7. Ruin
Chapter 7
Ruin
Rage keeps his emotions locked inside of an impenetrable box. Its lid is strong, made from layer upon layer of fury and frustration that he condenses down to its most dense form, which then slides securely over the rim and keeps every other human emotion locked up tight. It’s why I was surprised that he formed an attachment to Celia so quickly after finding her, but that involved strategy, not just emotion.
Claiming Celia for himself isn’t only because he likes her. It’s because he knows that Rebel and I will like her, too—and finding someone who can tolerate the three of us isn’t something you simply do . It’s an act of divine intervention having thrown her in our path.
When she ran away the first time, it was mostly anger that slipped free.
Now that she’s disappeared from under his nose for a second time, it isn’t just anger rising up—it’s pain. Because despite all of his best efforts, he has to come to terms with the fact that some things are out of his control.
Celia may be one of those.
“This is not your fault.” I stare at the empty cage in our living room, my arms crossed over my chest. She didn’t break out—our brother Rebel let her out. “He broke the rules.”
Rage is barely listening, too focused on his phone to hear me. He grunts in response, glaring at the screen. “I shouldn’t have given him a key.”
Of course, he’ll continue to find ways to blame himself.
He pours over security feed, tracking their descent from the roof to the diner across the street, until finally they end up in one of the cars from the club’s valet lot. “They went for a little joyride,” he growls, shoving his phone into his pocket. After running a hand through his hair and tucking in his shirt, he shrugs on his suit jacket and grabs the keys to his SUV.
I finger the knife strapped to my hip, slipping it in and out of its holster. “Where are they now?”
“Not far. Let’s go.”
Pinpointing Celia’s location is easy with the GPS tracker inside her collar. We stop by the valet office for a spare key before following the map to one of the most popular hills in the city and silently scanning each car idling on the cliffside overlook. Most of them are your typical suburban outfit, but one stands out—the bright red Ferrari. In typical Rebel style, he chose the most inconspicuous joyride possible.
Not only that, but it’s rocking .
We pull up beside them and Rage jumps out of our car before we’ve even stopped. I slide the gear shift into park while he interrupts our brother’s fun.
I wasn’t invited to watch, but I slip out of the passenger seat and make my way to the front of their car to peer through the window. It’s too fogged inside for me to make out more than shadows, but with Rage sitting in the driver’s seat, it’s easy to picture Celia and Rebel on the passenger side. Is she the one rocking in his lap, or is he crammed against the dash while ramming inside of her? Are their bodies woven tightly together, blurring the lines between where she starts and he ends, or are they barely touching one another?
I wonder what it’s like to be wrapped up inside of her. To be consumed in her presence, unable to see anything outside of her light and warmth. I picture Celia kissing each of my brothers and wonder what it is about her lips that they enjoy. If I kiss her, will I taste a kaleidoscope on her tongue?
That could be why Rage and Rebel are so obsessed. Not to her, but to the waves of color she radiates. The taste and touch of a blushing rose, or the radiant gold of honey laced with a sugar so sweet, we’re doomed to gorge ourselves to death.
I can hear them moaning, their voices neither clashing nor melodic. Merely the sounds of two people falling apart. Within seconds after the crescendo, Rage reappears, snapping the driver’s door shut and storming off into the distance. I keep my hands in my pockets and watch him until he disappears up the long stretch of road toward the hilltop. He’ll be back once he cools off.
Someone inside the car suddenly presses their hand against the windshield, smearing the condensation and allowing me to peer inside. Celia is wrangling her body back inside her clothes as quickly as possible, clumsily bumping into both the window and the ceiling of the car, until finally she tumbles out of the side door.
Her hair is a wild tangle of warm auburn locks framing her face in a fiery halo from the pink sunrise. She looks up and around quickly, her eyes wide and sweatpants on backwards. “Where did he go?” she asks, still looking around while fidgeting with the ends of her t-shirt.
I nod toward the slope extending up the hill. “He’ll be back.”
She curses under her breath and rakes her fingers through her hair. “He just—he just sat there.”
Rebel emerges from the car a second later, his skin flushed and his hair as wild as hers. “Baby, don’t worry about him. He just needs to walk it off.” He slips Celia’s arms into a leather jacket and zips it up halfway, then does the same for his own.
Touching her throat, Celia prods the fresh bruises peeking out from around her leather collar. “He’s going to be angry. I wasn’t in the cage like I was supposed to be.” She looks over at me like I hold the secrets to solving her problems with Rage. All I can do is stare right back. There’s a layer of sweat at her hairline, little wisps curling and sticking to her skin.
