22. Rebel
Chapter 22
Rebel
Thanatos calls to inform me that they’ve found Rage passed out in the cold and handcuffed to his car. Who knows how long he’s been there. An hour? Two? Longer?
If the fucker hadn’t locked me inside my own goddamn room all day, none of this would have happened. I would have gone to breakfast, smoothed things over between them, and reaped the benefits.
Because once Rage and Celia finally get together, then it’ll be my turn.
Rage is just too goddamned stubborn to let things go any way other than his own. It’s going to put him in an early grave. I grimace as the picture of Rage passed out on the ground flashes to mind.
Okay, not the best turn of phrase… but that doesn’t make it any less true.
While Ruin and Than rouse our brother and take him to see our very own Doc-in-a-Box, I make my way to where Celia should be— her home. Despite how little time we’ve spent together, Celia’s house has become one of my favorite places. Unlike our apartment above the club, it’s spacious and open, with enough wide windows to bathe every square inch in endless natural light at all hours of the day. Sunlight, moonlight, and any other kind of light in between. I love it, and that’s the most surprising part.
If I could steal it from her, I would.
That’s why I spend hours searching its every nook and cranny, taking little knick-knacks and shiny things when I can fit them in my pockets. The problem with driving a motorcycle is that it doesn’t lend itself to much cargo space without saddlebags—and those bitches are ugly. Meaning, if I want to take something, it has to fit in the palm of my hand.
Swiping her keys was easy. Making a double of every single one and slipping the originals back into place was even easier. The thing about Celia is that she’s oddly trusting for a woman whose life we bulldozed through all of a sudden. Scratch that—she’s oddly trusting for a woman raised within the bratva. Maybe that’s why she’s complacent about it, though—she knows how inevitable we are.
The bratva creates the kind of person that’s impossible to refuse. Despite all her fussing, Celia hasn’t put a gun to our heads and demanded we leave her alone.
I’d be impressed if she did.
It’s why I’m not the least bit concerned when I bound up her three little front porch steps and unlock the main door to her house. She has a shotgun hiding in the hall closet and a pump-action rifle beneath her bed, but she wouldn’t dream of using them on someone as charming as me.
I’m her favorite.
“Celia!” I call out, scanning her living room for her first. Then I jog to the kitchen and find it empty. I click my tongue and swipe a bottle of her favorite white from the wine cooler, then pinch two wine glass stems between my fingers.
A little romance can’t hurt.
She did try to kill my brother—allegedly, if we believe Ruin’s theory. Unless Rage antagonized the fuck out of her and she suddenly snapped, I don’t see Celia as the killing type
What the hell did he do to her?
Rage won’t fess up, too stubborn to admit when he’s done something wrong, so it’s up to me to smooth things over with our girl.
I kick the cooler door closed and shiver at the chill. Jesus, is the heat off? I turn on my heel to check the thermostat down the hall when movement in the corner of my eye grabs my attention.
The back door is ajar, letting in the cold evening air. Curtains hanging over the window scratch against the glass as a breeze blows them back and forth.
I set down the wine glasses and reach for my handgun. “Celia? You home, baby?” Carefully rounding the corner to the dining room, I check the corners before stepping inside. Rose petals flatten beneath my feet, with even more of them covering the entire dining room table. A heavy vase sits in the center, its crystal spiraling and sharp from the base to the lip. Two taper candles flicker on either side, like someone set the table for a romantic candlelit dinner.
Although I wouldn’t oppose dinner with our girl, I doubt she has romance on her mind after this afternoon. I set the chilled wine on the table and continue moving through the house. The ground floor is clear, so I head to the stairs. Bottlenecking in a stairway is the worst idea ever, but it’s the only way upstairs unless I feel like climbing the giant oak in the front yard.
Not fucking happening.
I keep my footsteps light as I pad upstairs. Once on the second floor landing, I make a beeline for Celia’s bedroom. The door is wide open, and so are her dresser drawers. Clothes are thrown inside an open suitcase, like she’s planning to make a run for it.
Also not fucking happening.
She isn’t in the room. I glance inside her bathroom and find a little purple box torn open on the counter, but still no Celia.
A thud through the wall makes my heart race.
Lifting my gun and storming into the room next door, I finally find Celia.
Eyes wide.
Duct tape over her mouth.
