by Selena
And then there’s strong King, our leader, trying to save us all from ourselves without noticing he hasn’t saved himself, that he’s become a man obsessed with his ambition to be the hero, to be the best, to take the world for us no matter what it costs.
Or… Maybe it’s not his ambition at all. Because there are two more people in our family. One who had enough and checked out a long time ago, even before she had a chance to wash her hands of us. Who lives in her own little Margaritaville in her mind. And though I can’t hold her blameless in that decision—she chose to bring us into this world—I can’t hold her completely at fault either.
Then there’s Daddy. The man I put on a pedestal all my life, who bought my love easily with lies as sweet as his candy, who put a laptop in my hands and a credit card under my nose, who said, “Go buy yourself a nice pair of shoes, the newest iPhone, the designer dress you’ll wear once. Don’t worry about how much it costs, sweetheart. Only the best for my baby girl. I’ll always take care of you.”
And what has he done to take care of me?
He’s taken care of his own ambition. He sheltered me, but I no longer know if it was for my own benefit. Did he only want to hide his own actions? Or was there something more sinister? I remember what Devlin said about arranged marriages, that surely the mafia still had them. Is that why he was so obsessed with keeping me pure and innocent? Not for my safety, but so he could auction me off to some stranger, the bidder who could offer him not the most money, but the most status?
After all, aren’t we all pawns in a game he orchestrated to feed his ego and his insatiable hunger for revenge against a slight to his pride? My brothers are doing this not to help themselves, but for him. They’ve already made the football team. They’ve gotten the parking spot. They’ve even gotten the Darlings to stop fighting them, thanks to me. They’re exactly where they want to be at school. This has gone beyond us. Why would my brothers care about taking down an old family, a bunch of adults? Burning their houses, ruining their name in a town? This isn’t for us. This is for Dad, who sits at home sipping a scotch and watching the ball drop while we do his dirty work. He’s the gamemaster.
“You don’t have to do this,” I blurt out as we pull up to a house and the charge of excitement builds again.
“Suck it, Preston,” Duke whoops, hopping out of the car without listening to what I have to say.
“You have no reason to ruin anyone’s house, let alone their lives,” I say, rushing ahead even though they’re not paying attention to me anymore. They’re caught in the madness of mayhem, the seductive danger of their plan. “What did Preston’s dad ever do to you? For that matter, what did Preston? You broke his arm. You took his spot on the team. You ruined his future. Isn’t that enough?”
This time, Royal stays in the car, keeps it running. There are lights on upstairs in some of the bedrooms. I remember Preston’s sister, all skin and bones, clinging to Chase’s arm. Is she in there? Is he? Will they get out?
“You have to stop,” I yell, lunging for the door.
Royal taps the lock, trapping me inside. “You wanted the truth,” he says, his voice cold. “You said you could handle it. We’re only on the second house. We’ve got a half dozen more. And miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep.” He chuckles, the coldness of it sending a chill down my spine.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “Why are you hurting people for Dad? You don’t even like Dad. You’ve always known the truth about him, haven’t you? You’re the one who doesn’t buy into this, Royal. Why are you going along with it?”
The other three come barreling into the car, Baron pushing me back across the seat and sandwiching me between him and Duke. Trapping me.
Royal takes off, peeling away from the house, but not before I hear screams as the door flies open. I have only a single glimpse of a woman’s figure silhouetted in the doorframe before we’re gone.
“Did you see that lady jump like a bomb went off when we busted the window?” Duke asks, laughing as he falls back against the seat, his muscles vibrating with adrenaline beside mine.
“Two down,” King says. “Five to go.”
Five. Maybe I can convince them to stop before they do them all.
“You’re going to get arrested,” I try. “When every single Darling house gets targeted, they’ll know it was us.”
“No family gets that powerful without making enemies along the way,” King says.
“There’s no reason for it,” I plead. “You’ve already won. Let Dad fight his own battles.”
“Weren’t you the one going on about family earlier?” Duke asks. “We stick together, sis. We’re Dolces.”
“Yeah we are!” Baron says, reaching across me to slap hands with Duke as we arrive at the next one. There’s a gate to the neighborhood, and at first I’m relieved, thinking maybe this house will be spared. But Royal punches in the code with his gloved hand, and we pull through.
“They’ll have your car on camera,” I say, trying desperately to deter them. “If they know this one is you, they’ll figure out they were all you.”
“Don’t worry so much, little sis,” Duke says, squeezing my knee. “Dad’s made friends in town.”
They’re out of the car, shoving me back in when I try to follow. I watch them run across the lawn in the rain, juvenile delinquents dressed in black sneaking through the night. Thunder rumbles overhead drowning my objections. Glass shatters. Volleys of explosions follow. One of them escapes through the broken window, and my brothers duck, racing for the car and piling in, high from the thrill. Fireworks paint the inside of the house with smoke and streams of fire.
“You’re fucking crazy,” I yell as the car shoots down the street. “What if there are kids in those houses? What if one of those hits a person?”