While Rebel tries to soothe her, I commit Celia’s current appearance to memory. Not only is she flushed from what I assume is sex with Rebel, but she’s also distressed, a worry line creasing on her forehead. She looks at me without truly seeing me, lost to the turmoil inside her head.
“He’s always angry. That’s his thing.” Rebel pulls her into his arms and murmurs something in her ear, leaving me out of the conversation. He kisses her cheek, then tilts her head up to kiss her lips. It’s a tender moment, made even softer by the way she looks at him once they pull apart.
Like he’s holding her heart in his hands.
Unlike Rage, it doesn’t bother me that Rebel and Celia are getting closer. It was bound to happen the moment I carried her back into our lives. “He’s upset that you chose Rebel,” I interject, “before him.”
Celia turns her frown onto me. “Why the hell would I choose to be with the maniac who’d rather choke me out than be nice to me?”
It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just what Rage wanted.
“Don’t worry,” Rebel says, pressing another kiss to Celia’s lips, “he won’t take it out on you. I promise.” Releasing her, he gives me a quick look before heading up the road. “I’ll go talk to him. Stay here with Ruin.”
“Are you crazy?” She looks between the two of us before following Rebel up the slope toward the top of the hill. “You just said he needs to walk it off!”
“It’ll go faster if he has a punching bag.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
I follow the two of them on foot, keeping watch of our surroundings. All three of them are so wound up in each other that they’re forgetting who and where we are. Bratva families will keep their distance if they recognize us, but we’re on North Side. Many civilians live here, and their daily commute is about to start. We’ll be a walking spectacle within minutes.
As the sun rises, the sky turns a deeper shade of pink, bleeding all around us. Only when we reach the top of the hill does the sun break over the horizon. A crown of gold shoots into the heavens, and standing at the hilltop overlooking the city is my oldest brother Rage. His fists are clenched tightly by his sides, his gaze absorbed in the waking city below.
“Brother,” Rebel calls out, jogging toward him. “Listen?—”
Rage spins, throwing his body weight into a punch that lands square on Rebel’s jaw. Their weight classes are different, and Rebel can’t take hits like that without consequences. He tips backward and stumbles, gravel spraying around his feet as he catches himself. Straightening, he throws his arms out and spits blood onto the ground. “Come on, you call that a hit?”
I grab Celia as she lunges toward them. “Don’t,” I warn, “or it will be your blood on the ground instead of his.” She struggles in my arms, and I lock her in a loose chokehold to keep her from squirming hard enough to actually get loose. I can’t let her throw herself into the fight. I doubt they would intentionally hurt her, but if Rage throws a punch and she jumps in the way, even if he pulls back, she won’t get out unscathed.
Rebel can take a hit without passing out, but I’m not sure about Celia. If she gets injured, things are only going to get worse for all of us.
Rage lunges. Rebel deftly dodges to the side, using his speed to his advantage. It’s been years since they’ve gone at each other and longer still since they’ve honed their distinct fighting styles, but their best techniques fly out the window as they slip back into old habits. It’s like I’m watching a replay from fifteen years ago when Rebel got his ass handed to him for coming home drunk after a high school party. Only this time, he’s drunk off of a woman instead of liquor.
Still, he’s grinning even when Rage’s fist connects with his ribs. He groans, then quickly kicks out at Rage’s shin and covers his pants in dust. “You mad, bro? What, because I fucked your girl?” Shaking his head, he laughs again. “Or is it because I broke your precious rules?”
“I locked her in there for a reason!” Rage shoves Rebel back a few steps. “You can’t take her out whenever you damn well please!”
“She was starving!” Rebel’s smile hardens and he jabs Rage in the throat without doing enough damage to repel him. They grapple each other and tumble to the ground, Rebel landing on top. “You didn’t fucking feed her! You lock her up, knock her the fuck out, and then you don’t actually take care of her! You should have stayed with her until she woke up! Made sure she was okay! Called the fucking doctor!” He punches Rage’s face, growling, “how can you say you want a child if you can’t even take care of its mother? You’ll kill any kid you have!”
Grabbing Rebel’s hand mid-punch, Rage squeezes until Rebel yelps. “Because fucking her is so much better, huh?” He rolls them over and pins Rebel to the ground with a knee on his chest. “You couldn’t wait to get your dick wet, so you bribed her with dinner to win her over. Father of the fucking year, right here.”
