9. Caspian
CASPIAN
Ryu sauntered out of the room as if he wasn’t a fucking walking atomic bomb. I dragged my hand down my face, trying to clear the thoughts he’d once again put there, and pretend that Max hadn’t seen how he was taunting me.
Asshole.
“He’s going to kill you?” I asked Max. Ryu was all hot air.
He’d never harm Max because it meant more than likely hurting Leona, which he’d never do.
But he was behaving the same way toward Max as he did when I first came to the penthouse.
Defensive, staking his claim, peeing on the bushes to mark his territory.
Max flopped backward on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “I guess we’ll find out.”
I closed the door behind me and then crossed my arms over my chest. I’d come here to talk to him about his tattoo, about the journals, about him finally telling Leona the extent of what he’d done for us over the years. The more layers we peeled back, the more we needed answers.
Before I could ask, he covered his face with his hands and groaned. “Cas, what the fuck am I doing?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I snorted. “Why don’t you tell me?”
His eye peeked at me from between his fingers. In that moment, he looked so young. Like the boy I grew up with. “I honestly don’t know. That’s not a lie.”
I sighed, looking down at my shoes while I tried to figure out how to dive into this landmine of a discussion topic. “I saw your tattoo.”
His hands fell to the side, thumping on the top of the bed. “I figured. Does everyone know?”
“No, just Leona, me, and Obi,” I said. “When did you get that?”
He was quiet for a moment. “After I turned twenty-one.”
Four years. He’d had that tattoo and hidden it from me for four fucking years.
“Why?”
His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the ceiling. “Do you remember the night of my birthday, when you and I went to the club and Leona followed us?”
A sad smile quirked the edge of my lips. “How could I forget?”
She’d surprised the hell out of us at that club, and we’d both freaked out.
When we brought her back to the house, Luciano had yelled at her before grounding her for a month.
I’d taken her upstairs to get her ready to sleep, while Max had talked with the Don at his office and taken the brunt of his anger for exposing his only daughter to risk.
“That night, the Don tried to force me to marry Leona after she turned eighteen.”
Everything record-scratched to a stop. “What?”
He tilted his head to the side so I could see the clear grey of his titanium eyes and the honesty written there. “He found out that I knew he’d killed my father. He realized I was planning a coup against him, and he tried to force me to marry Leona so he’d have control over me and over her.”
My arms dropped to my sides as I stood straighter. My voice dropped to a whisper. “And you said no?”
He nodded. “It would have trapped her in this life. Trapped her to me, trapped me to him. I couldn’t do it.”
“Max…” I had no idea what to say.
“He threatened you too, you know.” His voice went hollow. “He told me that if I didn’t do as he said, it would be easy to kill you. No one would care; no one would know. I thought if I could just keep Luciano focused on me, I could get you both out. Once I killed him, you’d be free.”
Minutes of silence stretched between us. All this time, and he could have married her. Now, she wore my ring, and she’d be my wife instead.
Because he gave her up.
I sat on the side of the bed and let my back flop down so we lay side by side. My heart thundered inside my chest. The journals he gave me, the proof that the Don had been manipulating his father and then him…
“You were trying to protect us.”
“A lot of fucking good that did.” He let out a bitter laugh and then grimaced as the movement wracked his battered ribs. His hand pressed to the bandages—the stitches I had put there. “Look where it got us.”
God, what was I supposed to do with this?
He’d lied to us for years.
But he also might have saved our lives. Countless times. Protected us from the Don. Tried to give us a better life.
“It sounds like it kept us alive.” My throat tightened as I forced my next words out. “Were we best friends? Did you think of us that way? I fucking did.”
“Yes, I did, Cas,” he said, voice strained, with wide eyes. “You have always been my closest friend. My best friend.”
“Friends don’t hide this kind of shit.”
“I just…I didn’t—I was afraid.” He shrugged and turned his head away so I couldn’t see his expression.
“Anyway, I got the tattoo a few weeks after that night. When I realized how ruthless I would have to become, and that there was no future for the three of us together. Only you two could get out. It was supposed to be…a memento. I don’t fucking know. ”
We were both quiet for a moment as the weight of his words settled over us like a blanket.
