14. Hector
14
HECTOR
A n ear piercing shriek shatters my peace and quiet, pulling me from my tranquil state as I finger the strings of my guitar. The scream is so loud that it would put a pterodactyl to shame. I sigh and let my fingers strum across the chords, waiting to see if another banshee wail follows or if it’s just going to be the one today. My fingertips twitch again before playing a few notes from Home by Phillip Phillips, just waiting.
A door slams. Another half-shriek, half-growl. Then several loud thuds followed by breaking glass. She’s using knives today. I sigh again and gently lay my guitar back in its case, already dreading going into that room. She’s been in a foul mood since she came rolling in last night, like a hurricane making landfall. Everything in her path was either leveled, broken beyond repair, or left for dead. And I sure as shit didn’t want to be any of the above.
I stop just outside the doorway and press my ear to the wall, trying to gauge what kind of warzone I’m about to walk into, but the room is silent. Deadly so. Inhaling through my nose, I open the door and step inside, prepared to duck at the slight movement, but I’m met with only darkness and shadows. My eyes find her in the low light from the open door behind me.
Emelia is on her knees with her back to me, a knife loosely gripped in each hand and resting on the floor on either side of her. Her head is tilted back and she’s staring at the wall of photographs, news clippings, and string mazes stretching randomly from one piece of paper to another. Each string is a different color, representing something only Emelia knows. She inhales slowly, and deeply, and I know that she is counting her breaths.
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?” I ask when she doesn’t acknowledge me.
She doesn’t move a muscle. “I broke the lamp,” she says nonchalantly. “The overhead lights are too bright. They hurt my eyes.”
“And here I thought you had better aim.” I smirk and sink to the floor beside her, nudging her thigh with my knee.
“My aim is perfect,” she snaps back and gives me the side-eye glare I love so much. “I was just tired of looking at their stupid faces.” She still hasn’t moved an inch, her hands still grasping the knives at her side. “It’s like they’re mocking me.”
I tilt my head back and close my eyes. “What happened the other day?” I ask her after a few seconds of silence. “The other day. After you turned off your comm?” There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to know. A part of me that’s still angry and hurt that she lied to me.
Her head finally moves as she turns to face me. Her eyes hold a spark of insanity as she speaks. “I found him. After all this time. I finally fucking found him.” Emelia springs to her feet and bounds across the room to the lightswitch.
I groan and cover my eyes with my forearm at the sudden brightness. “Dammit, woman!”
She spins around and tosses both knives at the wall in quick succession. The blades bury halfway into the drywall, piercing a photo of a man. “I found that son of a bitch withering away in a hospital bed. And you wanna know what he gave me?” She stalks over to me and wraps her arms around my waist, sliding her hands into my back pockets. “A name,” she whispers when I don’t answer immediately.
I can’t answer her. My brain has misfired and my neurons can’t seem to find an electrical pathway to my voice box. I stare at the photograph of Sanders taped to the wall, my vision narrowing onto the face and everything else fades away. That fucking bastard. I inhale sharply and pull her tighter against me, one hand on her hip and the other cradling the back of her head. “What’d you do to get that?” My voice is little more than a whisper, hoarse and gravely.
She tilts her head back until her chin is resting against my sternum and I drop my hands to her shoulders. “I promised him I would make it painless.”
“And did you?”
Her eyes flash dangerously and I can’t help but smile down at her. “Abso-fucking-lutely not!”
“Good. That fucking bastard deserved the slowest of deaths. Fucking shot me in the back,” I mutter under my breath, and look back over at the wall. It’s then that I notice the other knives sticking out of the drywall, each one piercing a photograph of familiar faces.
Declan.
Hayden.
Silas.
“I talked to them last night,” she whispers, her voice muffled. I look down and she’s pressing her face against my chest. “They didn’t know about the fire. Well…They knew that it happened, but they weren’t a part of it,” she adds softly.
“And you believe them?” I ask because I’m genuinely curious. I trust her judgment implicitly and if she believes them, then so do I. If she wants them dead, well, I always keep extra duct tape and a shovel handy.
“I want to,” Emelia admits quietly, and takes a deep breath, like she’s inhaling my scent. “I really fucking want to.”
