Chapter 14 – TANK
TANK
The door slams shut behind her and something in my soul fucking shatters.
Four fucking years of watching from shadows, following her social media like a pathetic stalker, memorizing every fake smile she plastered on for those charity galas. Four years of wondering if she ever thought about us.
About me.
And now she's here, smelling like vanilla even through the leather and vents of my gas mask, looking like a fantasy I only have the audacity to hold onto in my dreams.
Was here. Now she's running away from us again like we're the monsters everyone else has always seen when they look at us.
My worst fucking nightmare.
My body moves before my brain catches up. She needs to know. Needs to understand that we never stopped—I never stopped—
"Don't even fucking think about it."
Kade's voice cuts through my movement, and I freeze. Not because I have to listen to him. But because the absolute certainty in his tone makes me want to put my fist through his fucking skull.
I turn slowly, and even through the gas mask's lenses, I know he can see the fury in my stare.
The mask makes my breathing sound mechanical, menacing, but right now I want to rip it off and scream at him with the voice I don't have even if it means letting everyone see me in all my disgusting glory.
My hand twitches toward it.
"She's just freaked out," Kade continues, like he's explaining something to a child. "Let her run. Let her process. Again—she'll be back."
The snarl that tears from my throat is pure animal rage. Before I can stop myself, I'm moving. My hand wraps around Kade's throat and I slam him into the wall hard enough to crack the one-way glass. The dancers on the other side keep grinding, oblivious to me about to murder my brother.
"The fuck, Tank?" Kade grits out as I squeeze his neck until the cords throb.
He doesn't fight back immediately, just stares at me with those gray eyes that have seen too much but somehow remain completely oblivious to what's right in front of him.
"You think chasing after her like a lovesick puppy is gonna make this better? "
My free hand flies up to move in sharp, angry signs. You threatened her.
Kade chokes on a laugh. "You think she was going to just fall into our arms if I said, 'Welcome home, baby'? You saw the way she looked at us. Like we're monsters."
You acted like one!
"Bullshit." His hands come up to grip my wrist, not fighting, just holding.
The burn scar on his left forearm flexes with the movement.
"She traded our kingdom for a mansion, Tank.
For designer clothes and a senator stepdaddy.
She made her choice and she made the wrong fucking one. Now she gets to live with ours."
The rage boils over. I pull my fist back and drive it into his face with enough force to snap his head back against the wall. Blood explodes from his nose, painting his mouth red.
"Motherfucker!" he snarls, spitting blood and launching himself at me, all that pent-up fury finally finding an outlet.
We've fought before. Brothers working out aggression in the gym or the ring.
This isn't that.
His fist connects with my ribs, and even through the tactical vest, I feel it. I grab him by the shoulders and drive my knee into his stomach. He folds.
"Stop it! Both of you, fucking stop!"
Jinx's voice cries out through the violence, and suddenly he's between us, those blue eyes wide and desperate. His long fingers wrap in the front of my shirt. "Please, Tank. Don't do this. Not now."
I could toss him aside and keep beating Kade into understanding. But this is Jinx. Jinx who's looking at me like I'm about to break something that can't be fixed.
My hands shake as I sign, my breathing uneven through my mask. He let her leave. Again. Didn't even fucking try to fix it.
"She was always going to run," Jinx says softly.
She needs us!
"She doesn't give a shit about any of us, Tank!" Cyrus cuts a hand through his tousled hair, blood from his split lip dripping onto his expensive shirt.
When did I hit him? Shit.
Maybe Jinx wasn't the only one who tried to get between us and I just blocked it out.
Cyrus spits the blood on the floor before glaring back at me. "Kade's right about one thing. She will be back. Where else is she gonna go? Who else is suicidal enough to kill a fucking senator for her?"
I stare at them. My brothers. My family. The only people who've ever given a shit about me, or even treated me like a human being, besides her.
But I only stop when I see how fucking tired Jinx looks. Like he's aged ten years in ten minutes. The cocky, carefree mask—the mask he wears as obsessively as I wear mine—has finally slipped.
