18. Kade
Kade
The scratches from Ellie's nails burn like a motherfucker down my jaw, but the pain is nothing compared to the sound she's making. My hands shake like they haven't since I was a stupid kid watching my brother get hauled away by cops.
"DON'T! I'LL KILL YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL KILL YOU, GET OFF ME!"
Her nails rake across my face again and I jerk back, but I don't let go of her wrists. If I let go, she's going to hurt herself even more. She's already torn lines into her own forearms, her body arching off the mattress like she's fucking possessed.
No. Like she's trying to escape something pinning her down.
Someone pinning her down.
She's not really seeing me, I realize. Her eyes are open but they're looking at a different room, a different man, a different set of hands around her throat. I know this because of the way she's clawing, not at my wrists where I'm holding her, but at my neck.
Going for his throat.
"Ellie." I keep my voice low and steady, the opposite of everything happening inside me, which is a white-hot inferno of fucking rage consuming rational thought at a rate that should concern me. "It's me, it's Kade. You're in your room, Princess, you're safe here."
She doesn't hear me.
Her legs kick, tangling themselves up in the sheets, and a guttural sob tears out of her throat as her fingernails find the scratches she already made and deepen them.
Thin lines of blood run down my jaw and drip onto the shirt Tank must have given her, and she's still fighting with everything her trembling, fevered body has left.
Tank rushes in through the doorway, his massive frame blocking the hallway light.
His eyes widen above the mask when he sees the blood on my face and Ellie thrashing in my grip.
He takes one step forward and then stops, frozen, his hands lifting and dropping at his sides like he can't figure out what to say or do with them.
"She's having a flashback," I say through my teeth. "She thinks I'm…"
I can't finish that fucking sentence.
I don't need to.
He knows exactly what I mean.
I hear footsteps rushing down the hall and a second later, Jinx appears, still wearing Cyrus's baggy hoodie. His blond hair looks wild and he clearly just woke up.
"Princess." His voice is soft as his eyes lock on her, but he's panicking. He kneels beside the bed, his hand hovering near her hair. "Hey, it's me. It's Jinx. You're home, El. You're home and nobody can hurt you here."
Her thrashing slows, just a little.
Jinx's fingers find her temples and rest there, the lightest possible touch, brushing sweat-soaked strands of blonde-and-pink hair away from her face. "There, that's it. Good girl, you're safe. Count with me. One..."
"Two," she gasps, and it's her voice again, broken as it is.
"Three," Jinx says.
"Four." A shudder rolls through her.
"Five."
His hand cups her cheek and she turns her face into it. The sob that comes out of her is the sound of someone arriving back in their body after being somewhere horrible.
"There she is." Jinx lowers himself until his forehead nearly touches hers. "There's our girl. You're okay. You're right here, safe and sound."
Tears course down her face, soaking the pillow, soaking Jinx's fingers.
I release her wrists slowly, one, then the other, and she doesn't lash out again.
Her hands find Jinx's hoodie instead, fisting in the fabric, pulling him closer until she's half in his lap and half on the mattress and her face is buried in his chest.
I sit back on my heels.
The blood's dropping off my jaw as I reach up and touch my fingers to the wounds. There are three of them, deep enough they'll scar. Good. I never want to forget how pissed I am right now at that motherfucking shithead who did this to her for as long as I live.
Tank hasn't moved from the doorway. His chest is heaving, his mask puffing with his harsh breaths, the only outward sign that he's not made of stone.
His eyes are locked on Ellie with an agonized stare.
His hands flex at his sides and I know he wants to hold her.
Wants to fix it. He can't do either without risking making it worse, and the helplessness is eating him alive.
That makes two of us.
Jinx murmurs into her hair. Song lyrics, maybe. Or nonsense. Either way, the steady rhythm of his voice is soothing her, her sobs softening into whimpers and then breathy silence.
I straighten up slowly.
She thought I was him.
She looked at my hands on her wrists and she saw his hands, and she fought me like you fight someone who is going to kill you. The way you fight someone who has tried to kill you.
For the first time, I don't reach for the lighter in my pocket.
Fire isn't enough this time.
Jinx looks up from Ellie's sleeping form. Didn't take long for her to go under again.
"I'm going to text Cy," he whispers, already reaching for his phone.
I nod and walk over to the door. Tank shifts to let me past, but his eyes are locked on her.
Stay with her, I sign and keep walking.
Down the hallway, then the stairs.
Todd Waterson's mansion is twenty minutes away by car, less if I break every law on the way there, but what's a traffic citation in comparison to what I'm going to do to him when I get there? I know his security rotation by heart because Cyrus recorded it all weeks ago.
