31. HOSTAGE SITUATION
I woke in the wee hours of morning, tucked between Nash’s legs and arms. The room was pitch black, but my eyes adjusted quickly as I strained to look at my bedmate. The brawny bartender was fully dressed and fully asleep, his expression as peaceful as I wished I could be. After carefully extricating myself from his embrace, I paused, laying my head on my pillow while I studied his face.
I used to think it was creepy to watch someone else sleep. Stalker Behavior 101. But I hardly needed to stalk a man I’d already caught—accidentally, inexplicably. He was also a man I couldn’t keep. I meant it when I said I would ruin him. The process had already begun. It started with his business and reputation and ended with Grimm deciding to rob me of the last good thing in my life.
Donovan’s death may have come at Jax’s hands, but his blood was on Grimm’s. I didn’t delude myself into thinking our gang leader couldn’t have prevented everything that happened last night. He should have protected Donovan for his own sake because my brother had been the shield between Grimm and me. With that gone, nothing remained to hold me back.
Sliding out from under the sheets, I stood.
I could hardly confront Grimm before dawn, not knowing where to find him when he wasn’t at the Capitol, but I had access to the next best thing.
I padded out of Nash’s bedroom and down the stairs, moving as noiselessly as I could. The bar was closed, but I wasn’t the only guest invited to tonight’s sleepover. Maggie was here somewhere, and Ripley, too, hopefully in a better state than I’d seen him last.
It was pervasively dark and quiet, the perks and negatives of being so far from the city. I expected to find the underground cellar equally so, and I took a moment to dig into the utility closet and find a flashlight. Clicking on the wide, weak beam, I ventured out the back door and down the steps onto the concrete pad outside.
The cellar hatch sat a few feet away, its metal handles chained and padlocked. I made quick work of mentally picking the lock, then opened one of the wooden doors and descended the steps.
It was as dank and dusty as ever, and the quiet was punctuated by the sounds of soft snoring.
I aimed the flashlight at the bed across the packed dirt floor. Maximus lay on the stripped mattress, flat on his back like a corpse in a coffin.
Creeping close, I stopped a few feet from the iron bed frame and trained the beam of light on the older man’s face. I cleared my throat in the hopes of waking him gently. Another snore answered my effort, so I put my fingers to my lips and blew out a shrill whistle.
Maximus sat bolt upright as I turned the flashlight under my chin like a child about to tell a ghost story. When the old man whirled round to face me, rattling the chain attached to his ankle, I bared my teeth in a smile.
“Boo.”
“Fitch.” My name burst out of him on a sharp breath. He might have been relieved, but that lasted only moments before he asked, “How long can I expect this imprisonment to go on? I’ve missed Holland’s birthday, her engagement…”
“Preston’s an ass,” I grumbled. “And it’s downright medieval to use your daughter to secure a political alliance.” The thought made my stomach churn, and my lips twisted in a sneer. “But you’ll do anything for your damn politics, won’t you? Sacrifice anyone.”
Maximus stared at me coolly, flexing his empathic magic to keep his true feelings secret from me. “You understand necessary sacrifice,” he said slowly. “Better than most.”
I understood all kinds of sacrifice. Most recently, the accidental, devastating, and decidedly un necessary kind.
Clicking the flashlight off, I dropped it in the pocket of my borrowed pajama pants. I rubbed my palms across my eyes—dry for now but throbbing.
“My brother’s dead.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. “Your daughter marched him into a lion’s den. She let him die.”
Maximus sat with his legs dangling off the side of the bed while I rambled on.
“I wanted to blame her, but it’s always been me, you know? Donnie’s always been my responsibility. My dad even told me so.” I could have done without the resurgence of that particular memory. Though, my father said those things all the time. “Look out for Donnie. Can you watch Donnie? Make room for Donnie. He looks up to you.”
I scrubbed my face again, trying to shoo away the last remnants of sleep and the sound of my father’s voice, resonating.
“Now Holland’s afraid I’ll kill you,” I muttered into my palms.
It would have been fair to trade a life for a life and leave her as alone in the world as I now was. But I brought her father here in the first place to spare her that pain.
With a sniffed breath, I peeled my fingers away and glared at the older man. “Everyone thinks I enjoy this shit, but I really hate it.”
Not a flicker of genuine emotion crossed Maximus’s face. He was as guarded as I wished I could be, expending all his energy on a facade, wishing perhaps to die bravely.
“I’m sorry to hear about Donovan,” he said at length.
I snorted. “I’m sure you are.”
The rattling thwap of the cellar door flinging open whipped my head around. I turned to see Nash descending the steps two at a time, breathless and harried as he hit the ground on bare feet.
“Oh.” The word burst out of him on a panted breath. He straightened, smoothing the fronts of his tank top and sweats in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “Everything okay down here?”
My fists balled. “You, too, huh?” I growled. “I thought—” I shook my head— “I hoped you of all people knew me better than that.”
He shifted backward, suddenly cagey. “Better than what?”
