Chapter 30
THIRTY
GRIM
The hurt in Gemma’s eyes lingered like stale cigarette smoke in my lungs.
From now on whatever bullshit we had is over.
It wasn’t over. It would never be over, so long as the ink still stained my chest. Killing Gemma has become our fucked-up fantasy. Not the actual death—she could have killed herself in the past five years, she could have found a way, I knew that.
It was refusing to take her life in her own hands, instead trusting me with it, obeying whatever I said.
And that drove me nuts. Her soul-deep submission.
“We had a fucking plan.” Lock’s voice dragged me back to the present.
We’d waited until the club closed before starting cleanup. Bleaching the bathroom, moving the body. Now Lock leaned against my bathroom wall, arms folded, eyes on me. Raze watched me with a similar expression, and Wraith sat on the toilet, reading a book. Behind them, a body dissolved in acid.
“We had a plan,” Lock continued.
With my thumb and forefinger, I massaged the arch of my jaw. “I’m aware.”
“Are you? You were supposed to distance yourself from Gemma—there! There it fucking is.” He pointed at me like he’d just discovered something.
“What? There is what?”
“I thought I was seeing things at first, but every time we talk about letting Gemma go, you tense the fuck up, like you’re getting ready to fight.”
I relaxed my shoulders. He was right. Fuck. I didn’t know how I’d get myself out of this, but I did know it wouldn’t happen if I kept seeing Gemma. She had ensnared me and whenever I was with her, I didn’t want to leave the web.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Are you saying I did this on purpose?”
“I dunno,” Raze said, stepping forward. “But, somehow, anytime she’s with you, shit goes sideways.”
I rubbed the groove between my brows, looking at the barrel holding a rapidly decomposing body.
“Let her fucking die,” Raze continued. “Let someone take her. Stop fucking saving her. Her contract is void. There’s no real tie to us. So we let America’s fucking Princess leave our lives.”
Another wave of involuntary tension corded my muscles. I breathed through my nostrils, focusing on the moment.
“It’s not that simple,” I said, voice strained with tension.
“Why the fuck not?” Lock demanded.
You promised to kill me, Santos.
I’d opened my mouth to tell them the truth, the entire truth, of that night, when the reason waltzed in.
Vander Archeron.
The man above us. The reason the police or FBI never came sniffing around. The reason for the ink on our backs. The Horsemen stilled as he walked in, sitting on the edge of the tub like he had every right to be there.
“What the fuck do you want?” I said.
He folded his arms, a lazy smile on his lips. “Is that any way for a son to talk to his father?”
A different, spiky tension wrapped barbed wire around my fascia.
Vander eyed the black barrel, sniffing at the now familiar smell of acrid, soapy rot. “You boys have learned a lot since the first time we met.”
I shifted, rebalancing on my feet. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“What I’ve always wanted,” he said. “You.”
I worked my jaw. “I’m paying your tithe. I’m doing your contracts. What the fuck else do you want?”
“I have you the way someone has a dog. Throw meat and it snaps at the right thing.” I ignored the obvious bait at calling me a dog, as he continued, “I don’t want a dog. I don’t need a dog. I need a successor.”
“Tough shit.”
He laughed, bitter and humorless. “You’ve had five years to kill the Crowne girl. I’m starting to think you want this life. Secretly.”
A nearly imperceptible shift happened in the room. I could feel the question, the burning glares, as Vander revealed the truth.
“Either finish your contract and kill Gemma, or join me. Permanently.” He stood up, brushing at nonexistent dirt on his thighs.
“You have until the fifteenth of this month. If she’s alive, I’ll assume I have my answer.
” He walked to the door, pausing, his fingers curled around the frame.
“You can’t have both, Santos. You don’t get Gemma and your little family. ”
Then he left.
Silence followed, the creaking of the Ferris wheel in the wind loud.
“You’re gonna explain what is happening,” Raze said. “Right fucking now.”
“What did he mean you have to kill Gemma?” Lock added.
I exhaled.
“That’s the contract,” I said. “That’s what she demanded for the ink.”
I tell the story, the entire story. Me stalking Gemma, finding her as she tried to kill herself.
The look in her eyes after I saved her. Knowing the minute I left her alone, she would find a way.
Tattooing myself. Showing up, showing her her life was forfeit, her only agreeing if once our contract ended, I ended her.
“I knew,” Lock said. “I fucking knew something was up. Five years ago you told us she tricked you into this contract. You said you would figure a way out of it. That we would be free. You—” He broke off in disbelief and indignation.
“Not only did you drag us into this,” Raze continued for him. “You knew there would be no way out.”
“There is a way—”
“You will never fucking kill her!” Lock raged, his voice hoarse.
A moment later, the anger drained out of him. He slid down the wall, to the marbled tile floor, arms over knees.
Resigned.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“And he knows?” Raze said, drawing my attention back. “Vander knows?”
I rubbed my jaw. “He figured it out. I don’t know how. Probably the same way he found us that day.”
“And you didn’t try correcting him?” Raze asked. “Lying?”
I could have.
I should have.
I might even have convinced him long enough to get myself out of it. But that was the problem, the dirty, fucked-up truth. I didn’t want out, not if I had to give up my only tether to Gemma.
“So what now?” Lock asked. “You gonna go be your dad’s pet?”
“He’s not my fucking dad,” I growled.
“Maybe you could mark her.” Wraith spoke for the first time, flipping a page in his book.
Raze looked at Wraith like he was sprouting heads. “How are you so cool about this?”
“Because I’ve known for years. At least it’s out in the open. We can deal with it. The whole ‘let’s pretend nothing is happening’ thing clearly isn’t working.” He eyed the barrel in the center of the room.
“So what do you suggest?” Raze threw a bloody towel—used to clean up the bathroom floor—at Wraith. “He actually mark her?”
Wraith caught the towel with ease and shrugged. “Maybe it will cancel out the contract. You know, a double-negative thing.”
“Or,” Raze stressed, “maybe it will make everything worse. Maybe nothing changes, and now we have a spoiled, suicidal brat on our hands.”
“That’s also a possibility,” Wraith conceded.
I’d been holding, white-knuckled, to my last shred of control. Today, with her taste still on my lips, I could feel that grip slipping.
Mark Gemma Crowne?
Lock laughed. “You only think this is a good plan because the idea of bloodshed gets you hard. And that plan has a lot of bloodshed.”
“Look, I don’t care what we do,” Wraith said. “Mark her, don’t mark her, kill her, ship her off to the Galápagos. But—” He turned his attention to me. “—whatever happens, don’t put your life on the line for a girl willing to die.”