Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
GRIM
Shit.
Gemma wore one of my black tees, the shirt barely reaching the tops of her thighs, and it was fucking distracting. I liked her in my things. Liked her in my house.
But she’d definitely heard what I said.
Hopefully we could shove it down like all the other shit we buried.
“My shirt looks good on you.” I tugged at the fabric, pulling her closer.
She blinked rapidly, mouth open, and swatted my hand away.
“Your shirt looks good?” she repeated. “Are you kidding?” She shook her head, taking a deep breath through her nose. “I don’t know why I thought things would be different. Why you would ever tell me the truth.”
Her brow caved over blue eyes. She turned to leave.
“Wait.” I grabbed her arm. Her eyes bounced from my hand encircling her bicep, to me, and back. “Fuck.” I dropped her, raking the same hand through my hair.
She folded her arms, waiting.
Okay. Guess I’m telling this story.
The hallway was empty. It was quiet in the early morning, the pulsing beat of the club fading into the ever-present hum of the ocean. The guys were out, either at the club, doing business, or doing someone.
“I’m not doing this here.” I grabbed her hand, dragging her back to the bedroom.
Right as she came into the room, I turned and shut the door at her back, my hand above her head. I didn’t immediately step away, keeping her pinned.
She leaned against the door, neck tilted to see my eyes.
Gemma Crowne was more than beautiful, she was ethereal. Like some lost fairy, but the old-school kind, not Disney shit. The fairies whose beauty made you follow them into another world, trapped forever.
Her lips were a pouty, dusty pink. Her eyes a deep, devouring blue.
Whenever she felt, emotion glimmered in them like sunlight dying on the waves.
Right now, irritation shimmered in the blue depths, but there was something else there, too, something betrayed by the way she parted her lips, the soft inhale she made.
Fuck.
Even now, her body still gravitated toward mine.
I bent my elbow, arching my head lower, snuffing out the little light between us.
She arched toward me, her hips meeting mine—
I pushed off the door, walking to the other side of the room, putting distance between us. Gemma Crowne was fucking distracting, and I couldn’t be distracted for this conversation. I fell into my black velvet wingback.
Gemma stayed where she was, leaning against the door, one leg crossed over the other. She had the longest fucking legs. The way she was angled made my shirt ride up on one side, past her thigh, so I could see her delicate hip bone.
My bite had since faded.
She needs another one.
“Well?” Gemma asked.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, tearing my gaze from her legs.
“Everything?” she said. “Are you in debt? Is it my fault? He’s your father? What the fuck?”
Questions tripped out of her rapid-fire. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and studied the knots in the hardwood.
I thought I could protect her from this.
My need to protect Gemma went beyond saving her from random assholes. I didn’t just want to guard her from the world, I wanted to save her from the stained, ugly part of myself.
“I didn’t know my father growing up,” I said. “I assumed he was one of the many drug addicts or dealers my mother went through. A deadbeat. Then, around sixteen, he showed up. Wanted me in the family business. Wanted someone in the bloodline to inherit.”
A bitter-tasting laugh left my lips at the memory. My biological father, standing in the rotted wood doorframe of my childhood home, an ice-white sky behind him. His clothes nicer than anything I’d ever seen, the trailer park at his back.
Like the devil himself.
“Your dad,” she repeated, processing. “He’s your dad. So you’re royalty. A prince.”
My face twisted at that. “That’s Vander Archeron’s world, not mine.”
“Vander,” she repeated. “I’ve been calling him HSOG.” At my face, she clarified, “Hot and Scary Older Guy…” A sheepish look in her eyes subdued any jealousy about to flare. “But you said he wanted you to inherit—”
“Not whatever fucked European province he came from. His real kingdom, the Underworld.”
It was a moment before Gemma spoke again. I heard her shifting, pictured her folding and unfolding her arms, one long leg unwrapping and then wrapping over the other.
“That place you took me to?” she finally asked.
The Underworld, the real Underworld, was a hub for society’s worst. A place to do deals without scrutiny.
Where truces were made and broken. Drugs and money laundering were child’s play.
There, they got into organ and sex trafficking.
Slavery. At the center of it, my father, raking in power and wealth.
I nodded.
Her brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t you want that? You already kind of do it.”
We used our power to play “Robin Hood,” as my father had put it. Though he’d tried, we never set foot into any kind of trafficking. We existed as the boogeymen in bad men’s eyes, so everyone in our community could be safe.
My father?
It was only ever about one thing: power. At any cost.
“I told him to fuck off, and he did—for a while. A year passed without seeing him, and I thought he’d fucked off back home.”
“But?” she asked.
I dragged a hand down the side of my face. “I told you I killed someone.”
The creak of the floorboards. Soft, bare feet padding across the hardwood. Then Gemma took a seat opposite me, on the bed. Eyes wide, waiting, without judgment.
“Sabrina’s father was abusive.” I stared into her deep blue eyes, focusing on the way they softened, and not the memory I was unearthing. “I took as many hits as I could…”
I touched the half-moon scar on my lip, a memento from the time my stepdad slammed a belt buckle into my face.
Her fingers came to my lip a moment later, feathering the edge of the scar. “That’s how you got this?”
I nodded. “It didn’t matter, he fucking wanted her to bleed. If I left for more than a few hours, I’d come back to blood and bruises.” At the horror in her eyes, I quickly added, “Lock offered to take shifts to be in the house when I couldn’t, and Raze and Wraith eventually joined in as well…”
Memories of that day came back.
Wraith, Raze, and I had left to pick up dinner. We’d been gone less than an hour. When we got back…
He touched her.
