OverPowered Read online

  OverPowered: Anti-Hero Game

  Power Chain Book Four

  Chelsea Camaron

  Ryan Michele

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Don’t Miss Out!

  Books In This Series

  OverPowered: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book 4)

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Power Chain: Anti-Hero Game

  About Chelsea Camaron

  About Ryan Michele

  Other Books by Chelsea Camaron

  Other Books by Ryan Michele

  Copyright © Chelsea Camaron & Ryan Michele 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Chelsea Camaron and Ryan Michele, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  This is a work of fiction. All character, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  1st edition published: December 31, 2019

  ASIN: B0824J5T1J

  Thank you for purchasing this book. This book and its contents are the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied, and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  This book contains mature content not suitable for those under the age of 18. Content involves strong language, violence, and sexual situations. All parties portrayed in sexual situations are over the age of 18. All characters are a work of fiction.

  This book is not meant to be an exact depiction of life in an underworld crime organization, but rather a work of fiction meant to entertain.

  *** Warning: This book contains graphic situations that may be a trigger for some readers. Please understand this is a work of fiction and not meant to offend or misrepresent any situations. There is quite a bit of violence, so if that’s not what you’re looking for, then please don’t read. ***

  Acknowledgments

  Editing by: Silla Webb

  Cover Design by: Cassy Roop of Pink Ink Designs

  Cover Model: Peter Towers

  Cover Picture Photographer: Eric Battershell

  Don’t Miss Out!

  Want to keep up to date with Chelsea Camaron and Ryan Michele?

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  Ryan:

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  Books In This Series

  Power Chain: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Prequel)

  Get your copy: HERE for FREE

  PowerHouse: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book One) — Released Feb 20th

  Get your copy: HERE

  Power Player: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book Two) –

  Get your copy: HERE

  Powerless: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book Three) –

  Get your copy: HERE

  Overpowered: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book Four) –

  Get your copy: Here

  OverPowered: Anti-Hero Game (Power Chain Book 4)

  Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling Authors Chelsea Camaron and Ryan Michele team up to push beyond the boundaries, crossing a line into a deep, dangerous, and forbidden world. One where no one escapes, even if they beg to.

  This is the Power Chain Series—a series of interconnected stand-alone romances.

  Even puppets need masters. Especially her.

  She was his.

  I wanted her for mine.

  She thought she was in charge.

  I was a puppet master in control of everything and everyone.

  She was innocent.

  I was all things dark and dirty.

  I am Garrett Monroe.

  I’ve never been overpowered or underestimated by anyone in the underworld of my business.

  She has to learn he can’t save her from me – no one can. I never let go of something I claim …

  Including her.

  Prologue

  Garrett

  The lighter felt heavy in my hand, much like it did all those years ago. Funny how time passes, but some things simply never changed. I flipped the top back and struck the flint. The flames danced in their shades of yellow and red blending into orange. With my right hand holding the lighter in place, I lifted my left over the flame. The heat against my palm grew. The sting intensified.

  I remained steady.

  To feel pain was to feel life.

  Long ago I learned to stop feeling. Emotions, that was; those feelings inside got me nowhere. When shrouded in loss, gripped by grief, and despondent to life in general, one quickly grew … cold.

  That was then; this was now.

  And I was still a cold-hearted motherfucker.

  The only thing I was willing to feel in life was physical pain, and that was simply to remind myself my heart did indeed still fucking beat.

  I flipped the lighter shut. The flame snuffed out quickly. If only things in life could be so easily shut down like the flame in the lighter. My mind started to travel back to those moments, the ones where everything changed, forever linking the four of us. My brothers.

  I wouldn’t go there. Couldn’t. Not right now.

  No, my focus needed to be on one thing and one thing only … a man named Charles Beacon and his request.

  Reaching out, I moved the tablet on the table beside me so I could better see the screen. Pressing play on the device in front of me, I listened to him speak again as I rolled the lighter over in the palm of my right hand. The metal now warm from my hands and the flame, but still as always hard and unbreakable—like me.

  Yes, I recorded our meeting. I recorded everything I ever did with this prick and others like him. One never knew when these videos would come in handy.

  There wasn’t a single thing about Charles that was upstanding. Therefore, I covered all my bases anytime I was with the likes of him. Was it illegal? Yes. Did I give a fuck? Absolutely not.

