36. Angel
THIRTY-SIX
ANGEL
Friday was upon us. The deadline to complete our contract was here, and yet the four of us sat around the office table, fidgeting like four teens in trouble for spray painting the side of the water tower or something. Nobody spoke a word. Nobody moved an inch. We just sat in silence, like monks in meditation.
Was this what our lives had become? Was this what Harper’s presence in our lives turned us into?
"So we’re just going to let the clock run out, is that your big plan, Ro?"
Of course it was. Rowan, for all that he’d always been a decisive, meticulous man his whole life, this time around, the fucker couldn’t move. He was frozen with indecision, with personal feelings tied up in this hot mess express.
And now, it could cost us all our livelihoods. Or more.
Nash grumbled from his side of the table, staring pointedly in any direction but Harper’s. Still avoiding her, I see.
"And who’s gonna explain our first outright failure to the boss? I’m not about to look Lilly St. Clair in the eye and tell her we intentionally fucked this one up."
Rowan sighed, the sound heavy and full of regret, sadness, and resignation. "I’ll talk to Lilly. I’ll come up with something. If we lose our jobs, we lose them. Wouldn’t be the first crew to go solo. And we certainly won’t be the last."
I watched Harper’s hands twitch on the top of the desk, her nails absently scratching into the wood. Yet she didn’t open her mouth. Clearly, there was something on her mind.
Interesting.
The girl had never been able to keep her mouth shut a day in her life, and yet now she found the self-control to zip those perfectly plump, kissable lips of hers?
Stop thinking about her sexually.
"You have anything to add, Harper?" Rowan asked quietly, his eyes picking up the cues her body was putting out just as I had only moments before.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Her chair clattered to the floor as she shoved backward and stood in a rush. "Obviously, I’m not advocating for my own death here, but, like, you guys can’t throw away your whole lives for me. There has to be a solution that prevents that."
Rowan’s eyes were glued to the table. "There isn’t. If you don’t die, our contract isn’t completed."
"What if you complete the contract?"
Rowan slammed his fist on the desk, shaking the whole thing with his violent outburst. "Do you want us to kill you? Is that it, Harper? Do you have a death wish?"
A heavy silence fell over our group, and Rowan returned to brooding sullenly. Nash still staunchly ignored the elephant in the room and leaned back, his eyes on the ceiling as he laced his fingers together behind his head.
"Sure seemed that way from the bullshit on the bridge."
Harper refused to even so much as glance in his direction, and I watched as she flinched and folded further in on herself, like a wounded bird.
What happened to the fiery harpy? The fierce lioness who’d been giving my brother shit since the moment she walked in?
I couldn’t tell what had turned her actions in on themselves so rapidly, but I was determined not to let it affect me. In another day, she’d demand to go home to her normal life, and we’d have to let her.
After all, there was no reason for him to want her dead if the time on the inheritance clock ran out.
"Fighting amongst each other isn’t going to solve anything. What we need is a plan?—"
Nash chuckled darkly. "Fuck your plans, and frankly, fuck you, too, Ro. I’m done making plans. Last few times I made plans for the future, they all went down the drain." He motioned to his face, then at Harper, and finally, around the room. "I planned on having a normal life with a normal girl. Turned out she was a psycho." His eyes were dark and humorless as he pointed out a problem that had never been his failing, turning it into his own fault. "I planned on never seeing Harper again, and surprise, she’s not really dead." He stuck his nose in the air and rolled his fucking eyes like a child. "And I planned to live out my days somewhere where I didn’t have to worry about my face making me unemployable or ostracized, and now we’re talking about that ending, too. Why the fuck did we even stop her from killing us on the bridge the other day? I shoulda jumped in that fucking water with her seven years ago, for all the good life’s brought me since."
"It’s all Father’s doing," I muttered, but no one was listening to me anymore. Harper stood and marched off toward the kitchen, and I could feel the other two holding their breath in her absence, waiting to see if she’d come back or not.
The sound of our front door slamming sent a chill through me.
The three of us all locked eyes, a mutual understanding passing through us at the realization that she’d left the rooms—unaccompanied, no less—and what that meant for us.
And then Nash sprang into action, bolting from the table to follow her out the door to gods knew where.
Rowan’s eyes held mine for a long moment, and neither of us moved. "Do you think we should follow them?"
"No," I replied, remembering how she flinched at his words, how he looked like he hated them even as they spilled from his lips. "They’ve gotta work their own shit out."
"There’s too much there to work out in a day."
The nod I gave in understanding went unnoticed. For the first time in a long time, my brother seemed . . . distracted. I hadn’t seen him stare off into space like this since our high school years.