The truth. Finally.
“You love her.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him flinch, but he didn’t respond.
“Max, come on,” I pushed. “You have always loved her.”
“I loved her…the only way I knew how as a child. She was my sister, my partner, my closest friend, the only real companion I had before you. My earliest memories are of us together, inseparable. Giggling when we were happy, comforting each other when we were sad. I loved her like she was a piece of my heart outside my body—” He swallowed, gulping down the next words he was going to say.
“I went too far. Somewhere, the line between protecting her and getting my revenge got too blurry. I got angry. Furious. Rage turns everything in your eyesight red; it makes enemies out of everything and everyone.”
“Why haven’t you told her this?” I asked.
“What difference does it make?” He turned to face me. “It changes nothing.”
“Max, it changes everything.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“It changes everything for me,” I said. “It means I can find a way to forgive you.”
A month ago, I would have said no fucking way. I hadn’t forgotten about all the fucked up shit he’d done to me, and there was still a lot of ground to cover before he made things right…but the possibility was there. There was a path forward if he walked it.
His eyes searched mine. He looked more bare, more open, than I’d seen him in years—probably since the night of his father’s funeral.
That was when he had pulled away from us, after he’d learned that Luciano had killed Massimo.
Since then, he’d been a shade of the boy he was.
Now the man before me was complex and conflicted, but understandable for the first time in ten years.
My friend was coming back to life.
“Even if you can forgive me…I don’t think I can forgive myself.”
“Hmm,” I murmured. “That’s the real problem, then.”
He faced the ceiling again. “Besides, you both found a new home. You’re happy here. All of you together. That was all I ever wanted.” His voice dropped low and turned heavy. “I never expected to live through this anyway. I just wanted to make my father proud.”
Your father would be pretty fucking disappointed in you, Max. I spat those words at him when he tried to make excuses for his behavior. I didn’t need to say them again to see he was thinking the same thing. It was salt in the wound.
“What you all have here…” he whispered, almost too quietly for me to hear. “I don’t understand how it works.”
“It’s not as complicated as it looks,” I said. “We love her, and I think we’re learning how to love each other, and that’s the glue that keeps us together.”
“But…” A small tint of pink bloomed on his cheeks. He swallowed, coughed discreetly into his fist for a second. “It seems so crowded.”
I snorted, picturing all of us piled up on the massive bed in the penthouse. Cuddled up next to one another, wrapped up in each other. “It can be. But we make room.”
I left the second part of that unsaid.
That we might have room for one more.
If he could find his way to fit with the rest of us.
“How do you not kill each other?”
I laughed. “Oh, we’ve tried. Remember when you tortured me and fucked up my knee?”
He blanched, and his small smile fell. “Yeah.”
I waved a hand to clear the sudden awkwardness. “When I was recovering, Ryuji and I got into a fight and the fucker kicked it on purpose. Just to fuck it up. So I laid him out and knocked him flat on his back.”
His mouth hung open. “What the actual fuck, Cas? What was the fight about?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
“Leona?”
My grin stretched even wider. “He was jealous of my relationship with her. I was threatened by how obsessed he is with her.” I exhaled through my nose.
“It’s fine now. They’re all like that. Obsessed.
Possessive. It used to make me nervous and frustrated, but now I couldn’t imagine not having them.
They would do anything to make her happy, to keep her safe.
It’s not perfect. We fight and then we get over it. But we’re family.”
“Family.” He let the word slowly roll around in his mouth like it had a new meaning, a fresh taste he’d never experienced before. “Hmm.”
“Look,” I said as I sat up, rubbing the back of my neck. “I can’t make you tell her, or any of them, the truth. But you’re a mess, Max. Getting it all off your chest might help. Maybe you’ll be able to think more clearly after.”
He didn’t answer, but I saw his throat work as he gave me a tight nod.
I stood. “Sleep. You won’t heal if you don’t rest.”
I left him lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Whether he let what I said inside that thick skull of his was up to him.
But after what he’d just told me?
Everything was different now.