Chapter 29
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Mercer
The arcade trip had been half magic, half misery, and seeing it end like this was like watching a bomb drop from overhead, knowing no matter how far or fast you ran, you couldn’t escape the blast.
The dolls stood where I’d placed them in a group. Beck and Colette were among them, and the latter watched me with her head tilted like she could smell the shift in the air. She probably could. Hellhound senses and all.
I didn’t know what waited inside the club. It might have been an ambush or nothing at all, but I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk them.
So, I was outing myself. Blowing whatever cover I might have had and sabotaging any chance at sparing myself a barrage of questions and a crippling amount of blame.
Maybe it would be a relief to come clean.
Guilt had been gnawing at me for days. Eating away at my sanity and robbing me of sleep. Not that I slept like a normal person anymore. Working at the Dollhouse until dawn meant night and day had swapped places, and my shame had consumed all the quiet hours in between.
Maybe Darby would understand.
I did it for my daughter—for Molly—the one person in this world I couldn’t fail. Darby knew what it was to love someone so deeply you’d stop your own heartbeat if it meant theirs kept going.
Maybe he’d forgive me.
No one spoke as I walked toward the Dollhouse’s front doors.
When I grasped the warm, brass handles, my vision tunneled. The glossy black and red swallowed me up and carried me away, and suddenly I was back in the desert, rattling across a sandy landscape in a bare bones Humvee.
Grit in my teeth.
Sun scalding overhead.
Diesel engine humming under my boots.
Then an explosion.
The shockwave roared up through the chassis and into my bones, and the floor became the sky as gravity cut loose.
A weightless second ended with the crunch of metal.
The pop of shattering glass.
The seatbelt snapping against my ribs.
I was upside down, legs pinned, and all I heard was screaming.
Awareness returned as I regripped the door handles.
I couldn’t breathe, then or now, and I was still trapped, only this time it was by eight pairs of watchful eyes instead of a twisted pile of fiery steel.
I expected another explosion, another bomb—whether literal or figurative—going off in my face, and I steeled myself against the rush of force that would assault my body.
But the doors didn’t explode, they only groaned on their hinges as I pulled them outward.
Daylight poured into the dark club, illuminating the emptiness we’d left behind and the devastation the angels had put in its place.
“Property damage” didn’t begin to cover it.
The lighting rig had come down, a steel cage of wiring and spotlights lying atop shattered tables and splintered chairs. The floor was littered with enough glass from broken chandeliers that it looked like the whole place had been dusted with glitter.
Curtains had been reduced to ribbons, loungers were upended, and the air reeked so badly of booze that every bottle in the bar must have been broken open and left to soak into the floorboards.
The dolls crowded in behind me, filling the entry with a silence so deep I thought I might drown in it.
Shock.
Horror.
Loss.
I felt it all because it was mine too.
Then the quiet broke.
Darby gasped—sharp and ragged—like something inside him had hit the floor the same way the lights had.
Questions tumbled out after.
“Who could’ve… How? Why?”
I’d asked Antonella the same thing.
Beck was next to speak, but not to us. He was on his phone and walking away while Colette folded Zephyr in her arms and started speaking to him softly in French.
The twins pressed against each other, tails entwining, as Callum buried his face in his brother’s shoulder.
Elliot shrank inside his hoodie, his expression neutral but his eyes blazing red.
Oz surveyed the group from behind his glasses’ lenses. When his gaze found me, it held the question I’d been expecting.
How did you know?
One by one, everyone moved past me, and this time, I didn’t stop them. They crept into the ruin while Beck paced the sidewalk, barking into his cell about insurance deductibles and vandalism.
Darby stayed too. He stood close enough to touch, but I didn’t dare. His body language was closed, arms wrapped around himself and shoulders hunched. He was withdrawn. From this. From me.
When I swallowed, my throat felt as rough as if it still held the desert sand from my memory.
“Darby…”
He met my gaze, and his eyes were dull and lightless. “Who did this?”
“Antonella Rossetti,” I replied. My voice stretched thin, like it was being pulled out of me. “Or someone working for her. I’m not sure.”
His lips bent in a frown. “You used to work for her.” When I didn’t refute it, he asked, “Do you still?”
