Chapter 6
SIX
GRIM
It wasn’t my and Gemma’s first dead body—our love story was littered with them.
Gemma hadn’t left the beach, her body a silhouette against the moonlit sky. Despite ordering her to leave, she stayed to watch me dispose of the body. My shoulder blades were still tense from that small act of defiance.
The Crowne party continued as shadows danced against the drapes. I eyed the blood still crusted on my hands.
Contrary to the Horseman on my back, this was not my job.
I don’t do this.
Wraith was the one who made and disposed of bodies. But if I called on Wraith, I’d have to tell him everything. So I’d done what I always did with Gemma’s monsters—fed them to the sea.
My phone vibrated—the Horsemen.
Fuck.
I picked up the call. “What?”
“Where the fuck are you?” Lock asked.
My gaze traveled beyond the mansion’s inky-black shingles to the beach, where Gemma was starting to move.
“Busy,” I said.
“White Privilege Barbie is becoming a fucking problem,” Raze said. “You seen her?”
I eyed Gemma’s shadow. “Nah.”
“This is why I should have put a tracker in her,” Wraith growled. “This is bullshit.”
“She—” I started, only to be cut off by a tap, tap, tap.
A frat-boy-looking motherfucker with green eyes fogged my window with his mouth. Behind him, a pink sports car glittered on the cobblestone driveway.
“Bro.” Frat Boy tapped my window again. Behind the tempered-glass window, his voice softened as if underwater.
I muted the phone and rolled the window down just enough to see green eyes, red with weed.
Frat Boy laid his arm on my hood. “You’re blocking me—”
I snaked my hand through the sliver of space in the window, grasping his collar and slamming him against the glass. A thin trail of blood smeared a line down the window as he fell to the ground.
I got out of my car.
“Starting to hear a lot of rumors around this, man,” Lock continued. “People saying we’re weak, that we don’t enforce contracts.”
“Dude,” Raze added on the call. “Sometimes I think she wants us to kill her.”
I nearly laughed.
If they only fucking knew.
I stepped on either side of him, staring down. “You should really learn to keep your hands to yourself.”
“Word on the street is that she’s off limits,” Raze continued. “They’re saying she’s the fucking Reaper’s girl.”
I nearly laughed at that. Gemma Crowne would never give up her sparkly, perfect life.
Not that I’d let her if she tried.
“They say we’re killing people who mess with her,” Lock cut in.
I unmuted. “They also think we do weird sex stuff in the dungeon together.”
I bent over the asshole, bored. The cobblestone was wet with leftover rain, the reflection of my car’s headlights smeared and blinding. Blood poured in the slits between his fingers as he held his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice quiet and muffled.
Good.
He’d touched what wasn’t his.
“We can’t keep this contract. When you took her ink on your chest, you said it would be worth it.”
I’ve only told one lie to my brothers, five years ago, the day I took Gemma’s contract. They didn’t know what really happened on that beach, or the promise I’d made to Gemma.
They didn’t know she never asked for this. They didn’t know I forced it on her—forced all of us into this. They definitely didn’t know Gemma’s response to being forced into this was to make a game out of making monsters mad, of forcing me to choose to save her or let her die.
Every body became another secret, another lie to tell.
“It’s been five years,” Raze added. “This contract is fucking us.”
The asshole at my feet continued to slither backward, crying and begging. I paused, finding Gemma’s silhouette again.
The first time I met Gemma was back in high school, in a nearly abandoned storage room that I used to smoke.
She didn’t know I was there. The door opened and slammed shut just as I was about to light a joint, and then the tears started.
I froze with the lighter in my hand, listening.
When I saw her one-of-a-kind pink Vans, I knew it was Gemma Crowne.
I don’t know why I’d stayed. At first I was pissed I couldn’t smoke.
But the longer I leaned on the other side, listening to her cry with the lights off, the less angry I was.
Through the slats in the books, I watched her rip apart her manicure, picking off hot-pink flakes like she was on a mission.
I didn’t plan to let her know I was there. Gemma Crowne was pretty much the last person I wanted to know.
Then I leaned too hard and a book fell.
“Who the fuck is there?” she’d sniffed.
I heard her shuffling to stand, so I came around. Gemma froze when she saw me, still on her knees. Shit. That memory was burned, tattooed, etched in all my neurons.
She was so vulnerable.
So broken.
So fucking beautiful.
What happened next was what always happened with us.
Instinct.
I smeared the black mascara under her eyes, marring the freckles on her red cheeks.
She fucking angled her chin toward me, defiant.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” she’d said, voice huskier from the tears.
I could have kissed her then.
“This has to end,” Wraith said, bringing me back to the present.
There was a reason I haven’t fucked Gemma since the first time. I knew once I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I’d never let her go.
I was fucking weak for her.
I’ve always been weak for her. The dirty, ugly truth was tattooed on my chest. I sold drugs, but I didn’t fuck with them, because I already had one addiction fucking up my life.
Gemma Crowne.
“Agreed.” I clicked off, focusing on the man bleeding at my feet.
One bullet, through the temple. Another body added to my Gemma Crowne collection.