Chapter Thirteen
XADEN
I've been sitting here for hours, drowning myself, tipping back a bottle of Grey Goose.
I got sick of the taste of the brandy and bourbon so decided to try vodka.
It's going down smoother than the others—or maybe it's because I'm drunk.
I really don't give a fuck. All I know is I feel good.
I feel nothing, and that's exactly what I want.
Relaxed for the first time in years. It's been a long ass time since I've gotten drunk and I'm suddenly wondering why I ever stopped getting lit.
This is better. This is so much fucking better than feeling.
I squint my eyes and look out the windshield and my stomach drops because for half a second—just half a fucking second—I think I see them. But I blink and it's just the dark. Just the empty, dead dark.
“You're not even there.” My voice cracks and I fucking hate it. I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache. “You're not even there. You fucking left.”
Something shifts in my chest. Something soft and weak tries to claw its way up, tries to wrap itself around my ribs and squeeze, and I shove it down so hard I nearly choke.
No. No. I don't do that. I don't fucking feel that.
I take another swig and love the feeling of the alcohol burning my throat. It's a reminder that I'm alive and they aren't. And the second that thought lands, the softness tries again, tries to crack me open, and I slam the door shut on it the only way I know how.
“Fuck!” I yell, and my fist connects with the steering wheel.
The horn blares but it doesn't disrupt my rampage.
I'm too hyper focused on the need to feel pain, something sharp and clean, to simply drown out the other thing, that fucking ache in my chest that isn't anger, that I refuse to name.
A minute ago I was perfect, I was numb, I was fine, and now…
Now it's trying to get in. It's trying to make me remember and I won't.
I won't.
I throw my door open and jump out of the car only to start slamming my fists into the panels.
The metal bends beneath my knuckles and every dent is a door I'm locking.
Every hit pushes it further down: their faces, their voices, the way they used to…
No. I'm yelling but I don't even know what I'm saying, and I don't care as long as it's loud enough to drown out the silence they left behind.
My fist slams through the side window and the sting of pain from the glass tearing through my skin is like a welcome relief.
There. That's real. That's something I can understand.
Pain I can control. Not the other kind. Not the kind that sits in your chest like a rotting thing and whispers their names when you're trying to sleep.
My fit of rage flees without warning and the grief lunges, it surges up so fast I nearly buckle.
My knees give out, then drop to my ass and lean back against the side of my car, resting my forearms on the tops of my knees.
I'm panting, utterly wrung out, and for one horrible, unguarded second my eyes burn and my throat tightens and I feel it, all of it: the missing, the wanting, the howling emptiness where they used to be.
I crush it.
I strangle it.
I bury it under rage so fast it makes my head spin.
The anger is still simmering just beneath the surface, ready to break free at any moment, and I'm grateful for it. It's the only thing keeping me upright. I'm a ticking time bomb. I know it and so does Cas.
He's tried to help me focus, curb my hunger for vengeance, but nothing has sated me until tonight. Seeing her fall and hearing her screams of agony feed the beast inside me and I let it feed, because the beast is easier. The beast doesn't grieve. The beast just hunts.
The instant I find those cocksuckers' kids that Kellar has hidden and used as leverage to keep them in line, I can take him out.
I'm not Lorenzo. I actually think about what I'm doing, and if I take a Senator out, there will be hell to pay if I don't have people in high places to help me cover it up.
I'll allow her brother to play in the rematch game against us, but after that, he's mine to kill.
Without finding those fucking kids I'm stuck. I can't make a fucking move and it's making me crazy having to wait and trust my men to find out all the dirt they can. We know Steven has hidden them someplace, but we have no idea where. We only know the name.
Walter House.
When I finally claim both towns as mine, I might take Hollow Hills just to fuck with those punks who thought they could pull a gun on me.
I look up at the moon and growl. I feel nothing.
That's a lie.
I feel everything and it's killing me, so I tell myself I feel nothing and I say it again and again until the words go numb.
I used to smile and laugh… fuck, I don't even remember the sound of my own laugh.
