37. Cruel To Be Kind
CRUEL TO BE KIND
Qiang’s POV
The house is eerily quiet when Marcus and I make our way down the stairs and to the garage.
The house is empty, but we are going to have a long day of housecleaning when we get back.
Although after Marcus got off the phone with Cade this morning, I have more questions about that than worries about cleaning the house later.
Tristan and Qi are already waiting for us in the backseat of Marcus’s Mercedes when we get to the garage. Qi is curled against Tristan’s shoulder, while Tristan looks completely at ease, as if nothing is amiss, when the reality is quite the opposite.
“What did he say to you?” Marcus asks Tristan while we climb into the car.
Tristan shakes his head. “Not much, just that shit’s about to go down, and he has Kingston under control while it does. Said he’ll fill us in on the rest when we get there.”
“I wonder what he did to get Kingston under control?” Marcus muses aloud, knowing nobody in this car has the answer.
“I wonder if anyone in this car is planning on explaining what’s going on?” I sass out irritably, not liking being kept in the dark.
“Tristan, Marcus, and Cade have been working to get the Adairs out of our lives once and for all. Whatever they’ve been cooking up is coming to a head right now, and Cade wants to make sure all the key players are in the same place so he can make sure no one gets accidentally trapped in the fallout,” Qi huffs out in frustration.
Tristan grimaces at the amount of displeasure on Qi’s face, but I honestly don’t know why he’s so worried about it. If Qi were really that mad at him, he wouldn’t be actively laying his head on his shoulder.
Then again, Tristan is so attuned to Qi that, regardless of what role Tristan plays in his displeasure, Qi feeling displeasure on any level, for any reason, is fundamentally wrong, as far as Tristan is concerned.
Sounds as though Tristan hasn’t been giving Qi much more information than Marcus gave me last night when he said something about Sterling being taken care of, or this morning after Cade’s phone call.
He just keeps telling me to trust him and that we’ll all be on the same page soon, since it’s Cade who seems to have all the keys.
Which means that whatever is happening is most likely highly illegal and something that could destroy us all if Sterling somehow manages to pull the rug out from under whatever cockamamie plan they’ve cooked up.
Tristan already has the GPS set to a location that’s about forty-five minutes away. It looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere, and I watch Marcus frown before looking up to meet Tristan’s eyes in the mirror.
“Final call. Do we trust this guy?” he asks.
“Oh my god! You went so far as to include him on whatever revenge plot you’ve got going against the Adairs, but you wait until now to fucking question it. Ridiculous!” I huff out, more than just a little tired, and a whole lot of scared.
Whatever they’ve got going on seems like it’s already in motion, and if it goes wrong, it could be catastrophic, and I’m absolutely terrified and more than just a little bit prickly. I want these fuckers out of my life, not somehow managing to have stakes on my most important people.
Marcus huffs and leans over towards me, his thumb brushing against my jaw.
“I promise, pretty, everything is going to be just fine.”
“If you believed that, then you wouldn’t be asking questions about trusting Cade this deep into it,” I grumble back.
Marcus sighs and nods towards Tristan. Tristan nods back, and just like that, Marcus puts the car in reverse, and we start a very long, very quiet drive out to the middle of nowhere.
If I thought shit couldn’t get any shadier than it already was, the fact that the GPS leads us to an abandoned farm that’s so far removed from civilization I don’t even know how the GPS knew this place existed makes this so much worse.
I don’t know if this is Cade purposefully being as creepy as humanly possible, or if this is really a glimpse of how shady he can get.
Either way, the–at least fifty years past due for a fresh coat of paint–dilapidated–looking barn in the middle of an overgrown field that looks reminiscent of every horror movie I’ve ever seen has my skin crawling and the hair on the back of my neck rising.
Cade is the picture of ease as he strides out of the barn before Marcus even has the car in park. With his crisp sense of fashion and his infamous vanity, the fact that he looks calm here is unsettlingly out of place.
The only thing that has me following Marcus out of the car, rather than dragging him back in and making him turn tail and head back home right now, is that it’s Cade.
I’ve known Cade for years, and I trust him.
Even if this whole setting is about as un-Cade-like as possible, knowing he set up whatever is going down here keeps the full-scale panic that’s threatening to come up at bay.
