Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
FINN
Dutch stops the car in front of the hospital. I drag my gaze between the door and J, wondering how I’ll get out while holding her.
“Do you need me to grab a wheelchair or something?” Dutch offers.
At that moment, J stirs awake. She notices that she’s still cuddling me, and her body reacts on impact. I feel every inch of her lock up in disgust before she slams her hand on my chest and uses my abs to propel herself upward.
I grunt.
The minx directly slapped my bruised ribs.
She did that on purpose.
“Finally, we’re here,” she mumbles, as if the entire drive in my arms had been pure hell.
I decide not to hold it against her. She no longer looks like a cadaver come to life and her eyes are brighter. The danger’s passed, but she still seems weak.
J pops the door open. “Dutch, Sol, it was great meeting you. Finn…” She flips me the bird, but she still hasn’t recovered, so it doesn’t end well for her. Putting a hand to her chest, she glances up weakly through her fringe of blonde hair and rasps, “Let’s never see each other again, ‘kay?”
I allow her to stumble inside the hospital building on her own. A nurse meets her as soon as she walks past the desk. Immediately, someone brings a wheelchair for her.
“You’re just going to let her walk away?” Sol wonders.
“For now.”
“And later?”
I turn to my best friend with a blank expression.
Sol shudders. “That’s frightening.” He pats Dutch on the shoulder. “With that face, doesn’t he already look like the head of the yakuza?”
“That’s not funny,” Dutch mumbles.
“You realize that’s what he is,” Sol responds dryly.
Dutch’s nostrils flare. “We should head back to the house and figure out a plan. Now that we have J working with us, I want her to have everything she needs to make contact with Cadence.”
I’m not surprised Dutch is dancing around the subject of my eventual takeover of the yakuza. My brothers are more uncomfortable with me joining the organization than either of them will admit.
It’s not something we’ve talked at length about. I doubt it will ever be discussed. When it comes to this side of my life, they’ve accepted that some things are inevitable and it’s better if they don’t know the details.
A phone icon appears on the car’s dashboard. Sol taps the interface, and Zane’s voice blares through the speakers.
“You guys still at the hospital?”
“We’re just leaving,” Dutch says. “What did they find at the scene?”
Sol scratches the scars on his wrist that never healed properly. “Did one of the south side gangs get loose in the suburbs?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Zane responds.
Dutch grunts. “What does that mean?”
“It’s what I said. There were no shells. No tire tracks. No footage.”
“No footage?” I lean forward. “Redwood Prep has cameras everywhere.” I also saw J looking intently at her phone when I walked into the chem lab. She was watching live footage of that infamous parking lot behind the school. I have a hunch that she saw something important.
“Whoever it was and whatever happened, someone cleaned it up. I’m talking squeaky clean,” Zane says.
“You sound a little impressed,” Sol notes.
“I’m just wondering if these are the same people who took the girls. If we can get in touch with them…”
“The girls are different.” Dutch’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel.
This isn’t the first time one of our parents forcibly separated him from Cadence, which is probably why he’s handling this so well.
“Someone sent Jinx footage of Cadey and Grey being kidnapped. They intentionally left breadcrumbs for us.”
“You think Jinx has footage of tonight?” Sol wonders.
“I doubt it.”
That reminds me. I need to get my hands on Jinx’s hard drive and do some digging.
The fact that Jinx was the only one with a video of the kidnapping irks me. Now that I know Mom has the girls, I’m starting to think the scene of Cadence and Grey being forced into a grey van was fabricated.
“You know what’s weird? The last text we got from Jinx is that she would meet us soon.
” Sol fishes his phone from his pocket and reads Jinx’s text.
“‘Hello, Princes of Redwood. Did you get my gift? This secret keeper is ready to lay out all her cards. Why? Because I have something you want and you have something I need. You don’t know me yet, but soon, I’ll be closer than your next secret.
See you soon, Jinx.’” Sol looks up from his phone.
“Has she gotten in touch with any of you?”
A confession springs to my lips, but I hold it back.
“Not since Mom took Cadey. Her app is offline too.” Dutch flicks the indicator and turns off the freeway.
“She’s hiding something,” Zane guesses.
Dutch shakes his head. “Jinx is always hiding something, but she’s never gone silent before.”
“She’s never dealt with the yakuza before either,” Zane points out. “Gossiping about teenagers screwing around is different than ratting out the mafia.”
“Maybe someone killed her because she got too close to the truth?” Sol whispers.
He’s wrong.
Jinx is alive and well and she’s keeping her promise.
She’s much closer to me than any of my secrets.
I inhale, and her lilac fragrance fills my nose. It must have rubbed off on me when I held her in my lap during the car ride.
It’s pleasing.
I close my eyes as my brothers discuss and let my memories of J take over. Her blonde hair. Her blue-green eyes. Her mouth parting as she panted for me.
I sink farther into the back seat, my breath thickening as I remember her fingers curling in my shirt. Her eyes begging me to save her. Her hand struggling in my grip as I restrained her. The thrum of her pulse hammering under my thumb, faster, faster, moving closer to bliss and to death.
Her life hangs on a knife’s edge.
Pleasure and pain.
Desire and destruction.
Yes, Jinx is alive.
But after one night with me, that might no longer be the case.
Adrenaline pumps through my body, a rare sensation. I believe… this feeling means I’m thrilled.
“Finn, what do you think?” Sol says.
I straighten. I have no idea what they were talking about.
“Leave Finn alone,” Zane says after a beat of silence. “You know he won’t agree to us setting a trap for his girlfriend.”
The car rolls to a stop in front of the villa. Dutch and Sol exit the vehicle and walk inside without expecting any response from me. I let them think what they wish and take my time outside, stretching my legs and admiring the vast, starry sky.
My brothers will want to strategize more, but I don’t think I’ll be much help. It’s been a very long day, and exhaustion is beginning to creep up on me.
Zane rides his motorcycle up and joins me as I look up at the sky. “Since when do you stargaze?”
“Unlike you, I don’t need tits attached to something in order to admire it.”
He snorts.
I smile and keep looking up.
“Finn.” Zane speaks hesitantly. “A lot’s going on right now. Grey’s gone and it consumes me.”
As it should. I know how much Zane loves his wife.
He shakes his head. “But you’re my brother, and I know you’re going through a lot right now too.”
Whether intentional or not, they’ve been reminding me that I’m their brother often lately. As though I may one day forget and leave them.
Zane’s eyes travel over my injuries. “You don’t need to stay in the yakuza, Finn. At any time, for any reason, you can leave. We’ll make sure you can leave.”
He’s wrong.
The yakuza is not something a person can simply walk away from. They—my father will kill everyone I care about if I turn my back on the promise I made. That is something I have no doubt about.
Zane pats my back as I remain silent. “Get some sleep, man. You look like crap.”
I would argue with him, but I don’t think it’s in my best interest to act tough. Tomorrow, Kurosaki’s men will expect me at training, and they won’t go easy on me because of my injuries.
Moving to the front door, I push it open and turn back to find Zane staring up at the stars with a wistful look on his face.
“Zane,” I call.
He looks at me, the wind tussling his hair. We’re all the same age—Dutch and Zane were born minutes apart, but Zane has always been a younger brother in my mind. I’ve felt extra protective of him growing up.
“We will get them back.”
His lips curl. “I’m not worried about that part. I can’t live without Grey. There’s no universe, no dimension that I exist without her. I know I’ll find her.”
Then why does he look so defeated already?
“What has me worried, Finn”—my brother meets me at the door step and looks at me with eyes shadowed and dark—“is what kind of monsters we’ll all have to become to do it.”