Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
ROMAN
Ifucking hate the holidays.
The traffic is always a bitch, and I swear it’s like an open invitation for the world's most idiotic assholes to venture away from their everyday lives and shop for gifts at the same time as everyone else.
It’s me.
I’m the idiotic asshole.
If you searched you’d see a picture of my face.
My phone buzzes for the thousandth time in my coat pocket, though I’m choosing to ignore it.
My father has been calling me all day, but I know it’s because he’s not happy about us refusing to spend the holidays at home as a family.
He’s going to have to get over it because Colton, Jace, and I have other plans.
Since becoming enforcers, our Christmases are filled with endless assignments.
We’ve had to prove ourselves over and over again to The Order before they’d even consider giving us time off.
This is the first year we’ve had a break, and I know it’s because my father had planned to have us stay with him, but fuck that. We’d all rather work instead.
Besides, it means that I actually have time to buy the perfect gifts for my boyfriends, which is how I ended up here—in the middle of the mall, paying a woman five bucks a pop to wrap presents. I’m a complete ass at gift wrapping, and the guys would only laugh at me if I tried.
Behind me, someone’s kid is crying, and I’ve had just about enough Mariah to last a fucking lifetime.
Gifts in hand, I haul ass to my car, that low hum of anticipation sitting warm in my chest. I plan to cook dinner for them tonight, and yeah, I’m weirdly looking forward to it.
I can’t remember the last time we just simply existed as a normal fucking household, and the past couple of months have been like a heavy, emotional weight on all our shoulders.
Guilt wraps around my heart, squeezing tightly with the regret of how we left Bailey that night.
There isn’t a single day that has gone by since that I haven’t thought about it.
How her mouth felt wrapped around my cock, her moans when both Jace and Cole fucked her, is enough to send me spiraling.
But all of that fades away, and is replaced with the ugly truth that we left her there like she was nothing more than an also-ran racehorse. Ridden hard and hung up wet. Literally.
Leaving her like that was our only option.
The connection we’d always shared only intensified to a catastrophic level from the moment we touched her, and we all knew that she felt it too.
That was a huge fucking problem, because if she ever decided to venture down the foolish path of discovering our true identities, not only would she reveal who killed her ex, but she’d learn that the three masked strangers were her stepbrother and his two best friends.
That would only complicate the fuck out of everything, and risk raising speculation where The Order is concerned.
Not to mention my father, who is still fucking calling me.
I reject the call, sending it straight to voicemail with the rest of them, as I pull into our drive beside Colton’s snow-covered Audi R8.
They’re home.
I’m smiling when I hit the top of the porch, because I know that the minute Colton sees that I come bearing gifts, he’s going to wield whatever power he thinks he has over me and try to convince me to let him open them early.
Not a chance.
This is our first normal Christmas together, so he can wait until next week and open his presents on Christmas Day like everyone else.
I reach for my keys and twist the doorknob by instinct, frowning when I notice that it’s unlocked.
That’s strange.
Jace and Cole are usually good with our security.
Our job demands it. I mean, Cole is a damn hacker for Christ’s sake.
That’s one of the reasons my father wanted to bring him into The Order.
He slips through firewalls and networks like a damn ghost, and can create, maintain, and wipe digital traces of all kinds.
His skills are next level, which is why unease crawls across my skin at the thought of them not being guarded.
When I notice the alarm system isn't on, dread immediately sits heavily in the pit of my stomach.
Could our work have followed them home?
It isn't unlikely to think that someone could seek some sort of revenge for whatever it is we took from them, and it doesn’t sit right with me that my guys could have been blindsided.
Cautiously, I step inside, pushing the door open as quietly as possible, just in case I walk into the biggest clusterfuck imaginable.
The smile dies on my face when light, feminine laughter filters down the hallway. What?
I set the bags down on the counter, my mind running through every recent conversation searching for some mention that we’d be having company, but we don’t do company. Ever.
So who the fuck is in our house?
I stalk toward whatever the hell is going on in the living room, my pulse climbing with every muted step, and when I see the reason for everyone’s fucking happiness, there’s no holding back the anger rushing through my veins.
Bailey’s legs are draped over Colton’s lap, controller in hand and game on the screen, but all I see is red. Jace is on the floor in front of them, leaning back against Cole’s knees, laughing at something she says. All three of them look so damn comfortable, and it only makes my stomach twist.
“Care to explain why Bailey fucking Asher is in our house?” I seethe, watching them fumble—big time.
Colton jolts like he’s been slapped, causing Bailey to drop her controller on the floor.
Jace freezes halfway to standing, guilt written across every line of his face, and the succubus in question just blinks, not understanding that she’s made the biggest fucking mistake by being here.
They know better than to let this happen. They know the fucking consequences.
“Baby, we need to talk,” Jace says, and Colton shifts to stand at his side. They’re standing there like I’m an untamed fucking animal who’s escaped from my cage, and I think that pisses me off the most.
“Be so fucking for real with me right now,” I say, and Jace scrubs a hand over his face. Clearly, they aren’t fucking thinking. I spin on my heels and walk down the hallway, storming into our kitchen where my discarded shopping waits.
Bailey is in our house, after everything we had discussed. We’ve been turning ourselves inside out since Fright Night, and for what…? They couldn’t hack it, so they invited her over?
Why put her at risk like that?
