19. Bishop
My skin itches with the need to get back to Camilla. It’s irrational, but no matter how much I try to stamp it down, it only seems to get worse with each passing minute. It doesn’t help that Davenport thinks he’s taking her territory, which makes him even more of a threat to her than he was before.
I don’t know much about the arrangement Davenport had with De Marco or why he would be stupid enough to promise his first-born daughter to someone as disgusting as him, but what I do know is that Camilla isn’t the innocent wallflower her father liked to portray her as. Quite the opposite, in fact. From the recon I’ve done over the last few years, it seems he’s been training her to take over the operation should something happen to him.
But why would he do that if he knew he was just going to hand her over to his sworn enemy the day she turned eighteen?
He could have spent that time training his brother and nephew, who are fucking morons, but not totally incapable of running a Mafia family. But instead, he taught her, he trained her, and I need to get to the bottom of why.
I’m basically sprinting up the hallway toward her room when I catch sight of Kaos leaning across from her door, reading something, but it’s only when I’ve almost closed the gap that I realize it’s Camilla’s chart. The one I hid because of its contents.
I trust my father and brothers with my life. There’s nothing they wouldn’t do for me, and nothing I wouldn’t do for them in return. But there’s certain pieces of information that I know can spiral, and what Rogers found is one of those things.
“She’s a fucking virgin?” he growls, making me stop dead a few feet away from him, and my father slams into my back.
“She’s a what?” he says behind me.
“Fuck,” I groan and chance a glance at the closed door. It’s not that I wasn’t going to tell them, I was just going to wait until they’d warmed up to her and until she wasn’t hurt. Because if there’s one thing the men of the Legion love, it’s innocence. We love to tarnish it, ruin it, destroy it until it’s dirty and broken. That’s exactly what I’ve wanted to do to Camilla since the moment I realized her virtue was intact, but I have enough restraint to keep myself in check until she’s no longer covered in bruises. The others…not so much.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?” Kaos snaps.
“Because I wanted to give her a chance to heal before you assholes started fighting over who’s going to take it.” We haven’t decided she’s staying yet, but at this point, I’m assuming she is because Kovu and I are in so deep.
“Or you wanted to keep it for yourself.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not how we work, and you know it.”
“In the past, maybe, but you’re different with her. She makes you soft.”
I lunge for him before I realize I’ve done it, slamming him into the wall so hard it vibrates beneath the force. He’s larger than I am, by a decent margin, but I’m deadly when I need to be, and Camilla brings out a protective streak no one ever has before, not even my family. “Shut the fuck up,” I growl. I shove him harder into the wall, and to my surprise, he lets me, just staring at me with a dark smile.
“Maybe one of us just needs to fuck her and it will break your obsession. Is that why you like her so much? Because she’s a pretty little virgin? Do you think once you fuck her virgin pussy, it will break the spell and we can finally get her out of here? She doesn’t fucking belong here. She belongs with the man who bargained for her.”
My fist slams into his cheek so hard a loud crack fills the long hallway, and a second later, I find myself being tugged back. A line of blood drips down his lip, and he uses his thumb to track the crimson across his bottom lip. His eyes are wild with anger and something else, something darker, something he wants to keep hidden from the rest of us. But he should know I can read him, and every other member of this family, like a fucking book.
“Bishop, calm the fuck down,” my father snaps. His arms are wrapped tightly around my torso, but I break free and slam another fist into Kaos’s face. He’s always been so fucking opinionated, it’s about time one of us puts him in his goddamn place. He’s been an asshole the last few years, even more so than he was before, but we all went through that shit together. She betrayed all of us. We all lost someone close to us. And we all had to pick up the fucking pieces. I’ve had enough of him acting like he’s the only one who went through it.
I manage to land one more hit before my father drags me back again, kicking the backs of my knees until I fall to the ground.
Blood drips down Kaos’s cheeks, from his lip, and from his eyebrow. I may have only gotten a few hits in, but I made them count, and the smug son of a bitch inside me is pleased. He deserved it.
A door opens, and I look up to see Kovu look at each of us with furrowed brows, followed by a slow smile tugging at his lips. “I didn’t know we were having a party.” He looks over his shoulder and quickly shuts the door behind him. “But can we keep it down? Camilla just fell asleep, and this asshole riled her up today, so she needs her rest.”
“What the fuck did you do to her?” I growl. “You better not have hurt her. I will fucking end you if you laid a finger on her.” My voice is low and full of rage, but the anger simmering inside me is so much darker. I can’t remember the last time I felt this out of control, because that’s what I’m known for. I’m in control of every situation, every deal, every chess piece that makes up this city. It’s perfectly balanced and something I pride myself on, but right now I want to lose it. I want my baser instincts to take over, and I want to be the monster I try so hard to hide from the world. Because that’s not the part I play in this family, no matter how naturally it comes.
“I didn’t touch the precious princess.” He rolls his eyes as he wipes the blood from his cheek. “She really thought someone was going to give a fuck about her here. Seems the bitch is starved for it, so I just set her straight, made sure she knew her place.” He shrugs smugly.
Kovu makes a low noise immediately before he lunges for him, just the way I did. Right now, it feels like our family of four is split right down the middle, but Kaos and my father are going to quickly learn we’re not going to back down on this the way we normally would. This is different. This is about Camilla. This is about the missing piece of our puzzle.