The Finisher (Dark Verse Book 4)

Alpha

“YOU’RE A DICK, YOU know?” Dante’s wry tone caught him off-guard over the phone.

Alpha watched Jasmine talking to one of the girls in the AV headquarters, his mind preoccupied.

“Good to hear from you too,” Alpha ground out, distracted. Distracted by too much happening around him. The killer had finally left his DNA at his last scene. His wife had been screwing with his head for days. His feelers had come coming back about the missing girls. The Syndicate was clearly trying to get him out of the picture. Too fucking much was happening, and his head felt out of the game.

And his missing eye itched like a bitch.

Fuck, he sounded whiny. Alpha wasn’t whiny. He didn’t know what was up with him these days.

He heard Dante sigh. “Amara was upset at how soon you left after the wedding. Tempest too.”

Alpha grunted. “She’s barely one.”

“So?” Dante argued. Alpha knew better than to say anything about Dante’s little princess. Fucker was whipped by both girls in his life, and shamelessly so.

“How’s your marriage?” the younger man asked, with no sense of boundary or self-preservation. His marriage. It had started as a farce, a game, and now he didn’t know. He hated to admit how much he’d begun to enjoy her company, how she amused him with how cute she was and seduced him with her antics. He’d begun to doubt that there was a secret at all, her motives for the marriage unknown to him, and with the way she was, he knew it best to ride out the months with some distance. Everything had been going great. Until she didn’t show up at the tower.

Alpha remembered sitting in his office, watching the door, something twisting in his gut when she didn’t come. He’d called Victor, who’d told him she’d gone home. Thinking maybe she was unwell, he’d wrapped everything up and gotten home, only to find it empty, her dinner plate washed and drying. She’d eaten without him. And that… they did that together. She’d come back, and she’d been off. Not herself.

And then she’d called him Alpha. Not hubby, not handsome, not some absolutely ridiculous name like ‘pumpkin pie’. Alpha.

That had pissed him off, and he’d been even more pissed at getting pissed. For the first time in his life, Alpha had hated hearing his name. Standing there, watching her quiet form duck away from him, something nasty, ugly had taken root in his gut. And it didn’t go away, not when she’d started to have dinner with him in her pajamas, not when she simply went to sleep and didn’t even try to engage with him, not when she didn’t cuddle him anymore.

She had slipped in behind his defenses, and he did not like that.

Alpha wasn’t defenseless, much less against a little woman. And yet, last night, when she’d been about to duck away again, his defenses had shattered against the office windows. She’d pushed him over the edge, and he’d fucked her, and fuck if it hadn’t felt good. But being inside her, he’d not lost control like he’d thought he would. And that had given him a plan to get the upper hand back in their dynamic. He’d fuck her slow, satisfy them both, break the sexual tension, keep her happy, and keep his distance. He was best alone, and she was nothing but a distraction, one who was getting too close, too sneaky under his skin. He didn’t even care anymore what her motives were, he just wanted to let his promised time pass with pleasure. Their time together would end and they would go their own ways, mutually satisfied.

It was a good plan.

“Is that why you called?” he asked in response to Dante’s question.

Dante chuckled. “That bad, huh?”

Fucker.

“Anyway,” his half-brother’s voice turned sober. “Morana found something. The Syndicate did put that building here in your name, but they got tipped off by someone. The username on the account was ‘f_finisher’. The IP address originated from central Los Fortis. I’ll text you the address.”

Fortis Finisher.

What the fuck?

Was the killer a part of The Syndicate? One of their operatives told to target Alpha and his empire? Or was it a freelancer, someone Alpha had wronged in the past? He didn’t have a dearth of enemies who would happily see him fall, and clearly, the killer was framing him for some reason.

“I’ll check it out,” he told the other man, keeping most of his thoughts to himself. While he appreciated Dante and the fact that he was nothing like his father, a part of him couldn’t help but feel bitter about their shared past. He wasn’t a good man by any means, and the fact that Dante had grown up with resources Alpha had to bleed to earn and beg Lorenzo Maroni to save his mother, was still a thorn on his side. He tried to not let his previous experience color his relationship with Dante, especially since the other man had been persistent in wanting to have a good relationship with him, but sometimes it bled through. Alpha didn’t trust people easily, and while he’d been trying to keep an open mind, eventually, he hoped to be completely okay with the man, simply because the desire of having some family, any family, was acute in his heart.

He’d never thought he’d have any of his own, especially because he never really gave thought to bringing a life into his world without a mother. From his own experience, he knew how formative a mother’s love was for a child, and he’d never seen a woman and felt he wanted her to birth his kids. Zephyr would make a great mother, he was sure, but he didn’t trust her. She hid something from him, and though he didn’t get the feeling it was nefarious, it unsettled him. And what a girl like her, from as different a background from his as one could imagine, would hide he didn’t know.

