12. Kovu
CHAPTER TWELVE
KOVU
I can’t take my eyes off Camilla as Elias patches her up for the second time in a little over a week. Because of Caleb.
This can’t be allowed to stand. I won’t let it.
The others see me as the unhinged muscle. It’s how it’s been since Crew found me behind a dumpster covered in the blood of my parents, but Camilla has made me more. She doesn’t look at me and see a psychopath. She looks at me and sees the broken boy who just wanted to be loved, and even if she hasn’t said the words yet, she gives me that love. She gives me everything. Which is why I’m willing to kill a man I once considered a father figure to keep her safe.
He’s meant to be dead anyway, so what difference does it make?
Everyone has already grieved for him, meaning it shouldn’t come as a surprise when he winds up dead…again.
Bishop catches my eye and nods toward the hallway where Kaos and Crew are already standing.
With one last glance at Camilla, who is chatting with Leighton like they’ve known one another their whole lives, I follow after them until we’re out of earshot. I hate her being out of my line of sight at the best of times, but right now, it feels infinitely worse.
Kaos leans against the wall, his head hanging with his hands fisted in his pockets, while Crew and Bishop lean against the wall opposite him. There’s a rift in the group for the first time in years, hell, maybe ever. We’ve had arguments, of course, but this feels different. This feels like we’re tearing apart from the inside out.
“It might not be him,” Kaos says. “Maybe someone got his fingerprints off something and used them to frame him.” It’s a weak attempt at explaining something that already makes perfect sense, but I don’t bother pointing that out to him.
“K, what more evidence do you need?” Bishop asks, his voice gentle despite the tension in his shoulders. “He met Camilla on three separate occasions, one of which was inside Davenport’s penthouse, and on another he admitted to trying to kill her. He shows up out of the blue at the same time the fight club goes up in smoke, and then someone with his fingerprints breaks into the compound, which a total of about ten people know the location of, leaving a knife and bullet with Camilla’s name on it in her bed.”
I blow out a breath. It seems even more damning when he lays out all the facts like that.
“All I’m saying is that I don’t think we should do anything rash just yet. We haven’t even had the chance to talk to him yet. We should hear him out before we run off half-cocked.” Kaos tries to reason, but the rest of us made our minds up as soon as Camilla told us that he’d admitted to trying to kill her. We don’t need any more information.
“And whose fault is that?” Crew snaps. “He’s been dead three years. Three fucking years we thought he was gone. Three fucking years each of us mourned him. Where the hell has he been? How did he survive? And why didn’t he ever think to tell us he was alive?”
When he puts it like that, it seems even worse.
Kaos’s jaw tics, something it normally does a moment before he loses his shit, but then he looks away from Crew, breaking the intense staring contest they had going. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t fucking know. None of it makes any sense to me.”
His voice cracks, and I glance back toward the door my little lamb is on the other side of. Perhaps I should go get her. She always seems to be able to calm us down. Maybe there’s something she could say or do that will help him see that we can’t let this stand. Not if we want to keep our girl safe.
“In the interest of being overly cautious, we can’t go back to the compound or to any of the safe houses until Wyatt has a chance to update all security protocols. I won’t risk any of our safety, especially Camilla.” Crew’s eyes move to the same door mine did a few moments ago before he lets out a breath. “I don’t want to believe that my brother is capable of any of this anymore than you do, Kaos. But at some point, we’re going to have to accept the facts as they’re laid in front of us.”
He glares at him for a moment before giving him a sharp nod. “I know.”
“So where do we go?” I ask.