Chapter 2
Two
Wraith
Merit hadn’t taken long to fall asleep. He’d been full of trepidation about sleeping in the same bed as us, but the moment he was on my soft bed, his head resting on hundred-dollar pillows, swaddled by blankets and sheets that cost several hundred dollars, he’d lost the battle.
And I couldn’t blame him. He had to be exhausted.
We’d been watching him long enough to know how taxing those runs in the forest were on him mentally, not to mention physically.
Add that to all the trauma he’d endured with this most recent master…
Ike grunted and lifted his phone from his lap. “Pops is calling,” he muttered, pushing up from the chair he’d been occupying.
Neither of us had gotten into bed with Merit as we’d told him we would, though we hadn’t left him alone.
Even now, I wasn’t keen on leaving him on his own, even if he was asleep.
But if Pops was calling in the middle of the night, that meant he either had an emergency job for one of us, or he’d found out what we’d done.
My money was on him knowing we’d essentially kidnapped Merit, and he was ready to rip us a new asshole.
Which also meant if we didn’t answer his phone call, he would show up here.
And that was the last thing we needed. Pops was the biggest monster of us all, and stepping out of line like this would have dire consequences.
I could probably calm him down and get him to understand, but Ike?
Textbook psychopath Ike? That was a laughable matter.
Despite Dad working hard every single day to make sure we all knew how to fake having normal human emotions, Ike hadn’t grasped it.
Ike and I were two of a set of quadruplets, and while all of us were close, even with our youngest brother, Sabbath, Ike and I were the closest. He relied on me to give him his social cues, to tell him when it was okay to be his normal self and when he needed to, as he called it, “fake his humanity”.
I jerked my chin toward the door. “Let’s take his call,” I muttered. Casting one last glance at Merit, I reluctantly followed Ike out of the room, shutting the door right before Ike swiped his thumb across the screen to answer Pops’s call.
“Pops,” Ike drawled.
“I told you not to get involved. To let me handle this,” Pops growled, fury coating his words. “But you did what the fuck you wanted anyway, didn’t you? And then, you were sloppy about it. Leaving bodies? We don’t leave bodies lying around. Have you two lost your fucking minds?”
“Winston…” I heard Dad murmur, trying to keep him calm, which I was thankful for.
Pops losing his shit could have dire consequences…
like putting us six feet under. He had no soft spot for us.
The only kid he was soft for was Sabbath because he wasn’t like us.
Sabbath had taken after Dad—looked just like him, too.
“They had him in the woods again,” I informed our parents. “They were ready to shoot him with rubber bullets. He’s been through enough, Dad.” I could get anyone to sympathize with me, it was him. “You couldn’t expect us to just let that happen, could you?”
“I expected you to follow the fucking rules, Wraith. I might have expected this from Ike, Onyx, or Vargas, but not you. You’re level-headed. You follow the rules. You don’t step out of line,” Pops snapped, not giving Dad a chance to respond.
I blew out a quiet breath. “I had to step out of line for him, Pops. I’ve been forced to stand on the sidelines and play this waiting game for months.
No more. Never again. You can do what you want with me and Ike, but Merit stays protected.
We promised him no one would ever hurt him again.
We promised he would be safe from here on out. ”
Pops made a sound in the back of his throat that revealed his clear disgust with us.
I bit back a grunt of annoyance that we were even dealing with this when we were adults capable of making our own decisions.
Ike leaned against the wall, his expression empty.
No doubt, he was bored of this conversation, but out of respect for our parents, he wouldn’t hang up the phone.
It would upset Dad, and none of us liked upsetting him. It made us as uncomfortable as upsetting our neurotypical little brother, Sabbath.
“Bring him here. If he is going to be around, he needs to understand what he’s been brought into.”
“Not until he wakes up,” Ike said, finally speaking up.
“Ike…” Pops warned, his voice dropping an octave.
“I said what I said,” Ike retorted, not giving a fuck about orders or stepping on Pops’s toes. “He needs rest. He has injuries. We will bring him home, but not a moment sooner. That’s my offer.”
Pops growled, clearly about to lose his shit for being disobeyed, but suddenly, Dad was on the line.
“Okay, Ike,” Dad soothed, always the mediator between us and Pops.
“That’s fine. We’ll see him tomorrow, okay?
Find out what he likes to eat, and I’ll make sure it’s here. I’m sure he’d like some food.”
“We already fed him,” I griped.
Dad hummed like he always did when we got irate. Some fucking how, it soothed the monsters within us. “I’m sure you did, Wraith. But I think a home-cooked meal will do him well, too. Do you have clothes for him, or do I need to send something?”
“He has clothes.” He had everything he needed here. Ike and I had made sure of it. What the fuck would we bring him home for if we didn’t already have everything he could possibly want or need?
While Ike didn’t work because he didn’t fit into society well enough, I did.
With an IT degree, I did well enough working for a tech company that allowed me to work from home.
It provided Ike and I with a place to live and allowed us to live very comfortably, especially since people paid me off-record for more shady work.
“Good. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ike ended the call and slid his phone into his pocket. “Pops will not take him from us,” Ike growled, his eyes flickering toward the bedroom door like he was already devising a plan to take Merit and run away with him.
I clapped his shoulder. “He won’t,” I agreed. “Family or not, I will slaughter anyone who tries to take him from us.”
Merit was watching us when we walked back into the room. I arched a brow at him. “Listening in, little killer?”
He huffed. “Not hard to do when you’re right outside the door. Your father sounds… pleasant.”
“He’s an acquired taste,” I informed him. Merit snorted. “You thirsty? Need more food?”
Merit shook his head and closed his eyes. “Can I have some kind of noise? The silence is… too much.”
Without prompting, Ike suddenly began to play Sleep Token from his phone on low. It was just loud enough to fill the room but was still soft enough to fall asleep too. Merit murmured, “Thank you,” and buried himself beneath the blankets once more, only half his face visible.
I sat back in the chair I’d been occupying, watching as Merit slowly fell back asleep, the blanket slowly rising and falling with each steady breath he took.
No one—not even Pops—would be taking him from us. I’d kill anyone who even attempted to do so.