HADES Read online

  BENJAMIN

  “What the hell is this?”

  Benjamin doesn’t know what’s more surprising: The sight of Tess now dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, waiting for him on the steps of his condo building when he returns home from that crazy dinner with Keane and Lena. Or the fact that the good-hearted Christian girl is actually cursing. For the second time that night.

  He slows to a stop in front of Tess, who's holding up the vellum envelope the same way prosecution lawyers on television present evidence against defendants being accused of heinous crimes. Man, does she have any idea of how cute and adorable she looks right now underneath the streetlights?

  “It’s an invitation.” He holds up the bag he’s carrying. “I got my dinner to go after you left. You hungry?”

  Tess glares at him for a few heated seconds before admitting, “Yeah, I’m starving.”

  And that’s how they end up on opposite sides of his kitchen counter, eating his filet mignon and kung pao brussels sprouts out of separate halves of a plastic container.

  “So, why did I arrive home after a very strange almost-dinner with your asshole brother and his lovely wife to find an invitation from you?” she asks before tucking into her half of the dinner.

  “They don't have invitations here in Ohio?” Benjamin asks, laying the faux innocence on super thick. “You see, in Boston, when somebody want somebody else to come to a big event—especially a classy one that's going to require dressing up—they send this piece of paper in the mail, usually on nice card stock because, hey, we’re not animals, no matter what they say about Southies on the news. Okay, the taxi drivers are beasts—nobody's going to argue with you about that. But the rest of us can pick out some A4 card stock and stuff it in an envelope, just like all the other humans in America.”

  Tess clamps her lips and suppresses what looks an awful lot like a smile before she juts out her chin to demand, “Why would you send me an invitation to your Man of the Year thing in Boston?”

  Benjamin shrugs. “Because I want you to come to my Man of the Year thing in Boston. Why else do people send other people invitations to their classy events?”

  Tess sighs. “Okay, since we’re playing this game, I guess the next question is: Why would you want me to come to your big event in Boston when I’ve made it abundantly clear that I hate you with the force of a thousand suns?”

  “Only a thousand?” he asks with a smirk. “Where I come from, that's a love tap. In Boston, nothing’s really over til the girl slits your throat.”

  Tess jerks her chin back and tilts her head to the side. “What in my whole nature would make you believe that joking about domestic violence after inviting me to a very uncomfortable dinner with your asshole brother would cause me to have good feelings about finding this invite in my mailbox?”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” Benjamin holds up his hands. “I’ll give it to you straight. I guess I…”

  He hesitates. This is the tough part. Tess has been more than a little bit hostile toward him—and he’s from Boston, so him calling somebody hostile is saying something.

  The best tactic with her would be to cage the truth in a palatable lie. Tell her that Daphne needed escorting or something silly like that.

  But instead he says, “You know what? I’m not going to lie to you about my intentions. No, not this time. I didn't tell you the truth from the start sixteen years ago, and that's how we got here.”

  “Yes, that’s how we got here,” Tess agrees, her tone bitter. “You didn't tell me you were using me to get some stupid van. That's why I have no idea why you would—”

  Benjamin never loses it. Keane admits to everyone—from his wife to random employees—that he inherited their father’s temper. But Benjamin’s fought against getting angry, of even raising his voice, his entire life. And he’s only broken twice.

  Once, was when Donovan dared to say anything to him about Tess on the first day of hockey practice back at Boston Glen. And the second time is now, standing across from a woman who refuses to let him explain what happened that summer.

  “Goddammit, Tess, I didn't use you to get a van!” he yells. “I could have given zero fucks about that van. I was only using it as a cover story for why I was so obviously going out of my way to spend as much time as possible with you. Because I liked you. That’s the God’s honest…what I should've just told you from the beginning. I was crazy about you. Three weeks. Just three weeks. And you fucking ruined me for anybody else.”

  Benjamin drops his voice to level with her. “You asked why I didn’t just buy a big house in Carnation Estates and find some wife to live in it with me and start a family. The real answer to that question is that I don’t date anymore. Not since Stephanie called to tell me we made a whole human being together.”

  “Why?” Tess shakes her head at him, and she actually has the gall to ask, “Why would us having a kid together keep you from dating?”

  “Why?” he repeats. “Because I'm hung up on you and the idea of you—of what we could be if you gave me a second chance. Why? Because you asking me for help has been the highlight of an otherwise pretty damn boring three years here in Ohio. Why? Because I want to walk the red carpet and introduce you to my hometown press, not just as the mother of my child, but as the woman I love. Still.”

  Tess's eyes go saucer-wide. “What? Benjamin, no…”

  “Look at me, Tess,” he demands, coming around the counter to close the distance between them. “Look at me when I tell you I’m not that scared sixteen-year-old kid anymore. I want you to come with me to my thing in Boston. I also want to kiss you again. And one day, when you’re ready, I want to show you that I have sex without literally coming as soon as I get inside of you. And I'm sorry if that crosses some kind of line. But I finally saw Hamilton with Daphne last summer, and I'm not gonna miss my shot. Not with you. Not this time.”

