Chapter 5
EVELINA
For a moment, it's like none of this is real.
Because none of this is me.
I might have grown up in a bratva family, but I did so behind walls. Protected. Shielded. Unsullied.
I don’t find myself in situations like what just almost happened with Andrés.
I don’t see men fighting like animals.
I don’t run through the woods at night like the heroine in a horror movie.
And I certainly don’t find myself pinned to trees with bloodied hands around my throat, icy, dangerous, devil eyes ripping into my soul, while something that feels worryingly like excitement thrums in my veins.
This is the second time I’ve found myself face to face with Vaughn, with his hands around my throat and his darkness seeping into me like ink staining my skin. The most alarming thing isn’t that it’s happening again.
…It’s that the feeling slithering and coiling inside me isn’t purely fear or horror.
We stand like that for another few long seconds, only the nighttime sounds of the forest and my heavy breathing disrupting the silence.
Vaughn’s slippery, bloodied fingers—his own blood, I think, based on the slash wound on his upper arm soaking his dress shirt—tighten on my neck, squeezing just enough to send a bolt of vicious and all-consuming heat flashing through my core.
“Do you know, Evelina,” he growls, “why captive birds can’t be set free?”
I blink, swallowing against his hand and still trying to wrap my head around the idea that any of this is real.
“I—what?” I whisper.
“Because when pretty little birds are raised in pretty little cages, they never learn the basic survival skills that would keep them alive in the wild.”
Oh.
He’s talking about me.
“I…” My brows knit. “I’m not a caged bird—”
“No, and that’s the problem,” he growls. “Someone’s had the bad sense to let you out of your cage, which is how you keep finding yourself in places and situations where you do not belong,” he murmurs darkly.
A heated shiver ripples down my spine, shaking me to my core.
“You… You’re hurt,” I whisper.
Vaughn’s eyes don’t move a fraction of an inch, just keep stabbing into mine.
“What the fuck were you doing out here with Andrés Torvallés?” he growls.
I don’t say anything.
“I asked you a question, Evelina.” I shiver as his thumb strokes my jugular, the slick motion sending a bolt of strange electricity through my system. “It would be in your best interests to answer it.”
“Just…” My throat bobs. “Just a date.”
The tension in his jaw ratchets up a dozen levels, and his eyes flash with blue fire.
“A date,” he says coldly, his voice like razors.
“A date that went wrong,” I add. “Seriously, thank you for—”
“I wasn’t saving you, I was killing him,” he rasps darkly.
A sharp tremor tears through me as my eyes widen. “He… He’s dead?”
“My condolences,” Vaughn says dryly.
Holy hell.
“Now, again,” Vaughn murmurs in that emotionless, even tone, “I would like you to tell me what you were really doing out here with that motherfucker. And if you lie to me again, I’ll fuck you until you cry.”
There’s a glitch in my reality, or maybe in me. My reaction when he says that should not be the one I just had.
I shouldn’t ripple with heat I don’t understand.
I shouldn’t be instantly squeezing my thighs tightly together.
I shouldn’t feel warmth liquifying my insides.
The seconds tick by at a glacial pace as I stand there pinned to a tree in the woods by a monster with a blood-soaked hand around my throat, dangerous, viciously alluring thoughts bleeding through my veins like delicious poison.
“I…” My throat is so dry I can barely speak. I swallow heavily against his hand and try again. “I was going to ask him about…about my father.”
A bleak, mirthless smile spreads over his lips.
“You genuinely thought the Torvallés family would give a single flying fuck about your father.”
I flinch. “I…” My eyes close as I drag in a rough breath, then I open them again to glare at him. “I don’t exactly have a lot of options,” I hiss.
“Then perhaps it’s time to let nature take its course.”
My heart twists. “He’s my father—”
“That means very little to me,” he spits back.
“So why do you care if I was asking Andrés for help, then!?” I blurt. “It bothered you so much that you killed him!”
Vaughn barks out a cold, quiet laugh. “I killed him because we had our own issues that needed addressing. Believe me, it had fuck-all to do with you.” His lips twist. “If you’re under the impression that I’m your knight in shining armor, you should immediately purge that idea from your system.
” Vaughn’s captivating eyes narrow. “I don’t give a shit about you asking that walking cum-stain for help, or fucking him, or whatever you got all dolled up tonight to do with him. ”
My mouth falls open. “Excuse me?” I squeak.
“But what I do give a shit about, Evelina,” Vaughn continues, “is you seeking assistance from the Torvallés family.”
My mouth purses. “Like I said, I don’t exactly have a lot of options.” I frown. “Why do you care that I went to the Torvallés family?”
“I have a complicated relationship with them,” he growls. “And unfortunately, you and I are too few degrees of separation.”
My brow knits. “What?”
“Your bother is sleeping with my brother,” he says tightly. “Ergo, we are too closely connected for you to be trying to get in bed with the Torvallés family.”
My face heats. “I wasn’t…getting in bed with anyone.”
He says nothing. But his thumb strokes slickly through the blood over my pulse point again, sending another ripple flickering through me.
“Please—”
“Don’t.”
The word barks coldly from his throat, startling me.
“Don’t what?”
“Beg,” he murmurs, his cold eyes holding mine captive. “It makes me hard.”
Jesus..
