20. Daisy
TWENTY
daisy
I could count on one hand the number of times a man had trusted me to do anything other than look pretty. It was always ‘look pretty, Daisy,’ or ‘smile more, Daisy, you're getting frown lines.’
But the way Zeiden had let me do what I needed to?
Lord, why had I even needed to do anything? My brain had a running list of reasons. To take back my power. To find my inner psycho. Hell, to just let go. I mean that last one I could have done at a nightclub, which was one more thing I’d never gotten a chance to do.
“Shit, Zeid’s girl, what the fuck he do to you? Going straight for the junk?”
Zeid’s brothers were here and so were the two women that were like me, I'd guess. Attached to their men. In love even.
Instinct had me wanting to just hide behind my big protector, but then something else hit me. I was powerful. I was stronger than I’d realized. Hell, I hadn’t even thrown up with all that blood.
I could probably have a conversation with these women while the others cleaned up my mess. What did that say about me and just how not bothered I was? Or maybe it said more about how bad he was.
“So, do you guys come here often?” I asked Cali and Rylee.
“God, girl. Are you trying to pick me up or scope out the next play date?”
I glanced between the two of them and finally, when they started to smile, I knew at the very least they weren’t judging me.
Not judging me covered in blood, like this was just normal.
“Oh. Sorry. That might have been the wrong way to put it. I mean, yes. Do you get to, you know, do these things with them a lot?”
Cali was still smiling and Rylee rolled her eyes right back.
“Ignore her, Daisy. She worked with dead people for too damn long. Anyway, yes. We go where they go. Sort of comes with the territory. It’s that or we get to hole up in the little fortress. It’s not really that little, but you get the point.” Rylee almost looked starry eyed as she watched the three men.
We go where they go? That sounded ominous if I compared it to my life.
“Like you go with so they can control you?” I asked.
That got the smile on Cali’s face to fall fast and hard. “Uh, no. Control me? What the fuck? That is never happening. It’s more like there is power in numbers. Plus, we’re all family. A chosen family. Although I would say that if you had any ideas of grandeur like daddy dearest does? Well, yeah, no. Those field trips are few and far between.”
What would I miss if I indeed stayed here? Who was I kidding? Like there was a chance I wasn’t staying. No way.
But really. What wouldn’t I miss if I stayed here?
That gave me pause. I looked down at my perfect manicure that I had been forced to maintain. It was all cracked red blood mixed with my cotton-candy iridescent pink polish. Since the morning after Zeid had rescued me, I hadn’t had one person pull and tease my hair. It was long and natural and I liked it. No one sat measuring my waist to make sure that I hadn’t gained an inch. My thighs hadn’t been pinched to make sure there was no cellulite.
Heck. Zeid seemed to like all of me just the way I was. And Cali and Rylee? They treated me like I fit here.
Screw that. Could I stay here?
“You seem to think that I am staying here. But I’ve only known Zeid for a few days?—”
I was cut off when large arms darted around me. Zeid wrapped me up in his hold and twisted me to face him.
“Every word out of that mouth of yours echoes. So think long and hard before you say shit like that.”
I looked up into his face. Gone was the darkness that seemed to be his mask down here. Also gone was the lust, but it was all replaced by something strange, like a little innocence laced with what I wanted to call anger, but that didn’t feel right.
“Say shit like what, Zeiden?”
The drying blood seemed to crinkle and crack as I tried to pull out of his grasp.
“I was talking to Cali and Rylee, not you. So let me go and then you go clean up the mess you let me make.”
He wasn’t letting go.
“The fuck I will. I heard you. I heard you say that they seem to think you are staying. Make no mistake, dove. There is no way out. Not now. Not ever.”
That should have been scary. In fact, that should have felt like a death sentence. A small part of me wanted to panic and my heart sure as hell tried, but as I looked into those endless pools that were a straight shot to his soul the panic just disappeared.
There was one less monster in my world thanks to Zeid. There was joy and happiness too. And freedom to just be.
“When you say there is no way out, do you mean that like I’m a prisoner?”
I wasn’t sure what was so damn funny, but everyone else in the room seemed to be in on a private joke by the sounds of muffled laughs.
“Do Cali and Rylee look like prisoners to you?”
