Coerce Read online

  Coerce Copyright © 2021

  by Candice Wright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  Cover design by Temptation Creations

  Editing by Tanya Oemig

  Proofreading by Chantal Fleming

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Ivy

  2. Ivy

  3. Ivy

  4. Ivy

  5. Ivy

  6. Ivy

  7. Ivy

  8. Ivy

  9. Atlas

  10. Ivy

  11. Ivy

  12. Ivy

  13. stalker

  14. Atlas

  15. Ivy

  16. Ivy

  17. Stalker

  18. Atlas

  19. Ivy

  20. Atlas

  21. Ivy

  22. Atlas

  23. Ivy

  24. Ivy

  25. Atlas

  26. Ivy

  27. Atlas

  28. Ivy

  29. Atlas

  30. Ivy

  31. Ivy

  32. Atlas

  33. Ivy

  34. Ivy

  35. Atlas

  36. Ivy

  37. Atlas

  38. Ivy

  39. Atlas

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Candice Wright

  For those who found comfort in the darkness that others feared.

  “You can love a monster, it can even love you back, but that doesn’t change its nature.”

  ~ Eliza Crewe

  Prologue

  A thousand stars light up the night sky, illuminating the atrocity below in an ethereal way.

  The carnage and mayhem which desecrated what should have been a day filled with love and celebration have calmed now that the last body has fallen. A random arm or leg twitches involuntarily here and there, as if people’s souls are desperately trying to hold on to their bodies with ghostly fingers. A cacophony of desperate last breaths echoes through the night like the final notes of a mournful ballad. Only when their lungs fill with blood and blessed silence remains, do I feel a sense of satisfaction.

  Not pride. There is no honor in ambushing a family wedding and gunning down unarmed men and women, no matter how much they might have deserved it.

  That’s the way it is in my world, though. An eye for an eye.

  The groom, Dylan Walsh—Sean Walsh’s twenty-four-year-old heir to the throne— had raped my fifteen-year-old stepsister Abigail and left her pregnant.

  If he were a smart man, Dylan would have killed Abigail after he’d finished with her. Leaving her alive to reveal his actions was akin to signing his death certificate and that of every other person with Walsh blood running through their veins.

  Blood crimes are always paid back in blood tenfold. For making my sister bleed, I made his mother, sister, aunt, and bride bleed. Dylan should be grateful I’m not an animal as he proved to be. A bullet is quick and efficient. I showed these people a kindness he denied my sister. Their suffering was over in minutes. Abigail’s will last a lifetime.

  “It is done. Let’s get out of here. Seline is making pot roast this evening and I’ve worked up an appetite.” My father grins maniacally as the residual adrenaline coursing through him tries to find an outlet.

  I can only hope my stepmother has prepared herself. Not that I care either way. Seline is…well, Seline. An American woman like my mother had been, but that’s where the similarities ended. Seline worked her way up the social ladder on her back with her legs spread wide until she hitched her star to my father. Motivated by money and power, she is much like he is, only she cares little for anything else and for whatever reason that suited my father’s needs.

  Typically, I’d call in our cleanup crew now, but not this time. This is my father’s way of making a statement. With as many police officers, politicians, and judges in our pockets, we could be caught on camera and still end up walking away.

  Money and power. It’s what the world is built on and nobody is beyond corruption.

  As I follow my father, I glance up at those stars bathing the sky with their twinkling glow, illuminating the enormous pristine white tent that hides the bloodshed inside. I wonder for a second why I can’t recall the exact moment death became so normal to me.

  I don’t find the answers. I never do. Maybe there never was a defining moment. Perhaps it’s all I’ve ever known. After all, how many people can say they killed a person seconds before they were even born?

  The myth surrounding the event always makes people fearful of me. I was born in a river of blood after clawing my way out of my dead mother’s body. I supposedly didn’t cry, didn’t fuss. I just stared at my father with cold eyes.

  I’d call bullshit if I cared enough what people thought about me to correct them, but if their fear keeps them away, then who am I to knock a gift horse in the mouth?

  Climbing into the back seat, our driver Clint waits for the other two vehicles to signal. Clint pulls out when the first car pulls away, and the third car slips in behind us. It’s a strategic convoy, one we’ve used since I was a kid.

  Bulletproof glass only goes so far and my father is a paranoid son of a bitch.

  “Adriane has the plane ready for us,” I tell Clint when my phone chimes with an incoming text letting me know we’re good to go.

  “You heading home with me for dinner? Seline has been asking after you.” My father turns to me, his question not a question at all, but an order.