Rolling my eyes, I beckoned him with a wave. “Go ahead, Nash. Tell me. Where’s the damn fire?”
“I just… woke up and you were gone.”
I hummed an aggravated sound. “And?”
“I was worried,” he said slowly.
“About me? I’m fine.” The smile I forced felt almost feral, too sharp and full of pain to be convincing.
“You’re not.”
My arm swung toward Maximus next. “Well, he is. And that’s what you were really sweating about, isn’t it? That I’d waste the old man and burn my last bridge with the precious Capitol? I didn’t come down here to kill him, dumbass. I came to let him go. I’m done. With everything.”
Nash inched forward, so hesitant that it grated on me. When he came within arm’s reach, he stretched a hand toward my waist, but I dodged him.
“Have you thought about this?” He frowned. “Now might not be the best time to make decisions—”
“I said I’m done .” A sob snuck in, and I cursed it silently. Talking to Nash, seeing his face and his fingers extended toward me made me feel too weak and vulnerable.
I whirled around and focused a thought on the shackle clasped around Maximus’s ankle. The lock clicked open, and the restraint fell into a pile of chain on the dirt floor.
“Get out of here,” I barked, filling up with anger and another wash of tears. “Walk home, for all I care. And when you get there? Do your goddamn worst.”
“Fitch…” Nash’s voice from behind me preceded a touch on my shoulder.
I shrugged him off and glowered at Maximus, who had yet to budge. “You want me dead, right? You signed the kill order. Here’s your chance to get rid of me for good. Send the investigators. Tell them I’ll be here, and I’ll be waiting.”
Maximus stood. A month underground had not done him any favors. His hair was greasy and plastered flat to his skull, his clothes unsalvageable. He looked almost frail despite being well-fed and tended to.
He remained in place beside the ratty mattress, processing my words until he asked, “What kill order?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I seethed. “I saw it, and I’m letting you go anyway.”
His brow furrowed. “I never signed any order, Fitch.”
I sucked a breath to rage at him again. What was the point of lying? Buttering me up now earned him nothing. So, maybe he wasn’t lying. But that meant someone else had.
The scene at the warehouse replayed in my mind. Grimm at death’s door, held in my grip, Donovan begging for mercy. And then that paper flashed like a red flag in front of a raging bull. A last-minute redirection. I’d never touched it. Seeing it in Grimm’s hand had been enough.
As I recounted every conversation I’d had with Maximus since then, my pulse began to race. Had I ever asked? Did I come out even once and accuse him of the crime for which I condemned him? No. I hadn’t.
A horrified gasp of a laugh crept up my throat, and my eyes bulged wide in dawning realization. I stepped back, cackling like a madman until I ran out of breath.
When I stopped reeling, stopped reveling in my own ignorance, Maximus was watching me.
“I didn’t want to kill you,” he said.
“Well, fuck me,” I said as a final chuckle shook my body. “I bet you do now.”
Donovan already had a grave. A headstone was marked with his date of presumed death after only eight years of life. It was tucked away in a small cemetery, having been interred beside our mother and father at a service I had desperately wanted to attend.
I went after the fact; years later when I had my own car and Grimm couldn’t so closely monitor my comings and goings. I had no money for flowers, so I came empty-handed and sat in the grass till night fell, hoping to feel close to the family I had lost. In the dark and the quiet, I felt nothing but absence. I never came back.
At the time, I hadn’t given much thought to Donovan’s grave. He was at the motel watching cartoons or reading. Safe. Alive. But I had wondered what they buried there in the absence of a body. After six hours of sweating and sinking the tip of a shovel into the dirt over and over until I’d lost all feeling in my shoulders and arms, I found out.
A child-sized coffin lay at the foot of the hole Nash and I had dug. I stood atop it, covered in mud and leaning heavily on the shovel. I let the tool drop and went down beside it, stretching out my quaking legs and wiping the lid of the glossed wooden box with tingling hands.
Part of Donovan died then, twelve years ago. His innocence was stolen long before I was willing to admit it. I tried to protect him, but I failed.
I was too tired to do more than sit amidst the crumbles of damp earth. Last I checked, Nash was propped against a tree overhead, similarly spent. I would need his help when I was ready to crawl out of this hole, but I wasn’t sure when that time would come.
Maximus was gone. Not sent away as I’d intended with well wishes and bad memories of his weeks in captivity. Nash insisted on a memory potion for the lucky devil, then drove him into town while I wandered around the Bitters’ End like a wraith, steering clear of the room where Ripley and Maggie were holed up and giving Pippa a wide berth.
When Nash returned an hour later, he found me hiding out behind the bar, looking at the bottom of a whiskey bottle and a pile of cigarette butts.
I wasn’t up to burying Donovan, but I was drunk enough to believe I was, and that it couldn’t wait another moment.
Now it was mid-afternoon, and I was horrifically sober. My head lolled back against the side wall studded with roots and buried rocks, and I took in a narrow view of the sky. Pink and orange hues mingled with standard blue like a whimsical watercolor. It was pretty. Peaceful and isolated enough we’d been able to toil half the day without interruption.