“I’m not the one trying to knock her up!”
“You will, though!” Rage slams Rebel’s shoulders into the ground. “She’s ovulating, you piece of shit!”
Celia stops breathing. I unwind my arms from her neck and spin her around, grabbing her face to keep her eyes on me. “ Krosotka. Breathe.”
She tries to shake her head. “Let me go. I need—I need air.”
“No. You breathe here, with me.” There are too many layers between us for me to feel her body heat, but I can feel the flush of her cheeks in my palms. I squeeze her face until I feel the cut of her teeth. “You are safe, krosotka, I promise.” She can’t open her mouth to argue because of how I’m holding her, so I drag her toward the overlook facing the sunrise. “Look.” I slide my hands up into her hair and tilt her face toward the sun. Clouds cover its face, but the light remains warm and bright, shining like a beacon. “That glow is you. All the red around it, the parts that bleed, those are us . You cut through the red, krosotka. Watch.”
Slowly, the sky starts to transform as dawn breaks. The streaks of gold from the sun blend into their harsh surroundings, muting the reds and turning them orange, then peach, then lavender. As the sun rises, the landscape around us changes, too. The shadows lurking beneath trees and cars disappear as night shifts to day and the entire world awakens.
Celia’s like that, too. She wakes up our world.
I press my chest to her back, wanting to feel what it’s like to be as close to her as my brothers are. “You make our shadows disappear,” I tell her, hoping that she understands. We’re flawed men. We won’t get everything right. We’ll try to be better, but when we’ve cut our teeth on bullets and bone our entire lives, it’s hard to remember how to be soft.
But Celia makes me want to remember.
She reaches up to touch my face, her fingertips ghosting across my mask. When they reach the edge, she hooks them underneath, tugging gently to pry it off.
I stop her before she succeeds. Grabbing her hand, I pull it away from my face and hold it by my side.
Her voice is as soft as her skin. “I deserve to know what kind of shadows I’m dealing with, Ruin.”
My scars itch, the worst ones begging to be peeled off and left bloody. I don’t reply, because what can I say?
I don’t want her to shine her light so close that there’s nothing of me left.
Rage and Rebel, on the other hand, crave it. They want her to obliterate every dark thing inside themselves and replace it with something worth holding onto—a future born of love instead of bloodshed. A family and all the unconditional love it provides .
But I can’t live in that world, and pretending otherwise is dangerous.
I think she understands that danger. It’s why she has always resisted living within the bratva and being tied to men like us. Danger lives within us.
If she carries my brother’s child, that danger will live inside of her, too. It will change her, just like it’s changed him, and their child will be no different than either of its parents.
She wraps her arms around her body and slumps against me. “I can’t get pregnant,” she whispers, shivering. “Not like this. Not when I’m—” Her voice cracks, and she doesn’t finish her thought.
I think I understand that, too.
When we stole Celia from her normal life, her entire world shifted. She could no longer see the future she wanted because we were standing in the way. But it’s in those moments—the ones where we feel stuck in uncertainty—that carving a path ahead becomes as important as breathing. She can either keep banging her fists against our bodies to try and force her way to the future she’s always wanted, or she can take our outstretched hands and let us lead her to the future she’s always needed.
Because the two paths don’t have to divide. They can merge somewhere in the middle to create something even better than she ever imaged… and better than we ever dreamed.
I press my palm to her stomach and wonder what it’ll look like—her golds mixed with my reds, or Rebel’s blues, or Rage’s greens. Will it be as beautiful as she is? Or even brighter?
My brothers limp over and stand next to us, the two of them leaning on each other. Rebel has a black eye and split lip, while Rage has scratches from Rebel’s rings on his cheeks and rips in his suit. Rebel grins at Celia, his teeth bloodied from the fight. “Careful, baby. You two look good together. I might get jealous.”
She stares between the two of them, then cranes her neck to look up at me. “If we’re going to make this work,” she says slowly, “we need some ground rules.” Clutching my hand over her stomach, she takes a deep breath. “I can’t have a baby in a cage.”
Rage grumbles under his breath. “You’d be out of the cage by then.”
Jabbing his elbow into Rage’s side, Rebel hisses, “ dude, not helping.”
“I don’t want to be in a cage at all!” Celia’s eyes flash with anger. “So get rid of it!”
“I am not getting rid of the cage.” Rage drops Rebel’s weight and steps in front of Celia, leaving our brother to grumble and groan as he drops onto the guardrail. Her eyes meet his and sparks fly between them, intense enough that I can feel her trembling in my arms. “ Until you’re pregnant, I’m not letting you out of our sight. And even then—” his nostrils flare—“I need you safe. That’s what the cage is for. Safety.”
