Chapter 20
A couple days later
My body jerked. I opened my eyes, and all I saw was the interstate.
“What the fuck!” I jumped up. Savion was in the driver’s seat, driving while I was buckled into the passenger seat.
How didn’t I feel him get me out of my bed?
It was dark outside. According to the clock on the car, one in the morning.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Relax,” was the only thing he said as he focused on the road.
I looked down and saw that I was dressed in a pair of black tights and a cropped T-shirt. A frown plastered on my face as I looked back over at Savion. “You love stripping me out of my clothes.”
“You’re talking like I raped you or something. You are my wife.” I didn’t know how to feel about that response. I just lifted the seat to see if I could get a hint of where he was taking me.
Atlanta.
The sign zoomed by. I quietly sat there, waiting for the car to come to a stop. When it finally did, we were in front of the aquarium.
“You got me out my bed in the middle of the night to bring me to the aquarium? You know this place is closed, right?”
“To the public, . . . yeah.”
Savion got out of the car and rounded to my side. He opened the door for me, and I stepped out. What I should’ve done was shut the door in his face, but he’d gone through all this trouble to bring me here, so I might as well see why.
We went up to the entrance, and a guy let us inside. The aquarium was dark except for the blue lights coming from the tanks.
We stopped in front of a massive tank. Hundreds of fish drifted through the water while blue lights danced across the glass. For a long moment, neither of us said anything, which was strange. Savion was usually staring me down. Tonight, he was staring into the water.
“You brought me to the aquarium?”
His mouth twitched. “You don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The silence returned as I stared at the side of his face. This time, it wasn’t uncomfortable. I found myself looking at him instead of the fish. The blue lights softened his features. Made him look less like the man who’d kidnapped me and more like a man carrying something too heavy to put down.
“Why here?” I finally asked to pick his brain a bit.
His gaze remained on the tank. “It’s quiet.”
That answer shouldn’t have surprised me.
“You own half a city.”
“I own a lot of things.”
“Then why live underground like a mole rat?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. A real smile. It may not have been huge, but it was a start. It vanished just as quickly as it came.
“My daddy liked noise.”
I frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
The answer came so fast, it almost caught me off guard. For the first time since I’d met him, Savion looked . . . somewhere else. Like he wasn’t standing beside me anymore. Like he’d gone to another place.
We walked off through a tunnel. Sharks glided overhead.
“When I was a kid, I thought my daddy was invincible.” His voice was calm as he spoke. “I followed him everywhere.”
I stayed quiet to see just how much he was gon’ open up to me. Something told me interrupting him would make him shut down.
“He was the kind of man everybody listened to.” His eyes tracked a shark swimming above us. “I wanted to be exactly like him.”
I swallowed. “What happened?”
His jaw flexed. For a second, I thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he said, “I watched him die.”
My steps slowed. The words hit harder because of how casually he’d spoken them. To anyone else, they might’ve thought it didn’t hurt him, but I could hear it and feel it. Shit cut deep.
“I was there when Bishop pulled the trigger.”
I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat hard. My daddy was the one who took his away from him. The words settled between us. Heavy. Cold. I stared at him. My heart ached for Savion.
This was the first time that I’d ever heard him talk about himself.
I’d been living with him for so long and barely knew anything about him.
People were trying to paint him as such a terrible person when they didn’t know the pain and trauma that he carried on a daily. If I were him, I’d hate my family too.
Here he was, handing me pieces of him that he’d probably never given anyone else.
“I couldn’t stop it.” His voice dropped lower. “I couldn’t save him.”
For the first time, . . . I heard regret.
“After that, everyone wanted blood.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Revenge.”
I understood him too well. My family wanted blood and revenge for everything.
“My family disappeared into the shadows instead. Giving the Saint-Merciers exactly what they wanted: the city.” His eyes lifted toward the water overhead. “Less attention. Less bodies.”
“C’mon, I know you wanted revenge too.”
“No.”
“Liar.”
His gaze slid to mine. “Every day.”
My heartbeat skipped. I took a step toward him. Fingers itching to graze his. Savion wasn’t really a monster. He just didn’t know how to cope with everything that he’d gone through. He needed love. He needed someone that could help him pull himself out of darkness.
“I hated him for that,” he spoke, bringing me from my thoughts.
“Hated who?”
“My daddy.”
I blinked. That, I wasn’t expecting.
“What?”
“I hated that he left.” His voice cracked so lightly I almost missed it. “I hated that I needed him.”
My forehead wrinkled. This was a son yearning for his father. My brothers didn’t look at shit from Savion’s side of things. Had it gone the other way and Daddy was the one who got killed, they’d feel the same as him. What they needed to give Savion was grace.
He stopped in front of another tank. Thousands of tiny fish drifted together. The room was silent except for the hum of the filters.
“This is why I like it here.”
I looked up at him. “The fish?”
“The stillness.” His gaze moved across the water and then locked with mine, and for the first time, I saw him. Like really saw Savion. This wasn’t a monster. This was a man that needed me. He needed my love, and I was gon’ stop fighting it.