12. Kade
Kade
Bass from the club thumps and throbs through the floor, and through the chair I'm sitting in with my legs spread and my lighter turning between my tattooed fingers.
My version of a rosary, I guess.
I brought Ellie with me this time. She's kneeling at my feet, all prim and proper with her hands resting in her lap like a good little pet. She looks bored as fuck, but I haven't told her she can get up yet. She's being unusually obedient, and I know better than to think that means I've broken her.
Way more likely she's just spacing out because she's bored and irritated.
My empire is crumbling and I'm watching it happen in real time. First there was Carson skimming off the top and running shipments behind my back. Now there's the fucking Southside situation, which would have been manageable if a fucking senator hadn't turned out to be their source of funding.
A senator who just so happens to be the stepfather of the girl sitting at my feet. Convenient.
Nothing in my life has ever been convenient, and I don't believe in coincidence.
Then there's the matter of my own brother going behind my back.
Cyrus and Jinx, too. I don't know what, but I can tell they're keeping something from me. They're both being weird and not in the way they usually are when they're skulking around trying to hide the fact that they're fucking each other for some reason. Like anyone gives a shit.
And to top it all off with a little blue cherry are the fucking pills I found in Ellie's sweater. They're sitting in my jacket pocket right now.
Five small blue ovals wrapped in tissue paper.
I haven't called her on it, or told the others. I guess part of me wants to see if they know, and if they'll come to me. A part of me wants to see what she'll do. She isn't freaking out, so I can't say if the pills are just an anxiety thing or an addiction thing.
Not that people tend to keep legitimate prescriptions stashed and wadded up in their clothes like that. But she hasn't freaked out, which could mean it's nothing or it could mean she has more.
Either way, watching her is the only way I'm going to get anything because apparently no one consults me about what's going on in my own fucking operation anymore.
That ends tonight.
Ellie shifts on her knees again. Her hands are folded in her lap and she's counting again. It's silent but I see her lips flutter every so often in a way she thinks is invisible.
I see everything.
"I need to use the bathroom."
It's the first time she's spoken all night.
I look at her. "You pissed twenty minutes ago."
"I drank a lot of water." She gestures at the floor beside her without looking at it.
The dog bowl, which is a new addition. Stainless steel and squeaky clean with Princess engraved on the outside.
She drank from it without protest, which is even more suspicious.
I expected her to tell me to go fuck myself, and then I'd have an excuse to leash her.
But she didn't question it, which is fucking suspicious.
"Hurry back. Five minutes or I come looking."
She stands, brushing her knees, and walks out.
I count to sixty seconds before I follow.
The bathroom door is closed, but she didn't lock it. Smart girl. She knows locked doors make me break shit.
I push the door open and the scene on the other side slaps me in the face. Ellie is bent over the bathroom sink with one nostril pressed to the granite surface, a razor blade tucked between her fingers and a thin line of crushed blue-and-white powder disappearing into her nostril.
She hears the door and spins around, her eyes so huge, there's barely any green around her blown pupils. A fine dusting of white clings to her full upper lip and one nostril, and the remaining half of the line sits on the counter.
"It's been one minute," she hisses.
I cross the bathroom in two steps and pin her against the counter with my hips, my hands planted on the counter on either side of her. She gasps, arching back. My thumb swipes across her upper lip, collecting the white powder, and I hold the evidence between us where we can both see it.
"Apparently you didn't need the full five to get this shit up your nose."
She parts her lips like she's about to defend it but the argument dies in her throat.
I flick the powder off my thumb and look past her at her little setup with the razor blade on the counter.
"It's just Xanax." Her voice is too fast as she scrambles for footing. "It's prescription, Kade."
"Oh, yeah? Your doctor tell you to fucking snort it?"
She's dead silent.
I grab her face, my tattooed fingers pressing into her jaw and tilting her head so she can only look up at me. Her eyes are already glassy, her pulse hammering beneath my fingers, and I see the moment she realizes this isn't a conversation she's going to talk her way out of.
"You thought I wouldn't notice your little habit?" I challenge calmly. "Five pills in your sweater, Princess. Wrapped up like candy. How many more are there?"
