38
“Another day as chauffeur and babysitter,” Lance whispers in the front seat of the car, his eyes fixed on the road. The disappointment on his face makes me giggle.
“Are you staying?” I ask getting out of the car and picking up our things from the trunk.
“A party on the beach full of drunks and a bonfire? No, thanks,” he says as we walk down a small path leading to the beach.
“It’ll be fine, just a friendly hangout. Right, Jase?” I stifle a laugh at my brother’s grimace at his new nickname.
“Define gathering.” He pulls out a bag full of weed. I slap his hand away and tell him to put it away before Lance turns around and sees it.
We keep walking until we find James with the rest of the group. Some are still on their way, but the blond guy I’ve seen so many times before is here. He greets me with a smile from his place, raising a bottle of vodka and catching the attention of Lance, who watches everything behind me.
“Is that alcohol?” He asks with a frown, putting the bags on the ground.
“No, it’s just a little soda,” I say.
“Yeah, that’s it,” my brother agrees.
We end up kicking him out before he sees any illegal substances and confirms whatever is going through his head. I approach each of the boys, greeting them and engaging in small talk until I end up next to my brother. In front of me is the blond boy.
“What do you want to drink?” he offers, nodding toward the bottle of vodka resting on the sand.
“A beer is fine.”
“Coming right up,” he mutters, walking over to a mini fridge away from the crowd. Then he tosses me a can of Bud Light that I take with a thank you.
The minutes pass amid laughter and more beer. I glance over my shoulder at the little path from earlier, wondering where the hell Grace has gone.
“Hey!” As if I had summoned her, she emerges from one side of the beach.
That side leads to a small forest that isn’t very dense. It doesn’t catch my attention enough to have visited it before. Although the question here is, What was she doing there?
“Sorry I’m late, the traffic is crazy out there.” Maybe the others didn’t notice her nerves as she introduced herself one by one, but I know her pretty well.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you stuck in traffic in all these years,” I say in a low tone, amused. With the way she drives I can already see her flying over the cars.
“There’s always a first time for everything,” she murmurs beside me, taking a long swig from her can of beer.
I burst out laughing, turning my attention to James.
He is now smoking a blunt that my brother gave him, his well-built torso exposed, revealing a long scar on his right side.
I frown when I see the piercings in his nipples and belly button.
Why so many piercings? I look back up into his eyes and look away when he gives me a cocky smile.
“Another one with a death wish,” Grace says beside me with amusement. “At least this one is hot.”
“We’re just friends. We’ve known each other for a long time. He doesn’t have those intentions with me, otherwise he would have told me.”
“Anyway, there’s something about him I don’t like. I don’t like him,” she says, narrowing her eyes.
“Will you try to kill him too?” I scoff. She continues to inspect the rest of the group with her hazel eyes.
Rock music starts blasting the air. I smile when my brother jumps into the water with another boy with brown hair, and I join them with a smile, diving into the water until my head is completely covered.
Seeing him joke around with his friends gives me guilty pangs in my stomach.
I haven’t told him anything about our father yet.
I don’t know if I’m the best person to tell him, but I don’t like the idea of hiding it until he decides to tell him himself, because maybe it’s something he’ll never tell him.
My body shivers in the cool night air as soon as I get out of the water. Finding James holding a towel for me.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he says before sitting down on the sand. I take advantage of his good mood of today and sit next to him, shedding some light on the mystery that has always surrounded him in my eyes.
“I didn’t know you liked to smoke too.”
“Do you smoke too?” He asks with curious eyes.
“I’m talking about the coke you snort. You’re full of addictions,” I say in a teasing tone. He nods slowly, fixing his gaze back on the road ahead. “It’s bad, you know?”
“Sometimes, even if we know something isn’t good for us, we cling to it just to be happy for a few minutes.
” I press my lips into a thin line, feeling my nerves on edge and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end because of his intense gaze.
“My brother has been fucking obsessed with you for as long as I can remember, and I don’t think that’s good either.
But at the end of the day, there you are, going back to him over and over again.
Not even caring that he’s a fucking monster. ”
“Which brother are you talking about?” His face changes to a more confused look, being cautious as he speaks.
