4. Roman
ROMAN
When Dom leaves, we stare at one another, the silence heavy and dark, like a shroud smothering all the air in the room.
“He's right,” Cain says. “Her father is not going to let her come back to be with the three of us. But I do have an idea.”
“Oh, yeah?” Malachi cocks his head and places his chin on his hand, his dark brows raised sarcastically, as if he can't wait to hear this.
“Just hear me out.” Cain crosses his arms over his massive chest and regards us both warily as he begins to speak. “I knew her when we were kids, right?”
I nod, but I’m already unsure about where this is going.
“Her parents know me—not who I am now, but they did back then.
They knew my family, too. And while our families weren't exactly friendly, and there was a rivalry between us, they were neighbors. Furthermore, my family is more powerful than theirs these days, and by a lot. We have made significantly more money in the years since I last saw her and consolidated much of the power we had in our area of business. Her father’s business kind of stagnated.
No surprise there; he had lost his daughter.
I think that would make anyone's business the last thing on their mind.”
He pauses to crack his knuckles, making me wince. I absolutely hate that habit, but I'm not going to tell him off for it, as I've got bigger things on my mind right now.
Cain pulls himself up to his full height.
“I think the three of us should go to her family home, now we know that's where she is.
But we shouldn't let them see that she's with all of us.
We should play it off as if she's just with me, and you're my friends, and we live together in a big house with security.” He smiles.
“Lots of security. We can get it one way or another, if the dean agrees to let us.”
Mal chuckles. “How did I guess that it would involve you being the hero of her story? And getting the dean to agree is a big if.”
Often, I side with Cain over Mal. He tends to be calmer like me, whereas Mal is hotter headed.
On this occasion, though, I’m finding it hard to give Cain the benefit of the doubt.
Mal is not wrong; this gives Cain the chance to be the hero of the story and lets him consolidate his position with Ophelia over us.
I twist my lips as I mull over what he’s said. “Let’s say this works, and one day, in the not-too-far future, her father wants to see her married and decides you're a good choice. How would that work? I wouldn't be happy with you being her husband and me and Mal being second best.”
Cain shakes his head. “You're thinking way too far into the future. All that matters right now is getting her back. We can sort out all the other stuff once she's here.”
I hesitate, still unsure if this is a route we should go down.
The idea of pairing off Ophelia with Cain doesn’t sit well with me.
She’s the girl I lost my virginity to. It would kill me if one day Cain got to be the one who marries her.
What would it do to the three of us, too?
I remember how uneasy I was when Ophelia first arrived, how I thought she would split the three of us apart and distract us from our goals.
Right now, it doesn’t seem like I was wrong.
Impatient, Cain rolls his shoulders, as if working out a cramp. “Come on, man. We just need to know she's safe.”
I’m being selfish. Ophelia needs us. Do I really believe that if I can’t have her then no one can?
Malachi jumps in. “She's at home, with her parents and a veritable army, I imagine, so of course she's safe. She’s probably better off there.”
Mal’s words surprise me, and I turn to him. “Don't you want her back here with us?”
“Yes,” he snaps. “But I'm worried about Cain's role in this. It seems that he's thinking more along the lines of claiming her for himself. I want her back, but I'm not sure if I want her back as Cain’s. I was the first one to ever spend any real time with her. Also, we don’t know yet if we can get security.”
Cain laughs at that. “Are you trying to say that the years I spent with Ophelia when we were kids meant nothing?”
Mal drags his hand through his almost black hair, his dark eyes flashing with anger.
“You were both different people back then.” He gives his head the briefest of shakes.
“You two think I’m some hot-headed idiot, but I brought her down from a panic attack.
We connected right then and there. Why should you be the one to be her official boyfriend? ”
“Boyfriend?” Cain cocks an eyebrow. “What we are is way beyond those sorts of titles. What we are works for us, and we understand that all of us matter. It’s just the outside world we’re fooling here, Mal.”
“She’s not yours, Cain,” he bites back. “She was mine first.”
We’re squabbling over her like kids in a toy store. When children fight over them, those toys end up broken.
As I consider Mal’s words, I bristle. “That doesn't have anything to do with it,” I say.
