Chapter 23 Brother’s Fury
Chapter twenty-three
Brother's Fury
Lena
Miguel's face when he saw my wrecked state told me everything.
I'm standing in my Mobile Mercy Unit, my scrubs wrinkled like I've been through a medical emergency—or gotten finger-fucked on my own exam table, but who's keeping track?
My hair's escaped its ponytail in that specific way that screams "sexual activity" rather than "saving lives," and I'm alone.
Completely alone. Zane slipped out the back door minutes ago, but his presence lingers like a fever I can't shake.
"You're fucking an Iron Talon," Miguel says, not a question. A diagnosis. Terminal.
"It's not like that," I lie, my voice steady despite my pulse running tachycardic enough to require medical intervention.
"You're marked, disheveled, and smell like sex," he lists, like presenting symptoms. "Your lips are swollen, there's a hickey forming on your neck that you haven't even noticed yet, and—" he pauses, his jaw clenching, "—his bike is still warm outside."
My left ovary composes a funeral march while my right brain calculates exit strategies. None of them end well. All of them end with either Zane dead, Miguel devastated, or me alone. Possibly all three.
"Miguel—"
"Him or family." His voice is quiet now, which is worse than yelling. Miguel quiet is Miguel lethal. "That's your choice. Right here, right now."
"That's not fair," I protest, even though fair is a concept that died with our parents, with his wife, with every person I couldn't save.
"Life isn't fair," he says, and there's so much history in those three words. "We both learned that young. Choose, Lena. Him or us. The enemy or your family."
I think about Zane, currently breathing as quietly as possible six feet away, probably planning seventeen different ways to kill Miguel if this goes south. I think about the texts, the way he watches me work, the way he makes me feel like my disasters are features, not bugs.
I think about Miguel, who raised me after our parents died, who taught me to be strong, who built a family from broken people and blood oaths.
"It's already over," I lie, the words tasting like antiseptic and ash. "Whatever you think happened, it's done. Finished."
Miguel studies me with those eyes that have seen too much, know too much. For a moment, I think he's going to call my bluff, going to search the van, going to find Zane and paint my medical sanctuary with violence.
But then his shoulders drop, just slightly. "Good. Because if I find out you lied to me, hermana, if I find out you chose him..." He doesn't finish the threat. He doesn't need to.
"I know," I say quietly. "I know what I'd lose."
He pulls me into a hug, and I smell leather and motor oil and home. "You're all I have left," he murmurs against my hair. "I can't lose you to them. Not to them."
"You won't," I promise, another lie to add to my collection. I'm becoming quite the curator of deceptions.
He leaves, finally, his bike roaring to life like a warning. I wait until the sound fades completely, then wait another full minute, counting heartbeats like rosary beads.
My phone buzzes.
Zane: He's gone. You can stop holding your breath.
Of course he's still nearby. Of course he's watching. That should terrify me more than it thrills me.
You should be halfway to safety by now
Zane : I don't do safe. Thought you'd figured that out
He appears in the back door like a fever dream with better cheekbones, slipping inside with that fluid grace of someone used to moving through shadows.
"You lied for me," he says, not touching me, just studying my face like he's trying to read my vital signs.
"I lied for us," I correct, then laugh because there shouldn't be an 'us.' There can't be an 'us.' "God, I'm an idiot."
"No," he says, stepping closer. "You're protective. There's a difference."
"I just betrayed my brother. My family. Everything I—"
He kisses me, soft this time, nothing like the desperate claiming from before. It's worse, somehow. Tender is so much more dangerous than violent.
"You didn't betray anyone," he says against my lips. "You chose happiness over history. That's not betrayal. That's evolution."
"That's a pretty way to justify destruction," I tell him, but I'm not pulling away.
"We're both pretty destructive," he agrees. "Might as well be it together."
My phone buzzes. I look at it, then at him, then make a decision that's either brilliant or suicidal. Possibly both.
"My apartment. Midnight," I tell him, my voice steady despite my internal organs staging a full revolt. "Bring condoms and that attitude."
His smile is dark and full of promise. "What attitude?"
"The one that makes me forget I'm supposed to be smart."
"Angel, you're brilliant," he says, backing toward the door. "Smart has nothing to do with what we are."
"And what are we?"
"Inevitable," he says, and disappears into the night like a promise I shouldn't want to keep.
I stand in my van, surrounded by medical supplies and the ghost of good decisions, and text him my address. Because apparently, I've decided that if I'm going to destroy my life, I might as well do it thoroughly.
My left ovary approves. My right brain has filed for conscientious objector status.
And somewhere in between, in that space where disaster meets desire, I'm already planning what underwear to wear for my own apocalypse.
Black lace, I decide. If you're going to burn, might as well look good in the ashes.