Something was up.
"You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind, Rowan. Feel like sharing with the rest of the class?"
His lips drew into a taut line. "Not in particular, no."
"No to the first half, or no to the sharing bit?"
"Both."
"Fine," I replied loftily, rising from my chair. "I’ll just go find something else to occupy my time with."
One, two, three, four, five . . .
I counted my steps to the door, and just as my hand fell on the handle?—
"Okay, okay, you win. Sit down and we can talk."
He knew me so well.
"So," he began, his hands tightening into fists atop the table, "I paid a visit to our father."
It made sense. After all, where else would he have gone and not returned until the wee hours of the morning without telling us? Rowan didn’t like the idea of either myself or Nash being in the vicinity of that man any more than we wanted to be there. So far, he’d been our front man, heading off our lifelong abuser by standing for all of us when summoned to the manor. But he only hid that from us this time because he had to have known we’d likely insist on going with him. And in Nash’s mental state, there would have been hell to pay for letting us tag along.
"And?"
Sunlight cast a long shadow over his face from the window on the far wall, the setting sun bathing the room in an orange glow around us. "And he’s definitely behind the contract. I told him we had no intention of completing it, and he threatened—well, he made some threats I don’t think are all that empty."
"Threats like what?"
He shook his head solemnly, hiding whatever he’d been told from us in his usual protective manner. "It doesn’t matter. What matters is I need more time. And unfortunately for us, I don’t have it." The dinging of the clock against the wall signaled the top of the seventh hour, and I mentally counted down to midnight in my head.
"Five more hours to change your mind."
His eyes met mine, and it felt like the fucker could see right through me. "You don’t want to kill her any more than I do."
"But I don't want to lose my whole life, either, brother. We might be able to pick up the pieces and move on, but what about Nash? Or does his life not matter to you anymore?"
I could see the anger building in him, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t about him and Nash. It was about hiding the truth from myself. The truth I couldn’t even think aloud, lest it shatter what little control remained in my body.
"There’s only one way to stop him, and you know that."
Sadly, I did know that, and it entailed very likely leaving the manor in a fucking body bag. Making it past all his guards was easy going in. Coming out after killing our father was an entirely different matter. One with very low odds of success.
"I’m not eager to lose my life, Ro. I have things to do in this one." Things nobody else cared about. Things like revealing the truth about my mother’s death. "And if we kill him, what happens to Nash’s mom?"
Natalia Blackwood was a wonderful woman while she was alive and conscious, but conveniently, when she’d first spoken out against dear ole dad, she had a strange and unfortunate accident in her brand new car that same night.
She’d been in a coma ever since.
Part of Nash’s arrangement with our father had been that he’d continue to pay for her treatment and care, her life support, in the hopes she’d wake up again someday if he did what was asked of him. Until now, he’d kept that promise. But who knew what would happen to her if we didn’t fulfill the contract? To the truth about my own mother? And what about Rowan?
"What does he have on you?"
Rowan’s eyes cut to mine with a dangerous glint in their depths. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what dirt, what leverage, what fucking strings does he have attached to you that keep you from making a move?"
Deep down, though, I already knew.
Rowan’s weakness had always been us. His older brothers.
In a sad sort of twisted fate, he’d become our de facto protector, and the one thing he could have leveraged against him to make him forget his morals and do the wrong things over and over again without question.
It was what led him to the situation seven years ago.
Seven years. Seven o’clock. That lucky number seven really was a bitch to us.
"He threatened to kill us."
It wasn’t a question, nor was it a statement. It was a solid fact, something I’d known deep in my gut for a long time. His mother was dead. He had no other family aside from Nash and I. And Harper, of course. All his life, he’d been protecting us from our father. Since he was big enough to understand what happened behind those closed study doors, he’d been stepping in to take our punishments and standing up for us.
The fact that Rowan only hung his head in response was telling enough in itself that I hit the nail on the head.
"So he’s hanging us above your head, and that’s why you’re so torn up about it."
Rowan stayed silent, refusing to meet my gaze. His locs hung around his face, shielding him from view, and I impulsively leaned forward and yanked on one, eliciting a yelp from the stoic bastard.
"Fucking talk to me, man! We’re brothers! You don’t have to protect Nash and me. We’re big boys, okay? We don’t need you to serve as a fucking human shield anymore."
"There’s more on the line than you know, Angel, and I can’t explain it. But we have to be careful and get ahead of this before it spirals out of hand."
I sat back down, laid my hand atop one of his balled-up fists, and sighed. "Then let me help."