“You guys are just in time. I had to scramble, but I’ve got everything under perfect control. In less than an hour, Sterling will be done,” he says to Marcus and Tristan.
He turns to me with eyes full of concern. “I promise, little pixie, they’ll pay for what they’ve done to you,” he reassures me, and the level of care and friendship that exists in that alone has a hitch in my throat.
Fucker and I may only be friends, but sometimes I forget, with how distant of a person he is, how much his friends mean to him. He may not be loud with his feelings, but it doesn’t mean they don’t run as deep.
I suddenly feel Marcus’s arms wrap around me just before his chest presses against my back and I’m practically encased within the bracket of his arms.
“Stop it, you jealous brute,” I hiss quietly in Marcus’s ear.
Marcus just responds by leaning in and nipping playfully at my neck. Cade snorts with amusement at my attempt to look like I’m put out by Marcus’s possessiveness, but the fact that I’m burrowing deeper into him isn’t exactly convincing anyone.
And just like that, Cade’s mask of neutrality slips back on, and he focuses back on Marcus and Tristan as if that little moment hadn’t happened at all.
“Let’s go,” he says, motioning his head towards the dilapidated, freaky-ass barn.
“What if he escapes?” Marcus asks, as the rest of us follow Cade’s lead.
Cade shakes his head. “No chance; even if he managed it, I have a backup plan that will take him out completely if necessary.”
“Completely, as in…?” I ask to clarify that he’s saying what I think he’s saying.
Cade turns to me with a maniacal gleam in his eye I’ve never seen before, and I realize, for the first time, how shady he really can be. Not sure how I feel about that, but then again, if anyone deserves to meet an unnatural end, it’s Sterling Adair.
But then, when we walk into the barn, my eyes pop wildly.
Kingston is tied–to–a–motherfucking–chair.
Like, creepy illegal-interrogation-room tied, with his chest bound to the chair, his hands pulled back and tied behind him, and duct tape across his mouth.
Kingston’s eyes land on mine, and he starts yelling, his words getting muffled by the tape.
Marcus’s arms tighten around me while he and Tristan exchange uneasy glances before turning towards Cade.
“What the fuck did you do, Cade?”
Cade looks completely unbothered as he straightens the sleeves of his shirt.
“You said you wanted him safe, that you needed to question him and make sure he has an alibi while Daddy goes down. After your party, he went to a club and drank ‘til he passed out. I just snagged him while he was compliant and secured him for when he woke up. Safe, interrogable, and a room full of fucking alibis, it’s exactly what you asked for,” he shrugs as if it’s the most natural fucking thing ever.
Kingston’s eyes flash in my direction as he screams, and it’s not fear there.
Instead, it’s rage. He’s totally pissed, which is fair; if I’d had a day like he’s having, I’d be pissed too.
But I think I’d be a bit more scared than pissed if I’d woken up tied to a chair in a barn in a place so far removed from society, I’m not even sure time exists here anymore.
Not to mention being in a room of people who are most definitely not his friends. Not this guy, though.
“Should we untie him?” Tristan asks quietly.
Qi scoffs at that. “Fuck no, let the fucker piss himself for a while,” he says harshly.
“Qi…” I chide quietly.
“You know what, no, Qiang. This guy was in our house last night, calling you a whore after everything he’s already done to you.
Let him fucking sit there and suffer over it for a minute.
It’s not like he’s actually in danger here.
No one here is actually going to kill him,” Qi rants out angrily, making me swallow the rest of my words.
Qi is like the nicest person ever, to everyone, all the time, except Kingston.
Kingston broke the one rule Qi can’t forgive.
He hurt me, maliciously and cruelly, and while I know Qi’s only being cruel because he trusts that everyone here will be safe at the end of the day, it still breaks my heart to see him this angry, even in a way that will ultimately carry no long-lasting harm.
“Well, hypothetically–” Cade drolls lazily in response to Qi’s assumption of not killing Kingston tonight.
“Cade…” Tristan says slowly in warning.
While it’s obvious some of this was supposed to happen, and he’s not exactly putting his foot down on setting Kingston loose regardless of his discomfort at how Kingston is being held, it’s obvious he draws the line at actually killing Kingston.
Although he didn’t bat an eyelash when Cade stated that death is a backup plan for Sterling if he manages to escape whatever trap they’ve laid out for him.