“Why?” I press her. I know the answer, but I want to see if she will admit it. If not to me, at least to herself.
“I won’t say it,” she deadpans and levels me with a ‘don’t even fucking start’ look.
“Okay, Megara,” I chuckle and give her a squeeze before leaning down until my lips brush the shell of her ear. “Then can I?”
She nods once and her teeth sink into her lower lip. “If you must.”
I lift my hands and cradle her face between my palms. My thumb strokes her lower lip, pulling it from between her teeth. “You are the most infuriating, arrogant, self-destructive little devil I have ever met,” I tell her, and stroke the pads of my thumbs along her high cheekbones. “Your sarcasm knows no bounds and your homicidal tendencies borderline on the insane. Sometimes I wish you would put a bullet through my skull to put me out of my misery.”
“You’re doing a really shit job, did you know that?” she snarks but I can see the emotion pooling in her eyes when I lean my head back and meet her gaze. Her lip trembles and she leans her right cheek into my hand.
“Shut up and let me finish,” I demand with a smirk. “You’re impatient. You’re demanding.” I lean my head forward until my lips graze against her forehead. “You’re terrifying. You’re beautiful. I would kill for you. I would bleed for you. Both of which I do, frequently,” I add, and she chokes on a giggle. “I love you, Emelia, and I would die a thousand times over for you. You own my very soul, every broken piece of it.”
She trails her fingers up my chest and briefly traces along the healed scar above my heart. “No dying,” she whispers and continues to drag her fingers up my body until she’s cupping my face, mimicking my hold on her. “But I will settle for some homicide. You know how much I love looking at you covered in blood.” She pulls my face down and meets my lips in a searing kiss, pouring her passion and emotion into the touch. “I love you, too,” she murmurs against my lips between soft kisses.
It takes a tremendous amount of willpower on my part, but I pull away and hold her at arm's length. If I don’t put distance between us, I won’t be able to think coherently. “We should go. I do believe you need to tell them the truth before Hayden does something exceedingly stupid.”
She rolls her eyes but nods in agreement. “Whatever do you mean?” she asks sarcastically and smiles when I drop a chaste kiss on her nose. I can’t help myself. The taste of her skin is like a drug, and I’m far too weak to fight this addiction.
We take the black Audi R8 because, and I quote, she ‘likes the way it hugs the curves on those winding backroads’. My stomach, on the other hand, could do without the tire-squealing turns. When we pull up outside, the living room lights are on and I can see the colors reflecting off the glass of the TV. “Do you have any weapons?” I ask her as we ascend the front steps.
Emelia looks at me over her shoulder and winks. “Not the sharp kind.”
“Good,” I mutter under my breath. “Because if this gets ugly, I do not want to be scrubbing blood out of my beard tonight.”
She rolls her eyes and knocks on the front door. Three quick, hard raps. The lock on the inside of the door clicks loudly before it pulls open, revealing a very tired-looking Declan. His face is still slightly bruised from his fights the other night and I have a twinge of guilt. Maybe I should have pulled him out of it sooner than I did.
Declan’s eyes widen as they slide between me and Emelia and his hand falls away from the knob. The shock and disbelief written across his face is only there for a moment before he composes himself. “Hayden,” he calls over his shoulder.
The assassin appears a moment later with a bowl of popcorn in tow. “Angel?” he asks, his voice soft and cautious. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” she says, and walks past Declan like she fucking owns the place, without so much as glancing up at him. I shrug when he looks back at me and follow her inside. She hops up onto the counter and crosses her ankles, swinging her feet like she loves to do when she’s too high to reach the floor. It reminds me of the night I met her all those years ago in the casino.
Declan closes the door and takes a seat at the kitchen table. Hayden sits backwards in a chair and drapes his arms across the top. “Emelia, we know why you left and —” Declan starts but Emelia cuts him off by raising her hand. He falls silent immediately.
Damn. I knew she had a way with them, but seeing her in action…How they also worship the ground she walks on…Her display of power is intoxicatingly erotic, and I find myself wanting to obey her every order.