A masked stranger with his fist wrapped around her gorgeous fucking hair and a gun held to her temple.
“What the fuck, ” I hiss, aiming straight for the dude’s stupid fucking face. Plain white hockey mask with a half dozen holes I can slam a bullet through. But then he jerks, making me aim for Celia instead of him. Shit. “I will fucking end you.” The vow hammers through my heart like lead, heavy and final. This motherfucker has no right to touch our woman.
Who the fuck is this guy?
Celia always locks her doors. I just happen to know my way inside. He must have broken in. I should have checked the back door for signs. Broken glass, smashed handle?—
He skirts the room, sidling toward the jack-and-jill bathroom that leads to the other guest room. Motherfucker is trying my patience.
“Let her go, asshole.”
His dark eyes never leave mine as he inches closer to the bathroom.
“Wearing a mask? What a fucking coward.” I bare my teeth at him. Ruin has a valid reason for wearing one—he’s the exception to the rule. Everyone else should walk around with their real fucking faces on display. Be held accountable for their actions. “I bet you’re so ugly under there that Celia dumped your ass.” Or old. Man’s got a head of grays. I bet his dick’s as limp as a wet noodle. “Better yet, I bet she wouldn’t even go out with you. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The roses, the candles—you’ll do anything for a taste of her. Too bad I interrupted your fucking dinner plans, bitch.” A sneer curls over my lips. “You’ll never fucking have her. She’s mine. ”
The next few seconds happen in slow motion.
Cowardly motherfucker shoves Celia at me so fast that I’m barely able to get a shot in before she’s tumbling into my arms. Our bodies collide to the hard thud of bone and flesh while Limp-Dick literally limps across the bathroom and slams the door shut behind him.
“You good, baby?” I brush her hair from her face and search her eyes. When she nods, I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank God. “I’m gonna go after him. Stay put.”
I skip the joint bathroom and jump into the hallway, following the man’s thundering footsteps down the stairs. He’s out the front door in record time, because shit, I never locked it when I came in. “Dammit!” I hop over the porch steps to the front sidewalk and pound the pavement after him, lungs burning, pistol raised. I fire off a few shots but he skirts into the short stretch of woods that leads to the neighborhood pond. Clearly, I fucking missed.
The motherfucker never even tried to shoot me.
Bet he’s a shit-fucking-shot, too. Has to be on some kind of drugs to move that fast with a limp. Did I shoot him?
I call Thanatos while I run after him. “I need eyes on Celia. I’m chasing some motherfucker who broke into her house.”
“Kind of busy,” Thanatos grunts. I hear a car horn in the background. “Stay with her. I’ll send a team over.”
“Fuck. Okay.”
Limp Dick won’t come back with me there, I think , so I head back to Celia’s house. The front door is wide open. This time, I shut and lock it behind me, then I check both back doors and lock them up tight. The kitchen door wasn’t broken, just unlatched.
Maybe Celia walked inside and forgot to lock them back because…
Oh yeah, because she was about to fucking run from us.
I storm upstairs and slam into her bedroom door. It flies open, banging against the wall. “Celia,” I call out, shoving my gun back into its holster, “you better have a good fucking explanation?—”
My eyes ping to the bed, all the random clothes strewn about, some even scattered to the floor, but no suitcase. Her favorite perfume is missing from the top of her dresser, and the six-inch hunting knife I snuck inside her nightstand is gone, too. The rumble of a car engine sounds beneath my feet, and I jerk to the window to watch her peel out of the garage in her pale blue Porsche—the one she rarely drives. She rams into my motorcycle on her way down the driveway, punching it to the ground before course-correcting and barreling down the street and out of sight.
Far the fuck away from here… and far the fuck away from me.
What little air I have in my lungs evaporates, leaving me choking on the bitter taste of betrayal as I imagine the girl I just saved running away from the cute fucking future I had planned for us.
The mental image of the two of us smiling at each other while we joy ride through the city on my bike at sunset before having a private fucking party for two on a blanket beneath the stars pops like a bubble, making me realize just how flimsy it all was to begin with.
Because things like easy and happy don’t belong to men like us. I was fooling myself into thinking things with Celia could be sweet.
We’re men created from shades of gray. I will never be able to meet Celia in her world of light—the two don’t mix.
If I’m going to keep her, I’ll have to drag her into our box of shadows and throw away the key.