  “I have time,” I reply coolly. It’s easier to give in than to fight over the petty bullshit. I like to pick my battles wisely, and with my father, everything’s a battle.

  And that is as scintillating as our conversation gets. The rest of the journey to my father’s house on the outskirts of London is spent with each of us working.

  I stretch when I climb out of the car, my body stiff from sitting in the same position for too long.

  Waiting for my father to round the car, I take in the warm glow of the porch light giving off a welcoming vibe. It just goes to show that looks can be deceiving.

  We make our way up the steps and through the door, heading toward the smells coming from the kitchen. I might not have any love for Seline, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate her cooking.

  The murmuring of voices gets louder the closer we get and I don’t think anything of it until my father stops and looks at me.

  That’s when I tune in to what’s being said.

  My first thought is that Seline is having an affair, but then I realize both voices are female and familiar. I frown in confusion, wondering why my father stopped until Abigail’s agitated voice rings out.

  “But what if they want a DNA test?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I know someone who can fix one for us. You just need to keep your mouth shut and make sure you stay the hell away from that boy,” Seline hisses, making me frown even harder.

  “But I love Lewis. He has a right to know he’s going to be a father—” a slap sounds, making my body tense. I don’t
move and neither does my father, needing to hear it all.

  “You started this by spreading your legs for that boy. If your father knew, he’d kill him in a heartbeat, and you know it. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out you lied about Dylan Walsh?”

  “But you told me to say that.” Abigail is openly crying now.

  “Your father will be home soon. You just need to keep your mouth and your legs shut unless it might actually benefit us for once. Maybe, instead of fucking the hired help, you could work on your stepbrother instead. That way, when your father dies, we won’t be cast out.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be worried about that, dear.” My father strolls into the kitchen, pulls his gun, and fires a bullet into his wife’s forehead. Her eyes are wide with shock for a fleeting second before they glaze over and her body drops to the floor like a stone.

  Abigail screams, falling off the chair and crawling away to the corner of the room. She wraps her arms around herself and sobs.

  “Who is he?” my father roars, making her whimper.

  “Only Lewis I can think of that works for you is the pool boy. Pretty cliché if you ask me.” I shrug apathetically, but inside I’m seething.

  “No! Please, Daddy, don’t hurt him.” She reaches out to grab his leg, but he kicks her hand away.

  “Oh, I won’t hurt him. I’ll kill him,” he snarls, picking up his cell and calling Jim, who will have Lewis here, kicking and screaming, in about five minutes.

  “Please, please, you have to do something. You have to stop him,” Abigail implores me.

  I crouch down in front of her and stare at her tear-stained face. “Now why would I do that?”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” she sobs, snot and tears streaking her face along with flecks of her mother’s blood.

  “I told him I was nineteen. He didn’t know,” she whispers.

  “Seems your lying keeps getting people killed now, doesn’t it, Abigail? Do you know how many people I heard pleading tonight for their lives, or for the lives of their loved ones to be spared? Too many, and it was all done in the name of your honor. Honor which you do not have.”

  She has nothing to say to that. I stand and let her sit crying at my feet as she contemplates my words. Jim appears minutes later, dragging a confused-looking Lewis behind him.

  The second my father sees him, he grabs the boy around the throat and pins him to the wall.

  “You dare fuck my daughter!” he roars as Lewis’s eyes go wide and understanding dawns on his face.

  He doesn’t get a chance to plead his case. My father lets go of him before grabbing his gun off the table where he left it and empties the remaining bullets into him. His body jerks and twists like a marionette doll before falling to the floor. Abigail’s screams are the only thing I can hear after the deafening sounds of the gun firing.

  “Shut up, or so help me God, the next bullet will be yours.” My father sneers at Abigail, who is smart enough to know he means every word.

  He turns and storms out of the room, Jim following on his heels and waiting for instruction on what to do next.

  I squat back down in front of Abigail once more and cup her jaw softly, tipping her head back to look into her eyes. I see the moment everything sinks in, the second her worst nightmare becomes her reality.

  “Actions have consequences, Abby. You’re old enough to know that. You’re not his daughter or my sister through blood, so the fact that you’re even alive right now is a testament to how much the old man loved you. But things will be different now. This is what happens when you play with grown-ups. Get yourself cleaned up and finish up your father’s dinner.”

  I stand and smooth the lapels of my jacket before walking out of the kitchen and heading up the stairs to my father’s study.

  “You have got to be fucking shitting me!” I hear his angry voice as Jim tries to placate him.

  Quickening my pace, I knock on his door once before pushing it open to see him standing near the window with his hands in his hair, his usual composure missing.