“It's not about who was with her when she panicked, or who spent more time with her, or who she knew first. I could say she's more mine than yours because we were both virgins, but that would be stupid.
We all belong to one another now. That's how this has to be.
There can't be any other way, or it all falls apart.”
“I agree,” Cain says. “I swear I don't want her for myself. That's not how this works. It might be the first time we've ever done anything like this. But…” He trails off and looks away as his cheeks turn red.
I know what he's thinking.
It's not only the emotional resonance of the three of us sharing her. It might be something new that we’ve only done with her, but we’d all be baldfaced liars if we didn’t admit it turns us the hell on to share her. To watch each other with her.
Mal smirks, but it’s an angry one. “Okay, let's say that this hare-brained scheme of yours is going to work, Cain. What makes you think her parents are going to allow her to come back here and live in this decrepit water tower? Have you seen the place?”
Cain shrugs, as if he’s not got a worry in the world about that.
“I could get a team in real quick to spruce this up.” He waves his arms and gestures around him.
“We have the solar panels already. We have water. It just needs to be made a little bit nicer. We have money enough to do that, and fast.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Come on, Roman. We can easily hire people to work on it and dress it up some, add some feminine touches here and there. I can have guards here, too, like yesterday.”
“Guards from the father you hate?” Mal asks. “Could you trust them?”
“I do have another option,” Cain says. “In case my father says no.”
“Oh?” I’m intrigued. What the hell does he mean? “Go on.”
“I’ve been fighting. In an underground fight club.”
Mal stares at Cain as if he’s grown another head, but I laugh softly.
“The bruises,” I say, understanding.
“Yep.” Cain nods. “I didn’t tell you because it is supposed to be kept a secret.
But there are guys there who owe me. I helped train some so they could win their fights.
These are men with shitloads of money, and a lot of power out there in the real world, but in the fight club, they didn’t have the size or the skills to win.
I nearly always win, so some asked me to help, and I obliged.
The guy who runs the club owes me big because, really, I’ve helped him grow it a lot.
It makes him a fuck-ton of money now, and all tax free. ”
Guards from a secretive fight club…what could go wrong? Still, it’s better than having no backup at all.
“I say call them,” I reply. “If your dad doesn’t come through, that is.”
“I’ll do it ASAP. Dad first, and if he’s a no-go, then these guys.”
Sometimes Cain impresses me with how much of a leader he is when we need it. I might be the spiritual leader, but when it comes to holding us together, that’s all on Cain.
I can’t stop my mind drifting back to Ophelia and the world of confusion and pain she might be in right now. While we hope she's physically safe where she is, I don't think any of us believe she will be able to deal with it mentally or emotionally.
Malachi picks up his guitar from the corner and absentmindedly strums a few chords. “Is Ophelia going to be okay while we put all this in place?”
“We only just made her Prophet go away.” I hear the sorrow clearly in my own voice. “She believes we are the thing holding him at bay. We need her back with us before she starts to unravel.”
He pauses, his painted black nails motionless on the strings. “Don’t you think that's fucked up?”
Cain has been scrolling through his phone, presumably to find the numbers of the people he needs to call, but he stops, too. “What do you mean?”
Mal puts the guitar back down and leans forward, looking at us both.
“Well, if we're the only thing keeping him away…” Malachi gestures with his palms up, as if what he's about to say is obvious.
“Then if anything happens between us, and this falls apart, she's back to square one.
We need her to believe she's the one to defeat him.
That she's strong enough to overcome the voice in her head.”
He's right. “Exactly. You're correct. But the problem is we need more time .
She's been snatched from us too soon. Gone after one week of persuading her she's free. That's not enough. She's going to freak out, and I think she’ll hear the Prophet again, precisely because we haven’t had enough time to convince her she can control this.”
Mal watches me thoughtfully.
I turn to Cain. “Do her parents still live in the same house? The one where you used to go see her?”
“Yes. They never moved, I guess because they always thought she might come home. We could go and get her tomorrow. If we can get some men to start working on this place, making it more habitable for four of us.”
“We’ll need bedrooms,” Mal interjects.