10. Thanatos
Chapter 10
Thanatos
My joints scream in protest as I haul my aching body up a fourth flight of stairs. This janky apartment complex has seen better days; dirt and rust seem to flurry in the open-air breezeways, mingling with the sound of aluminum cans shifting in the wind. This part of town is the worst—which means that it’s the one that gets the most criminal activity. Although our bratva isn’t directly affiliated with the police, we keep unofficial tabs on each other. My police scanner hasn’t picked up this particular incident yet, meaning that we have time to absorb the impact before it lands.
If news about a serial killer targeting the city’s prettiest women gets out, it will go one of two ways: the fat, balding men hoarding trophy wives will shell out big and make a public show of finding the killer—or, more likely, every father who gives a damn about his family will lock up their households tight and hire the city’s underbelly to sniff out the knife-happy rat gutting their wives and burning their daughters.
It wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t have competition on the streets, but like all cities, if there’s a king ruling with an iron fist… then there’s an underground resistance movement scurrying through the shadows.
The movement isn’t large—it’s mostly comprised of people who are still miffed about how Valentina’s grandmother Katya Dolohov and all the other “old blood” leaders suddenly disappeared after their attempted coup—but it’s steady enough that when civilians go looking for help with our serial killer problem, they’ll end up paying the wrong side… which means that I’ll have to deal with any clean-up that follows a job done wrong—and all amateur hit men leave tracks.
I don’t have time for that, so it’s best we tackle the murderer before he goes public.
Another body drop out in the open, however, means that he isn’t trying to hide his kills. He’s trying to send a message. And for some inexplicable reason, that message brings everything back to Celia fucking Monrovia. The disaster my brothers can’t seem to shake. Over the past week, I’ve poured over all public and private records about her life that I can get my hands on. Marriage and birth certificates, bank notes, doctor’s appointments, medical records—countless documents, spanning nearly three decades with her upcoming thirtieth birthday. Trying to figure out what makes her so fucking special is driving me insane.
I hear her voice in my sleep, from the champagne bubble of her laughter from the wedding video I downloaded to my phone to the sobbing wreck of a woman crying her eyes out in therapy after her ex-husband had an affair. Her therapist prescribed her sleeping pills and anti-depressants, but Celia never refilled either, so I’m not sure if she took them in the first place. Piecing together Celia’s life and motivations should be easy—every piece of information that I’ve found has been straightforward. There are innumerable facts about her upbringing and early adult life that I have committed to memory.
But none of it explains why my brothers chose her.
The bratva bitch with baggage.
Any other woman would be crawling into their laps to bounce on their dicks and call them daddy, but not her, not Celia. Of course , the prettiest one would be the most broken. I’ve stared at her photographs for hours, trying to find the cracks. The pieces I can chip away to reveal the bitch underneath, the part my brothers refuse to see.
Now, I’m not only hearing her voice in my sleep, but she’s right there with me in my dreams, her wide, doe-eyes shining with tears as we lie next to each other in bed— my bed, the one she and Rage fucked in—naked and trembling and so goddamn beautiful that it hurts.
In my dreams, the conversation she had with her therapist is directed at me instead.
I tried my best. I really did. She sniffles as we lie in bed beside each other, bringing the crisp white bedsheet up to her chin. It falls over her waist and hips like satin, showing her delicate curves and transforming into a silken wedding dress. She’s warm to the touch as my palm glides up her waist and across her collarbone. A tear slips past her chin, and it catches on my fingertip. Her voice floats between us despite her lips not moving. I loved him as best I knew how. I did everything to make him love me. How am I still not enough?
The image shifts, and suddenly she’s straddling my lap, the white slip draped across her body bunching up over her hips to reveal gorgeous, tanned thighs, and between them, a tuft of soft curls and glistening lips as she sinks down onto my shaft, making my balls ache and my teeth clench.
More tears fall as she rides me, her voice a scratch inside my skull. If we just had a baby —her breath hitches— everything would be perfect.
I slam my fist on the drywall inside the stairwell, banishing the fucked-up nightmares, daydreams, wet dreams ?—
Hissing through my teeth, I tear open the door to the fifth floor and fight the pounding ache in my skull.
Everything would be fine if it weren’t for Celia. The serial killer is only here because of some freaky obsession with her. My brothers are only ignoring their bratva duties because of her presence in their lives. No one can see reason because she’s a poison in our veins, taking over our lives without us realizing the danger until it’s too late. She’s a sickness, a plague, a?—
Fucking bombshell.
My gaze snaps directly to her the moment I step into the empty apartment. Teeth still clenched, I take in her appearance from head to toe. I’ve never seen her like this—not in any of her records and definitely not in person. Her pouty lips are swollen and pink, the tip of her nose and tops of her cheeks matching in color from the cold winter air. Her hair is a wave tumbling down her shoulders, caressing the swell of her breasts hidden beneath a Pierce the Veil t-shirt that undoubtably belongs to Rebel, the leather jacket slung across her torso looking sinfully sexy despite the sweatpants doing absolutely nothing for her figure.
Our eyes meet, and an electric rush sparks like lightning in my veins.
What is it with this woman?
Rebel claps me on the shoulder while Ruin closes the door behind me. “Than!” he cheers, grinning. “Glad you could join us. The body’s over here.” Leading me into the adjoining bedroom, I find Rage kneeling alongside Zane, one of the men we contract out for odds and ends relating to corpse removal. He and his brother are some of the best at hiding evidence, so it makes sense that they’re here.
Banishing thoughts of Celia from my mind becomes impossible once I crouch beside them.
The victim looks damn near like her.