My breaths slowed, and my eyelids fluttered, threatening untimely sleep. When I forced them open, I saw Nash’s copper hair gleaming in the sun overhead. His sleeves were rolled up, showing forearms streaked with dirt. Even his face was speckled muddy brown and cut with tracks from recent tears.
“You ready?” he asked.
I wasn’t. I never would be. But I nodded.
He disappeared from sight, leaving the uninterrupted sky. It took all my remaining strength to shove myself to standing, where my head barely poked over the top of the hole. Turning toward where we’d parked the Porsche, I watched Nash walk around the front end and pop the trunk.
He stood there for the longest time.
Finally, he reached inside. I looked away from the scene, simultaneously unsure of what he would soon present me with and all too certain.
Shuffling footsteps swished through the grass, and a chill raked down my spine. I’d stopped breathing at some point in the waiting, and now my lungs burned. Air eked in as I glanced back to see Nash crouched and Donovan’s body lying prostrate on the ground between us.
Seeing my brother’s wounds for the first time in daylight, the viscera was almost more than I could bear. Severed tendons and veins stood out amidst the mangled skin, coated with blood in various stages of coagulation.
Maybe I’d had a bit of blissful denial because the sight of it shocked me. I could barely move or form a thought as Nash slid a hand under Donovan’s severed neck and another beneath his knees, then offered him out for me to take.
I wasn’t sure I could hold him.
The dead weight hit my weary arms and tipped me toward collapse. I struggled with the body, trying to ease it down gently and finally falling forward to hit the coffin lid on my knees and elbows while cradling Donovan’s head.
“Fuck,” Nash grunted from above. I glanced back and found him upright, his face in his hands as he turned away from the grave. He wanted to leave. I knew because I wanted that, too.
Pushing up, I let Donovan’s head rest gently atop the still-buried coffin. I crawled off of him, bracing on all fours as I took a moment to look him over. His eyes were closed, and his skin was ghastly white. His dark clothes made the blood look like wet blobs across his shirt that spread into brownish splotches on his exposed chest and face. He never stood a chance. Not in the gang, not against Jax, not with me.
My father’s words haunted my mind. “You’re gonna do great things.”
If only he knew .
I wasn’t sure how long I hovered there, hoping—as I had with my parents—to feel close to Donovan one last time. But, just like with my parents, I felt nothing but absence.
Finally, I stood and raised a hand toward Nash with a pitiful request. “I’m fucking stuck down here.”
He wiped his arm across his eyes and crouched to grab hold of my arm. It was harder than it should have been and left us both grunting with effort as he hauled me out of the hole. Topside, he tumbled back, and I fell forward, wanting to sprawl in the grass and rest. But I wasn’t done yet.
My body was taxed, and my brain was, too, but I didn’t care enough to mind my mental limits. I deserved to hurt. To be pushed toward destruction and damnation. I deserved to be buried and gone. Not Donovan.
It took a mammoth effort to target the pile of dirt we’d unearthed and push it with telekinetic force. Pain spiked into my skull, and I let out a cry as the dirt filled the hole. It heaped atop Donovan’s corpse, blacking out his view of the beautiful sky, burying him forever.
A headache rocked me, and I cupped a hand to my face, feeling the familiar trickle of warmth leaking from my nose.
“You’re bleeding,” Nash said from his position on the ground.
Twinging pain accompanied my reach for the car keys poking out of his pants pocket. I called them through the air and gripped them while walking swiftly toward the parked Porsche .
In the corner of my vision, Nash scrambled to stand and chase after me.
“Fitch?” he called out.
“Stay here,” I said, staggering a bit as I reached the driver’s door and flung it open.
Nash stopped and gave a sweeping glance across the cemetery around us. “Stay here ?” he echoed. “Why?”
“I need to be alone.” I dropped into the seat, leaking blood that I tasted on my lips.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He’d broken into motion again, closing the gap to me. When I grabbed the door handle to pull it shut, he caught the window frame and held it.
I glowered up at him. “I’m not gonna kill anyone if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“It’s not,” he replied, unmoving.
“Well, good.” A flip of my hand removed his, and I yanked the door closed.
“Fitch, what are you doing?” Nash’s voice was muffled by the glass and metal, then almost drowned entirely by the engine turning over. He pounded his fist against the window. “Where are you going? Fitch!”
“Call a cab or something,” I told him, but wasn’t sure he heard as I shifted into reverse. The coupe began to roll backward.
Daubing my sleeve against my nose, I turned out onto the grassy road that had brought us here. Seeing Nash in the rearview reminded me of leaving Donovan behind when I went to the Thatcher job. No one could say that I hadn’t tried to save him, or that I wasn’t trying now not to destroy Nash, too. I had little left to lose, and maybe that was the answer: to face the world and whatever fate I was due with nothing but my own shadow behind me. At least that way I couldn’t ruin anyone else.