Fuck the right moment. I can't let him live to waste oxygen another day. If he's going to haunt her in her sleep, let him do it from hell.
"Kade."
Jinx is coming up behind me, his bare feet moving fast on the hardwood.
I don't stop. My hand closes around the keys hanging on the hook by the door.
"Kade, where are you going?"
"You know where."
"The hell I do." He grabs my arm and I let him, because if I shake him off right now the fire inside me might break free and I don't trust what it would do to anyone in its path. "Stop. Just… just stop for one second."
"I don't have seconds to spare. That fucker put his hands on her. He—"
I can't even get the words out.
Because I really am going to lose my fucking shit if I say it out loud.
"We don't know that." Jinx steps in front of me, both palms on my chest, pushing.
I could move him like he weighs nothing, but his eyes are wide and wild and he's trying so hard to be the rational one, which is something Jinx has never been.
"She's feverish, Kade. She's been hallucinating for days. We don't know what she was seeing."
"Then how do you know who I'm going to kill?"
"What's happening?" Cyrus's voice calls from the bottom of the stairs before Jinx has a chance to respond. His glasses are askew, clearly having rushed to get back. "Is Ellie okay?"
"Todd," I say, because I can't get any more specific than that. "I'm gonna kill him."
Cyrus's face goes completely blank for a second. Then his eyes narrow.
"That was always the plan. What do you mean?"
"I mean right fucking now. Tonight."
"No." He ascends the stairs in three long strides. "Absolutely fucking not."
"He hurt her, Cy." I step toward the door and Jinx's hands push harder against my chest. I take him by the wrists, gently only because it's Jinx, and move him sideways easily. "She thought I was him. She was screaming, clawing, fighting for her fucking life."
Cyrus stops, his hand gripping the railing.
"I knew something was off," he mutters. His voice is quiet but that doesn't mean he isn't pissed.
"At that dinner, the way she shrank whenever he said her name, and the way her mother…
" He closes his eyes and sighs. When he opens them again, they're stone cold.
"I suspected something, but I should have known. "
"Then you know exactly why I'm walking out this door."
"And doing what?" Cyrus takes the last stair and blocks my path alongside Jinx.
Two bodies between me and the threshold, and the only thing stopping me from going through both of them is the logical corner of my brain that's still, barely, functioning.
"Storming a senator's gated compound at this hour and strangling him in his bed?
You'll get caught. You'll get twenty-five to life. "
"I don't give a fuck."
"You do," Cyrus says, stepping forward. "You care because if you're in a cell, you can't protect Ellie from the aftermath. Besides, who runs the operation if you're gone?"
"You do. All of you."
"Bullshit. We need you here, Kade. She needs you here."
I sway on my feet and realize distantly that I haven't slept in a long ass time and the adrenaline pumping through me is about to catch up. I feel like fucking shit all of a sudden.
"He's a senator," Jinx adds while I'm fighting not to suddenly pass out. "He has security, and allies who'll come looking if he disappears without a damn compelling reason. Ellie's still connected to him legally. If we fuck this up, it falls on her and her mom."
I know.
I fucking know.
I know every logical reason to wait.
But logic left the building the moment she looked at me with those terrified, glassy eyes and saw him.
But…
"If we do this wrong," Cyrus says, clearly picking up on the crack in my resolve, "Ellie could lose everything, including us. We have to follow the plan."
I stare at the door. The keys dig into my palm hard enough to draw blood, adding to the collection of scratches already drying on my skin.
"The plan," I repeat flatly.
"We kill him right," Cyrus confirms. "And we make damn sure he knows why before the end."
The lighter finds its way into my free hand. I don't even remember pulling it out of my pocket.
I set the keys back on the hook.
He's right.
I fucking hate it, but he's right.
Todd Waterson doesn't get to die fast. And he sure as fuck doesn't get to die a victim.
I turn away from the door and Jinx exhales deeply. Cyrus's hand finds my shoulder and gives it a squeeze I shrug off.
I take the stairs back up, one at a time, and look back into her room.
Tank lowers himself onto the edge of her bed beside her. His dark eyes find mine and I can see the question he wants to ask, but I don't have the answer myself.
I lower myself into the chair in the corner instead and watch Ellie sleep.
I watch her, and I hate myself more than I've ever hated anyone because I spent weeks looking at this girl and seeing the person who broke me.
The spoiled princess who chose a mansion over a trailer and abandoned everyone who loved her in the process.
I had a hundred chances to look closer. A hundred fucking moments where the truth was right fucking there, and I never asked the one question that matters more than all the others.
Who broke her?