I ignore the two broody bodies standing on either side of me and start unpacking the groceries from the bags on the counter.
“Roman, we need to talk.” It’s Jace who speaks first, reaching out to gently place a hand on my forearm.
“You don’t say?” I mutter, pausing to look him straight in the eyes, hoping they see just how pissed off I am.
“We would never have gone out of our way to have her here, and you know it,” Cole says, his voice calmer than I feel.
“I don’t know, you looked pretty fucking cozy together.”
“Keith did this.” I pause at Jace’s mention of my father, because whenever he’s involved in something, shit always hits the fucking fan. “He spoke to Whitman, and apparently, boarding is at full capacity—”
“Bullshit!” I interrupt, seething over the fact that Keith and Whitman are talking about our girl in the first place.
That detail alone is enough to put me on edge.
Whitman may be the dean, but he’s also one of the Elders, and the fact that Bailey is on his radar is alarming.
If they want her here, that’s a damn good indication that she shouldn’t be.
Now I know why he’s been trying to call me all fucking day.
“So, what, you just let her in? Do you not see how dangerous that is?” I say through clenched teeth, standing back to look at both my guys.
Their harrowed expressions only fuck with something inside my chest, and the anger and tension begin to fade almost immediately.
A deep, heavy wave of concern for what this could all mean floods the space between us.
Do the Elders know about Fright Night?
“She is safer here with us, baby. We won’t let anyone hurt her,” Cole says, and then he and Jace move, closing the space between us until the heat rolling off their bodies burns through the cold presence of dread creeping up my spine.
“If they know—”
“They don’t know. Nobody knows. I’ve torn through every link to that warehouse, including her phone. She’s safe, Ro,” Colton says, his words hanging like a heavy weight while my brain plays catch-up.
“You left the damn house unlocked.” My voice comes out flat, and Jace’s guilty expression says that he’s the one responsible.
“That’s my bad. I changed the alarm code for Bailey, right before you stormed into the house like a caveman,” he says playfully, kissing a trail along my jaw before meeting my mouth.
“I got distracted,” he adds, slipping his tongue past my lips as his arms wrap around my waist. He pulls me in closer to him, and I willingly follow.
“Oh my fucking God,” Colton gasps, and both Jace and my attention snap to him. “You bought me presents. Aweee, Babbbyy.”
Bailey disappeared into her bedroom, and that’s where she’s been since I came home this afternoon.
I feel like the biggest cunt on the planet for not even bothering to check on her, but that’s not what we do.
Bailey and I haven’t really talked since high school.
Not since I said goodbye and went on one of my father’s trips to Banff.
Which was all a fucking lie. The father and son bonding trip ended up being an initiation into The Order, and I couldn’t even look at Bailey after what we had to do—what I had to do.
Before then, I had never taken a life, and if I had shown any signs of remorse or regret, my targets would get younger and younger, until the list of names bled into faces I’d grown up with, and it was only a matter of time before one of those faces was hers.
Emotion became a liability, and love? We could kiss the idea of that shit goodbye because that’s not how our lives were designed.
But what they didn’t know was that of all the humanity they’d so methodically ripped from us, they could never take away the love that Jace, Colton, and I shared.
We’ve learned to keep the things we love the most locked away and out of their reach, which is why Bailey being under our roof feels like The Order is taunting us.
We fucked up.
We should have never even touched her in the first place, if not for anything but to prevent this sickening paranoia. But God, she was perfect.
Everything about Bailey makes my body ache to have her close, to feel her in the spaces we didn’t know existed until she walked into our lives that first time.
What I feel for her is complicated, but the one thing that has always been clear to me is that I love her.
We all love her.
My stepsister.
One of the many reasons why being around her is a terrible idea. We’re just asking for trouble at this point. But I can’t help it.
No matter how much logic fucking screams at me, no matter how much I tell myself to stay the fuck away from her, my body, my mind, and my heart all betray me.
I stare up at my ceiling, needing space and time to think. Jace and Cole have been asleep for hours, so I decided to hide out in my room tonight so that I didn’t wake them with my bullshit.
I can’t sleep knowing that she’s under the same roof as us after everything that we did to her. Knowing that we hurt her so fucking badly over and over, and over again, and she still fucking manages to smile.
There is no shaking Bailey Asher.
She’s woven into the fabric of who we are, and to pretend she doesn’t exist is to tear ourselves open every single fucking day, and I don’t think I have the strength to stay away from her anymore.
Not when I know what it feels like to have her. Her taste, her lips… the sounds she makes when she comes are seared into my memory, and I’ll be forever branded by her.
I tried to do what was right. For three years now, I’ve tried to keep my distance because I thought that was the only way to keep her safe from our world, and all the pain and suffering that comes from being in this fucked up society.
We made an oath and wrote our names in the blood of our victims, swearing loyalty to The Order until our dying day. Every death, every single drop of blood, bound us tighter to this world, but I’ll be fucking damned if the Elders or anyone else thinks they can stop us from being together.
She’s ours. Sacred. And we’ll burn this whole fucking world down before we ever let them touch her.
I rise from my bed before I can talk myself out of it, and do the one thing I swore I’d never do. I open the drawer of my nightstand and reach for my Ghost face mask and knife.
If this is ever going to work, if we’re going to have a chance of surviving what’s coming, she needs to know the truth.
All of it.