Again, the response that flickers to life inside me like a dirty little secret is not the one I should have.
Heat shouldn't simmer and liquify my core, and I shouldn't get a tightening sensation in my belly that zips down to my thighs.
“So, you won’t help me yourself,” I choke, “and you also get a say in who else can’t?”
Vaughn's jaw clenches. “Even if wanted to help you with the situation with your father—and to be clear, I don’t—I couldn’t.”
“But…but the Syndicate—”
“You don’t know anything about the Syndicate.”
“I know it’s powerful,” I counter. “And I know you run it. So—”
“It isn’t that the Syndicate can’t,” he grunts. “It’s that it wouldn’t.”
I glare at him. “You mean you wouldn’t.”
I gasp sharply as his hand tightens around my throat. “I mean the Syndicate wouldn't,” he growls. “The Syndicate is not a charity, Evelina. It’s a brotherhood. A family that helps its own…not outsiders.”
He draws in a slow breath, and I don’t realize my legs are shaking until my knees knock together as his thumb traces through the sticky blood on my throat.
Vaughn straightens to his full height, his broad shoulders half-blotting out the moon as he looms over me looking partly annoyed and partly amused.
“Go home, Evelina,” he murmurs quietly.
His hand finally drops from my throat, and I immediately notice the cool air hitting my skin where his hand just was.
“Hold on,” I blurt as he starts to turn away. “Please—”
I shudder violently as he whirls on me. His blood-soaked hand grabs my jaw, making me gasp as he angles my face up to his. His slick thumb traces a thin line just under my bottom lip, across my chin.
“What did I just say about begging, Evelina,” he says quietly but with breathtaking intensity, still in that unnervingly emotionless tone.
He drops his hand, leaving me shaking and trembling against the tree, my pulse racing.
“Go home, princess,” Vaughn murmurs. “Same deal as the party. Forget everything you saw tonight.”
He starts to walk away.
“Wait.”
I’m a fraction of a second away from adding “please” before I stop myself.
Don’t beg, it makes me hard.
I steel myself as he slowly turns to look at me again.
“You said the Syndicate only helps its own. How does someone join?”
Utter silence descends over the clearing. Even the background noise of the nighttime animals goes quiet, as if nature itself is holding its breath at the sheer idiocy of what just fell out of my mouth.
But family is family.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m serious. How do I—”
“I heard you the first time.”
There’s a deadness to his voice as it floats through the still air between us like a frozen breath. Vaughn’s brows pinch a little, as if he’s trying to decide if I’m making a terrible joke.
He regards me coolly. “I don’t think you realize what you’re asking, princess.”
The “princess” rolls bitingly off his tongue like a slur, and I stiffen.
“I want to join,” I spit, with a bit more force this time. “How does one do that?”
I tremble as he slowly walks back over to me. He gets so close in my personal space that I find myself stumbling back, until my shoulders hit the rough bark of the tree behind me. Vaughn doesn’t stop until his hard body is almost pinned to mine, caging me against the tree as he looms over me.
“The Syndicate would break you,” he rasps quietly.
I shake my head, shivering. “It wouldn’t,” I croak.
His eyes pinch. “I would break you.”
A wicked throb tightens and coils low in my belly. Utter silence envelops the clearing again as the world goes still. All I can hear is the sound of my heavy breathing and the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath my feet as I shift uncomfortably under his unblinking, vicious glare.
Time ticks by in silence. I can’t tell if he’s been staring at me for nine seconds or ninety minutes.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he finally says quietly. “And you will imprint it on your fucking soul.”
I start to open my mouth to agree. But before a single sound can escape my lips, Vaughn leans right down into me, making me gasp and sending a ripple through my core when his lips brush my ear.
“Remember that you asked for this.”
Then, without another word, he straightens up, turns, and starts to walk away into the night.
I blink, frozen, my back still tight against the tree as if his body is still pinning me to it.
“Vaughn—”
“Expect an invitation in the next few days,” he growls, still walking away.
Wait, what?
“Although if you’re smart, Evelina,” he murmurs, glancing back, “you’ll ignore it when it comes.”
He starts to recede into the shadows of the trees as I stare at him, wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” I croak.
He halts mid-step, his back still toward me. “Don’t.”
I shiver as he turns to glance at me over his shoulder, the moonlight casting ghostly shadows and deep, violent lines across his face.
“Don’t thank me.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you knew the first thing about me, you’d know there’s nothing about being on my radar to be thankful for.”
The invitation arrives three days later, delivered by a man dressed in black waiting for me after rehearsal one day.
He says nothing, just hands me a black envelope sealed with venom-green wax bearing the imprint of a dagger encircled by a halo of light.
Inside, the invitation itself is handwritten on parchment paper in ink the same green as the seal.
You have been selected to present yourself for initiation.
The process will be difficult. Not all who attempt it will succeed. Risk of serious injury or death is inherent.
If you wish to proceed, you will arrive at Blackbriar Hall at nine p.m. two weeks to the day from receipt of this notice. Dress in black clothes you can move in.
Attendance constitutes consent. Absence will be taken as refusal.
Per Silentium, Per Sanguinem.
I reread the invitation four times, feeling my pulse quicken with every word.
Suddenly, I realize I have no idea what I’ve signed up for.
But there’s no going back now.