Cardinal House (The Blackwell Brothers Book 4)

25. Wolf

Idon’t know why the thought of Luna in my bedroom is such a big deal. It feels almost like a holy experience, walking her, hand in hand, through the dark, cool halls of Cardinal House into the newer wing of the single level building.

The gloom embraces us, the shadows guiding us with cold hands and haunting fingers, like a cloak of darkness enveloping its monsters and welcoming them home.

My bedroom door is at the end of the furthest hall, leaving the heart of the house and moving into the bowels. The heavy mahogany door swings open with an eerie creak when I push down on the brass handle, and slip us inside.

The curtains are open, as they always are, because I rise with the sun, waking up with its rays on my skin, its warmth, when you live a life haunting the living before bringing them their death, you’ll take any sort of light you can get.

The walls are painted a deep royal blue, a bright splash of aqua in the almost black colour that seamlessly melts into the dark mahogany flooring. A large, decoratively carved, sleigh bed sits in the centre, dressed in navy and rich gold. Washed out vintage rugs cover the floor surrounding it, and there are floating, industrial style bedside lamps attached to the wall on either side of the bed. Doors leading to a walk-in wardrobe and the en suite are opposite the bed. No tables, no dressers, just a mantle over the fireplace topped with cream pillar candles that smell like jasmine.

The only reason I chose this space was for the view. Perhaps that’s why I’m so nervous about showing her my room, I’ve never let anyone in here before, not even my brothers have seen this. It is unshared with anyone, until now.

Luna leads me in as I shut the door at our backs, her soft, padding footsteps heading straight towards the huge arched window.

That’s the view.

Headstones and trees, grassy hills and wildflowers as far as the eye can see. It makes me feel like I’m outside even when I’m inside, and I need that.

Space.

Fresh air.

Freedom.

‘I’m not free.’

“It’s beautiful,” Luna whispers, drawing my attention back to her.

Her fingers squeeze in mine, and I feel a little burst of excitement expand in my chest.

“You like it?”

Slowly, she turns to me, both of us standing side by side, hand in hand, like we’ve been doing this for centuries. I feel as though my soul knows her more than any other. Familiar and warm and full. Like a total eclipse, the moon obscuring the sun, that’s how she’s come into my life.

Obsession.

It’s so much more than a need.

It’s blood and bone, secretly shared smiles and love.

‘We’re more than love, Wolf.’

“Yes,” she breathes, “I like to see outside.”

I lift our joined hands up and curl my arm around her shoulders, her forearm coming across her chest to keep our fingers laced as we stare out at the view.

“I like to see outside too.” I tell her, thinking of my mother.

The closed drapes and the shorn scalps, the cleansings and the midnight punishments. I want to tell her I understand her pain, even if I don’t know what it is, even if she doesn’t remember. I think sometimes we can have pain inside of us that doesn’t feel like it has a source. It makes us dismiss the misery as inconsequential, but those dark holes can grow and stretch and swell, and before we know it, we’re consumed by it, and there’s no way of clawing our way out.

That was me.

Right up until I got shot.

When I died.

When some really incredible people massaged my heart and got it beating once more.

It was all an awakening.

So I could have this.

My brother shot me and killed me, but all his bullet really did as it slashed through my heart was bring me to life.

“Luna,” I say, sweat slicking the back of my neck.

Obsession.

It swells and it grows and it consumes.

I don’t think it’s a curse anymore.

Unbelievably, I think, for me, it’s a blessing.

“I’m never going to be able to let you go, Little Moon.”

A sick confession.

Something horrid and rotting and possessive.

I have no regrets.

There’s a part of me that worries, when her memories come back, she’ll have had this whole other life, and there won’t be space in it for me.

And even then, I know, as she tips her face up to mine, her ice-blue eyes stark white in the dark, I will never let her go. Even if she ends up somewhere else, with someone else, I will protect her from the shadows.

Lurk and stalk and creep.

I am a monster.

But I am forever hers.

Thorne is already on the porch when the sun rouses me from sleep.

His black on black slacks and shirt, shined dress shoes, polished belt buckle. His appearance perfect in every way.

Mostly, I am his opposite. My chin-length, straight, black hair is scraped back with my fingers, tied in a bun at the crown of my head. There’s a spliff tucked behind my ear, my chest is bare, and I wear loose gym shorts on my legs, feet bare.

