Chapter Fourteen
B lood stains my hands, it’s running down my face and my clothes are covered in it. Dean is barely able to walk but he’s trying, desperately, his steps dragging through the puddles as rain continues to fall in torrents. The street is lined with lights but it’s quiet although that is to be expected at four a.m.. Even cities as busy as this one must sleep.
It feels as if we have been walking for hours.
I thought the rain would wash away the evidence of what I had done but it clings to me, showing the whole world I’d just killed my own father.
I’m not even sure I meant to, but he was beating Dean, worse than any other time and I couldn’t get to him. I knew this was the last time; Dean wasn’t going to survive. My shoulder is still throbbing with how hard I was ramming myself into the door to try and break free of the closet.
All I could think about was saving my brother. I had to save him at any cost.
When I did finally break out, my father was lifting a baseball bat, his eyes crazed, teeth bared like a fucking animal.
“Get back in that closet boy!” He roared as he brought the bat down, but I was quicker, putting myself between it and my brother. A rib is broken, I know that much is true and after the hit had landed, there was no time to react to the blow. I had to save him.
My father always carried a switch blade. He used it to threaten me on a daily basis. There’s a scar under my jaw, on the left side where he pressed the very tip of it to me, slicing my skin as he told me how much me and Dean ruined his life. How it is our fault our mother left him. I don’t think he realized that she left us too.
I learned quite quickly that she wasn’t coming back for me or Dean.
He wanted to kill me that day and for whatever reason, he didn’t. It was after that when I no longer gave him the reaction he wanted. He was after our pain because it made him feel better about his own and when I no longer delivered it to him, he used the next best thing. My brother. The only person I cared about.
Pain was his only goal, no matter how he delivered it .
I reached for that very switch blade, hooked to his belt in a worn leather case, the handle rubbed down from the many years of being gripped.
It was lighter than I had anticipated, surprisingly easy to use as I hit the tiny button to flick the blade out.
My father didn’t have a chance to scream at me as I plunged the blade straight into his chest.
Blood had spilled over my hand, soaking the silver metal red and the whites of his eyes, bloodshot from the alcohol, grew big as the bat thudded to the ground beside Dean’s prone and still body. My brother’s breaths were wheezing from him, as if every intake of air was a struggle and my father’s began to match.
He stumbled back from us, forcing me to rip the blade from his chest. His hand immediately went to the wound, blood pouring through his fingers and down the front of his white shirt.
Violent anger washed through me, a hurricane of fury that had me lunging for him, lifting the blade once more but I went for the throat.
I didn’t want any chance of survival. I wanted him gone.
He was too weak to stop me, and his throat opened as if it were nothing more than butter under the blade. Blood splattered my face, my clothes. It dripped like a leaky faucet off my nose and chin.
A few long seconds passed, his eyes wide, staring at me as his mouth opened and closed and then he collapsed. His knees buckled and he toppled, landing on the light grey carpet, his blood spilling from him to create a puddle under his throat that pulsed in time with his slowing heart.
And then he went still, eyes remaining open. I’d never seen death until I watched him die, it’s like a light goes out behind the eyes, stolen in just a second.
Stolen by my hand.
He deserved it.
He deserved so much more.
Dean had made a sound then, drawing my attention away from the body and reminding me that we had to get out of here. We had to run.
With the little strength Dean had, he got to his feet with my help, and we left. We didn’t grab a single item, not a cell phone or a bag, but in my pocket, I had the blade that had saved us.
Sebastian found us close to dawn. He had blood on him too, but it had been obvious from the wounds on his face that the blood was his own. He looked as if he’d had the shit kicked out of him, but he took one look at both of us and bundled us into a car.
And we never looked back, he brought us into a new life. Where we were in control, where we were the formidable ones, the ones everyone else got on their knees for.
He and then Malakai became family.
I took a vow that day, to never let another person down.
“You good?” Sebastian shoves my shoulder, a shit eating grin on his face. “What the fuck are you daydreaming about?”
“Shit night’s sleep,” I explain, it is technically not a lie. I didn’t sleep at all, too busy mulling over what had happened on the couch. I never should have asked Savannah to do that, never should have watched.
If Bast knew…
Fuck.
He passes me a beer as Willow and Olivia come in, Willow nursing a glass of champagne while Oli sips orange juice, a small bump stretching the front of her dress.
“No Savvy?” Sebastian looks to the door as if his sister is about to walk right through it. But she isn’t here, it’s like an instinct, I can sense her. Her presence, her soul since it’s wrapped so tightly around mine. I fear there is no way to get her out.
It is torture.
“She has a date,” Willow goes to Bast, curling up against his side as his arm comes around her but her words hit me like a freight train.
A date .
With another man.
A man that is not me.
She isn’t mine.
My nails bite into my palm where I’ve curled my fingers in, jealousy heating my blood to an inferno that has sweat breaking out on the nape of my neck. Willow flicks her eyes to me, soft and almost knowing but she looks away quickly.
“A date?” Bast snap, “With who?”
I’m staring at Sebastian’s wife intensely, waiting for her to tell me a name. Just a name.
“Adrien,” She swallows, her teeth biting into her bottom lip.
“Who the fuck is Adrien!?” Bast snaps.
My heart is pounding inside my chest, palms sweating. She’s going out with him .
As Willow explains who he is to Sebastian, I pull out my cell, putting on a front so the whole room doesn’t see how fucking murderous I feel right now. I didn’t like him the first time I met him but now? Now I want to rip him apart.
I pull up Savannah’s contact, hovering over the call button with my thumb and excuse myself from the room before I hit it.
It rings. And it rings.
“Hi,” Her voice chirpily sounds in my ear, “You’ve reached Savannah, I can’t get to the phone right now! Please leave a message.”
“Fuck,” I snap and end the call only to try again.
She doesn’t answer any of them and then her phone switches to not ringing at all. All I see is them, touching, kissing. Him with his hands on her skin, his mouth on hers.
Mine.
She is fucking mine.
I don’t say goodbye as I slip out the door and get into my car, hitting the gas the moment the engine has turned over so I can peel down the drive and onto the road.
It only takes me forty minutes to get back to the city and put the car in park on the side of the road outside of Savannah’s new place. She moved in yesterday without telling anyone, but the house is dark right now and her car is not in the driveway.
So, I sit and wait. I’ll wait all fucking night if I have to, but the moment she is home… it’s going to finally be game over.