“Does she know?” I ask, rubbing the backs of my eyelids. Surely, they’ve at least told Celia that she might be in danger. It’s not just one victim anymore—it’s four in the span of a few weeks. The killer is ramping up, growing more impatient as he grabs the next best thing he can rip apart. There’s no telling when he’ll finally go after Celia.
Rage grunts, which isn’t really an answer. But the tension in his shoulders and the vein throbbing in his neck tell me that no, he hasn’t said anything to her about the murders.
Because admitting that your father might be out to kill your girl—well, I don’t envy him or the others for that truth bomb.
Not one fucking bit.
Not even when Rebel hooks his arm around her waist and presses tender kisses to her neck, or when Ruin loops his fingers through hers, or when Rage reenters the room and crashes into her like a tidal wave, kissing her with such force that they tumble into the wall. She makes these little gasping sounds, like his fingers on her skin feels as electric as her voice does on mine, each willowy sound setting my nerves on fire more than seeing him devour her does.
They break away and he’s breathless, lost in the warmth of her doe-eyes, when he finally speaks.
“I need to tell you something, and you can’t freak out about it.”
She bites her plush bottom lip, just like how she does in my dreams. “Why not?”
“Because if you freak out,” Rage murmurs, thumbing a golden pendant dangling against her throat, “it could hurt the baby.”
My ears ring loud enough to make me wince.
The baby? There’s no way she’s pregnant. It’s too soon. I just dropped her off a few days ago—there’s no way?—
Unless.
The image of Rage fucking Celia in my bed at the safe house flashes in my mind hotter than hellfire. I never saw them have sex, only walking in at the right moment to witness the aftermath, but I haven’t been able to get the idea of it out of my head. Was he gentle? Slow? Furious while he pounded deep and flooded her womb? Or did she ride him like she rides me—full of sorrow and need and hurt—trying to fill the hole in her chest with the hole between her legs?
I’ve never had sex with Celia, but when I can’t sleep and her voice is whispering in my head, I find myself wondering what it would be like—dreaming of the possibilities, of the taste of her skin and the soft, tender sound of her cries as she comes.
I take a deep breath to calm my raging heart, but it drops to my stomach like a rock. If there was ever any hope that my brothers would let her go, it’s extinguished in this exact moment—in the way they hold her, touch her, taste her, each of them as gentle as the last, like they need her in one, solid piece for the news that comes next.
Rage breaks the news without warming up to it. “The man who broke into your house? He’s killing people.” He tenderly cups her cheek. “He’s killing women who look just like you.”
“He is practicing,” Ruin rumbles nearby, “for his real target.”
“Because she’s perfect.” Rebel’s lips curl into a sneer. I hadn’t noticed when I first walked in, but he’s got one hell of a shiner and a busted bottom lip. “If she’s perfect for his sons, she’s perfect for him too. God dammit. ”
Celia blinks and looks between the three of them. “I don’t understand.”
Sighing, I meet her bewildered gaze. Maybe if I’m the one to give her the bad news, she’ll hate me for it, and I can finally get her out of my head. “Our father. He’s here in the city. He’s killing women to send us a message.” I wasn’t sure that it was him before, but he left a note tied to the victim’s wrist this time, addressing it to all four of his sons.
this is all your fault
all of you
you let her die
you chose to save him
a DEVIL over your own mother
now its your turn
you cant save her
Our father was never what I’d call sane , but losing my step-mother was a tipping point that sent him careening off the side of a cliff. I nod toward Celia and finish giving the news. “He wants to kill you. He wants revenge.”
Celia’s mouth falls open. She looks at Rage, but he doesn’t console her or tell her that this is a joke. “I don’t even know him!”
Ruin scratches the scars on his neck and makes a garbled mix of sounds, ending on a whine that seems more canine than human. He tears at his clothes, ripping the turtleneck from his body and chucking it to the floor. Burn scars cover his torso from top to bottom, his flesh marred even further by deep scratches carved into his skin. Years have passed since the fire burned down our family home and scarred my brothers, but you wouldn’t know that by watching Ruin. It’s like he’s still breathing in the smoke, choking on the pain of his past. “He’s here,” Ruin whines, already scratching his chest and struggling to breathe. “It burns. Burns, burns, burns.” As Ruin turns in place to try and reach his back, I recognize the criss-crossing scars rippling across his shoulders from when our father lashed him for being a devil.
Our father may have thought Ruin was evil, but the true devil was inside himself.
Rebel latches onto our youngest brother and bands his arms around Ruin’s torso to keep him from hurting himself. “Easy, there, easy. It’s okay. You’re okay. Take a deep breath. There’s no smoke here, alright? Fresh, clean air. That’s it. Breathe.”
Celia watches the display with wide eyes, her gaze glued to Ruin’s body. “What—what happened?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.
I close the distance between us, coming to a stop directly behind Rage. He’s blocking me from reaching Celia, but I’m fine with that—I don’t need to touch her when I can already feel her phantom caress in my dreams. I meet her gaze, and a thread of sorrow tightens between us. A part of her must understand, because there are tears in her eyes.
“Our father happened.”
“He tried to kill Ruin,” Rage swallows, “and ended up burning our mother alive instead.”
“And all of you,” Celia realizes, tracing a burn scar curving beneath the collar of Rage’s shirt. “That’s horrible.”
My lips curve into a bitter grin. “That’s our father. He’s a sick fucking bastard.”
Rage turns to face me, his eyes steely. “We’re going to kill him.”
It’s not a question—it’s a promise.
We’re going to kill our father before he can touch what’s ours ever again.