  “Okay, you are not serious.” Tess waves both hands in the air, like she’s warding off a devil. “This is a joke. Or some kind of trick.”

  Guilt wrings his heart. He hates that she would think that sixteen years later because of what happened—what he let happen that summer.

  But he refuses to back down. He holds her gaze and answers, “I'm serious, Tess. I’ve never been as serious about anything in my life as I am about you.”

  Her gaze softens, and for a moment, she’s that sweet girl he met sixteen years ago. But then, she shakes her head. “This is a bad idea. A terrible idea.”

  Fuck. He’s losing her.

  “Maybe you think that. But I don't—” he begins to say.

  Only to cut off when Tess shocks the shit out of him by crashing her lips to his.

  “Okay, you have gotten way better at that,” she admits later that when they each collapse on separate sides of the bed after the most intense and passionate sex of Benjamin’s life.

  They’re not sixteen years old anymore, but their fire wasn’t any less consuming. One kiss had led to Benjamin pulling out a condom and showing Tess exactly what he’d learned over the years since their disastrous first time.

  He expels a laugh, partly out of relief, but mostly with contentment. He'd thought about this so many times since his assistant told him Tess was on line three.

  He draws her into his arms and kisses her on top of her dreads. “You know what would make it even better? If you said yes to coming to Boston with me.”

  She stiffens. “That's a huge event, Benjamin. Everybody you know will be there. Daphne, your brother and his family, all the people you work with, everybody.”

  “Yeah, everybody’s going to be there,” he agrees, working hard to keep his tone light and not spook her. “That’s why I want you there by my side.”

  “Benjamin…” she starts to say.

  Not going to miss his shot. Not this time. Not with Tess.

  “You know…” Before she can finish that thought, he reaches down and cups one of her glorious breasts with one hand and finds her pussy with the other.
Then he kisses the particularly sensitive spot on her neck he found when they were sixteen. “I’m thinking of some ways to convince you…”

  “Are you now?” she replies, keeping her voice cynical and tough—even as she shivers under his touch.

  “Sure am,” he answers with a chuckle…before getting down to some very serious business.

  This is the new beginning he's been hoping for with Tess, and there’s one thing he already knows for certain.

  This time, he’s going to make it stick.

  CHAPTER 24

  HADES

  VAMPIRE: It was Zeus.

  This was how they'd ended. With a text message from one of his most trusted MCs.

  Four years earlier, Hades found himself on the business end of a gun held by Persy for the third and final time. He'd read and reread the text from Vampire. His most trusted enforcer had written the message in code, but its meaning could not be mistaken. At least, not by Hades.

  There was a Cajun cuss for just about every occasion, but in this case, one of his Tennessee born and raised cousin’s favorite ones came tumbling out of Hades’s mouth. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Hades?”

  Persy's soft voice drew his gaze up from the text message he'd just received at the bayou house. She was standing on the stilted stairs’ first landing, looking down at him over the rail. Like Juliet.

  Was that what they were? Tragic and doomed?

  He couldn’t answer her.

  “Are you okay?” She came the rest of the way down the steps, eyeing the bayou distrustfully. “Did you see a gator or something?”

  City folk. They’re always so scared of the bayou. Her question almost made Hades laugh. Almost…

  “Nah,” he answered. His heart was already panging with regret as he told her, “I'm Swamp Boy. Ain't nothing in the bayou can get me.”

  “Okay, Swamp Boy.” She gave the standing water a wary look. “Can we go back inside? I forgot to put on bug spray before coming out here, and I'm being eaten alive.”

  The mosquitoes didn't bother him much. As his nanan used to explain it, skeeters got respect for the folks who were born and raised here on the bayou. But Hades understood their compulsion to take bites out of this particular outsider.

  He burned for her. If he were offered the option to swallow her whole, he wasn't sure he'd say no.

  “I love you.” The three words fell out of his mouth without warning for either her or him.

  He’d been holding them back so long. At first, she was too young, and it was too soon to declare himself. He hadn’t wanted to scare her off with all his love at first sight. But it had been there from the start. And he hadn’t been able to stop, even after he found out her father was directly responsible for his mother's death.

  This love—this obstinate love. It continued to burn, even when he was supposed to be punishing her as a stand-in for her father. Even after Vengeance figured out who had put the hit on him.

  Their week on the bayou was the first bubble he made with her. The first one he had to pop. But before he did, he told her the truth about his feelings. “I love you, ma belle. I can’t help it. I love you so much.”

  She gazed up at him for a long time, her eyes filled with wariness and fear. Like his love was one of the gators lurking in the bayou.

  Then she said, “I think…I think I love you too.”

  She shifted her eyes away, as if what she tentatively said to him was more embarrassing than what he’d boldly declared to her. “I know I shouldn't. Like I said, this is probably Stockholm syndrome. But I think I love you too.”

  He loved her. And she loved him back.

  At the moment, he wished more than anything that could be enough.

  But facts remained. And Zeus had to be dealt with.

  He declared he loved her with all his heart.

  Then he purposefully put all those feelings on ice and let his face harden to tell her, “It’s time for us to leave.”