Her knee comes up fast, aimed right at my cock, and I twist sideways just in time to catch her thigh with my hip instead. I push her back against the wall, pinning both her wrists above her head with one hand, my other forearm pressed across her collarbone.
She's breathing hard and so am I.
"Let go of me," she growls, struggling like a wild animal caught in a trap.
"Answer the question, Princess."
"Fuck you."
"How many fucking pills do you have stashed around my goddamn house?"
"It's none of your fucking business what I take."
"Fine." I release her and push off the wall. "The hard way, then."
I bend and she doesn't see it coming until my shoulder presses into her stomach and I lift her over my shoulder like a ragdoll.
She screams in indignant rage and her small fists start raining blows on my back as I carry her ass straight out of the bathroom and through the back halls of the club.
The music pounds louder, giving me a fucking headache all over again, as clubbers go right on in their blissful ignorance of what's happening a wall away.
A few guards' heads turn when I stomp past them with an enraged screaming woman thrown over my shoulder. Tony raises an eyebrow at the door, but nobody asks questions.
I shoulder my way through the back exit into the alley where my car is parked, ignoring the nails digging into the backs of my arms and my back like claws.
Ellie is still thrashing and calling me every profane thing under the sun.
When I yank the passenger door open and try to set her inside, her teeth sink into the meat of my forearm and draw blood.
"Fuck! You little—"
I jerk back, staring at the blooming crescent of tooth marks on my skin.
She fucking bit me.
She stares back at me from inside the car, her chest heaving, a thick smear of my blood painting her lower lip.
This girl is fucking feral.
And I have never been more turned on, or concerned, in my entire fucking life. Strange combination of emotions, but okay.
"Okay," I say very calmly. "Since you want to behave like a rabid animal, trunk it is."
Her face goes white as she realizes what I'm going to do. "Kade Gallagher, don't you fucking dare!"
I ignore her protests and drag her out, carrying her around the back of the car, pop the trunk with one hand, and put her in. She claws and curses and grabs for the edge but I've already closed it.
The banging starts immediately. Muffled screaming, fists raging against metal, the whole car rocking on its suspension with an impressive amount of force for someone who's basically a feral kitten. I walk around to the driver's side to start the engine, and pull out of the alley.
She continues to scream in rage the entire drive.
I turn the radio up.
Jinx is on the porch before I've fully parked the car in the driveway. He's barefoot and wearing one of Cyrus's hoodies, like he thinks no one will notice. The look on his face tells me he senses something's wrong, he just doesn't know the specifics yet.
"Where's Ellie?" he asks immediately.
I ignore him as I get out and go around for the trunk.
The banging intensifies, and from inside, I hear her voice, muffled but unmistakable. "Let me the fuck out you fucking son of a whore!"
Jinx's face goes slack. "Holy shit. Did you put Ellie in the trunk?"
He rips the keys from my hand before I can respond, fumbling with the key fob.
His hands shake as he pops the trunk and Ellie launches herself out, not beating the rabid animal accusations anytime soon.
She has mascara streaking down her face and her hair is a wild nest with a few pink streaks sticking out like straws.
She collides into Jinx's chest, and he wraps his arms around her immediately. He gives me a furious look over her head, cradling the back of it. "What the fuck, Kade?"
The front door opens and Cyrus steps out, glasses shining white in the porch light. It takes him approximately half a second to assess the scene in front of him.
"You're a fucking psychopath," Ellie hisses into Jinx's chest. I know those tears, though. It's rage that makes her cry those tears, not fear.
"Yeah," I say calmly. "And you're a fucking junkie. I don't take that shit seriously coming from you."
Jinx's expression goes blank. The millisecond of guilt in his eyes is all I need to confirm what I already suspected.
"You knew." I take a step forward. "Both of you knew she was popping pills and you didn't say a fucking word."
Cyrus's poker face holds, but Jinx has never been as good at lying as he thinks he is. At least not with his face.
"We were going to tell you," Jinx mutters into Ellie's hair. His arms are still wrapped around her but judging from the way her body stiffens, his embrace is about to become a trap.
The lighter's in my hand again even though I don't remember pulling it out.
Click. Click. Clickity-fucking-click.