Chapter Four #2
“I already knew that.” Jeremiah sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve had several run-ins with Scias Mailliard over the years. I know what he’s capable of.”
“So do I,” she whispered, looking down. Emotions clogged her throat and it took a moment to regain control of her emotions.
“You can stay with me,” Saxon spoke up. “I could give a rat’s ass what Jeremiah orders. He’s a moody bastard. Oh! I know. We could give each other mani-pedis and watch the Marvel universe in chronological order.”
“No,” Evren immediately countered. “I don’t think your brand of crazy is what she needs right now.”
“Rude,” Saxon retorted. “Crazy is not my fault. I suspect somewhere in my baby-hood, I had been dropped on my head once or twice. Unfortunately, I can’t ask the incubator since she’s dead.”
Lowen blinked. “Incubator?”
“His mother,” Evren answered.
Saxon held up a finger. “Let it state for the record that I was born motherless. God’s honest truth. I just borrowed that woman’s womb for nine months.”
Jeremiah pinched the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake.”
“She’s staying with me,” Evren interjected, eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” Jeremiah huffed. He turned a calculating gaze her way. “A past life, you said? I suppose you’ve heard a few things. Perhaps you could tell me something I can validate.”
“You mean, other than preventing you from getting a scar on your face?”
“Yes,” Jeremiah replied sarcastically. “Other than the scar I don’t have.”
“I wasn’t really privy to a lot of Scias’s dealings—”
“Convenient.”
“Jeremiah,” Evren rebuked. “She knows about Direridge.”
“What?” He narrowed his gaze. “How?”
“The night I died, I came downstairs and heard Scias and Rexx talk about a meeting at Direridge. That’s why Scias pushed me off the balcony.”
Jeremiah leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. She saw the proverbial wheels spinning in his head. “That means we have a mole.”
“Exactly what I thought,” Evren remarked. “Even if you don’t believe her past life story, the fact is, she’s heard the name Direridge.”
“I want you to investigate anyone who’s had access to the knowledge,” Jeremiah ordered. “Needless to say, this doesn’t go anywhere outside the four of us. Understood?”
“Okay,” Evren agreed.
“No brainer, of course,” Saxon replied.
“Lowen?” he asked.
She quickly nodded. “Okay.”
Jeremiah rose and picked up his tablets and phones. “Remember, Lowen, you’re hiding. Not to be seen. I’ll see if I can get any information on your situation. Evren, Saxon. You both start work in fifteen minutes. I have two conference calls today, so don’t bother me unless it’s urgent.”
He stalked out of the dining room without saying anything more.
“I don’t think he likes me,” she said.
Evren shrugged. “He doesn’t really like anyone. Not even Sax.”
“Hey! I can charm the pants off a fly.”
“Pants wearing flies aside, let’s quickly finish breakfast.”
She bit her bottom lip, wondering if she should leave or not.
“It’s okay, Lowen,” Saxon assured her. “If he wanted you gone, he’d have kicked you out.”
Evren nodded. “Jeremiah is the oldest so he thinks he has to carry the world on his shoulders. He had to become an adult early in life, but if it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where we’d have ended up.”
“Who’s the youngest?”
“That would be me,” Saxon replied, holding his hand up. “Aera is second oldest, but he left Vegas years ago. Last time I heard from him, he was president of a motorcycle club.”
“There’s four of you?”
“Six,” Evren answered.
“Right,” she said. “Now I remember you mentioning two others.”
“Every day I wonder if this’ll be the day the cops come to tell us they’re dead,” Saxon muttered. “And I wonder if I’ll miss them. It’s not like I care about them or anything. But still. Will I be angry? Sad? Indifferent? What is the protocol when you have siblings who freebase fentanyl?”
She reached out and took his hand, trying to convey she empathized, but he jerked his hand away.
“Oh, I’m sorry...”
“You startled me.”
“Saxon,” Evren reproached.
“It’s okay, Evren,” she said softly. She addressed Saxon. “I overstepped. I do apologize.”
“I just don’t like to be startled.” Saxon cleared his throat. “Anyway. Jeremiah has tried getting Georgie and Cricket sober but they don’t want to get better, so all he can do is make sure their house remains standing.”
“That’s sad.”
“Them and me are the only ones that are blood related,” Saxon added, and just like that his sour mood disappeared. “We share a father. But the big melting pot of stepsiblings I have are more my family than those two.”
“Jeremiah took over as caregiver as each of us was added to the mix,” Evren explained. “He’d make sure we were fed. Went to school. Protected us.”
“I wish I had someone protect me from my father,” she mused sadly.
“My mother had just been placed in the ground when he banned me from leaving his house. Said he didn’t want the outside world to influence me with inappropriate ideas.
When I turned thirteen, he put my virginity up for sale and Scias bought it.
His investment would’ve paid off on our wedding night when he forced himself into my body. ”
She shuddered a little at the memory.
“When he raped you,” Evren clarified.
“Some would argue that a husband can’t rape a wife.”
“They would be wrong.”
She nodded, looking away, doubting she’d ever want to be intimate with a man again.
“Don’t let the monsters win,” Saxon interjected. A black hole swirled in the depths of his royal blue eyes. Pain. Anger. Disgust. The gravity sucking all his light. “There are many, many nightmares in this world and not enough good souls. Don’t let them get you lost.”