And just like that the thing in my chest twists again, sharp and ugly, because I do remember.
I remember exactly what my laugh sounded like and exactly who used to cause it and I want to tear my own ribs open just to rip the memory out.
I have nothing to smile about. Nothing to make me happy. All I have is the skill to kill and claim turf. That has to be enough because if it isn't, if I let myself feel what's underneath, I won't survive it.
“Fuck this.” I push to my feet and sway a little as I lean through my smashed window and grab a bottle, then notice that I busted the ignition.
I stumble across the lot and pass by gravestones, and I don't look at the names.
I don't read them. I keep my eyes forward.
I know where they are buried. I picked the fucking place.
I just never came here to see them. I had no need to.
They are nothing but bug food now. Their flesh has rotted away and fallen from their bones.
Worms will be eating their corpses and there isn't a damn thing that can change that.
I tell myself that and I make it ugly on purpose. I make it grotesque because if I think of them like that, like meat, like nothing, then I don't have to think of them the way they were.
Warm. Alive. Mine.
The bottle shakes in my hand.
I take another drink and keep walking—stumbling might be a better description, but fuck it, I’m here now so I may as well surprise the dead with my presence and see if it shocks their corpse into rejoining the living.
I see the marker up ahead and my legs stop moving, I stand here in the dark of night alone with the dead, unable to move. I’m stuck. I’m rooted in place. I can torture, kill and break anything that pisses me off, yet I can’t move forward. I can’t let go.
I avoided coming here for a reason and I know to some cunts it would seem pathetic and weak, but not to me.
Seeing it makes it real.
Seeing their names makes it final.
I drop to my knees and slam my eyes closed. “Why the fuck did I come here?” I mutter.
I came here in a moment of weakness, a moment of shame because I had nowhere else to fucking turn.
I couldn’t go back to the house and allow my men to see me in this state.
They view me as strong, ruthless, a cold blooded killer.
I couldn’t even turn to Caspian. I told him to fuck off at the rink.
He tried to fight me but the moment I pulled my switchblade out, he left.
He didn’t want to watch as I cut the lips from his friend's face.
I know he is loyal to me, but it doesn’t take the sting out of the fact that the death of that cocksucker who was in the car the night I lost everything affects him.
He shouldn’t care. He should be fucking happy I took the cunt out.
We should be celebrating the death of Kyle, yet he left like a damn pussy!
They always fucking do.
No one stays.
“You came because you needed to see for yourself.” I grind my teeth so hard they ache.
The little cunt draws closer and every step she takes has me clenching the bottle tighter.
Just her mere presence has me wanting to commit mass murder.
I expect the bitch to stop beside me but she carries on, walking past me.
When she nears where they are, I push to my feet and sway. I suddenly hate being drunk.
“Don’t,” I warn as she closes in on them.
She looks back at me over her shoulder. Her blue eyes seem to glow in the moonlight, her blonde hair wet and loose.
Her face is clear of blood but the evidence of her anguish is clear as day in her eyes.
They are puffy and red from crying over the piece of shit I killed in front of her.
I take in the sight of her standing there in a fucking shirt that clearly isn’t hers.
She wears a pair of jeans beneath it but the sight of her in some other cunt’s clothes has my blood boiling.
Unlike all my other feelings I can’t slam the door on this one.
“I’m past the point of listening to you, Devlin.” The way she says my fucking last name like she has the right pisses me off.
She continues forward, the closer she gets the harder I find it to breathe. Her being here is a slap in the face to them. She has no fucking right to show her face. It’s because of her fucking family why they are here!
My legs move on their own accord so I can chase after her and stop her from getting to them, but then I slam to a stop when I see them.
The headstones are smaller than I expected.
That's the first thought that hits me and I hate myself for it, hate that some stupid, mundane observation is the thing my brain latches onto instead of the fact that my two best friends are rotting six feet beneath my boots.
I stare at the carved letters of the first name and my jaw locks so tight I feel the bones in my skull creak.
I take a swig from the bottle. Then another.