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Alekei and I are brothers. Full, biological brothers, actually,” he replies with a grimace of disgust.
“And why didn’t you tell me before?” I ask, looking at him once more, comparing his features with the boy I saw in the photo at his house. “You don’t even look alike and you have no contact as far as I know. I couldn’t have known anyway.”
“I know, and believe me, it cost me a fortune to stop looking like him.” His proud smile accompanies his resentful words.
“Why wouldn’t you want to look like him? Why don’t you talk to each other? Are you fighting or something?”
“We just don’t get along. Never have.”
“Why?”
“You really are damn nosy.”
“I am,” I reply with a smile.
The sound of tires in the distance catches our attention, and I turn my head in that direction.
When I see him get out of a black Jeep Wrangler, my eyes light up.
I don’t wait a second before throwing myself into his arms, not caring that I’m still wet or that everyone is staring.
He bends down and press a quick kiss to my forehead, still distant.
His tense muscles revealing that something is wrong.
“What’s up?” Jason greets me with a smile, raising a hand that I ignore as I continue to dry Lena’s hair, with her seated between my legs, looking at something on her phone.
“Looks like we got up on the wrong side of the coffin today, huh?” He pats my shoulder as he speaks, making my hand to jerk with the towel I was holding.
I raise my head, not bothering to hide my irritation.
“It’s okay. No need to bare your fangs at me,” he scoffs as he walks away.
Bare my fangs? And what the fuck he meant about coffin?
I shake my head, focusing my attention back on Lena.
“Are you cold?” I ask, putting down the towel. She shakes her head, pressing closer to my chest. “Are you sure? I have a hoodie in the car.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says with a smile, causing that tingling sensation to appear in my stomach.
I cover her face with kisses, lingering on her lips, then place my fingers on her cheeks and slip my tongue inside with a guttural moan. I want to deepen the kiss, but I’m interrupted by a piece of raw marshmallow that her brother threw at me.
“You’re going to drown her!” he bellows with a laugh, ignoring the angry look I was giving him.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Lena murmurs, getting up before I can say anything.
I stand up too. I want to know where the hell Sergei had been all this time it took me to get there.
I’m not surprised to find him not far from the woods with one hand on Grace’s arse and the other leaning against the tree while he hides his face in her neck.
I throw one of my knives without even blinking.
It lands in the small space between his fingers, creating a small cut that begins to bleed within seconds.
Sergei turns around, hiding the burning sensation in his finger with a forced smile, and Grace walks away with a pale face.
“Uh… I, well. See you later,” Grace says awkwardly before trotting off and disappearing into the trees.
“Do I pay you to stick your dick in Grace’s pussy in the middle of the woods, Sergei?”
“N-no. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”
“Of course not, because if it happens again, I’ll rip your fucking dick off,” I hiss with a stern look. On the way back to the bonfire, I find him leaning against a tree with a smile.
“In the end, you got what you so badly wanted.”
“Not everything,” I reply, shaking my head. I would never rest until I had that darkness back reflected in her beautiful eyes. The same darkness that seemed to vanish from her the day she left without a trace.
At first, I thought that if she did things she had done before, some of her memories would be triggered and her true self would return to my arms. At least vaguely.
It wasn’t my plan to let her end Norman’s life so soon.
I feared she wouldn’t be able to cope with the weight of her lost memories, but in the end it was an opportunity I decided not to pass up.
Especially because of the urgency in her eyes when she asked me to open that door.
In the end, even that wasn’t enough to help her remember.
I was becoming increasingly desperate for her to do so.
I wanted my little demon back.
“You’re a fucking son of a bitch,” he spits, wiping that smile off his face.
“That’s right,” I grin. “And you’re an idiot.
Only you would think of disobeying my orders, Viktor.
” I approach him, suppressing the urge to stab him in the other side.
“I should have ripped out your intestines and hanged you with them when I had the chance,” I say more to myself than to him.
He clenches his fists at his sides, but he doesn’t even dare to keep looking at me, much less put those fists he only needs to jerk off to some use. “Next time you won’t be so lucky.”