Brutal Hearts

CONTENTS Content Warning Acknowledgments Dedication Playlist Part I 1. Layne 2. Archie 3. Archie 4. Archie 5. Layne 6. Archie 7. Layne Part II 8. Archie 9. Layne 10. Layne 11. Archie 12. Archie 13. Archie 14. Layne Part III 15. Layne 16. Layne 17. Layne 18. Archie 19. Layne 20. Archie 21. Layne Part IV 22. Archie 23. Archie 24. Archie 25. Layne 26. Archie 27. Layne 28. Archie 29. Layne 30. Layne Epilogue Win Special Edition Hardcovers and a $100 Amazon Gift Card! A Wicked Empire Universe Free from Jordan About Jordan BRUTAL HEARTS JORDAN GRANT The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, or distributed in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. Copyright © 2023 by Jordan Grant. CONTENT WARNING Dear Reader: This book contains disturbing scenes that may be triggering. Please read the content warning below, especially the triggers of self-harm, sexual assault, and rape, which are EXPLICIT. Your mental health matters. - J Triggers: All are explicit unless noted. Main Characters - Self-harm — cutting; VERY explicit - Profanity - Bullying (limited) - Sexual situations - Blood play - Knife play - Mental illness — PTSD; suicidal ideation (limited) - Sexual assault (NOT between MCs) - Rape (NOT between MCs) Supporting Characters - Death - Mental illness — agoraphobia, hoarding - Alcoholism with alcohol-related brain damage - Sexual assault (perpetration of) - Rape (perpetration of) - Parthenophilia — related to virgins only - Dacryphilia ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the following people who helped this story come to life. Beta Readers: Edie, Amber, Melissa, & Danielle Copyeditor: Owl Eyes Proofs & Edits Proofreaders: Brittni Van and Roxana Coumans Cover Design: Maria Spada DEDICATION This is for the estimated 1 in 3 women who are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. I was 11. He was 17. If you can't get vengeance, I hope you find peace instead. - Jordan P.S. Fuck you, Chris. PLAYLIST I Believe in a Thing Called Love — The Darkness Dead Inside — Disturbed, et al. So Fresh, So Clean — Outkast Wellerman - Sea Shanty — Nathan Evans, et al. I am the Fire — Halestorm Dirty Thoughts — Chloe Adams Ghost — Zoe Wees Numb — Declan J Donovan Bleed It Out — Linkin Park Lost My Mind — Inverness, et al. playa (feat. H.E.R.) — A Boogie Wit da Ho Porn Star Dancing — My Darkest Days, et al. The Bad Touch — Bloodhound Gang Midnight Rain — Taylor Swift For the full playlist, click here. PART I DAWN — Gil (Years Prior) — I sit at my desk in my office, papers strewn everywhere. Balance sheets, profit-and-loss reports, accounts payable, accounts receivable, all of it bleeds across the hand-hewn wood and nearly hemorrhages down to the floor. Our business, our lives reduced to ink and paper and numbers that hang with a death rattle in the air. Fuck. "Good night," Eli calls to me from outside my open door. "Night," I say reflexively, before I extricate myself from the proof of our ruin. I raise my hand and give him a little wave, though he's not looking at me as he strides toward the elevator, the motion sensors picking up his movement and following him with a trail of fluorescent yellow spotlights. I snatch my mug, swallowing the corpse of my coffee that cooled hours ago in one gulp. Black and bitter, just how I like it. I set the mug back down on the table in front of me and bring my hands to my temples, closing my eyes as I massage small circles around and around, trying to ward off the migraine that's crawled up my spine and started to bed down for the night at my shoulders. The lamp on the corner of my desk with its levered arm swung toward me colors the world through my eyelids, curtaining the darkness in peach and coral. Around and around, I go, pressing harder, my index fingers digging into my skin until it hurts. I promised Eli I would find a way out. I promised my wife. I promised my family. And I have failed miserably. These past days have been replete with nothing but my discovery of even more debts and liabilities. I thought we still had equity in the Chula Vista properties to the south, but it's gone, evaporated to nothing with the ebb of the real estate market and the crash the Wall Street economists say is coming. It's not coming though, and it never will because it is here, staring at me in black and white, calling the time of death of everything Eli and I have worked for since college. In those days, we stayed up late, crammed into my tiny dorm room, watching the penny stocks and dreaming of making the big bucks. He came from money. I didn't. My father never had anything to lose, but Eli's could lose everything. So we watched and waited, designed and planned. We were going to forge our own path, and we did, straight into the damn ground. Fuck. My eyes pop open, and I comb through the pages, my fingers skittering across paper that smells like burnt ink from the printer in the secretary's office that needs to be replaced. I find the right page, part of the receivables listing payments six months past due from Affinity Pharma. The numbers bleed together on the paper. A quarter of a million dollars remains overdue, owed to us for Affinity Pharma's lease of the San Bernardino storage facilities. It would be more than enough to keep us breathing until the next quarter. But we'll never see a single red cent. They ignored the letter from the lawyer Eli and I had hired, demanding immediate