Chapter 18 – KADE
KADE
My Lambo's engine barely makes a sound as it idles, which makes the silence inside the car even more suffocating. Tank sits in the passenger seat, arms crossed over his massive chest, staring out the window.
He hasn't signed a single word to me in three hours.
Not during the briefing. Not when we scoped our latest target's apartment. Not when we confirmed the asshole's already skipped town like the coward he is.
Just silence. The kind that's louder than any of the drunken parental screaming matches we used to fall asleep to instead of lullabies.
I grip the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak. "You gonna give me the silent treatment forever?" I ask, not looking at him. "Because I gotta tell you, brother, you're really good at it. Even for a guy who literally can't fucking talk."
Nothing.
Not even a fucking grunt.
Just that infuriating stillness that makes me want to drive this car into a fucking wall.
"Look, I get it. You think I was too hard on her." My fingers tap against the steering wheel. "But what the fuck was I supposed to do? Welcome her home with open arms after four years of nothing?"
Tank's jaw tightens. I can see it even in my peripheral vision, the muscle jumping beneath the bandana he refuses to take off even when it's just us. But still, no signs. No communication. Just judgment.
"She left us," I continue, my voice getting harder. "She fucking left, Tank. One day she was ours, the next she was gone. And now she waltzes back because she needs something from us? Because her perfect life isn't so perfect anymore?"
The burn scar throbs in time with my pulse, a constant reminder of that day. The day I realized she wasn't coming back. The day I set fire to everything I could reach just to feel something other than the gaping hole she left behind.
Tank finally moves, his hands coming up in signs punctuated by a low growl. You're a fucking hypocrite.
"Excuse me?"
You act like you don't give a shit. Like you haven't been stalking her too.
"So fucking what? What do you want me to do?" I demand, taking a corner too fast. "Fall at her fucking feet and kiss them?"
You don't know why she left.
"Don't I?" I laugh. "Rich guy swoops in, offers her mom a better life. Of course she took it and never looked back. Who wouldn't? She laid it all out perfectly clear in that fucking letter."
Tank flinches slightly at the memory. The reminder of how Ellie finally responded to all our unanswered, desperate attempts to reach her.
It didn't sound like her, he signs.
I squeeze the piss out of the steering well until my blunt chewed nails bite into the leather.
I force my hands to relax because this car is my baby.
"If you have to believe she wouldn't say all that shit to us, that's your call.
But I'm not making decisions based on the fairy tales you've spun up in your head about her.
Are you already forgetting she only crawled back to us because she wants her new daddy's money? "
He sighs hard and growls again, the leather of his gloves creaking as his hands move in another flurry of sharp, angry signs. The lipstick print on the letter. The goodbye kiss. It wasn't hers.
I suddenly get this weird little feeling there's something my brother isn't telling me. Something he should have told me that I definitely don't know about.
I shoot him a look. "What do you mean, it wasn't her lips?"
Silence.
"How would you know that much about her lips, Tank?"
More silence.
No. Fucking. Way. I know for a fact he was terrified of her seeing him without his bandana. There is no way in fucking hell he let her kiss him. But I have to know. I have to know if somehow, someway, that happened and he told me nothing.
"Did you fucking kiss Ellie?"
He shakes his head, glowering at me. Before I can push it, he's signing again. Even if she did write the fucking letter, it wasn't a lie. She IS too good for us. I know that. YOU know that.
Oh. So he's just fucking delusional. "Shut up," I bite out, taking another hard turn.
You're scared. Tank's signs are slower now, more deliberate. Scared she'll leave again. So you're pushing her away first.
I clench my jaw so hard it hurts. He's not wrong.
Too bad it doesn't fucking matter. My phone buzzes in the cupholder, saving me from having to respond.
I snatch it up, grateful for the interruption, and look at the screen even though the giant fucking goody two-shoes next to me growls his disapproval.
Fucking Boy Scout.
JINX
The princess is in the tower~!
My pulse kicks up a notch.
She's at the house. Our house. The place we built with blood money and blackmail, the sanctuary we never thought she'd actually step foot in.
When we bought the place, I certainly never imagined it would be the place we kept her. The fact that it's so close to her college was an unspoken perk that made us all agree to sign on the dotted line without discussing it.
