Chapter 3
Chapter three
JUDE GRAVES
The first thing I register is the throb behind my eyes, like someone’s pressing their thumbs into my fucking skull. My stomach growls, one warning away from vomiting. I try to breathe through it—and realize something warm is pressed against my side.
I blink and turn my head just enough to see Micah, half-buried in the blanket, one arm slung across my hips like he tethered himself to me sometime in the night.
His messy hair is smashed flat on one side, his mouth parted in a soft, exhausted snore. He always looks peaceful when he sleeps. It hits me like a punch to the gut—like seeing a broken thing before it was ever shattered. One I helped break.
I barely remember getting into bed. I never do on nights like last. But Micah being here means I wasn’t alone when it got bad.
My throat tightens.
I’m grateful that he stays with me like this. I stare at the ceiling, waiting for the black spots to fade. It’s pathetic how used to this feels. The worst part is, it doesn’t even register as strange anymore.
Just...familiar.
A car horn wails somewhere below. My heart jumps, pounding too hard, and I squeeze my eyes shut until the room stops tilting. I need water. I need ten hours of sleep. I need to stop being this person.
Good fucking luck.
I try to carefully and slowly slide out from under Micah’s arm, but it doesn’t work.
He jerks awake, sucking in a sharp breath. His eyes are wide and unfocused for a second before recognition clicks into place. “Jesus,” he mutters, voice scratchy from sleep. “Thought you were falling off the bed again.”
“I fell off the bed?” I ask, raising an amused brow.
“Twice, man. It was annoying.”
I huff a tired laugh. “Did you pick me up and put me back?”
“Obviously.” Micah sits up, rubbing his face with both hands. “You look like shit.”
“You’re a generous friend.” I look down and notice my trembling fingers. Usual morning withdrawals.
He sighs and grabs the glass on the nightstand, pressing it into my hand. “Drink.”
I take a long sip. Room-temperature water has never tasted so damn holy. Micah is watching me with that expression he gets on a morning after a wild night. Which is, honestly, more often than not. It’s almost like he’s saying, how the fuck are we even alive?
“You had a rough night,” he says softly.
“When don’t I, man?”
He doesn’t answer. The truth is in the way his knee bumps mine under the sheet. How close we are without thinking about it, or how neither of us moved away during the night, because we never do. We sit for a few silent moments, lost in our own thoughts, until a sudden knock breaks through it.
I freeze.
Micah’s head snaps toward the door.
Another knock. Harder this time.
“Room service,” someone calls too cheerfully. Micah meets my eyes. He knows it, too. Trouble’s already here. Lovely.
A young guy in a hotel vest wheels a cart inside with coffee, fruit, eggs, all the things I can’t stomach right now.
He gives us a professional smile. Behind him are my two least favorite people.
Nolan barges in, one hand shoved in his suit pocket, the other already reaching for the coffee carafe.
Adriana glides in after him, sunglasses still on even though she’s indoors.
Micah stiffens beside me on the bed. I can practically feel him shrinking in on himself. He hates Nolan more than I do, which is saying something.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Nolan says without looking at me.
“Is it?” I mutter, wiping sleep from my face.
Nolan smirks. “Depends on how cooperative you feel.”
Adriana sets her bag on the table, eyes flicking over the bed at the shared blankets, and the fact that Micah is still sitting close enough that our thighs touch. She doesn’t comment. The curl of her lip says plenty.
She’s such a bitch.
Micah gets up, retreating to the far side of the room against the windowsill, just to get some distance between him and them.
Nolan finally turns his head toward me. He looks tan, rested, and clean. Like someone who didn’t just watch his client shoot meth on a tour bus six hours ago or overdose hours before that. “We’ve got a situation,” he says casually, pouring himself coffee.
I rub my eyes. “It’s too early for this shit, man.”
Nolan’s smile widens. “Jude, there’s no such thing as too early when you’re a man in your...position.”
I don’t reply because I have a sickening feeling that I know what’s coming next. Nolan leans against the minibar, Adriana crosses her arms, and Micah stays beside the window.
Nolan takes a slow sip of his coffee and says, “We’ve got a rat.”
My stomach drops. “Who?” I ask.
“A little wild cannon,” he says, almost playfully. “Name’s Ralph Calderón.”
My pulse spikes. Ralph is dangerous. Not in the calculated way Nolan is.