“You’ve had your conversation. Now it’s your turn to listen. I’ll do the talking.” Her voice is commanding yet soft. A conundrum, much like herself. Both men nod and Declan motions for her to continue. “I want to believe you,” she begins. “I want to believe that you are telling me the truth. That you knew nothing of the explosions and the fire, of innocent people being burned alive.” Her voice catches and her emotions leak into her words. “So,” she says after she clears her throat, regaining her composure, “I do.”
“That’s it?” Hayden asks incredulously. “No groveling? No pleading? No begging?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to you on your knees in front of me.” Her voice drops a few octaves and takes on a sultry tone.
My stomach flutters and dips at the thought of her standing above them. What a fucking display of power.
“Why?” Declan asks cautiously.
“Seriously?” Hayden hisses, and slaps Declan on his bicep. “Don’t fuck this up for me.”
Declan rolls his eyes and leans forward, staring intently at Emelia. “Why do you trust us?”
She meets his gaze with equal intensity. “It seems you’ve gotten under my skin, and I can’t seem to dig you out. Not that I particularly want to,” she adds softly.
I hear the front door close with a soft thud. “You see how well that worked out for us, don’t you?” A voice says from behind me. I spin around to see a haggard looking Silas leaning weakly against the wall. My eyes jerk back to the others and I watch as if everything in time slows to a crawl.
Declan’s face pales and he’s out of his seat before anyone else can even register what’s happening. Hayden blinks in surprise, stunned silent. He stands so quickly that the chair clatters to the floor, but his legs give out before he can take more than three steps. Hayden sinks to his knees with tears streaming down his face. His mouth opens like he wants to speak, but no sound comes out. It’s like his brain has short circuited and his neurons can’t find the right pathways to form words.
The sound of a glass shattering echoes through the room as Emelia drops her drink and hops off the counter, her eyes never leaving the weak man leaning by the door. She slips her hand through mine and squeezes tightly. I can feel her trembling. I cut my eyes to her and notice that her face is paler than usual and it looks like she’s seen a ghost.
To be fair, it seems like we all have.
“Silas?” Declan calls and catches his twin just as his knees buckle. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Didn’t you hear?” he asks, and gives a faint chuckle, but the humor doesn’t mask the pain in his eyes. “I died in a plane crash.”
Hayden must have recovered from his internal short circuiting because he stalks over and pulls Silas into a hug. His shoulders are so tense that I can see his muscles shaking. “You are fucking walking. Everywhere. From now on. No planes, no trains, no automobiles,” he hisses, and gently pushes Silas back a few inches until their noses are almost touching, and then their lips meet in what I can only describe as a soul shattering kiss.
My stomach does another flip as I look away awkwardly, trying to redirect the blood rushing in directions that it should not, under any circumstances, be rushing. Emelia catches my eye and smirks up at me knowingly. She can feel the tension radiating off my body.
Silas pulls back and smiles up at Hayden and it seems Hayden is supporting his weight fully, like Silas is unable to stand any longer. “Now, can I see my girl?” His eyes land on Emelia and it’s like everything else fades away from him. “Come here, Sweetheart,” he says softly and manages to push himself back from Hayden.
I watch his knees tremble as he takes a few steps in our direction, his hand still on Hayden’s shoulder for support. Emelia lets go of my fingers and wraps her arms around his waist. She buries her face in his chest and he drops a kiss to the top of her head. I watch the tears slide down her cheeks and I know they’re real when she inhales a soft sob. “Come on,” she says and pulls him to the couch.
They all help him sink down into the cushions and Silas hisses in pain as his legs bend and he repositions himself. “You got some 'splaining to do,” Emelia quotes the line and I roll my eyes. She knows that is not how the line goes and Ricky Ricardo would be ashamed, but I let her have her fun.
“You first,” he counters, and looks her up and down as if trying to find the scars and damage that healed weeks ago.
Declan sits down beside his brother and I notice how Silas jerks when his brother places a hand lightly on his knee.
“It seems we all have some ‘splaining to do’,” Hayden chuckles, and leans back against the wall on the other side of the room. His eyes dart between the four of us and I can see the gears turning in his mind. He’s trying to piece it all together.
Good luck, man. Apparently, I can’t even keep everything straight anymore.