6. Torin
SIX
torin
“ It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I thought I had it.”
“I know,” I mutter as a gentle breeze brushes against my cheeks. “I just—fuck, why didn’t you just leave it? Why didn’t you just come home?”
My brother scoffs at me. “For what? Emilio wanted nothing to do with us. And Ramsey was…he didn’t get it.”
I stare back into his honey-gold eyes. I still don’t agree with him leaving. That he entrusted people he knew he couldn’t be loyal to. “Did she do it? Did she…”
Judah turns his head away from me and stares off at something else.
I can see every memory pass through his brain. All the thoughts of the woman I loved pass by and skew the meanings we both believe we understood.
“I wanted to save her,” my brother says after a few moments. “From…Matteo and what he would do to use her once he found out, but…”
Apprehension picks at my skin because he didn’t tell me the answer I needed to hear.
It’s killing me.
With Ozzy putting himself at risk, and Emilio doing nothing about it, I feel responsible for what’s about to take place because it all lies on me now.
My future.
Reeve, Cairo, and Ozzy.
Everything and everyone who has ever meant something to me.
“Ramsey is trying to play sides,” I convey at the same time my stomach knots. “I don’t trust him.”
“Don’t,” Judah says easily enough. “He’s lost.”
“But he knows. Everything.”
“Let him.” Judah looks back at me. “You need to keep yourself and those around you safe. It’s vital, Torin. No one gets in or out.”
“Ozzy married her.”
“So, where does that leave you?”
I don’t know.
I can’t bring myself to make a decision, because the one I make will be final. I can’t undo it.
“I need you to tell me,” I hedge evenly, feeling a dull headache form at both of my temples. “How deep was she into all this?”
“Deep,” he confirms. “She killed me, didn’t she?”
My heart arrests in my chest at the confirmation, and all the blood drains from my face.
She couldn’t.
There has to be something wrong here.
“Why do you look so conflicted, brother?” Judah asks me. “You know she was running with Levi.”
“I was with her,” I admit, tucking my chin shamefully into my chest. “I saw the fear in her eyes with De Leon. How she would walk behind him so she could calculate his every move. She was scared of him.”
“Calculating would be accurate,” Judah claims. “And Matteo wasn’t the greatest. However, she stuck with him, didn’t she? When did she finally leave?”
I’m unaware of the full story behind that. I remember one day she was with him, and the next time I saw Matteo, she wasn’t.
I did my homework and found she was back home in South Shore, but it wasn’t as though I could waltz inside and check on her.
“I have no clue,” I reply. “I wasn’t around much then.”
“In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter. Wallace still plays a major role in her life, and he hates you and Matteo. And there’s one common denominator in all this.” I glance up at him. “Her.”
My teeth clamp down on each other because he’s right. She’s been in the middle of everything.
Always has been.
“What would she have gained with me?” I inquire, needing my brother’s input. “I don’t want The Landing’s seat.”
“To take out Emilio,” Judah states. “Maybe to allow Wallace what he’s always wanted.”
“Wallace would’ve had many opportunities to take me out,” I retort. Especially when I was deep inside her and unaware of anything around me.
“You come with backup. Reeve and Cairo would come back full force and cause a war.”
“So, take us all out, then? At the same time?” Judah nods then reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. “You got this. You know what to do. It’s always been us. I’m just no longer able to stand at your side like I always wanted to.”
My eyebrows collapse together because neither one of us can undo what’s already been done. But I hate that he said it.
I loathe that he’s not here and I waited for him.
“You were supposed to come home,” I mutter. “I didn’t…I didn’t feel you gone.”
My brother gives me a weak grin. “You didn’t want me gone. You kept me alive.”
“This—I can’t do it. I love her.”
“Yeah, brother. I know. But we have the same bad taste in women who crave power or whoever has it. Open your eyes.”
“I have, but ? —”
“No, brother,” Judah says, more urgently with a shake to my shoulder. “Open your eyes.”
Confusion spreads across my features when I feel something suddenly kick at my foot.
Then again.
I jolt upward, discombobulated and on edge as I blink back what the fuck my brother just said to do.
However, when my vision begins to edge out the surroundings of my bedroom, I zero in on the body kneeling at the end of my bed.
Thoughtlessly, I stretch my arm back to grasp the Glock underneath my pillow.
Another nightmare starring my brother.
“ Don’t ,” a feminine voice snaps, causing me to freeze on impact.
Hers .
This equally sweet and deep tone that fucks me every time I hear it.
Every. Time.
Craning my head back toward the sound of it, something is plopped aimlessly between us, and a flashlight shines toward the ceiling.
Dark, unruly locks are the first thing I register. Then the shadows over the left side of her face caused by the flashlight, and my woman has a gun pointed at me like she’s ready to use it.
She won’t.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I leer, my index finger flirting with the trigger underneath my pillow, but let’s not get it fucked up.
I’m not pulling it.
“What did you do, Pretty Boy?”
In my sluggish state, her question doesn’t register. But the nightmare of my brother does.
You got this. You know what to do. It’s always been us.
I shove his words back because his answer isn’t the one I wanted to hear.
But you don’t get to choose what other people do and don’t.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Judah. I have a feeling it’s not going to be the last. The nightmares have gotten worse with each passing day. He confirms what I need to know, but then talks like he didn’t die. He speaks of Ramsey like he was our savior when I never saw it that way.