I glanced over my shoulder where the two women leaned against a cement pillar watching X and Cas work. The lights down here were all on now, though it was still rather dim, but what light there was reflected off something on each of their fingers. I looked again. Rings? Were they married?
Did thugs even get married? Everything my father had painted in a neat little picture for me seemed all wrong. My brain wanted to let go of all the prejudices and lies, but a lifetime of brainwashing made it a bit harder. Still, the idea of choosing to stay? The idea of him proposing because he wanted to and not some stupid contract or millions of dollars? My heart began to beat freely like the cage it had always been stuck in was suddenly opened and I was actually free to feel. Almost. And then there went the brain again to think and overthink.
“Marriage can seem an awful lot like prison,” I said, turning back to Zeid.
His grip hadn’t let up even a bit on me, but one hand did move, and this time it was around my neck as he pushed me toward a wall, where he lowered his voice.
“You are not my prisoner, I am yours . If you tried to leave, you would take my heart right along with you. So the only way out is death. You see, if you tried to find refuge in the arms of another man, he would die and I would make it last twice as long as the judge here. If you looked at another man, I would kill him too. I would kill everyone until I was your only choice because, Daisy, without you there is no purpose. I have no purpose and it became clear to me the moment I couldn’t send you back to your father.”
I swallowed. That sounded a lot like a confession. One that I'd dreamed about. About someone wanting me for me. Someone so in love with me that they would do what all the romance books in the world said heroes did. Burned the world for the woman they loved.
“Is that a proposal?”
The set of his face hadn’t cracked. His fingers didn’t tighten or loosen. Hell, I couldn’t tell if he’d even taken a single breath. And me? My lungs burned until I realized I’d stopped breathing right along with him. Because I wanted the answer to a question I’d never wanted to ask.
“Tell me, little dove. Would you stay if it wasn’t?”
Would I stay? He told me I couldn’t leave, but in the end I don’t think that’s what he meant. He’d kill all the competition, which probably should have sounded horrible. Instead it sounded like the best confession of love of all time. I should have been scared. So why, in the end, was it that all I could see was a man that stuck around? He waited for me. He helped me move past my own demons in a really strange sort of therapeutic way.
I started a slow nod against that big hand that kept me front and center for him.
“Yeah. I guess I would. I would stay just to see my life with you. So I guess it doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t run.” I paused and then a small spark in me, one that had only seemed to have found a life with this man, burned bright. “I wouldn’t run far anyway.”
I reached up a finger and booped the tip of his nose.
The whole room was quiet except for the sound of scratching. The smell of bleach burned my nose.
“Did she just boop his nose? Fuck, when was the last time he even let me shake his damn hand?” I wasn’t sure which of his brothers was whispering, but Zeid was right. You could hear everything down here.
“Shut the fuck up, X. I let you touch my shoulder plenty.” And then Zeid turned his attention back to me. “Did you really boop my nose?”
Maybe it was the high of the kill, the realization of just how crazy this all was, or, fucking hell, maybe I had just lost it, but I got the giggles until I didn’t.
His face got real close and I nearly went cross eyed.
“Yes, dove. That was a proposal. But, I don’t have a ring. Not yet.”
There was no air in this room.
The entire place was bright white and I swore it swayed.
“Breathe, little dove. Just breathe.”
His voice was my homing beacon. No panic seemed to want to linger around him. Quickly enough the world came back into focus and my lungs remembered how to breathe.
“Then I say yes. Yes, I’ll marry you, Zeiden. I don’t even know your last name.”
His hold on me relaxed.
“Rossa. It’s Zeiden Rossa, and you, my future Mrs. Rossa, need to get cleaned up.”
Cleaned up?
Mrs. Rossa.
Holy shit. But instead of making a lot of sense or freaking out. I did what any serial killer might do.
“So, on a scale of one to ten, future husband, how did I do with the judge?”
He growled and grabbed me up over his shoulder.
“I’ll meet you guys back at the house. You got this?”
The blood was rushing to my head and my heart pounded in a way that I couldn’t hear much. The slap to my ass made me squeal and not exactly all from surprise.
My body was already this man’s. My heart too. Why not just sign up for the rest of it? The rest of it sounded like a lot of revenge and sex.