Chapter 14 Roderick #3
It’s impossible to miss the venom in his words, and I can’t even blame him because I feel my temper rise. The only thing that keeps my mouth shut and my emotions in check is the need to know the rest of this story.
“But that night, it was worse. Not only had she failed to keep one of the younger girls from being selected, but the piece of shit who bought her murdered her. A lot of the girls ended up with ‘borrow’ contracts after Jade made the idea known to keep the girls safe, but it wasn’t uncommon for some people to still want to own them.
Usually, when someone purchased a girl, Jade would follow along and kill their handler before delivering the girl to the authorities.
That night didn’t play out like usual. When she showed up that night, he was gone, and Brittany was long dead. ”
His eyes fall closed, a pained look crossing his face before he forces his eyes open to meet our gazes.
The look in his eyes catches me off guard.
He looks defeated. It’s so unlike him, it seems strange to see him like that.
Kratos and, I guess, Jade are both fighters.
They seem almost larger than life, but that’s not true, and that’s never been clearer to me than it is right now.
Everyone has weaknesses.
“She stayed with me for two days that time. It was the longest she had ever left the girls without being on a contract. I almost took her and ran. All I wanted was for her to be out and free, but I knew better. Jade would have hated me, and while I would have gladly taken her hating me for the rest of her life, if I knew she would be safe. I knew she would go back regardless of what I did. She wouldn’t leave those girls to face what she had, not if she could help it. ”
The front door opens and closes, stopping him from continuing.
At once, all of our heads turn toward the living room to see who it is.
I can’t believe we were so distracted that none of us noticed the beeping at the gate, but now that I’m listening for it, I do.
I pull out my phone and silence it just as Zander walks through the doorway, looking sleep-deprived and well-worn out but okay overall.
It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s changed. I’d bet my fucking car he’d showered and changed at the club, or maybe even at his shop, so that he didn’t have to explain to Jade why he came back covered in blood.
Smart.
The moment he steps into the kitchen, his head snaps up as if he can feel our eyes on him. I can’t say I’m surprised. We have a lot of training to keep us on our toes, but I can’t let him showing up distract me right now.
“So you're telling me she chose me this time?” Spencer asks, and I can hear how skeptical he is. I am too. “Why?” he asks, completely ignoring the fact that Zander just walked through the door.
“Again, I don’t think that she did it knowingly.
When she gets like that, she's almost a shell of herself. I hope you never have to see her shut down like that, but chances are you probably will. She’s like here, with no emotions, no sense of self, just surviving, and in those times, she looks for safety.
It’s as if she knows she’s shutting down, and the only thing she can think to do is get somewhere safe until she can get through it.
Like I said, for a long time, she turned to me.
Sometimes she turned to the girls like Charlotte, but last night she stayed here.
” He nods as if he’s happy with that, and I can’t say I’m not.
She’s our boss, and we’re supposed to keep her safe.
If she can trust Spencer, who she has more than a few issues with, then we can’t be fucking it up as badly as I feared.
What I can’t figure out is why it also bugs the shit out of me.
Well, I can, but I’m not going to look too closely at it right now. No, right now, we have bigger problems.
“What happened?” Zander asks as he makes his way over to the kitchen island to stand with us.
I’d honestly forgotten he was there.
His earlier exhaustion is gone, replaced with a sense of urgency to understand what's going on.
“So you're telling me that last night was bad enough that it triggered this panic mode?” I ask, choosing to ignore Zander. Even when he turns to me and raises his hands in a clear ‘what the fuck’ gesture..
We can fill him in later.
If he wanted to know what was going on, he should have been here.
The moment I think that, I know it’s not fair.
I might be upset about what went down last night and even this morning, but Zander has been busting his ass to try and get answers.
We all have. I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever seen Spencer or Zander take anything quite as seriously as they are taking this, but regardless of that, he will have to wait if he wants to be filled in.
I don’t know how long we have until Jade wakes up, and I would like to know what we're dealing with before then.
“Yes,” Kratos answers. His voice is low, coming out more like a growl than actual words. “The question here is why.”
I nod, and so does Spencer, while Zander just looks on, his head turning from one of us to the next as he tries to piece together what is happening on his own.
“And how do we keep this from happening again?” Spencer adds.
“From what Dom told me, that’s not going to happen,” Kratos says, turning his attention to Spencer.
“Unless you have some information, he didn’t.
But from what he said, Randall made sure to set this up, so we will likely be dealing with this again, and soon.
He invited her to their dinner next weekend, correct? ”
I watch as Spencer's mouth gapes open, and I have to physically work to keep my own from falling open in shock as well.
He can’t be serious, but the look on his face lets me know he is.
“No! No fucking way!” Spencer shouts, pushing up from his stool to stand.
Kratos doesn’t bat an eye at his outburst.
“I thought I’d explained this already,” he says with a sigh, as if he’s addressing children, and I clench my jaw so hard I worry I might chip a tooth just to keep myself quiet.
“She won’t turn it down. We could all do whatever we like, but it won’t work. Not if she thinks going will benefit the girls in some way. We could keep her from this dinner, but in the end, she will find her way back to Randall, no matter how much she’ll hate every moment of it.”
“Fuck!” Spencer shouts, pushing a hand through his hair in frustration.
The sound of broken glass fills the kitchen, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m responsible.
Looking down, I find the handle of my cup still in my hand, the shattered pieces of the cup litter the counter along with the remains of my coffee.
I chuck the handle in the sink, annoyed with myself, my chest heaving with the anger I feel that has no outlet.
I just cleaned Spencer’s beer off the wall last night, and now this.
“There has to be something we can do,” Zander says, his voice quiet, almost as if he’s pleading. He pays me zero attention, not taking his eyes off Kratos.
He doesn’t need to understand what's happening to grasp the severity of the situation. All he needs to know is that it's about Jade, and that’s enough, though I’m sure our reactions to this news is probably putting him on edge.
Good, he should be.
“There’s not.”
Jade’s voice breaks through the tension, and as one, we all turn to look at her where she stands leaning against the door frame, watching us.