Unhinged (Necessary Evils #1)(8)

Noah startled as his body vibrated. In his haze, he thought he’d been tazed. Then he realized it was Adam’s phone buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it, his hands threading in Noah’s hair, holding him in place so he could bite at his lips, his chin, his earlobe.

Once more, the phone began to vibrate. Adam dropped his forehead to Noah’s, breathing hard, before sitting up and retrieving his phone. “Yeah?” Noah couldn’t hear what the voice on the other end was saying, but they seemed just as irritated as Adam sounded. “Busy. Yeah, busy. None of your business?” Adam snorted. “I’ll be there. I said I’ll be there, Atticus. Damn.”

Atticus Mulvaney. Adam’s brother. A doctor. Both MD and PhD. Left practicing medicine to research rare diseases. Another golden child.

When Adam hung up, he examined Noah’s face. “Give me your cell phone.”

Noah frowned. “What?”

“Your cell phone. Give it to me.”

Noah fumbled in his pocket until he pulled out the ugly flip phone. Adam frowned at it like he’d never seen one before. “What? It’s all I can afford.”

Adam didn’t say anything after that, just punched something into the keypad. When Adam’s phone rang, he disconnected the call and saved it, then handed the phone back. “I have to go. I’m calling you an Uber. Text me when you get home.”

“What—”

“Don’t argue with me. Just do it.” Noah opened his mouth to tell him to fuck off but then snapped it shut. Adam pushed off from the bottom riser and walked three steps before turning back around and coming at Noah with enough momentum it triggered an instinct to run. Before he could get his addled brain to comply, Adam’s lips were on his again, kissing him in a way that had his toes curling in his sneakers.

Then he was gone and Noah was alone, wondering if he really had just hallucinated all of that. What the fuck was happening?





Adam’s lip curled as he heaved the bloody corpse towards the drain in the middle of the floor. He’d thought he was in really good shape before he’d had to haul his brother’s latest victim—a six foot four, three hundred pound rapist—from said victim’s car to the center of the abandoned slaughterhouse. While Adam was fit, his brother…wasn’t.

Atticus was tall and fair with a gym body and ginger hair. He looked like a Mormon and a tax attorney had a baby with shitty eyesight. Even now, while they were attempting to dispose of his brother’s fuckup, he was wearing a pair of seersucker pants and a white button down shirt, though both were covered in blood.

“Seriously, dude? Wet work is not my thing. How could shit go this completely sideways? And what the fuck are you wearing?” Adam finally asked after they got the man where they wanted him.

Atticus gave him a pissy look, using the back of his hand to push his glasses up his nose. “I had a work thing.”

“A work thing?”

“Yeah, you know work? That shit you do and they pay you for it? Oh, wait. No, you still live on Dad’s dime.”

Adam snickered. “You need to let that go. You might have a medical degree, but you work in the sciences. Dad pays your bills, too. You can’t afford that luxury mom car you drive playing mad scientist at the research center.”

“Fuck you,” Atticus said, voice testy.

After a minute, Adam sighed. “What was your work thing?”

Atticus brightened a bit. “The research center threw me a party because I scored a grant that will fund our program for the next five years.”

“Congrats. But don’t forget our real job.”

Atticus bristled. “This isn’t our job.”

“What would you consider it then? A passion project? Community service?” Adam placed his foot on the dead man’s chest, grabbing the handle of the blade, which was embedded in the man’s head, pulling with all his might. “What the fuck is this thing? Excalibur?” Adam grunted, starting to sweat through his now ruined Armani t-shirt. He gave his brother a disgusted look. “Seriously, man. How did you fuck up this bad?”

Atticus’s eyes bulged behind his glasses, his face contorting. “My fucking gun jammed. I had to improvise.”

Adam gaped at him. “And your first thought was a hatchet?”

Atticus snorted, his voice full of derision when he said, “It’s a meat cleaver, you miscreant. We were in his kitchen. It was that or a butcher knife, and when you have three hundred pounds barreling towards you, you make a decision and you let it play out.”

“Well, now, it’s two in the morning and we’re stuck here, in Satan’s tiled asshole, trying to pry a cleaver out of this fucker’s skull.”

“I’m sorry to pull you away from the coke you were probably snorting off some rent boy’s ass.”

Adam scoffed. “Coke? What are you, eighty? Who the fuck does coke anymore?”

“Haven’t you heard, it's making a comeback. It's all about nineties fashion and eighties drugs. Kids today,” August said, pushing through the clear thick plastic sheets that separated one room from the other. They reminded Adam of the things you saw in an automatic car wash.

Adam’s head snapped around to glare at Atticus. Why was Adam there if Atticus had already called August? This was August’s raison d’être. He loved the blood and guts. He was the cleaner, the enforcer, the stone cold killer with an iron stomach. Ironic given he looked like a taller, more terrifying version of Harry Potter, minus the glasses. He was the second oldest and had the least magnetic personality of them all as far as Adam was concerned. The family nerd with a dark side who would terrify the most hardened criminal.