He saw Jasmine give him a slight nod, and wrapped up his call with Dante, telling him he’d touch base soon.

“She said she saw a guy in a black hoodie,” Jasmine started as she came up to him. “And another guy running off. The hoodie is the one who left the envelope on the car for me.”

Another envelope. This time with a smear of his semen found at the crime scene, a crime scene his people had been able to cover up thanks to that warning.

Alpha was completely baffled. The only place he’d left his semen recently had been on his wife’s ass, and he doubted anyone could have swiped it from her without his knowledge, especially with all the surveillance in the building. Still, he’d check to be double sure once he was alone.

“Anything else?” Alpha asked, keeping their conversation on track.

Jasmine shook her head and left. Hector entered, followed by his wife. She looked tired. He didn’t like that, and he didn’t like that he didn’t like that. She hesitated on the threshold, uncertainty in her eyes as she wondered how things might have changed after last night, and Alpha wondered how a woman who wore everything on her face could be hiding something from him.

Hector raised his eyebrows at her, looking between them, clearly sending some kind of tension. That spurred her into pasting a fake smile on her face, one he absolutely didn’t like, and coming to his side. She perched on the arm of his chair, and not on his lap like she’d been doing every evening for the last few weeks, and fuck he did not like that.

He scowled, but he doubted she would see with the scarred side of his face toward her.

“We need to put this asshole down, boss.” Hector grit out, folding his arms across his chest. “Girls haven’t been this terrified in a long time.”

It was terrifying. With the speed with which bodies were dropping, the entire city had gone on alert. The police had finally started working the cases seriously, his guys in the department keeping him up-to-date on everything they discovered, which wasn’t anything he hadn’t found out on his own. The press was blowing it up, calling the perpetrator everything from Street Slasher to Fortis Finisher to the Red Ripper. Fear entrenched his streets, and now, he had been pulled down from observer to smack in the middle of it. The killer needed to be found, fast.

“You think he’s a… house cleaner?” Zephyr surmised from his side, referring to the common theory the police had cooked up about the guy being someone cleaning up the streets and ridding them of the high-risk individuals. The media had run with that theory, splashing it all over newspapers and channels. And they were all wrong.

“No. There’s a pattern to his kills,” he mused out loud. “He’s not killing people on the streets randomly. His victims, at least those we know of so far, have all been girls who wanted out of the streets.”

“So he’s keeping them in the business?” Zephyr’s voice was incredulous. “But why?”

“I think it’s bigger than that,” Hector looked at him pointedly. “They are his victims, but you are his target. He’s coming after what he knows is important to you and setting you up for it. The question is why. Why you? And why now? If he’s been actively killing for over two years, why just begin to frame you and plant false evidence at the crime scenes now? Something must have set him off. And we need to catch him before he does more harm.”

Alpha agreed with every word. “Take Jasmine and Victor with you to the last scene. Go check it out yourself. Ask around. I want to know anything anyone could’ve seen. And I want to know how to contact the man leaving me messages.”

Hector gave a nod and left, closing the door behind him.

Alpha woke his computer screen, clicking on the voice icon in the corner that had been specifically designed for his voice. “Bring up the security feed from 8PM yesterday.”

The icon whirred as his command registered, and in a few seconds, he had the split screens showing different angles of the building last night. Everything looked as it should have been. He clicked on the screen with his office, and it zoomed in.

He heard Zephyr’s breath catch as she watched them on the black-and-white feed, her body entirely hidden from the view as he covered her, his jeans low as he pumped into her, only her shapely leg visible as he held it up.

Blood rushed to his cock, the audio from the speakers recalling his heavy breathing and her whimpers. He was big, and his cock was big, and he didn’t know how she’d taken him but fuck if the feel of her wet pussy tightening around him hadn’t been the best thing he’d felt in a long time.

He unzipped his jeans, taking his cock out, and felt her eyes swivel to him as he ran his hand over it. It was like the dam inside him had a crack. It hadn’t broken free completely but more and more seeped out, and he wanted more.

“Yes or no?” he asked her the same question he’d asked before, keeping to his decision to simply keep it physical now. The tension between them was too much. He’d tried to resist it as much as he could, but the moment she’d called him a beast, something inside him had snapped. Thankfully, he’d still retained enough control to not let his actual beast out. As long as he kept it under control, it could work and it would be a lot less dangerous for her.

The hesitation in her response made him look up to the side at her, where she was perched on the arm of his chair.

Her beautiful, chameleon eyes were watching him, the green in the hazel disappearing as her pupils blew up, her stare on his face, not his cock. She leaned closer, pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth, right over the scar, in a kiss that went to his chest, making something rumble inside.