All Ramsey and Judah used to do was fight—constantly.
But now that he’s dead, Judah saw an error in Ramsey’s ways as being valid? Because I sure as fuck haven’t yet.
When you die, do you automatically become an idiot and forgive everyone?
A quick succession of snapping fingers drags me back to the present, as well as the drawback of a hammer on a gun.
I force myself to wake the hell up and concentrate on the here and now.
Judah can fucking wait.
A beautiful South Shore girl decided she wanted to come visit me, and I don’t know if I should be intrigued or pissed.
“Pay attention, Pretty Boy. I need you?—”
“I will rip your tongue out if you don’t stop callin’ me that,” I grit out, doubling down on my anger because it’s the easiest emotion to control at the present.
It fucks with me. I hate it.
A part of me might be happy that she’s here, but I’m living in before. Judah is dead. And she was there.
She was with my enemy.
She’s still with my enemy. Just a different one, who has more brains, muscle, and mouth. Levi Wallace and I will always hate each other.
And she can’t decide between the two of us.
“Why did you have Ozzy marry me?”
“I didn’t ,” I say without hesitation. “The fuck would I do that for?”
“To control me.”
I scoff haughtily because the last person I’d need is my cousin or anyone else, for that matter, to help me obtain that feat.
Because I already do own and control Bay Astor. She just hasn’t accepted that fact yet.
“I don’t know if you’re stupid or suicidal, but you fucked up by coming in here.”
“I needed to see you.”
Nope.
Hell fucking no.
Is this how she got my brother? That push-and-pull, I-want-you-now bullshit?
“This couldn’t have been a text message?” I drone evenly. “If I haven’t gotten my point across, I don’t want to see you.”
“Funny,” she drawls. “Because you had no problem crawling into my bed and fucking me a few days ago.”
I lift my shoulders. “Weak moment.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Lifting an eyebrow, I fix her with an unimpressed stare. “I’m sorry. Did my not ripping your sisters out of your house and locking up Wallace not do it for you? Did you need me to?—”
“ Shut up ,” she carps out. “That’s apparently all been settled thanks to your daddy.”
What has he ever done for us that would make me want anything else? He never investigated Lennox’s death. I had to figure it out. Do you know how many of Matteo’s men I killed to find out the truth? He buried our brother with body parts that I had to dig the fuck up on my own.
Both of my brothers—my blood—confirmed the role of the woman in front of me.
Bay Astor holds the fifth Titan seat. She’s the granddaughter of Penn Northcott. I’m surprised you haven’t put that together yet.
“What do you want, Bay?” I press. “Because you’ve got ten seconds to get the fuck out of my room before I blow your pretty little brains out.”
“Calm your shit, Torin,” she grinds out. “You expect me to buy this whole your cousin married me because he wanted to line?”
Actually…
“You don’t know my cousin,” I deadpan.
“No shit. How psycho is he?”
Very.
When he needs to be.
Yet with Bay, I don’t see that coming out any time soon unless she continues this little tirade of betrayal and power. Obviously, Judah’s death doesn’t have a huge impact on him.
Or he has something else in mind.
Regardless, I’m not going to wait. He might have his own demons that I’ll keep on the back burner for her to figure out. But so do I.
“Call him off.”
“Now you want me to take orders from you?” I sneer back. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Leave this alone,” she orders. “I didn’t kill your brother.”
It’s the lie that shoves me over the edge. That she believes I’m that fucking stupid to take her word for it.
My Glock is presented in the next second as I aim it at her forehead and plead for my finger to just pull the fucking trigger already.
She used you.
She’s out to get everyone.
She’s here for no damn reason.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” I snarl, my voice almost demonic in nature as I flirt with the trigger. “Don’t ever mention him to me again.”
“Torin,” Bay says more softly. “You have to believe me?—”
“I don’t have to do shit. This was all a game. Every motherfucker you’ve been with poses a threat to me. You’ve always been under Wallace. You’ve been fucking him for fuck knows how long and lead me to believe it was over. That you didn’t want him anymore. But I know he’s there, Wildfire. I just didn’t want to accept the fact that you weren’t who I thought you were.”
“It’s not like that. Levi and I?—”
“I swear to God, Bay, I will kill you. I will start a whole fucking war over this shit if you don’t fuck off me right now.”
She slowly rocks her head, and I see the briefest glint of those blue eyes overcast with unshed tears.
It’s not going to do anything to me.
My brother is fucking gone.
I’ve been sitting here for years like an idiot, waiting for him to show back up, and the reason he’s not is sitting in front of me.
She slowly pushes off my mattress and gets to the floor. My traitorous heart tugs with each step she takes, and it only drives me into a further state of animosity toward her.
“Bay.” She stops on a dime at the sound of her name but doesn’t turn around. “If I killed Wallace…what would you do?”
I see her body heave, drawing a deep inhale into her body when she answers me with the exhale. “I’d murder you. Slowly.”
Well…there goes that.
There would be no love lost if I stole from her. She’d flip on me without a second thought.
It may have taken her a few more seconds. Shit, it’s taken me days to wrap my head around all this. But she wouldn’t save me.
She wouldn’t forgive me.
It’s always going to be Levi Wallace over everyone.
That’s the problem with vulnerability and giving yourself to someone. It can be used as a weakness.
But it can also be the catalyst for revenge.