Chapter 12
“No, little doe. It’s forever.”
Peony stares at Axel for far too long, her face etched in disbelief. She doesn’t understand, doesn’t believe us.
“You’re…”
“Lying? Don’t believe me? Go ahead. Ask Kaiden or Zie.”
Her eyes fly to Kaiden first, and even though I’m not surprised, it still stings. I know I treated her like shit but doesn’t our history mean anything to her?
Kaiden nods and she shakes her head in return. Unwittingly, her gaze seeks mine. I don’t even have to move, the answer’s written on my guilty face.
“No,” she gasps.
“Yes, Odile. The sooner you accept that, the easier all of this will be…on everyone.” Axel sighs in exasperation and it breaks whatever frozen in disbelief spell she was under.
Her head whips back to Axel and stone cold fury crosses her features. She’s a blazing, beautiful force to be reckoned with and anyone with half an ounce of self preservation would retreat right now. I even take a small step backwards.
Not Axel. He stands his ground and smirks at her fire. Smirks. I half expect Peony to whip out a knife and gut him where he stands but she doesn’t.
She surprises me.
By turning on her heel and leaving.
The door to the apartment slams with a force that rattles the artwork on the walls and Axel somehow grins even wider. I look to Axel, silently asking if we should go after her. He shakes his head no.
“Well, that went well,” he says with no trace of irony. I blink at him in confusion. Really? That went well? I’d hate to see what a fucking disaster would look like to Axel then.
Kaiden doesn”t even attempt to hide his derisive snort and Axel turns on him in an instant.
“Something funny, Spirit?” he drawls.
“I can’t believe you thought that went well,” he sniggers, mirroring my thoughts exactly.
“Everyone’s still breathing, aren’t they?” He smirks again.
I love Axel, he’s a brother. We share a bond built on mutual history, pain and suffering, bloodshed and murder, and a love that can’t be broken. My loyalty will always be to him and Kaiden above all others - even the girl I loved. Which I have more than proven time and time again. But fuck if there aren’t times that I think he’s a complete psychopath. That trademark smirk of his is lethal and tinged with a controlled insanity that would make even the most mentally unstable quake in fear of crossing him.
He levels that smirk at Kaiden and his eyes take on a dangerous gleam. He’s silently challenging and taunting Kaiden to speak out against him. Kaiden, with all of his anger and trauma, and mummy and daddy issues, can’t help but rise to Axel’s bait as his hands curl into fists and his chest rises and falls with his rapid, shallow, angry breaths.
“Something to say, Kelly?” Axel pushes. The tension builds until it fills the room. It’s been brewing between the three of us since Odile stormed into the lunchroom and blindsided me. Kaiden’s barely kept his disapproval for what Axel’s done in check, and even though I’ve been much less vocal about things, I guess my simmering resentment hasn’t gone unnoticed either.
“I don’t understand it,” Kaiden spits.
“Which part?” Axel asks calmly. He speaks slowly like he’s talking to an idiot, which only enrages Kaiden more.
“Any of it.”
“It’s simple. Peony is The Doe. And we have to win the game.”
“Why do that to her though? Why place her in that much danger? After everything we did to her, hasn’t she suffered enough?”
Murder flashes across Axel’s face but quicker than lightning, it’s gone. He thinks he can school his features around us, but we know him best. He’s not as calm as he’s making out, and he hates the idea of causing Odile pain as much as we do.
“She’ll be safe once we win, and the three of us are more than able to take on the competition to ensure that that’s what happens.”
“With our lifestyle? Are you insane?!” Kaiden snaps. “The best thing we could have done to protect Odile is let her go. That’s what you said when we came here and left her behind. We didn’t want to but you insisted it was for the best. For her own good. And now, two years down the line, you’re dragging her back into our lives - back into danger - and telling us that you want to make it forever. Why? What’s changed? How on earth are you going to be able to keep her safe when we take over? How can we protect her when we overthrow—”
“That’s enough!” Axel roars, cutting Kaiden off mid-rant. I’ve kept silent but I agree with everything Kaiden is saying.
