Rage

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Nyx

I stirred awake in quietness of the morning as the sunlight filtered through the heavy drapes in the bedroom. Whose room am I in? My mind was still groggy as I tried to remember which brother had placed me in his bed, when the bedroom door busted open.

“Finally, you’re awake,” Key teased, racing to the bed and jumping in beside me. I laughed at his playfulness, now noting the details in the jovial décor that should have been a dead giveaway that it was Key’s room.

“We have a surprise for you, but I was starting to think you would never get up.”

I smiled at Key’s words as he sprang out of bed and bounced around the room in excitement, wondering what they had in store for me after such an amazing, sex-filled extended weekend. Granted I had slept for longer than I ever had after having the best seventy-two-hour sexual experience of my life, but the guys were slowly finding creative ways to wake me up, as if the smell of breakfast and coffee was too normal.

I groaned, rubbing my eyes. “What surprise?”

He grinned, stepping closer and pulling me upright by the hand. “You’ll see.” He briefly closed his mouth, his ravenous eyes raking over my naked body in appreciation. “As badly as I want you to stay naked forever, get dressed. You don’t want to miss this.”

“Key, it’s barely morning,” I protested, though the curiosity in my voice betrayed my annoyance.

He leaned down in front of me, his gaze locking onto mine. “You’ll thank us, Firefly. Trust me.” His tone softened, but it carried an edge and weight to it that I couldn’t quite place.

Ten minutes later, I was dressed in a pair of Cash’s jogging pants and one of Seb’s old shirts, my long faux locs hastily tied back as I followed Key through the house and down the staircase that led to the basement.

What could they possibly have for me down here? Growing up, the Solomon basement had always been off limits, so I was rarely down here. Yet, the further we went, the more the air seemed to shift, growing heavy and tense.

“Key,” I muttered, more hesitant now than I had been in the bedroom. “What’s going on?”

He glanced back at me, his mischievous smirk softening into something unreadable. “You’ll see. Just don’t freak out, alright? This is all for you.”

My stomach twisted as we reached a closed steel basement door. He pushed it open and dramatically bowed before I could even see inside the room.

“For you, Madame.”

I shook my head at his antics as he cracked the door open even more, revealing a dimly lit room that smelled faintly of damp concrete, iron, and old piss.

My breath caught at the sight before me, my hands flying to my mouth in shock.

The other three Solomon brothers stood in the center of the room—Darth, Cash, and Seb—each radiating the same dangerous energy I had come to expect from them. But my attention snapped to the figure slumped in the chair between them, bound with ropes and badly beat up.

Blood streaked the prisoner’s face, his hair matted and his clothes torn. It took me a moment to recognize him, but when I did, my stomach churned.

“Uncle Mo?” My voice was barely above a whisper, disbelief crashing over me like a tidal wave. If the Solomon brothers had him locked up down here, it was for a valid reason.

Cash stepped forward, his expression dark. “He’s no uncle. Not anymore.”

“What—what is this?” I stammered, looking between them. Key placed a hand on my shoulder, steadying me as my knees threatened to give way.

Darth spoke next, his tone clipped. “As difficult as it is to admit, the four of us haven’t been the best at communicating over the years. Spending these past few days with you had us opening up to each other and sharing stories we usually kept to ourselves. When putting together all the pieces, something still wasn’t adding up.”

“So we had Hollis do some digging,” Seb added. “And what he found was the piece we had missed three years ago.”

At the mention of my Uncle Hollis—one of the best hackers in the world—I stood straighter as my eyes focused on the prisoner.

“Mo was working with Tim and our father Donny,” Cash revealed. “Tim never had the strategic wit to pull something like that off himself, and my father was still conscious of his image and protecting his connections back then. Mo had the sex trafficking connect. It was his third cousin that owned the Rockford home you were locked up in. He’s the reason you were taken so easily. He sold you out.”

My blood ran cold. “That can’t be true,” I said, shaking my head. “He took care of me when Sharena and Tim would be so drunk, they couldn’t see straight. He protected me when they wouldn’t.”

“And then he betrayed you,” Darth said bluntly. “He handed you over to his sex dealer like you were nothing.”

Mo groaned, lifting his battered face to look at me. “It’s not what you think Little Ny Ny,” he rasped, but his eyes darted nervously around the room.

“Don’t call me that,” I spat, hating the nickname now.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Mo whined. “Tim was at the meeting with my connect and he mentioned you to him after he learned you were a Crowne. They threatened to kill me if I didn’t deliver.”

“So you gave her up instead?” Seb questioned.

“Because we have no doubt that a Crowne probably sold more than you’d ever made selling women in the past,” Darth implied. “This was about money. Isn’t that right you piece of shit?”

Cash punched Mo in the face again, causing him to splutter out a bunch of blood to go along with his sorry excuses.

Key’s supportive grip tightened on my shoulder. “And you never thought to just tell the Crownes about the deal? How many women have you sold out of this city?”

Mo’s silence stretched, heavy and damning as every last good memory I had of a parental figure growing up was shattered to smithereens now. Finally, Mo muttered, “I owed him. I owed him for keeping my business alive. This was my debt. Little Ny Ny was my payment.”

