RAIN
Chapter ten
Rage tears through my chest as Blade steps into the dark room, throwing the stairwell door shut. The cocking of my gun penetrates the ensuing silence.
He chuckles. “Do it. I fucking dare you.”
“You went after him!” I don’t recognise my own voice. It’s deadly; it…sounds exactly like his. “I know how many people your jealousy has driven you to kill, because of me…her.”
“Don’t you fucking dare bring her into this.”
The gun shakes in my hand as his shadowed figure turns to face me, his mask hanging loosely from his fingertips. I know he’s hurting. He feels the one person he has left—me—is falling through his fingers, but I’m his comfort person, his safety net, his only constant. She’s who he truly craves.
I’d fucked around with a few people the last year, but no one interested me enough to gain my full attention.
All those people disappeared after they’d been with me.
Yes, it pissed me off that he’d hurt innocent people simply because they’d had contact with me, but I still found myself covering up his crimes and erasing any incriminating footage.
He takes a step closer, pressing his forehead to the gun. “Do it, you fucking coward.”
My hand trembles. “Fuck you.”
“DO IT!”
Slivers of moonlight seep through the cracks in the balcony curtains, and I know he can see the war waging inside me.
I know he needs me, but, goddamnit, when do I finally get to start living for me?
Lowering the weapon, I click on the safety, and his smile morphs into a dark grin.
I swing my arm, the gun colliding with his head with a resounding thud.
His smile only widens as dark liquid pours down his face, and he barrels toward me, knocking the air from my lungs and launching me back onto the marble floor.
My skull whacks against it, and I groan through the pain before landing another hard hit across his cheek with the gun as he straddles me.
Our arms are a tangled web as he fights to disarm me.
His fist collides with my jaw, sending pain ripping through it and throwing my head sideways.
Copper fills my mouth as he rips the gun from my hands and launches it across the room.
The slick blood on his cheek lessens the impact of my next punch, and a calloused hand wraps around my throat, pinning me down.
I let my bloodied teeth shine with a snarl as I drive my knee into his back, causing him to fall forward.
My fist collides with his ribs, and his blunt nails dig into my neck.
“Surrender,” he clips in a panted breath.
My lungs burn as I claw at his wrist, blood spilling from my mouth to trail across my cheek. “Y-you,” I choke, “w-won’t kill m-me.” He stares. I smile. “I’m the only o-one on your s-side. You can’t g-get back to her without my h-help.”
His enraged breaths mix with my gargled chokes, and just when white stars dot my vision, he releases me. Throwing another punch across my aching cheek, he rolls off me, and I roll to the side.
Once I’ve successfully coughed up a bloodied lung, I roll onto my back, panting. Blade sits against the wall beside the door, elbows to his knees, head hanging.
No matter how many times we’ve fought like this and threatened death upon one another, neither of us can ever follow through. Instead, we leave each other bruised and bloody to get our threat across.
“You didn’t do it,” I breathe out. “If you really wanted him dead, he wouldn’t have seen you coming.”
“I need you,” he whispers.
“I’m right here, but if you ever go near him again, I won’t help you get back to her.”
He lifts his head. “It’s been almost five years, and you haven’t helped me at all.”
I spit out more blood and lift to my elbows. “Are you giving up hope, brother?”
“As far as she’s concerned, I’ll never give up.”
The admittance settles me a little, because part of me is always scared I’ll lose my brother to his own gun. Blade’s a fighter, but everyone has their limit.
He pushes up to stand and step over me.
“Promise me you won’t go after him again,” I plead.
“I’m a manipulative, lying cunt,” he throws my words, used to describe him eight years ago, back in my face. “I could promise you that, but it wouldn’t be true.”
Swiping my gun off the floor, he unclips the magazine to flick the bullets out one by one. Not because I’ll use them against him, but because pissing me off is enjoyable for him. Once it’s empty, he drops the weapon to the floor and turns to stalk down the hall, slamming his bedroom door shut.
I stumble to my feet, blinking hard to rid the pain throbbing in my head, and wipe the blood from my split lip with the back of my hand.
Blade was always my constant person too, but I’ve finally found someone else I don’t want to let go of.
“RAIN!” Blade’s voice booms through my closed door, startling me awake. Throwing back the comforter, I round my bed and swing my door open, ready to run directly into his room across the hall. I stop, catching him stumbling through the stairwell door in my periphery.
The more distance I eat between us, the tighter my stomach twists.
Blood pours from his back, staining his black sweatpants and leaving a crimson trail behind.
He groans and loses his footing. I catch his sweaty shoulders, but his weight knocks me down.
I grunt when my still-sore back hits the floor, and my eyes widen, watching the blood pour from the deep gash cut from the end of his right collarbone to the middle of his spine.
“People,” he breathes out raggedly, “ambushed me in the stairwell. I tried to fight, but—”
“Save your breath,” I croak.
