me too, right?!” Tytus shouts up at Roz.

“Yes, yes. You’re very handsome,” she assures him, and I can practically hear her eyes rolling. “Isn’t he, Gabriel?”

I don’t answer.

But It’s not because I’m angry at either of my only two friends. Instead, I quickly turn my back on them because I hear something quietly stir by the gymnasium doors—they click shut before I can see who opened them.

My hackles immediately rise, and I drop everything to race out into the dark hallway, switchblade drawn.

“Where are you going?” Tytus shouts after me.

He doesn’t get a response.

“I didn’t see any faces, I swear…”

The tiny, terrified voice is the first thing I hear when I push through the creaky gym doors. It comes from a shadow-filled corner to my right.

But I don’t look over.

I recognize that voice.

Rosa.

The school janitor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can just make out her silhouette. She’s cowering on the floor, head tucked beneath her legs, shaking like a leaf.

Fuck.

Why hasn’t she tried to escape already? I purposely led Tytus away from her office so she wouldn’t be caught up in this shit.

“Leave,” I command, disguising my voice with as much disdain as I can possibly muster. Then, before she can obey me, I turn and push my way back into the gym.

But my nerves are frayed.

Maybe I really am a failure. All of a sudden, I can’t even bring myself to kill a measly janitor. Innocent or not, she’s a witness. She should be dealt with.

No, I think, shaking my head. I can’t do that.

Rosa doesn’t deserve to die. She’s always been kind to me. I’ve seen pictures of her kids. I’ve heard about how her husband wasted away into nothing earlier this year, before tragically dying of cancer. It’s why she’s working double shifts, night and day. She needs to make up for the lost income, and pay the hospital bills.

I’ve always wanted to help. But I couldn’t risk the possible attention.

That’s not a problem anymore. I’ll make sure to fill her desk up with cash before I disappear forever. Maybe then, she’ll be smart enough to leave and never come back.

Just like I should.

“Is everything alright?”

Tytus is immediately there to greet me when I re-enter the gymnasium.

“Yeah,” I mumble, pushing forward, hoping that he’ll follow me back into the gym instead of stepping outside for a quick inspection of his own.

“Don’t worry, brother. You’ll get your chance,” Tytus sighs. “Ray Byrne will pay for what he did. And then you’ll be able to do whatever you want with his sweet little daughter.”

I can feel his depraved smirk as he brushes by my shoulder, returning to the problem of Winchester’s corpse.

“You two love birds done necking in the halls?” Roz shouts down at us. She’s still standing at the top of the bleachers, knife it hand, ready to get this over with.

But I know this isn’t over with.

And it won’t be for a very long fucking time.

You’ll get your chance.

Whether Tytus is right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. One thing is certain.

I’m not going to be able to get Bianca Byrne out of my fucking mind anytime soon.

That long auburn hair. Those crystal blue eyes. The smooth olive skin dotted with pale freckles. The hatred. From the moment I first saw the spoiled princess, she’s haunted me like a fucking ghost, taunting me every time I close my eyes, every time I look into the darkness. Every time I think about my past. And my future.

Her father made me an orphan.

She made me a failure.

They both need to pay.

Still, the thought of ever having to deal with that tiny fucking firecracker again makes my hands ball into fists. It makes my heart clench into stone. And it makes my forearm throb so hard my entire body aches with rage.

Fucking hell.

I hate how tightly my future is tied to her and her family.

My freedom. My inheritance. My self-worth. It’s all trapped beneath the overbearing weight of the Byrne mafia empire.

There’s no moving on. Not until I’ve won. Not until I’ve risen up and crushed her beneath my heel. Until I’ve destroyed her so entirely that she vanishes from my mind forever.

That day will come.

It has to.

And when it does, I’ll be ready.

Will she?