Even Jinx doesn't understand.
None of them do. How could they? They can speak, can explain themselves with words and intonations instead of violence and silence. They don't know what it's like to have so much to say and no way to say it.
I storm toward the door, needing air, needing space, needing to make sure she's okay even if she doesn't want me to.
"Tank, where the fuck are you going?" Kade calls after me, but I don't stop. Don't look back.
Because if I do, I'll kill him.
The warehouse is a maze of shadows and rust, but I know every inch of it.
Have to in our line of work. My bike waits outside like a faithful black and chrome hound.
The same bike Ellie rode home that last night, her arms wrapped around my chest, my heart slamming against her palm because I knew every fucking mile brought us closer to goodbye.
Never could bring myself to get rid of it. Sometimes I ride it around and imagine she's still holding me.
The engine roars to life, drowning out whatever bullshit Kade's shouting from the doorway.
I know where she's going. I've followed this route so many times I could do it in my sleep, unconscious, dead. The familiar streets blur past as I push the bike harder, faster, like maybe if I go fast enough I can outrun the memory of fear in her eyes when she looked at me.
Even if she looked at the others the same way.
Her car, a tan Audi, comes into view three blocks ahead. She's driving carefully, hands at ten and two, probably counting to five over and over the way she does when she's anxious. I hang back, keeping my distance. Just another shadow in her rearview mirror.
The city changes as we move from industrial decay to suburban prosperity. From our world to hers. The buildings get cleaner, the streets get wider, and the space between us feels like it's growing even though I keep the same following distance.
She pulls into the parking lot of Saylor University and I kill my engine at the tree line. This is familiar too. How many nights have I sat here, watching her window, making sure she got home safe?
Her silent guardian demon. Her monster in the dark who loves her too much to let go and too much to hold on.
She gets out of her car, and even from here, I can see her hands shaking as she fumbles with her keys. The way she looks around, quick, nervous glances into the darkness. She knows she's being watched.
But she doesn't run. Just walks faster, that controlled not-quite-panic that women perfect when they're alone at night.
I want to make some kind of sound so she turns around. Want to sign to her that it's just me, that I'd never, ever fucking hurt her, that I've been keeping her safe all this time. But what would that accomplish? Make her more afraid? Prove that I'm not just a monster but a stalker, too?
She reaches her dorm building and I watch her punch in the door code. Watch her disappear inside. A few minutes later, a light flicks on in a third-floor window.
I've memorized which room is hers, obviously. I've stood here through rainstorms and snowfall, through spring nights when the air smelled new and autumn evenings when everything felt like it was dying and nothing would ever come back to life.
Her silhouette appears in the window. She's safe. Home. Away from us, which is what she wanted all along. She stands there for a moment, and I wonder what she's thinking.
If she's crying. If she's scared. If she regrets finding us.
She was the only one who never looked at me with fear. Even that first day, eight years old with a scraped knee and tears on her cheeks as she stared up at me, she looked at me and saw someone worth knowing. Worth befriending. Worth loving in that innocent way before the world taught us better.
But she never saw my face. Not really. Just the parts I couldn't hide.
The scars that creep above the bandana, the damaged eye with the drooping lower eyelid that won't close all the way. She never saw the reason I eat alone and drink through straws with my tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth.
Why even hardened criminals go pale and look away when they glimpse what animal instincts and human cruelty did to me before I was old enough to defend myself.
Maybe if she had seen it all back then, she would have run even sooner.
But if I had to do it all over again, even knowing what I know now, I'd let her.
Maybe the others wouldn't, but if there's one thing in this world I've always needed, even more than Ellie herself, it's for her to be happy and free.
Even if it's without us.
But the woman who walked into our cage tonight didn't look free at all.
Her shadow moves across the window as she paces in her room.
Five steps one way, five steps back. Everything in fives because that's her safe number, her control when everything else spirals.
I taught her to sign numbers first, remember the way her small fingers curved to make the shapes so much better than my huge, clumsy hands.
When there were five of us, not four.