Ralph is chaos. A man who grew up inside three different cartels.
The man doesn’t fear death because he’s already met it on multiple occasions.
I’ve only heard of him because of how much Nolan used to idolize him.
Nolan’s such a goddamn loser that it should be comical.
“What did he do?” Micah asks from the corner.
Nolan glances his way. “He stole money. A lot of it. And now he’s threatening to expose our operation.”
Nolan’s empire isn’t built on music. It never was. He just uses it as a great cover to deal in the criminal underworld. Millions of dollars coming in through our band definitely helps. He sets his cup down and steps closer to me. “I need you to handle it.”
My throat goes dry. “Handle it,” I repeat.
Adriana smiles sharply behind him. “He means kill him, baby.”
I don’t look at her or acknowledge her annoying fucking comment. Obviously, he means kill, you stupid bitch. I look at Nolan. “How messy?” I ask.
Nolan’s eyes gleam. He loves this part. Loves watching the part of me that still has a conscience fight with the part he’s molding. A wild fucking animal clawing for freedom from a body that tries holding back. “As messy as you want,” he says. “But get it done.”
Micah shifts, furious. “You’re using him too much. He’s still recovering from—”
Adriana cuts him off with a lazy wave. “Micah, sweetheart, nobody’s talking to you.”
Micah’s jaw locks.
I exhale slowly, staring at the floor. I hate this. I hate all of them. I hate the way I barely hesitate anymore. But this is the life I signed away seven years ago. This is the goddamn price.
To this day, I’ve taken too many lives and threatened more than I can count. “I’ll take care of it,” I say quietly.
Nolan grins like it’s Christmas morning. “Knew I could count on you, kid.”
Adriana picks up a strawberry, bites into it, eyes still locked on me. “Whatever you do, make it look intentional. I know you like it sloppy.”
Micah flinches. I don’t breathe. Because we all know what she’s referring to. The kill that started everything. The one that still wakes me up at night.
Nolan claps his hands once. “Great talk, boys. We’ll see you downstairs. I’ll call with the details. Ralph will be in the city tonight.”
Fuck.
Adriana winks before following Nolan out the door. The door clicks shut, and we’re left in silence. And for a moment, I swear I can’t feel my own heartbeat.
Micah exhales slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. He sinks into the armchair by the window, legs spread, head tipped back. The skyline reflects in the glass behind him. “You said yes so easily,” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
He nods once. “Fuck, dude.”
We both know the rules—and the consequences. Disobedience means lockup, white-knuckled days and nights of withdrawal we’re forced to survive together.
I push off the mattress and cross to the desk, dropping to my knees beside my suitcase. The zipper’s half broken; it takes two sharp tugs before it finally gives. Beneath rumpled clothes and a stack of lyric notebooks I never finish, I find the blood-red case.
My fingers hesitate for just a second before I flip it open. I stare at the gun and my notebooks, at the two lives I’ve been living side by side, one made of words and chords, the other of violence and addiction.
Micah watches silently as I pick it up, my thumb tracing the cold metal. Funny how something so goddamn small can decide whether someone lives or dies.
I think about all the times I’ve pulled the trigger for Nolan, or beaten a face in until it stopped begging.
And then I think about the first one—the kill that locked the chains around my throat. A blackout rage in a hotel room in L.A. I came to with blood on my hands and clothes, my ears ringing, my body shaking. Nolan told me that he was powerful enough to make the evidence disappear.
He looked at me differently after that, like he’d finally found the perfect tool. I signed the contract with trembling fingers, convinced I owed him my life.
At least...that’s how I remember it. Sometimes the memory feels too vivid, or even like it belongs to someone else.
Maybe that’s what guilt does. It distorts everything until you can’t trust your own mind.
And like Adriana did earlier, they like to remind me of that fucking night over and over again.
I slide the gun into the waistband of my jeans, my shirt falling over it. With a heavy sigh, I sit on the edge of the bed, and he joins me. We don’t touch, but the space between us is small enough to matter.
“We’re screwed, you know,” he says softly.
I smile—tired, but genuine. At first, Nolan just trafficked and laundered drugs through my performances, then our shows. Then it shifted to threats. Then killing. A slippery goddamn slope I can’t escape no matter how hard I claw at the dirt.
“We’ve been screwed for years,” I say. And this time, I don’t even try to pretend it’s a joke.