  Zeus plays a part in almost every version

  of the Hades and Persephone myth.

  * * *

  Sometimes he's Hades's co-conspirator,

  helping the dark underworld god

  get what he wants.

  * * *

  Sometimes he is his competitor,

  and Hades just barely manages

  to snap the beauty up

  before the ruler of the overworld can.

  * * *

  In some versions,

  Persephone is Zeus’s daughter.

  And he simply hands

  the girl over to Hades.

  * * *

  As a gift? As a consolation? As a debt owed?

  * * *

  No one can say for sure.

  Perhaps that is why

  there are so many

  versions of this story.

  Hades told Persephone he loved her, and less than two hours later, he was standing over Antoine Perreault in his home office, pointing her father’s own vintage revolver directly at his head.

  “Tell him,” he said to Persy, who was being held back by Hyena and Vampire while Des-E, the third member of Vengeance, played lookout to make sure the adopted sister didn’t come home too early from her sleepover. “Tell him what you told me.”

  “Hades, don’t. Please don’t.” For reasons Hades couldn’t begin to understand, she struggled to get out of his MC’s hold and begged for her father’s worthless life. “If you truly love me, don't do this.”

  He did truly love her. They’d come to an understanding on the bayou. And he planned to do anything for her, anything she asked.

  After this necessary business.

  For that reason, he had to keep both his heart and his voice hard when he insisted, “Tell him what you told me. I want your words of love to be the last ones he hears.”

  “Don’t you understand?” she asked, her voice trembling with emotion. “I won’t be able to feel that way about you anymore if you do this. Please, Hades. You will destroy us. I will hate you forever.”

  It was hard for Hades to maintain his icy façade when she said that—to keep his emotional distance and not let her pleas and threats sway him.

  But he managed.

  “Maybe I’ll find some mercy in this black heart of mine if you say it out loud,” he suggested. “If you tell him what you told me down on the bayou.”

  She stopped struggling to get out of Vampire’s and Hyena’s grips.

  Despite the low light in her father’s office, he could see the cynical calculation in her eyes. See that her numbers based on everything she knew of Hades didn’t add up to her father walking out of this office alive.

  “If you don’t do as I ask, I’m most definitely going to kill your père. But if you do…” He shrugged the way French people are known for on both sides of the Atlantic. “Who knows?”

  Yes, there was a chance. A very small chance, but it was her only one.

  Maybe that was why, instead of flatly repeating the heavily caveated words she said earlier, her voice came out true and steady when she told her father, “Dad, I love Galen Fairgood. I know that we are from very different worlds. But I fell in love with him. I’ve forgiven him, and I want to build a life with him free of our pasts.”

  Hades was the one holding the Perreault revolver, but her words him like bullets.

  She forgave him? He hadn’t been serious about showing her father mercy. Everyone in the room knew that.

  But a warm light filled his chest, and instead of cocking the vintage revolver to shoot her father, he found himself faltering as he stared across the room at the love of his life.

  “You’re reneging on our deal, you damn bastard. You were supposed to kill her. Why didn’t you kill her?”

  Antoine Perreault’s bitter question pulled Hades’s attention back to the man in the office chair.

  “That was the deal,” her father reminded Hades. “Her life for mine.”

  “Dad, stop,” Persy said. “You’re not he
lping your cause.”

  “No, you’re not helping our cause,” Antoine Perreault shot back, his voice shaking with rage as he directed his gaze toward his daughter. “Bringing down our good name by associating with this swamp trash. You know, he sent me videos before the Tessier Ball. The games of Russian roulette. The dog cage. Who falls in love with someone who does what he did to you? What kind of harlot spreads her legs for a piece of swamp shit?”

  This time, Hades had no problem cocking the old gun. “I suggest you close your fucking mouth right now.”

  “No, you want me to hear her last words to me. Well, I got some last words for her too,” Antoine insisted with a sneer.

  He turned his furious gaze back to his only blood daughter. “You’re just like your mama. I could've married someone who would’ve given me children of good stock—more than one useless daughter. But she tricked me. Charmed and seduced me. Next thing I knew, I was fighting my parents to marry her and going along with her plan to get pregnant so they’d have to give me permission to be with her. My own mother warned me before I walked down the aisle with that temptress who’d done whatever it took to land herself a Perreault. She told me lineage was lineage and that I’d regret the day when I chose some no-name girl from Ohio over the wife she would’ve selected for me. And she was right.”

  Antoine suddenly burst out laughing. Not the jovial kind, but the kind when you realized that fou bitch Fate had played you for some kind of fool, and there was nothing else you could do but laugh.

  “Of course, you love this swamp trash,” her father said to Persy around gales of laughter, his voice taking on a deranged pitch. “Of course, you'd care nothing about embarrassing me or upholding the Perreault name. I can't show my face at the Tessier Ball anymore because of you. I had to take on massive debt to pay for a hit on the housekeeper’s son so I could finally move on with my life and marry someone of my own standing—because of you. And now you've gone and fallen in love with this thug. I take back what I said the night I gave you to him. I wish your mother was alive to see this. I wish I’d never married that low-class bitch.”