She crinkles her nose. “It’s a prison.”
“It serves a purpose.” Rage won’t budge, but I never expected him to. He grips her chin and presses the pad of his thumb against her lips. “Once you show me that you can behave like a wife instead of a runaway, I’ll reconsider.”
Rebel rolls his eyes behind Rage’s back but doesn’t verbally disagree. It’s only a matter of time before he lets Celia out again… or I do. My heart thrums with energy, the possibility of learning new things about Celia swirling in my head. What would she do if I was the one to sneak her outside? Would she happily follow me like she did with Rebel, or would she insist on staying locked away until someone else came for her?
Could I drag her out?
Would she scream?
I clutch Celia’s stomach tighter, feeling her flesh give beneath my fingers. When Rebel grabbed her hips earlier, did he leave marks like the ones Rage left on her neck? If I remove her collar, I bet I can count the fingerprints on her skin. One-two-three-four?—
She takes a shaky breath and clutches my hand tighter, derailing my thoughts until the only thing that’s left is the pressure of her fingers sliding through mine.
“What if I’m already pregnant?”
“Impossible,” Rebel calls out, a cocky grin plastered on his face. “I know I’m skilled, but even my swimmers need time to cross the finish line.”
Shaking her head, Celia meets Rage’s eyes and repeats her question. “What if I’m already pregnant?”
They stare at each other in silence until finally, Rage releases the iron grip on his emotions. The impassible stone in his eyes crumbles, and he presses the palm of his hand directly beneath mine and Celia’s to touch her abdomen. “Impossible,” he breathes, repeating Rebel’s turn of phrase. “That’s impossible, Celia. You—” He slams his jaw shut, forcing his next words through clenched teeth. “You took the pill. I saw it. Rebel saw it. The box was empty, and there wasn’t a single pill in your trash or anywhere on the bathroom floor. I checked. I checked five times. You swallowed it. You must have.” He wraps his hand around her throat and squeezes. “Tell me that you swallowed that pill.”
I hear Celia’s throat click on a timely swallow.
“I swallowed it.”
Rage sneers. “I fucking knew it?—”
Celia flinches at the venom in his voice. “And then I threw it back up.”
“ Liar. ” Rage squeezes tighter, and I grab his wrist to keep him from suffocating her. He snarls, turning his glare onto me, and pushes off of her neck to pace in front of the guardrail. “You just want out of the cage.” He laughs bitterly and kicks a rock off the cliff’s edge. When that doesn’t satisfy him, he grabs a fallen branch and hurls it over with a yell that echoes all around us. “You can’t be pregnant. You can’t. Because that would mean?—”
“—that you’ve been hurting the mother of your child? That you suffocated me when I didn’t deserve it?” Celia pulls free from my arms and jabs Rage in the chest with her fist. “I took the pill, yes, but I couldn’t hold it. Not when I—” She takes a shaky breath. “When all I really want is a baby.”
Rage freezes in his tracks, his eyes pinging all over her body, like he’s looking for the truth to her claims. “You’re lying.”
“Call my bluff, then.” Grabbing hold of his shirt, she pulls him down to her level and brushes her lips across his. “Or are you scared to find out how shitty of a dad you are?”
Rebel and I lunge for Rage at the same time, both of us latching onto his arms to keep him from touching her. He snarls, anger rolling off of him in waves as he fights our grasp. When it’s clear he isn’t going anywhere, he laughs, the sound hollow.
It sounds just like our father did right before he used to beat the shit out of one of us. Rage doesn’t realize it, but the more bitterness he lets in, the more like the monster he becomes.
“Alright, mama. You win. We’ll get you tested.”
Celia’s shoulders relax.
“But when the test comes back negative—” Rage smiles, the sharp curve of his teeth transforming him from the overprotective lover back into the bratva enforcer that makes grown men beg for mercy—“it’s back to the cage until I fuck that baby you want so badly into your womb.”
Lifting her chin, Celia keeps her composure well enough to fool Rage, maybe even to fool Rebel, as she nods in agreement. But I can see the truth in her muddied eyes. She’s scared, and she should be, because Rage doesn’t make idle threats.
If he isn’t a father yet, he will be soon.
Then we’ll finally learn if he can overcome the man who raised us to be monsters, or if he’s doomed to succumb to the violent call of our bloodline.