My stepdad was beneath Lock as he hammered into him, punching an already-passed-out body. Lock’s entire body was clenched, knuckles white, eyes on fire. As if he wished he could bring him back to life, just to beat him again.
Behind them was Sabrina, her shirt torn.
He fucking touched her.
I dragged my hand down the back of my neck. “I got back one day and Lock was bloody, my stepdad at his feet.”
“You said you killed someone.”
“He was still alive when I got there,” I said.
The next parts of the memory were blurry. Raze and Wraith going to Sabrina, taking her out of the room. Pushing Lock off.
Slamming my boot into my stepdad’s head.
Again.
And again.
“Then we heard sirens,” I said. “My biological father must have been waiting. Watching. Shit, he probably called the police. Because as the sirens started, he appeared in the doorway and offered a deal.”
He wore the same long, dark wool peacoat. His hands were in the pockets, shoulders relaxed, uncaring of the body or the sirens.
I can make this go away, just say the word, Santos.
“I needed his help. And he knew it.” I rubbed my brow.
“The rest is history. He covered up the murder, in exchange for our servitude. The contract was for five years. Five years doing whatever he asked, no questions. I think he was hoping by the end I’d have either wanted to join him, or he’d have something else to use against me, but it was nearing the end of our contract, and he hadn’t succeeded. ”
“Then I happened,” I whispered.
The whisper in her voice pissed me off. I whipped my eyes off the floor, locking with hers.
“You didn’t force me into this. I forced you.”
Her lips pursed. “I don’t understand. Why? Why didn’t you just let me drown? Why did you come back? You could have walked away—”
Because I couldn’t let you go.
I still couldn’t let go.
“You would have done it again,” I said. “But if I took your contract, if I agreed to kill you, you would never do it yourself. And I could keep you.” For a time lingered stale in the morning air.
Gemma stood off the bed, walking to the other side of the room. She paused, staring at the door for a good minute, then quickly turned around and closed the distance, stopping at my feet.
“Why didn’t you just not tell him? It’s not like I would have told anyone.”
The day after I saved Gemma, we were scheduled to meet. He was smiling when we came in. I didn’t know how he knew, but he did.
For as long as you wear that mark, you’re mine.
“I could lie and say I didn’t have a choice, but…I did. I chose to keep you.” Her lips parted, eyes wide. “He extended our servitude until I finished our contract.”
And every day Gemma’s contract went unfinished was another she was stuck with me.
“So tell him it’s finished,” she said.
I laughed. “Kinda hard when you’re walking around breathing.”
Gemma’s expression froze mid-movement, breath stalling in her chest.
“Breathe,” I said.
She blinked and released the breath she was holding. “So he knows? He knows what I asked you?”
I had so many opportunities to get out of it. I could have lied about what the ink meant, could have crossed it off my chest and pushed Gemma out of my life.
But the ugly, fucked truth was as long as I was tied to my father, Gemma was tied to me.
“If you’d let me die, you would be free.
” My eyes flashed to hers in warning, but she continued.
“If I died, everything would go away. Your dad wouldn’t be able to force you into working for him.
You wouldn’t be on magazines. People wouldn’t be trying to attack you. Your life wouldn’t be falling apart—”
I reached up, gripping her face between my palms. “You are the only reason I’m living.”
Her lush pink lips parted. For a moment it was just this, her face in my hands, sweet puffs of air leaving her lips. When she spoke, it was with the same velvety softness now coating the air.
“Are you going to die? Everything you’ve built will crumble.”
“Why do you care?” I bruised my grip against her cheeks, pulling her closer.
Do you love me or something?
She’d said nothing when I asked her, and the silence had grown into thick, spiky barbs in my chest. I never thought I’d be like this. I never thought I could be like this, my sanity hanging by a thread over what a girl felt for me. I was pathetic with my need.
I searched her eyes. “Why does this bother you?”
“You want me to say I love you?” She tried to push me off and I stood up, towering over her, sliding one hand to grip the back of her neck. “You already own everything. Have already taken everything. Do you really need that too?”
I dug my grip into her flesh, the sound that left me not quite human. “Yes.”
She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, brow cinched. “If I tell you that, you’ll keep it like you’ve kept everything else. You won’t ever say it back.”
“You’re right, I won’t.” Hurt collapsed her features, but I continued.
“Because I don’t just love you, Gemma. You live in my bones, in my marrow.
” I dragged her down with me into the chair.
“A thousand years from now when my bones have dissolved into the soil, when I’m nothing but dust and ashes, the earth will still feed on my love for you. ”
Her lips parted, no sound came out.
I traced my fingers along the mark at her neck. “You’ve only been inked on my flesh for five years. You’ve been inked on my heart since the day I met you.” Before she could second-guess me, I crushed my lips against her mouth.
“But—” She tore her lips from mine on a gasp. “—your father. What are we going to do?”
“I’ll give him what he wants.” I went to her neck, sucking and biting.
“But…but he wants you—”
“Gemma.” I tangled my hand in her hair, holding her head still, waiting for her thoughts to quiet and her cheeks to flush. “Get to your knees.”
She dropped without a second thought, sliding between my open thighs. Her simple, easy obedience shot straight to my cock. Fuck. She was fucking made for me. I massaged my grip in her hair, moving her skull around until soft little sighs left her mouth. Then I dragged her head back so our eyes met.
“You don’t worry about this. I take care of you.” A cute wrinkle formed between her brows. I tugged at her hair, quieting those thoughts. “Say it.”
“You take care of me, Grim.”