  “Show him,” he orders Jim, who nods and picks up his cell phone from the desk and walks it over to me, showing me the photo.

  It’s the scene of carnage we walked away from earlier today. The blood, the bodies, the death of all those people that, in the end, was all for nothing. The difference between earlier and now is the figure standing in the middle of the wreckage looking like an angel in the middle of hell.

  A little girl who can’t be any older than five or six stands in the middle of a mass grave like an apparition. Wearing a white bridesmaid dress soaked in blood, she looks at me through the screen as if she can see me, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “Who is she?” I ask calmly, but my eyes never leave the image of the little girl, her haunted expression burning itself into my brain.

  “Emma Walsh, Sean’s youngest,” Jim answers as I send the photo to my phone and hand his back.

  “I thought his youngest was a boy.”

  “Jamie is—was—eighteen and the youngest from his wife, but six-year-old Emma is the illegitimate offspring of his mistress Louisa, who died four months ago. She’s been with the Walshes since,” Jim admits with a sigh.

  “This is a fucking mess,” my father groans, turning away from the window to look at Jim.

  “Send Abigail to my sister’s in Scotland. She can stay there until the baby is born, then it can go up for adoption. I want a husband lined up for afterward.”

  “Three years is a long time for a man to wait. Do you plan on keeping her in Scotland until she’s eighteen and legal?”

  “Her mother is dead, which makes me her legal guardian. With my permission, she can get married at sixteen. Her husband can do what he wants with her. If I lay eyes on her again, I’ll kill her.”

  Turning his tired eyes to me, he grits his teeth. “Find the girl and finish the job. The last thing we can afford now is a fucking witness.”

  “She’s not just a witness, she’s the sole heir to Walsh’s throne,” Jim points out.

  “And the one person capable of bringing us down. It’s her or us.” My father sighs.

  See, every action has a consequence. With so much blood on my hands, it really shouldn’t make a difference, but as I pull my phone out of my pocket and stare at the screen, I know it’s a lie.

  I’ll kill her, but it might just be the death of me too.

  One

  Ivy

  “Get out of the fucking way!” The balding asshole with the sad-looking comb-over in the car behind me yells out his window while hitting his horn.

  “Sure, why didn’t I think of that?” I mutter under my breath, trying to turn the engine over, but nothing. Not even a pathetic whine to let me know she’s still alive.

  When the asshole holds down his horn, I slap the steering wheel and curse like my Irish grandmother used to. Feisty and fearless until the day she died, I’d been named after my favorite family member, but I’d inherited none of her confidence. Besides my wild honey-colored hair and ability to get sunburned in the middle of November, the only thing I’d inherited from my grandmother was my ability to drink whiskey like water without getting drunk, and that isn’t something I can add to my resume.

  I roll my window down. It squeals in protest and I wave him around, ignoring him as he calls me a variety of names and suggests what I should do with myself. Some of which I don’t think are anatomically possible.

  I slide over the center console into the passenger seat and climb out the door. The people now driving around me look at me with varying expressions of anger and pity. They likely think I’m doing it for safety reasons, so I don’t get clipped by a car zipping by, but the truth is the driver’s side door doesn’t open anymore.

  Letting out a sigh, I remind myself it could always be worse. I snag my bag and move to the grassy embankment next to the road.

  I rifle around in my bag until I find my cell phone and pull it out with a smile of victory that quickly fades wh
en I realize it’s dead.

  “Of course it is. If I say it could be worse again, are you going to smite me and maybe zap me with a lightning bolt?” I ask, peering up at the sky. I’m sure the man upstairs has bigger things to worry about, like famine and war, but it would be nice to catch a break sometimes.

  The sound of an engine slowing down has me looking over my shoulder at a sleek black car pulling up just behind mine.

  I quickly stick a smile on my face while calculating an escape plan if needed. I’m not one of those people that’s easily lured into a false sense of security by an expensive car and flashy clothing.

  I’ve seen too much to believe someone’s zip code solely defines their likelihood of becoming a criminal. Evil can just as likely wear a suit and Rolex as it can dirty jeans and a wifebeater. The black ooze of maliciousness is present in all walks of life. From pimps sampling the wares of the girls they pump full of drugs and turn out to be pumped full of cum, to people with inflated egos and fat wallets buying their innocence one jury at a time.

  Sure, there is a desperation with the disadvantaged. Many make poor decisions in a bid to survive, but money and power do not wash away a man’s sins and make him pure. It just buys him a larger closet in which to hide his skeletons.

  I watch as the back door opens and a man steps out in a dark suit that likely costs more than the entire apartment building I live in. Hell, he probably spends more on underwear than I do on food.