Chapter 2
ARCHER
“What the fuck was that?” Cato stalks through the doorway and into the room at the front of the house. The one with the massive fireplace and wingback chairs. The one with the piano.
The one where my father once conducted meetings and destroyed lives.
I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Slamming his hands onto my chest, Cato knocks me back a step. “Don’t come back to the house? Are you fucking braindead?”
“Don’t.” I turn to the fireplace and give him my back.
Perfect opportunity for him to shoot me while I’m not looking; it would hurt less than my current predicament.
Crushing my phone in my left palm, I place both hands on the thick cherry mantel and squeeze until my knuckles glow white.
When that doesn’t help, I close my eyes and pray the ache between my ribs dissipates soon.
But of course, a lifetime spent loving Minka Mayet plays on the backs of my eyelids, a movie I never asked for. A reel that drives splinters into my heart.
Fuck.
“Archer!” Cato grabs my arm, attempting to spin me again. “You told her not to come home!”
“I’m giving her the thing she asked for.” I swallow the fire crawling down my throat. The lava. The fucking poison. “Go away, Cato. Give me space before I say some shit that’ll hurt us.”
“You already fucking did!” he explodes. “You told her not to come home!”
“What’s going on?” Felix stops in the doorway and glowers. I don’t turn to look. I don’t quit the film playing in my mind. Heaven and hell in one. Pain and perfection… such is Minka Mayet. I don’t have to see Felix to know he’s pissed. “The fuck, Archer?”
“You told Doctor Mayet not to come home?” Steve demands, his voice shaky and not nearly as strong as he wishes it could be. “Detective Malone—”
“Come now, Mr. Morris.” Mary tries to coax the old man away. “It’s important that we head to your room. You need to rest.”
“Like hell!” His words crackle and disintegrate into a cough. A wheeze. A fucking whimper as his chest aches from the spasming movement. “Archer Malone!”
“I said leave me alone!” I turn from the mantel and shoulder-check my baby brother on my way past, then I stride around the rest of my audience—Tim, Aubree, Micah, Tiia… even the annoying federal agent, Roscoe Hale. My temper bubbles and oozes, my fury stinging every vein it fills.
I need to escape. To be alone. I need a fucking lobotomy so I can forget the sound of Minka’s hurt exhalation of breath, but Aubree grabs me on the way past, her hand wrapped around my wrist, and her strength, surprising as she tugs me back and stares into my eyes.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t ask why the fuck I’ve broken a good woman’s heart.
Because she knows all of me. Without a single word being muttered, Aubree reads my heart just as easily as others read a book. And then she dips her chin, flattens her lips, and releases me.
I turn on my heels and stride up the stairs, storming each floor and stomping on each step.
My pain is a living, breathing anguish building in my chest, and my phone, a fiery poker, scalding my flesh.
I charge through the house my father once built, the fortress he intended as his own personal kingdom, his narcissism convincing him he’s a king worth worshipping, and as I pass guards, a handful of them posted on each floor for as long as Felix is in town, I say nothing to them.
Fortunately, they say nothing to me in return.
I stomp into my bedroom and slam the door, only to twist and plaster my back to the heavy wood as Minka’s scent smacks me mercilessly in the face.
A cruel reminder of what I’ve sent away.
A memento of what I’ve broken. Her denim shorts lay draped over the back of a chair in front of the television.
A pair of flip-flops, kicked to the side after her last stint downstairs by the pool.
The bed was made in our absence, but I know pulling the sheet back will reveal more of her. Her perfume. Her shampoo. Her fucking hope that I’ll always love her the way I promised a million times since we met during a ferocious blizzard.
“Fuck!” I crush the heels of my palms against my eyes, blackening my vision until dots dance where a room was a moment ago. But amongst the dots is the woman, the doctor, the bravest person I’ve ever known, whose only flaw is caring too much about others.
Don’t come back to the house.
“Archer?” Micah’s voice rumbles from the other side of my door, his deep, troubled timbre slicing through in a way Felix’s wouldn’t have been able to. The way Cato’s can’t. “You wanna let me in?”
“No.” I shove away from my door and cross to the bed, sitting on the end and pressing my palms to my eyes again. It’s all I can do. This is the extent of my existence when Minka is no longer mine.
“Archer—”
“Fuck off, Micah!” My phone dings with an incoming message, my heart skipping and soaring in my chest. Nausea taps the base of my esophagus, threatening to make a mess.