He growls behind his teeth as I slide out from under him and race to the hall closet to fetch towels, then to my room to get my phone. Dialling 999, I put it to my ear, holding it with my shoulder.
He seethes through his teeth from my applied pressure to the gaping cut.
“I want these people found!” my father demands as we stand outside Blade’s hospital room.
“Yes, sir.” The older male officer nods. “I’ll leave Carter here to question your son when he wakes up.”
The younger officer moves past us, positioning himself beside Blade’s door.
“We have a detailed security system in that apartment complex,” my father rages, the vein in his neck popping. “Each door and the elevator are inaccessible without a card.”
“I understand, sir.” The officer’s yellow eyes almost roll. “We’ll look into it.”
“Find them, or you’ll be out of a fucking job.”
“Alexa.”
I hear a rasp call from Blade, and I race through the open door.
Hooded eyes follow me, and he snarls, disappointed I’m not who he called for.
I pull a chair across to sit beside him, my gaze drifting to the large plasters covering his back with over a hundred stitches holding the skin and muscle beneath.
I had a thought while racing to the hospital behind the ambulance that this may have been the Huxleys retaliating for Blade attacking Rome. I’d hacked Rome’s phone while Blade was in surgery and discovered Rome hadn’t had contact with Xander since the night they were researching my family.
“Water,” Blade croaks. “My mouth is a fucking desert.”
I take the water bottle from the table beside him, and his face etches in pain as he lifts to his elbow to take it.
“Blade,” Dad calls in a panicked tone I’ve never heard before. “What the fuck happened?” I reach out to take the almost empty bottle, and Blade’s droopy eyes look past me. I glance over my shoulder to Carter in the doorway. “Give us one fucking minute,” Dad spits, slamming the door shut.
Blade draws a deep breath before beginning to explain everything I already watched on the security cameras.
“I was in the gym and then went to go back upstairs. Three people in balaclavas jumped me on the third floor. I knocked one of them out and sent them flying down the stairs, but two tasered me and then pinned me against the wall. They sliced my back and said, ‘you thought running off to London would protect you?’ I managed to knock one out, and the other was dragging them away when I stumbled up the stairs and put in the pin for our apartment.”
Warmth drains from my body, and my muscles stiffen; I know they witnessed the involuntary reaction my body just had.
“Rain?” Dad drags a chair across to sit beside me.
“I-I.”
“Speak.”
“Ezra Smith,” I confess.
Blade’s brows furrow. “Our media teacher who was arrested for selling child pornography?”
I nod. “I had access to his computer. One day, we were grading assignments, and he left the room to go to the restroom. A message came through on his private laptop. I got a glimpse of it, and it said, ‘I want more of the kid.’ He was referring to you.”
Blade arches a brow.
“I had a meeting with the principal,” Dad queries. “He said evidence was anonymously sent to the police, but that was…what? A year after you both left school?”
Once the news broke about Ezra, Dad pulled his funding to the school, ceasing any involvement with them, but the principal and superintendent had no clue who they’d hired.
“It was killing me,” I admit, tugging at my hair.
“I knew about it and the mountain of people associated with him. I debated sending it in earlier, but I was worried about the consequences if they discovered it was me.” I meet Blade’s dead gaze, my own guilty.
“I saw the opportunity to send it in a day before we moved here from Los Angeles.”
The sick fuck only got five years for what I sent in, but I had others taken down with him.
Blade groans, trying to adjust and ease the pain. “Nothing good will ever come from trying to play hero, brother.”
Dad sighs, leaning back in his seat and shaking his head. “You should’ve told me, son. I could’ve had the stupid fucks taken out in prison.”
“I tried.” I peer across to him. “They put them in solitary, and the guards were untouchable. Either they’d bought them out, or they had protection from someone else. I’d begun negotiating with a guard anonymously two months ago, but she refused every cash offer.”
Dad stands and adjusts his black coat over his suit.
“Blade, you tell that officer the story you said and keep quiet about the rest. Rain, you will help purchase an estate under an alias for you both to live in and a garage with ten new cars registered under other aliases. You are to swap cars before you leave the city and when you return.” His eyes narrow on me.
“Your incessant need to prove your independence will get you and your brother killed.”
Blade chuckles. “Don’t act like you give a fuck about me, Aaron. At least I’ll have a scar Alexa can drool over.”
Dad pinches the bridge of his nose, a clear signal he’s getting a headache.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he moves toward the door. Ignoring me, he opens it, allowing the officer in.
I’m sure he’s proud I had those people removed, but disappointment radiates from him—I didn’t come to him to have the matter of their deaths handled sooner.
Our father wears the front of a clean, entrepreneurial man who took over his father’s small construction company and turned it into a worldwide empire, but he has connections the likes of which the world has never seen.
When you build a building to someone’s desired ‘specifications,’ such as a hidden room not included in the plans, people owe you favours. He’ll need to call in a few for this.