Normally, I’d be going for a run now. Follow it up with weights in the small room I use as a gym, even if one of my brother’s had stayed the night before like Thorne, but I don’t want to stray too far this morning.

Having Luna in my bed for the first time last night was like a fucking dream. I almost feel weightless this morning. Floating on a cloud.

“We are having an engagement party,” Thorne announces as I slump into the old rocking chair beside the wicker armchair in which he sits. “On the seventeenth.” Looking up from his phone, he peers over the top of the thick framed, black, reading glasses he wears on his nose, flicking his gaze down the raised red claw marks etched into my skin. “I want everyone there.”

“Okay.”

“It is going to be at Lucia’s. Haisley likes it there,” he explains, even though he needn’t bother, I know my future sister-in-law likes eating at that Italian. “Bring Luna.”

“Thorne,” I caution.

Not because I don’t want to take Luna out.

Last night was a big risk. One I’m going to have to explain momentarily to my brother, because he’s the boss, but taking her out to a restaurant owned by Vito Gambino, the Italian Don himself. After assaulting one of his drivers right outside his own bar, feels like pushing it a little. Especially considering we could bump into literally anyone that knows Luna, and we won’t know it.

Neither will she.

“I know the risks, the entire family will be there. There are far more of us than there is one Nolan Nicholas Beaumont.” My elder brother scoffs as he says it, returning his gaze back to his phone, just like our father does.

Taking the joint from behind my ear, I slip it between my lips and light it with the lighter always left out here beside the ashtray.

“I left a body in the bushes outside of his house last night,” I say on an exhale, smoke billowing out of my nostrils.

My gaze on the orange-pink sky, I scratch at the lumpy, red scar over my heart and think of Luna’s teeth sinking into it in the middle of the night. She swung her legs across my hips and sunk herself down onto my cock before even waking me up, I nutted in three minutes flat.

Not that I’m complaining.

Thorne sighs heavily, removing his glasses from his face and twiddling the arm of them between his finger and thumb, his elbow resting on the arm of the wicker chair.

“Why must you do these things at a time like this,” he says, looking out at the hills, not as a question, and definitely not to me. I think my brother finds leading this family just as exhausting as our dad does. “You are a disposals expert, Wolf, why on earth would you leave the body there?”

I shrug, the joint hanging on my bottom lip as I lean my head back against the wood of the chair, rocking it back and forth with a creak, “It’s only the shoulders down.”

Thorne tuts sharply, but he doesn’t sound the least bit surprised, we’re all killers in this family, some of us are just flashier about it than others.

“And the head?” he asks, another sigh of exhaustion that makes me want to laugh.

“Threw it in the furnace when we got home last night.”

“Wonderful,” he chimes sarcastically, but because he’s nothing if not well spoken, he clears his throat and purses his lips, his black eyes coming to mine. “We are dealing with enough messes right now without this, Wolf.”

“I know.”

“Then why?” he huffs, stilling the frantic twirling of his glasses, pinching them between his fingers instead.

“Luna wanted his head.”

“Luna was there?” he asks sharply, “I assumed you had both retired for the night.”

Now I’ve got his attention, “Nope.”

“Explain.” One word, and he’s about to pull his hair out, it makes me smile around the butt of the joint.

I tell him what happened, a brief version of the events, but he still frowns at me when I finish the story.

“It’ll be interesting, won’t it?” I say then, pinching out the spliff and flicking the roach into the ashtray.

“What will be interesting?”

“Seeing if it gets reported,” I shrug. “The man is a solicitor for a mafia leader, has a niece nobody knows about and has never heard of or seen. He hasn’t reported her as missing, which means he either doesn’t care, or, what’s more likely is, he thinks she’s dead after he administered the killing blow and got his goons to toss her into the river to wash up as a Jane Doe.”

“Yes, we know all of this. You also know he will have that body cleaned up and gotten rid of before he can blink. All you have really done is make him question why someone killed a man on his property, one of his men I take it, retrieve the head like a trophy, and do nothing else. All this has achieved, is making him suspicious of everyone and everything around him, and be extra cautious if and when he leaves the house.” He stares at me, and I look his way as I feel his eyes on me. “All this has done is put Luna in possible danger.”