My heart cracked at his words, the betrayal slicing through me like a blade. I staggered back, my chest heaving with ragged breaths as every terrible thing that had ever happened to me in my life rushed to the forefront of my mind.

Why did I smile through the pain, instead of embracing that the shit I had gone through had fucked me up in a way that some damage could never be repaired?

Why did I not curse every fucking day about the fact that my mom never did shit for me when she was alive? And just to put the nail in the coffin, she had given me a hereditary gene that I only recently learned had taken the lives of so many women in my family.

And why would I feel even one ounce of sympathy for the first man I ever called uncle?

Key leaned down, his lips brushing against my ear. “This is your moment, Firefly. You’ve spent the past few days taking what you want from us and not apologizing for it. Show him what it means to cross you. Step into your power.”

I looked at him, my eyes wide and my mind racing. “I—I could never?—”

“Yes, you can,” Seb interrupted. “You’ve been surviving men like him your entire life. This is no different. You’re stronger than you think.”

Stronger than I think… Seb’s words washed over me, lacing with the approving nod from Darth and the favorable smirk from Cash.

Mo’s voice broke through, pleading. “I’m sorry, Little Ny Ny. Please—please don’t do this.”

“I told you to stop calling me that shit.” My hands clenched into fists as I stepped forward, my steps on the concrete floor to him slow and purposeful.

Key didn’t follow me to him. None of the Solomon brothers did. They simply watched, their faces unreadable as I approached the man I had once trusted with my life.

Kneeling before him, my unsympathetic eyes met his bloodshot ones. “You were supposed to protect me,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm brewing inside of me. “Yet, you sold me out like I was nothing. Like I was some pawn in your twisted game.”

“I didn’t want to. But I didn’t have a choice,” Mo murmured again, repeating those same weak words.

I laughed bitterly, the sound hollow even to my own ears. “There’s always a choice. You made yours. Now I’ll make mine.”

My trembling hand reached for the knife Cash handed me without a word. The weight of it felt foreign, yet oddly comforting. Mo’s eyes widened, his panic spilling over.

“No—wait, please?—”

I didn’t hesitate. Not even for a second more. The blade pressed against Mo’s throat, my movements confident and deliberate. I didn’t flinch, even as the blood gushed out of his neck, staining my hands.

It was a clean slice, and it wasn’t lost on me that Mo was the first person who ever taught me how to gut my own fish. Now, I was the one cutting into him the way his actions had sliced yet another hole into my heart.

My therapist is about to get paid overtime after this shit. The room seemed to hold its breath as I stepped back, the knife clattering to the floor as I admired my work and relished in watching him struggle to breath past the blood.

There was something so primal about seeing his blood on my hands this way. The warmth lingering as a reminder that I’d crossed into territory most people feared.

I could have stabbed him several times, but I liked this raw, unfiltered display of watching the life slowly leave his body with every second that passed. It was both horrifying and intoxicating that life could be so delicate.

Key was at my side in an instant, his hand on my chin, tilting my face to meet his gaze. “You did so well, Firefly. This is only the beginning of you stepping into your purpose.”

My chest heaved, adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I looked at the blood on my hands, then back at Key, Seb, Darth, and Cash, my voice steady when I said, “And the end of his and everyone else who took advantage of the trust a little girl gave the people who were supposed to love her.”

Cash’s keen smile was predatory. “That’s our girl.”

Our girl. It had such a nice ring to it. I never killed before today, but I could admit that I had thought about it plenty of times. To actually go forth with taking someone’s life was something else entirely.

I shouldn’t like it.

But I did.

I would never be able to unsee his lifeless face.

But I didn’t need to.

I would kill again.

I was sure of it.

Especially if I always got to share this experience with four of my favorite people in the entire world.

“I love you,” I told them, quickly clarifying by saying, “I’m in love with each of you and have been for longer than I can remember. I’m not sure I’d even be alive if it wasn’t for the four of you and Mia. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

These men … My men. They would bleed for my father, but they’d burn the world for me, and that terrified me as much as it thrilled my soul.

“I love you too,” Darth stated first, pulling me to him in a kiss so invigorating, I moaned into his mouth.

“I love you more,” Key said next, cupping my ass and kissing me just as fiercely.

Seb took me out of Key’s arms and spun me around until my back was placed against his front as he whispered, “I love you most,” his kisses on my neck the perfect amount of sweet and sexy.

“I just love you,” Cash said last, grabbing me by the chin, his thumb teasing my bottom lip. “You already know that shit though.”

And I did. Through all the bullshit life tossed our way, my Solomon boys had been a constant beacon of support. Some people searched an entire lifetime to find their soulmate, yet I didn’t know what I had done in this world to get so lucky to have found four of them.

Thirty minutes later, Darth, Seb, and I fucked in Seb’s bedroom this time, while Cash and Key took care of Mo’s body.

Once they returned, I showered with Cash and Key, thanking them properly for bringing me such a precious gift.

Later that night once they were all asleep with two of them protectively on each side of me, I let the tears go that I had been holding in.

Tears of sadness.

Tears of appreciation.

Tears of … freedom .

It was because of the Solomon boys that I felt some of the chains around my heart melt away.

And it didn’t hurt that they were all dangerously sexy as fuck and cherished my pussy like she was made of gold.