Moments of Malevolence (The Hunters Book 1)

I’M NOT one to pick up chicks from bars, but this one has piqued my interest. What is it about her?

It can’t be that fake smile she gives each of us, as if we think she’s happy to be here and serving us.

No. It has to be something else.

But what?

“Why are you looking at her like that?” Kyson nudges me, but I don’t bother turning to him.

“Do you want her to stay?” Grayson asks.

I glance his way, and he’s raising a brow, waiting for me to answer him. I say nothing and sit back as I watch her step up the stairs and then pour the whiskey into the glasses. She hands Grayson his and once again smiles that well-rehearsed fake smile she has mastered so well. Then she does the same to my brothers before she gets to me. When she offers me the drink, my gaze moves from the glass to her. My hands are in my lap, and I make no move to grab the glass. She glances down at my hands, then at me before she stands to her full height.

“No drink?” she asks, smiling. “Anything else I can get you if you don’t want whiskey?”

I bite the inside of my lip as I watch her. Most women would be uncomfortable with my stare, but she gives it straight back with no hesitation whatsoever.

What is it about her?

She waits for a few beats before she places the glass on the tray and turns her attention to the other guys. “Anything else I can get you all?”

“No, that will be all for now,” Grayson states. She nods and goes to leave, but she takes one last glance at me, and I see the villain in her eyes, the one who wants to come out to play. She pins me with a stare as if to say, “fuck you,” then grins before she saunters off.

“You could talk to her, you know,” Grayson mutters.

My brothers and I don’t socialize. Frankly, we fucking hate everyone. Even my own brothers get on my very last nerve. Grayson was a little punk on our street that somehow, we let in our inner circle, which is something we don’t usually do. And we haven’t been able to get rid of him since.

He’s like glue, he just sticks.

But he’s loyal.

I raise an impatient brow at Grayson words, but he just shakes his head before he turns and starts talking to the twins.

Growing up we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives. We figured the only way to make money was drugs—either buying or selling. We did that for a bit until I witnessed a murder.

Right in front of my eyes.

He was an older man and wore a black ski mask and all-black clothing.

I wanted to laugh at the irony of it.

It was straight out of the damn movies.

He killed our neighbor and climbed out the window before he lit a cigarette, took off his mask, and set the house on fire. He spotted me, smirked, and walked over, his hand running through his hair.

“Trying to work out… Should I kill you where you stand, kid,” he’d said, as the house behind him went up like a kindling box, and he paid no attention to it. “But I see that gleam in your eyes.” He leaned in close, slipped me a phone, and whispered, “Do you want to do something dangerous for the rest of your life?”

I pulled back and stared at him.

How did he know?

He didn’t even wait for me to answer as he nodded his head. “Answer when I call.” He walked off, and I never looked back. When he called my phone two days later, I answered. When he said to meet him, I listened. And when I rolled up to the arranged meeting spot, there were five other teenagers there as well. I was the youngest, but that didn’t mean shit.

We were being trained by special operations soldiers, the ones who loved killing so much that when they pulled out of service, they started to do their own dirty shit.

It was the most painful thing I had ever done in my life.

The training was intense, and it took a good year before I was allowed my first kill.

I fucked it up, but Pops—that’s what the man who gave me the phone liked to be called—fixed it.

I never fucked up a kill after that.

A year later, Pops asked about my brothers. He was creating his own army and I was his special soldier.

He figured because he could mold me, my brothers would be great assets as well.

And he was right.

They were.

The three of us became his secret weapons. He stopped training other people after that. The men he had trained before my brothers and me, and even those after, he let go, or possibly killed, I don’t know and don’t care to ask.

Pops was lethal, but I had become even more lethal with time.

And in turn, my brothers did as well.

We were deadly.

Destructive.

Evil.

To this day, we still work for Pops. But he isn’t the only place we get jobs now.

Killing is what we are good at.

Killing is our business.

Why would we limit ourselves to one person who gives us work when we have the whole fucking world at our fingertips?