  Currently, I was sitting on a gray Adirondack chair that glides because Ellen Sue told me she loved the view from my balcony when she needed a break from cleaning, and she loved the gliders.

  Personally, I liked the idea of a wicker sectional out here, but Ellen Sue got anything she wanted for putting up with all of us. Frankly, after the shit we put her through, the woman shouldn’t be cleaning, but rather be awarded for sainthood or something. Except she loved to do for her boys, and she said if she stopped working then she’d know she was truly old.

  Ellen Sue refused to feel old.

  So she hopped from house to house, week after week, cleaning and catering to Onyx, Paxton, Dane, and myself. Whatever made Ellen Sue happy, we did, period; end of story. We owed her everything.

  Which was why I had a balcony with Adirondack gliders in some eco-friendl
y material that came with some bullshit thirty-year warranty. I didn’t pick the shit out, Ellen Sue did, and I proudly handed over my credit card. Every house I owned, she picked out the furniture. Except my bed, I always chose my beds.

  I could count on my two hands how many times I’d sat in this seat, looking out into the city building lines. When the times came, and they came more often than I’d like lately, I got stuck here in this space. Lately, I had been tied to the city and this penthouse. For different reasons, I couldn’t seem to find time to get away.

  I didn’t like to live in the city, but I worked here, so it was convenient. Only time and again, being here felt like it would smother me. That was the other reason I didn’t buy the wicker furniture; I would rather be anywhere but here. So Ellen Sue could have what she wanted because truthfully this place was more home to her than me.

  I hated the penthouse.

  I hated the city.

  I hated this chair.

  I hated it all.

  This life I had, well, the only thing I loved was the power.

  His voice boomed in my earbuds. I took my eyes back to the tablet and away from the skyline. My mind went back as if I was still there as I watched the video in front of me and the request I had yet to accept or deny.

  “Gonna need extra services, Monroe.”

  I nodded but did not reply.

  The video was clear as day, as if I had it on a big-screen television with high definition. Those cameras were worth every fucking penny. We were in my office. A fancy, overpriced building with a view that happened to be two buildings down from where I currently sat in my penthouse. The very office with a solid glass wall overseeing the city and a sleek black desk where day after day I signed documents helping and hurting people, equally.

  The client in front of my desk, on this particular day and in this video, was Mister Charles Beacon. Millionaire mastermind behind a software technology company that he began in the eighties. The man was aging but still young in spirit; at least he tried to come off that way. His biography listed him at seventy-two. Rather than checking his Medicare benefits, he was scoping out life as if he was still some young buck, instead of one step closer to assisted living.

  “I have a young lady whom I have acquired.”

  I shook my head. “I’m an attorney, Mr. Beacon,” I reminded the bastard. “I’m not here for matters of the heart.”

  Decisions were crucial. Situations like this weren’t our typical jobs, especially not for me. Which was why I replaying this video. I wanted to catch the subtle clues I didn’t catch in the moment. His tone, his glare, it was all meant to be menacing, but for a man like me it was nothing more than obnoxious. How he thought he was intimidating when he was nothing more than an aging man with a receding hairline and a chip on his shoulder was beyond me. He was past his prime. Plus, the entitled attitude did shit for me.

  Frankly, no one intimidated me. Once upon a time … maybe. When life was simple, then, yes someone could have gotten to me. Now, though, I knew pain, I knew loss, and there wasn’t a single thing anyone could take from me that would hurt.

  I was that bastard now.

  The one who couldn’t be shaken.

  See, back then, I was that kid; the one who understood that fights in life were bound to happen. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. The thing was, I never backed down. It simply wasn’t in my DNA. So even if I got my ass kicked time and again (which truthfully didn’t happen except from one person) I would not be shaken by this guy or any other motherfucker.

  “What I require is out of the realm of legal services. In fact, it’s not you I seek assistance from specifically. I understand you have a brother who does certain things under the radar. A mister Dane Anderson.”

  I smirked, not helping myself. Dane had a reputation, yes, and it wasn’t for being a law abiding citizen. While Dane wasn’t my blood brother, he was my family, my brother by choice; that part was correct. Onyx, Paxton, Dane and I grew up together in an Amish orphanage from hell. Each of us came from different homes, different circumstances, and we all landed in the same place. A home of horrors that seared a darkness in our souls. Choices had to be made and in the end, they had bonded us together for life.