But I lower my hands and wait for my vision to clear.
I blink, blink, blink through the blur and desperately wait for Minka’s name to come back into focus on my phone screen.
But it’s not hers I find.
Sophia:
I know I’m not supposed to monitor private phone calls and shit, but what the fuck, Detective?
“Archer.” Micah opens my door in spite of me, stepping in and closing it again to shut out the curious stares on the other side.
Tim’s. Felix’s. Aubree’s. He flips the lock and keeps his movements slow.
His walk, a mere meander. The thumb of his right hand, digging into the palm of his left, massaging an ache I’m not sure will ever truly go away.
If Felix is our obnoxious, noisy leader, and Tim is our grumpy, unsociable heir, then Micah is the one who speaks reason. He’s the one who doesn’t speak at all, unless the things he has to say mean something.
Giving up on the ache in his hand, he drops both in his pockets and comes to a stop three feet in front of me.
“So… guess I only caught the tail end of that shit, but I’m putting enough dots together to realize you might’ve just done something really fuckin’ Malone.
” He closes the space between us and sits on the bed beside me.
“Turns out I might have experience with this stuff, so if you wanna talk about it…”
“I don’t.” I toss my phone with Soph’s text read, but not acknowledged, and flop onto my back.
This is the same ceiling I stared at yesterday while Minka rode my cock.
Her beautiful body swaying over mine. Her perfect eyes warming my skin.
Her sweet dimples digging into her cheeks, because riding me is something she enjoys doing, too. “Fuck.”
“You loving Mayet is how the rest of us grew brave enough to try something similar.” Micah glances over his shoulder, his dark green eyes burning against the side of my face.
“Some might say we were born to be alone. We considered ourselves cursed. You broke the mold and proved the fate Timothy the Second set for us wasn’t the fate we had to choose.
But now you’re kinda screwing our belief system up, ‘cos if Minka and Archer are not together, the foundation the rest of us thought we were building upon becomes kinda shaky, don’t you think? ”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” I clench my jaw and wonder… where is she? Is she okay? She needs me to hold her. I know she does. But now she’s alone… in the heat… on infusion night. “I’m doing the right thing. For her,” I rasp. “For me.”
He chuckles, soft, almost silent, and completely fucking fake. “I’ve been doing the Cannon Daily crosswords for years. In pen. But I’m not sure I can solve this puzzle. You’ve lost me.”
“I already told you I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Arch?” Fletch’s voice echoes through my door, and right behind it, the soft rap of his knuckles. “Can I come in?”
“For fuck’s sake. No!” I bound to my feet and storm across the room, then whipping my door open with a flourish, I count bodies as they all take a step back.
All except one. “No, you can’t come in. No, I’m not discussing this.
And no, I don’t want a fucking hug, like that’ll make this shit better.
” I spin in place and glare at Micah. “Get out. Stay out. Mind your business. If your relationship is shaky, work on it with Tiia. I’m not the fucking glue everyone else gets to rely on for happiness. ”
Micah pushes to his feet, his temper a slow, dangerous blaze locked behind a pair of emerald eyes. His hands flexing, visible even while tucked into his pockets, and his jaw tensing, a million words attempting to be let free, but the control he has over them is absolute.
He got that from his mother. It’s the only reasonable explanation, because the Malone in him would have him setting shit on fire already.
He wanders the expanse of my room and slows in front of me, his eyes scouring mine. His lips folded into flat, unimpressed lines. Then he goes, crossing the threshold and taking Tiia’s hand in his.
God forbid she moves more than three feet from where he put her now that his belief in our happiness is on its head.
“Arch—”
I swing back to Fletch, my best friend, my brother, just as surely as the rest of them are my brothers. I was with him throughout those years as his marriage collapsed. I held him through her addiction, her infidelity, and eventually, her funeral.
Unlike Micah’s cold, calculated rage, Fletch watches me the way I know, I fucking know, I watched him while Jada destroyed them both.
Fighting anger with anger is easy. But pity? Sympathy?
“Leave me alone.” I slam the door in his face, the heavy wood rattling in the frame and vibrating out until the walls move with it. Then I swallow the ache in my throat, the one that makes it almost impossible to breathe.
Turning on my heels, I stride to my bed and scoop up my phone, but then I head back again and plaster my spine against the door, sliding down to my ass, and I wait… with my head in my hands and my heart in my throat, until finally, another text lights up my phone.
Michaels:
She’s at the apartment, boss. Door is locked behind her.