Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Sophomore Year – Night of Spring Bonfire
P ulling Ash out of the van, I held his head down so he couldn’t make out where we were. I had only a few hours left until dawn broke and the spring bonfire was over. I had to make sure the mission was finished by then.
My adrenaline was at an all-time high because I’d caught Ash freaking Ortiz. They’d thought we were going after their leader, which gave us the perfect opportunity to grab him. I was on fucking cloud nine.
The rest of the members were already inside celebrating, and I was pushing Ash through the back door, to get him hidden inside.
"Drop him," a voice whispered in the distance. I whipped my head around, trying to figure out where it came from.
Hoping there’d be at least one of my guys not getting fucked up, I threw Ash into the hallway.
"I swear to God, I will fucking shoot you if you don’t drop him immediately."
I laughed hysterically. "You are a scared little motherfucker, hiding in the woods. Go on, show your face, or are you too much of a pussy?" I shouted.
A figure came out from the edge of the woods behind the house. The wind whipped around as the thunderstorm raged on.
"Come on, Walsh," the person said.
"Rain." It was Ash’s brother, but not by blood. They had grown up together, from what I understood, and were always together on campus. I was surprised to see him alone and to have figured out this quickly that we’d gotten Ash.
"I came alone." Rain gestured around him.
"Why?"
A long pause passed between us. "Because I don’t wanna do this the way it’s always been. Come on, Walsh. Be the bigger man."
This time I laughed maniacally. I was not the bigger man nor would I ever be. I was surrounded by death, so killing my family's mortal enemy did nothing but ignite pure pleasure and satisfaction in me.
"I’m not the man you bargain with, Rain. Not that I see any leverage on your side." I withdrew my gun from its clip. I am a threat. If this fucker thought I was going to listen to his sob story and have a change of heart, his luck had truly run out.
"Don’t do this." Rain was practically begging. He got closer to the light we kept on out back.
"It’s not you I want, Rain. I can kill you and be completely unharmed, it's Ash I need."
"That isn’t the fucking deal. The spring bonfire allows the two leaders to be targets. I’m not after you because you're not the leader."
Luca was the leader of the Alpha house, and the leader of the Den was Trevor Sale, but we were after Ash Ortiz. We broke the rules because Ash was the true target.
"That isn’t what's written in the code. I can kill anyone in the Den tonight." I paused, tilting my chin in his direction. "That is exactly what I plan to do."
"Where’s Luca?" Rain questioned.
I chuckled. Where was Luca? He should’ve been out here, but he was partying inside.
"Wouldn’t you like to know?" I cocked my head to the side. "Anyway, this conversation is boring me. I’m going inside."
Then the little fucker pulled out his weapon and aimed right at me.
I had to give him a lot of credit. To the untrained eye, he looked cool, calm, and collected, but there was a glint of nerves in his eyes and his hand shook as he held the weapon to my face. There was nothing nerve-wracking about killing someone you hated. There was something fucking thrilling about it, and the fucker reeked of fear.
I reveled in maintaining the upper hand in any situation. Even when faced with an unforeseen glitch, like this minor hiccup, my mind seamlessly crafted backup plans. My old man's advice? Anticipate the execution of plan A but meticulously map out contingencies for plans B, C, and D.
What caught me off guard in this scenario was the blonde hair blowing in the wind as a figure sprinted toward me in my peripheral vision.
Mother. Fucker.
Practice exactly what you’ve been taught.
"I’ll release Ash!" I shouted as the figure got closer. "Just take him and go."
I raised my hands, then went inside the back door where I’d stuffed him in the hallway. As I shoved Ash out the door, Rain looked at me pointedly before shaking his head and grabbing him. Then he ran into the woods, thankfully in the opposite direction Cagen was emerging from.
"Don't shoot," she wailed as she approached. Cagen shrieked again, then I whipped around to one of my men rushing out the back door with their gun trained on the screaming. I couldn’t tell who it was at first because everything was shrouded in darkness.
"Fuck!" I shouted at the same time the gun went off. I pulled my weapon, pointing it at whoever was shooting in a frenzy. Suddenly, I realized it was Luca. His eyes were narrowed, he was breathing heavily, and I could smell the booze even though I was feet away from him.
"Stop!" I screamed. My brain was trying to process where the bullets were coming from and why he was stumbling before I realized the feminine screams had stopped.
When Luca realized it was just me and no one else, he lowered his weapon. I ran over toward Cagen on the ground with a gaping hole in her chest, blood pooling around her.
"What did you do?" I said through gritted teeth at our so-called leader. It wasn’t the same sadness swimming in me that I had witnessed from my dad when Mom was murdered. He was completely broken, his heart shattered when I walked in on them in the living room. Then I watched him relive that same pain when he found out she was cheating on him with her family's mortal enemy.
"You killed her," I stated.
"I heard screaming. I thought someone was hurt, one of our men?—"
"So you just came out and started to shoot?"
Cagen didn't deserve it, and dealing with the aftermath would be an absolute clusterfuck.
I turned toward Luca, lifted my weapon to his face, and clicked the trigger. It all happened too fast.
A resounding shot echoed through the night before I holstered the weapon. It wasn’t a kill shot but was enough to take him down and ensure the rest of the house knew who was in control. I’d tell my dad it was the Den who hurt her, so he wasn’t killed. Eventually, when Luca healed, he’d go live a quiet life in Seattle, far away from the Mafia where everyone who pissed us off went.