  I regretted nothing where they were concerned.

  The thing was for a man like Charles Beacon to know Dane by name, well that meant he had underground connections. It also meant whatever he was trying to do with this young lady was not something that needed to land on any radars.

  “What does Dane have to do with me?” I asked him casually.

  He rolled his shoulders forward and stiffened. “Well, I would like your assistance but also his. My connections can’t seem to reach Mr. Anderson, so they believed you two had a familial connection.” He cleared his throat.

  I didn’t speak.

  He continued on, “I have a delicate matter of sorts. The people I know have told me that your services go beyond that of attorney/client for a courtroom, but rather you and your business partners have a reputation for giving people what they seek in life and doing so inside the lines of binding agreements. I have acquired a young woman in a transaction. She’s not, shall we say, seeing things my way.” He paused for dramatic effect. It did nothing for me. “I’m a ruthless man, Mr. Monroe. I’m sure you can understand, I’m not a man who likes to be challenged. I do not have the time or patience to break her myself, so I would like Mr. Anderson to help me hide her away.”

  I laughed in his face. I couldn’t help myself.

  Even sitting here watching the scene replay, I found myself giving a huff in the absurdity of his request. He was a ruthless man, so he said. But his plan for this woman was seclusion. Solitude didn’t bend someone to your will; no, it simply broke their spirit. It was cruel and rather ineffective, honestly. A broken person was not a pliant person, but rather a spirit floating and existing until they found their end.

  He had no idea the man he was sitting in front of. He had no idea the lengths of which I would go to protect someone I loved, the lines I would cross for revenge, or simply the shit I would do for entertainment’s sake.

  I watched the tablet with the lighter still in my hand. The weight of what four teen boys did all those years ago was nothing compared to the ounces of the Zippo lighter. Years had passed us by. Together we knew what it was to fall and rise up again. I didn’t regret what we had done. I had no remorse. I didn’t need atonement, saving, and I didn’t need to help the smug bastard in the video.

  Except, I was going to do as he requested.

  I was going to meet his woman. I was going to carry her away to my private home in the Virgin Islands. Yes, I was that smug bastard with an elite home like a famous fuck. Only I wasn’t known, and I liked it that way. There she would be sheltered from the world. No escape. No way to find help.

  I sat back in the glider as a smirk danced upon my lips. I wasn’t doing this for him, though. No, Charles Beacon had no clue that this woman he procured was no longer his. I was going to whisk her away.

  Enissa Mitchell was mine, and she didn’t have a clue.

  No one did.

  That was what made this whole thing even better.

  1

  Enissa

  “You don’t have to do this, Enissa,” my mother whispered, tears shimmering and threatening to fall. “I don’t care what they say.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat as I fought back my own tears. This wasn’t supposed to be my life, but it was all the same, and no matter what I’d get through it.

  Gripping my mom’s shaking hands, I tried giving her my strength. “Momma, I’m strong. I’ll go, and I’ll make the best of a bad situation.”

  “Please, just take this.” She again kept her voice low as she handed me a small dark brown leather pouch. The one she always kept in a safe place in our home. It was special to her, given to her by her mother before she passed away, and it meant the world to her. “It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got to give you, baby girl
.”

  Wetness fell down my cheeks and splashed down to the ground. I couldn’t stop them. “Momma, no.” She needed it more than I did.

  “It’s my wedding band, a necklace, and some money. It won’t get you far, but take it, find a time, and run as far as you can. A daughter isn’t meant to atone for the sins of her father. Even if they came from the right place. It’s not right for you to pay for our mistakes.”

  Well, if that wasn’t the damn truth. It didn’t matter, though. There was no choice for me. If I didn’t leave with the driver and get on the plane to California, then Mr. Beacon was bound to make my family pay … in the worst of ways. He wasn’t a kind man even though I didn’t actually know him, only having short conversations with him to make this deal. What kind of man would do this? Rip a family apart over money? The evil kind, that was who.

  My mother didn’t ask to get sick and have her body attack itself. She didn’t ask to be crippled and unable to take care of herself. None of this was within any of our control. Now this stranger was manipulating our situation for his benefit.