After all, the first rule of stalking club is you don't talk about stalking club.
And now I'm supposed to just... what? Walk in there and act like everything's normal? Like my hands aren't shaking with the desperate need to touch her, to claim her, to make sure she's really fucking real?
"Job's done," I say, already turning the car toward home. "Target's confirmed out of state. Cy's monitoring his credit cards. If he so much as sniffs at a plane ticket back here, we'll know."
Tank doesn't respond. Just keeps staring out the window, his disapproval thick enough to choke on.
The drive back feels endless and too short all at once. Every mile brings me closer to her. Closer to the confrontation I've been both craving and dreading since the moment she waltzed into our throne room three days ago.
She'll be back, I'd said with such certainty. And I was right. I'm always right about her.
Even when I wish I wasn't.
Tank shifts in his seat as we pull up to the house, his massive frame somehow managing to look both threatening and vulnerable. He signs one last message before we go inside, his dark eyes soft.
Don't break her.
Then he's out of the car, leaving me alone without a word.
I sit in the car for a moment, watching Tank go around the back of the house to disappear through the way she's the least likely to notice.
He won't go to meet her, of course, because being a hypocrite runs in the family even if we don't share a single drop of blood.
Through the window, I can see Jinx's head above the living room's main bay windowsill, probably absorbed in his phone as usual. I'm sure he's tracking every movement in the building, and so is Cyrus.
And somewhere in there, in that pink room we built for her like some kind of shrine to our collective insanity, is Ellie.
Mine at last.
Well… ours.
At least for the next year.
The house looks different knowing she's inside. Less like a fortress and more like... I don't know. I don't know if I want to know. Home's definitely not the right word, nothing’s been that in a long damn time, but… something.
The front door's unlocked—we never lock it because who the fuck is stupid enough to rob the Kings?—and I step inside to find the place eerily quiet.
No music. No voices. Just the soft hum of Cyrus's server system upstairs and the distant sound of Tank's weights already clanking in the gym. Working out has always been his go-to coping mechanism, especially when he's avoiding something.
Or someone.
Like Ellie.
Guess it's healthier than burning shit down, but who's counting?
"She's in her room," Jinx says without looking up from his phone. He's sprawled on the couch like a lazy-ass god in a Renaissance painting. "Been up there for an hour. Hasn't come out."
"You talk to her?"
"A little." His jaw tightens and I see a flash of rawness in his eyes.
I want to ask what happened, but the pull upstairs is too strong. My feet are already moving, carrying me toward the stairs, toward her, toward whatever the fuck this is about to become.
The second floor hallway feels longer than it should. Especially because at the end of the hall, pink light spills from the slightly open door of her room. She didn't close the door. Interesting.
I pause outside, my hand on the doorframe. I can hear her moving around inside, the soft rustle of fabric, the creak of floorboards. My heart hammers against my ribs like it's trying to bust free, and I realize with horror that I'm nervous.
Kade fucking Stark, who's stared down armed dealers and walked out of burning buildings without giving a rat's ass, is nervous about talking to a girl who used to ride on the back of his bike.
Pathetic.
I push the door open without knocking. Because fuck it, this is my house. My rules.
My—
The thought dies the moment I see her.
She's standing by the window, backlit by the dying sun, and the light turns her pink-streaked hair into fire. She's changed out of the clothes she wore to the warehouse, now wearing soft gray sweatpants and a tank top that displays the elegant curve of her neck.
The collar sits there like it belongs, silver and dark against her fair skin, and the cold dead thing where my heart's supposed to be sputters like it's trying to come to life.
She turns when she notices me and those green eyes hit me like bullets. There's fear there, sure, but also defiance. That same stubborn tilt to her chin.
"Kade," she says, and my name on her lips makes my cock twitch despite my best efforts.
"Princess." I lean against the doorframe, going for casual even though my pulse is racing. "Getting settled?"
"As much as one can settle into captivity." Her voice is steady, but I can see her fingers tapping against her thigh.
One, two, three, four, five.
Her tell.
She's scared.
Good. She should be scared. Should understand exactly what she's gotten herself into.
Hope Daddy's money is worth it.