We are not good people. I’m not sure we ever have been. But Odile made us better. We worked so hard to be…more for her, but our destinies were pre-decided for us. We were humoured when we were younger but once we finished school it was time to get serious. That meant leaving Odile behind for her own protection and safety. Even though something in my gut tells me that we failed her in that respect when we left.
I can’t understand how suddenly it’s safer for her to be ours by our side than for us to distance ourselves from her. But Axel always has a plan. I may not fully comprehend what Axel’s plan is this time around, but I know that if we win – which we undoubtedly will – that he thinks we’ll be able to protect Peony and keep her safe. He must have a reason for that confidence. But I can see Kaiden’s reservations too.
The whole point in leaving her behind was so that she remained invisible to our enemies. Once she’s by our side, everyone will know her face. She’ll be vulnerable. A target. Someone they can use to get to us. And they will. It’s what we’d do. Hell, it’s what we do already. Find our enemies’ weaknesses and exploit them. It’s just good business. But the thought of Odile becoming collateral in a war she knows nothing about…it breaks me. It’s the only reason I agreed to let her go in the first place.
I even planned to go back for her. I thought once we were at the top of the food chain, holding all the power, that we’d be invincible and I could make amends and have her by my side. But joining Trinity was a baptism of fire. The things we spent our early teenage years doing was child’s play compared to the things we have had to do in the last two years. Which is why I realised that Odile can never become part of this world. Despite Kaiden’s best efforts to train her and taint her with his darkness, to bring her into the fold and make her one of us, she isn’t made for our cutthroat life, and I wouldn’t want her to be. She’s not some bloodthirsty, dangerous force to be reckoned with. To me, she’s still that sweet girl who charmed her way into my heart with patience and kindness and a little spark of fire.
To be one of us you have to be an inferno.
“I’ve let you have your say,” Axel snaps. “But this is not open for discussion. You’ve had the chance to vent and get it out of your system, but now you shut up and fall into line. This is not a fucking democracy.”
There it is. The power play. It’s the first time Axel’s ever come out and said it outright: I’m in charge, I’m top dog, you’re beneath me, so fall into line. We all knew that was the case, but this is the first time he’s claimed his throne. Over Peony, no less.
“And what if I don’t want to be a good little soldier? I think you’re forgetting who you are. Who we are. You may be our leader but you are not our boss. We don’t bow to you. We’re a fucking Trinity, damn it!”
Kaiden looks close to snapping and I fear that they’re going to come to blows. We rarely disagree, and even when we do, it’s never like this. The only thing, the only person, we have ever properly fought over before is Odile. It seems that history likes to keep repeating itself like the nagging bitch she is.
I know I should step in and say something, but I doubt I could ease the tension right now and I might just make things worse.
Without a backward glance Kaiden follows Odile’s path across the apartment to the door. Axel waits until Kaiden has it open before speaking in a calm and deadly purr.
“If you walk out of that door right now, you won’t have any say in which candidates we invite to take part in the game.”
“Well, as this isn’t a fucking democracy, I guess I don’t have much say anyway. Get fucked, Axel. Tell me when the game begins and pray I’ve calmed down enough not to hunt your ass first.”
“It’ll take all three of us to protect her,” Axel calls out, making Kaiden pause. His shoulders are up by his ears with tension but Kaiden doesn’t turn back to face us.
“You should have thought about that before dragging her into this. You should have protected her better from the very first day she came into our lives. All you’ve ever done is use Odile for your own agenda and you’ve never had her best interests at heart. I’m beginning to wonder if you even had ours or if you only look out for number one and daddy dearest.”
“You’ll never know the scars I bore for Odile’s safety,” Axel replies in a purr so low I don’t think he meant for Kaiden or me to hear it.
I wonder if he’s referring to Ms. Smith. It was right after our first serious mission, our first kill, that Axel started sleeping with his form teacher. I often wondered if it was his way of trying to cope with what we did.
But it’s too late anyway, Kaiden has gone.
I think The Holy Trinity has too.