He wanted to turn his head and catch her lips entirely, taste her again and revel in the way she responded to him with such abundance. But kissing her was dangerous.

Thankfully, she pulled back before he could.

“Yes,” she breathed softly, arousal clear in her voice.

Before she could take it back or rethink, he tugged her down on his lap, keeping her back to himself and making her face the monitor. Thanking whoever was up there that she wore dresses, he pushed her panties aside. He had the ones he’d ripped yesterday, tucked in his drawer after he’d jerked off to it before bed.

She was wet, but not as much as she usually got.

“Watch yourself be a little slut for me. Just for me,” he said in a low voice against her ear, and felt her slicken, with his words or with the visual or the memory, he didn’t know and didn’t care. She was lubricated enough, and he angled himself, sliding in, keeping his hands on her hips.

Her curvy ass fell plush against his pelvis, her back bowing with the pleasure as he went deep, her hands falling to the desk in front of her. Landing her feet on the ground, he sat as she worked herself up and down on his cock, her pussy walls milking him and fuck, the pleasure shot up his spine. He wanted to impale her hard, push deep into her, and fill her in her womb. He imagined what she’d be like, round with his seed, gushing with his touch, and it fucking did something to his brain.

He grabbed her hips as she slowed, and helped her move, leaning his head back against his chair as she flexed.

A knock on the door had her stilling over him.

He paused the video and pushed his chair closer to the desk, her walls fluttering around him with the motion, and kept her seated on his lap, the table covering their lower bodies.

“Come in.”

He felt her surprise at his command, her knuckles turning white as she stayed utterly still, keeping her head straight and looking at the monitor like something very important was on the screen and she was focused on it.

Two of his guys who’d been on a recon mission stepped into the office, not surprised at finding her on his lap. Over the weeks, everyone in the headquarters had seen her there at one point or the other, and it didn’t raise any eyebrows anymore.

“Boss,” one of the guys gave him a nod. “There was a shipment of girls to the Syndicate twenty years ago. Came from Tenebrae to Xalin to Los Fortis. Fifteen girls. There hadn’t been any underworld activity in the city back then so the girls were disbursed from here. We tracked down twelve of them. Nine are dead. Three are under the Syndicate. Three are missing.”

The fact that Alpha stayed hard inside her while listening to the gruesome report would have disturbed most people. He didn’t give a shit, keeping her still and feeling every single way her walls quivered around his length as she watched him have a conversation, a slight tremor in her body the only indication she was barely holding on to composure.

“And Luna Caine?” he asked, only interested in the information he’d promised to his half-brother.

“One of the missing,” the other guy answered. “We’re tracking her but it’s taking some time.”

Alpha gave them a nod. He could have let them leave, but he was enjoying the torment of his little wife, enjoying the way she tried to appear completely innocent and focused on the monitor while clenching around his cock like his private little slut in the presence of the company.

Fuck, he was aroused.

So, he kept the guys talking. Asked them for every detail of the report. If they thought it odd, they didn’t comment on it. Nor did they glance at his wife, which he was glad for because they were skilled and he’d have hated to lose them. The possessiveness was both surprising and unsettling, but he’d chalked it up to her having his name. He had a reputation and while she was attached to his name, she was a part of it. It only made sense that he’d want everyone to remember that and treat her the same.

He kept them talking, and slowly put his hand under her skirt, pressing her clit.

Her body froze, her fingers gripping the edge of the table so hard he was afraid she’d break her pink-painted nails.

He rubbed her clit.

The men reported.

Her pussy squeezed him so hard he felt it shoot fire up the line of his spine, straight to his head.

He kept rubbing.

The men kept talking.

She kept trembling, her thighs quaking as she tried to keep her upper body still.

He pinched it between his fingers hard.

And with a wet flutter, she came all over his lap, her shoulders sagging like she just sighed, a loud breath leaving her.

He dismissed the guys, uncomfortably close to exploding but not wanting to inside her for the sake of his plan.

Giving her ass a smack, he pushed her up, took some tissues from the desk, and came into his hand.

After the pleasure ebbed, he cleaned himself up and tucked his dick back in.

The moment he was done, she collapsed, her entire body shaking. He let her catch her breath, playing the video again, focusing on the aftermath of the session onscreen.

He watched the entire video, saw himself leave, saw her straighten on the black-and-white screen, and clean herself up with the tissues on his desk. She threw the used tissues in the bin in the corner and the office stayed empty until the cleaning staff came in the morning to take out the trash. The killer could’ve taken the tissues from anywhere once they left his office. But the question was, how did the killer know to find the sample? Was it by luck or something more nefarious?

Alpha didn’t know. Ignoring the way her soft, pliant body cuddled close to him, he watched the video again.