I wanted to say no or claim that it was complicated, but the truth was painfully simple.
“Yes.”
Darby’s body stiffened, every muscle tight with tension and his fists clenched at his sides. “You’ve been working for the angels this whole time?”
It was practically a shout; an accusation I flinched away from.
“I tried to quit,” I blurted. “I did quit, but then they showed up at my house. They…” My breath buckled. “They threatened Molly. I had to protect her, Darby. And I was trying to protect you too. All of you. I never wanted this. I didn’t want—”
“You convinced us to leave,” he cut in. “And you knew. All day, you knew. About this?” He stabbed a finger toward the ransacked club while my mind flooded with the most damning things.
When he told me about the dolls and how they died, I knew.
When we shared a bike and claimed first place on a digital speedway, I knew.
When he giggled with delight over a gaudy pink lava lamp, I knew.
And I’d known for days before that. I’d passed up chances to kiss him because I feared he would taste my deception. I’d longed to have him in my bed but instead lay there alone because I wouldn’t lure him closer while knowing this would push him away.
Absolutely, I knew.
“They said it would be worse if you were here,” I managed at last. “That you’d be in the way. I was afraid they might hurt you.”
Darby turned to look at the club again, surveying the visible damage. I couldn’t help but speculate how far it went. Was the upstairs ruined too? The rooms where they slept? The kitchen where they shared meals? The couches where they curled up together?
Darby’s face twisted viscerally as he murmured, “This hurts me.”
This was the explosion. A bomb had detonated in the air between us, and I was stuck dodging shrapnel while straining to see a way out of the cloud.
“But it’s just stuff, right?” I asked, not believing it even as I said it. “Stuff can be fixed or replaced. It’s better than if it was you. What if you’d been here when it happened? What if they’d done this to you? To your boys?”
“It’s not just stuff, Mercer.”
Mercer. Not Mercy. Because I deserved none.
“It’s my home,” Darby continued. “It’s their home. This is everything we have, and now it’s…” Again, he gazed past me into the wreckage, and his eyes shone with tears.
I’d never seen him cry.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, reaching for him.
He jerked back, and in the span of a blink, the fragility was gone.
“You tricked me,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You lied to me.”
“Darby—”
“I trusted you!” His voice rose again, hoarse, ragged. “Do you know…” He trailed off, shaking his head as his expression twisted into one of disgust. “Do you know how stupid I feel right now?”
The shine returned to his eyes, and I couldn’t stand it. I stepped toward him, needing to hold him, to fix this. To do anything other than stand there and watch him hurt.
But I collided with his hands. Both palms hit my chest in a shove that threw me off balance, and I fell back. Pavement cracked against my tailbone, and pain reverberated up my spine. I stared at him from the ground, stunned in more ways than one.
A shadow of regret flickered across Darby’s face, but it was swiftly replaced by searing anger. His tail tip twitched like a snake’s warning rattle.
“Get out,” he said. “You’re fired. And banned.”
The words hit harder than the shove.
“Jesus, Darby…” I murmured, breathless again. “I didn’t… I was trying to protect…”
His nostrils flared through a slow inhale and slower exhale, but he didn’t say another word.
The verdict had been rendered.
I sat on the ground for several seconds, long enough to feel the sense of loss sinking bone deep. Then I pushed myself to standing.
My gaze drifted to Beck, who had ended his phone call and now lingered a few feet away. His yellow eyes swept over us, trying to make sense of this ugly scene. I owed him an explanation too. And an apology. But I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance to give either.
I’d done enough damage already.
I looked back at Darby. The love I had for him—and, fuck, it was love—thrashed in my chest. This might be the last time I ever saw him, and the thought left me dizzy.
“Okay,” I said softly. Uselessly. A bandage over a bullet hole. Then I said it again. “Okay.”
My steps across the parking lot felt slow and heavy, and each one made something inside me buckle a little more. My bike sat facing the street, black paint glossy and golden in the afternoon sun.
Before climbing on, I paused and turned.
Darby was still there.
Arms crossed. Jaw tight and unyielding.
Throwing my good leg over the motorcycle, I settled onto the seat and gripped the handlebars.
I didn’t look back again.