Then I yelled for help from the guys inside. It took a few moments, but eventually a few came from the house and saw me with her lifeless body in my arms and their leader on the ground, wailing in pain.
"Fuck," one of my men muttered, returning back inside for a moment before coming out with a few more guys. A couple of them grabbed Luca to take him to the hospital.
The power that I so desperately craved was slipping out of my fingers as the minutes ticked by. None of this was a part of my plan.
"We gotta—" Fuck. My entire plan was unraveling before me, and it wasn’t just the body growing cold in my arms.
I had seen many dead bodies and helped my father clean up my mother’s killer. Yet an unsettling sensation churned inside my chest.
Part of me wondered if my fuck up would somehow make me second-in-command next year instead of the leader position I deserved. Staring down at Cagen, I thought this must have been what kings felt when their thrones were crumbling before them.
Get a grip, for fuck's sake. There was no time or space in my life for this, especially not right now.
"Lemme take care of the body and handle the family," Andrea, a large guy who constantly wore white tanks and jorts, offered. He would now be my second-in-command.
I nodded. "Do it fast. Call her parents, the cops, and anyone else who needs to know. Tell them she's been missing."
Andrea nodded. Somehow, those cracks in my control were fusing together. I was giving out instructions and handling this like a true leader.
Andrea disappeared into the woods with Cagen.
"I cannot find Cagen. Where is she?" A soft voice emerged from the house.
"Muse," I murmured, looking down shamefully.
"Where is she?" Her small voice cracked from behind me as blood dripped from my hands. I shoved them in my pockets, trying to conceal them.
"She’s missing. I tried—" I cut myself off because something about the woman in front of me made me question everything. The way her eyes drooped, there had to be more than this situation that was driving her breakdown. They weren’t particularly close and had been using each other. Cagen used Madison to mold her as part of the group, and Madison used Cagen for her popularity.
"Madison." She fell to her knees, and I dropped, grabbing onto her hands. She caught sight of the blood.
"It was a mess out there," I said. It was neither a full truth nor a lie. For a small moment, I saw the broken person she was.
She examined her shaking hands before her eyes fluttered back up toward mine.
"I’m not like you," she cried. "I am not your ‘muse.’ Whatever happened—" She wasn’t making sense. "I didn’t…I still don't want to be involved in whatever world this is. Why did you drag Cagen into it?"
"She disappeared," I said, trying to believe my own lies.
She grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me close, and I let her because she needed this—she needed me. "I should have been here. I never should have left, but that…the fire…"
The fire? What fire was she talking about? The gunfire? Did she hear what happened and knew the truth?
"You aren't involved?—"
"No." She shook her head, threw me to the ground, then stared at her scarred hands. "You ruined everything that I was working for. She was my in."
She emitted a hum that came from deep within her chest. "No. No. No."
Ah, it was clicking. She was sad the plan she had contrived was crashing down around her.
"It’s all my fault." She felt guilty for leaving Cagen. Her emotions were so much more complex than I’d originally thought.
Pushing off the ground, I stood, trying to wipe away the crimson staining my hands.
"You will pay for this." She swallowed before glaring at me. "You fucking asshole. You ruined my entire life."
That’s my girl. The woman standing in front of me, the cool, hardened person I knew so well. The same demon that dwelled inside of me, breathed life into her. She was my dark queen, and I was her king. At this moment, I knew there was no one else but her.
"Come here, Muse," I whispered while closing the distance between us, but she shoved me away the moment I tried to wrap my hands around her.
"No." Her face was devoid of any emotion. She was standing in the glow of the small light on the back of the house, getting soaked, but I knew the look on her face. Something had snapped.
I grabbed her chin faster than she could pull away and dropped my face down to hers, ignoring her verbal and physical protests.
"One day, you’ll be mine," I growled into her mouth before pushing her away and stalking off toward the woods.
"Go find your missing girlfriend, Walsh Solis. You are a fucking piece of work." I paused momentarily and glanced behind me to see Madison standing underneath the light.
"You and I are one in the same, Madison Ryan—cut from the same cloth. When you’re finally ready to let the world know who you really are, I’ll be waiting." I took a step closer to her.
"It'll be a while then, Walsh Solis. Because there's one thing you're right about. I may pretend to be the good kid around others, but this is war for what you’ve done to me."
"Which was?" I asked, smirking.
"I worked so hard to be there for Cagen—to be a part of her group. Now I’ve lost everything."
"So it’s not Cagen that upsets you?" My eyes narrowed, waiting for her answer.
"No. Fuck," she cried. "I sound so fucking high school, I know. I just wanted to be a part of a group. I wanted the chance to hang out with people like you. I wanted to be someone you wouldn’t be embarrassed being in public with."
"It's not—" She grabbed my mouth, shutting me up.
"It absolutely is. We couldn’t be together because I’m not good for your aesthetic. I am…was…desperate to be with you. I wanted you to use me as the accessory on your arm. I felt like I was never pretty enough, or popular."
"This is just a game, Madison. You have to learn to play it better." She looked defeated at my words. It wasn’t what she was looking for from me, but I couldn’t be there for her.
She took a moment, letting the words hang. "Don't come crawling back to me when you realize you've lost this little game we're playing."
There she was.
I laughed into the forest as I turned to jog where I knew the guys would be burying the body. There was my wild redheaded muse. The person who pretended she was a yoga-practicing, bubbly, preppy girl who hung out with girls like Cagen. She was not that person. She never would be.