“Not a person,” Royal says quietly, his voice undercutting the adrenaline-fueled chatter of my brothers. “A Darling.”
twenty-five
Crystal
By the time we pull up at the next house, my head is spinning, and I think I’ll be sick. Royal and King change places, and my brothers hop the fence and run up a long driveway, disappearing into the darkness. “Make them stop,” I beg King. “They’re going to get hurt. I know you don’t want that, King. You’re not even going to be here next year. You won’t have to deal with it when the Darlings come for revenge. And why do you need to make Dad king in a town you won’t even live in? What does it matter? Can’t we please just go home? You’ve made your point.”
King drops his forehead to the steering wheel. “I told you to stay home, Crystal. I told you not to get involved, that you wouldn’t like what we do.”
“Fine,” I say. “Take me home. Hell, let me out of the car and I’ll walk home. I don’t want any part of this.”
“But you are a part of it,” he says. “This is who we are, Crystal. Not just us. You, too.”
Before I can answer, my brothers are leaping over the wrought iron gate. Lightning flashes, blindingly bright, silhouetting them as they come for the car like thieves in the night. I shrink back, stifling a cry when they pile in beside me.
“They’re on to us,” Royal says, pulling off his black stocking cap and shaking the water from it. “Let’s get Devlin’s next. His dad’s a pussy. He won’t fight back.”
“No,” I say, lurching across Baron and grabbing for the door handle. “He helped you, Royal. If it weren’t for him, we never would have found you and gotten you out. Don’t hurt him.”
“Devlin’s not even there,” Baron says, dropping me back onto my seat in the middle. “Calm down.”
“Mr. Darling is a good man,” I plead. I don’t know when I started crying, but my face is streaked with tears, and I can barely choke out the words.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Royal snaps. “Does Devlin’s dick move like a snake, or what’s got you so hypnotized you believe their brainwashing?”
“Want us to drop you off with Dad?” Kin
g asks, pulling up to the end of Devlin’s driveway. He switches off the lights and turns the car around, so we’re facing the exit to the neighborhood, as Duke reaches behind us to grab giant boxes of what might as well be dynamite. Lightning licks the sky again, lighting up the beautiful old house behind the rows of bowing trees over the walkway.
“No,” Royal says. “She said she wanted to see, so she’s seeing. Maybe when it’s over she’ll understand what being part of this family really means.”
He gets out of the car, slamming the door hard. Duke hops out, but Baron grabs me when I try to dive out after him. “I’ll stay,” Baron says. “This one shouldn’t take more than two people.”
I kick and scratch at him, screaming for him to let me go, but he pins my arms down and holds me there, forcing me to watch or close my eyes. I don’t want to see the door where Mr. Darling kept his evil father out, where he stood up to the most powerful man in Faulkner to defend his choice to let the cops search his house—to give us peace of mind. I can’t watch the lightning light up my brothers as they skip up to the front windows, full of boyish glee, high on danger and the urge to destroy, to wreak havoc on the world that gave them a mother who can’t be bothered to give them the discipline they need, a father who orchestrates evil and hands out approval when they carry it out, and enough free passes to make them feel invincible.
I can’t hate any of them. I pity them. I weep for them, and for the unsuspecting town my father has unleashed them upon. I weep for Mr. Darling and his silly little wife, and I pray they get out unharmed. I weep for Devlin, for the grief he will feel when he sees what they’ve done to his home, the house where he’s lived since childhood with the balcony where he’s stood gazing at me so many times. And I weep for myself, because I am part of this family, because it’s in my blood like chocolate, and I can’t escape it.
And I rage for Daddy, who’s probably standing at his darkened study window with a drink in his hand, watching the house of his enemy lit up from within like a bomb.
By the time Royal and Duke return, I’m sobbing uncontrollably in Baron’s arms. No one speaks as we pull away, the car creeping out of our neighborhood with an unwilling passenger, like the truck that took Royal.
“You did it,” I say, sinking back against the seat, spent. “You set up the whole kidnapping, didn’t you, Royal?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But I do, don’t I?” I press. “Dad would do anything to take down the Darlings. Even use his own children.”
“Fuck you, Crystal,” he says. “Anything I did, I did for you. I didn’t know you’d turn traitor in a week. I thought you were stronger than that. Better than that. I thought you were a Dolce.”
“You really did,” I whisper to myself, horror growing inside me. “That’s why you wouldn’t tell me the truth about what happened.”
“Fine,” Royal snaps. “Here’s the truth. Your precious Daddy planned the whole thing. Yeah. He was going to get the Darlings framed for kidnapping me. He said that if I didn’t go along with it, they’d go after you. And you know what? I shouldn’t have bothered. Because when they went after you, what did you do? You bent over and let them fuck you in the ass.”
“That’s not what happened,” I whisper, but I’m too sickened by his words to put any conviction in mine.
“Tell her the rest,” King says. “Tell her what happened.”
“They put me in that sick old man’s house,” Royal says. “But he found me before the cops did.” He turns to the window and goes quiet, that brooding, sudden silence he falls into lately.
No, I think. Mabel found him. And she told her grandfather.
I can’t speak, though. I feel too sick. I swallow over and over, the only thing I can do to keep the bile down.
“That’s when they took him to the Midnight Swans,” Duke says, taking over from Royal. He leans forward to squeeze my twin’s shoulder. “That’s why we’re going to take the Swans and everything else from them. Just like they took it from him.”
“Who put you in Devlin’s attic?” I whisper.
No one speaks, but they don’t have to. I already know the answer. I don’t want to, but I do. I remember Royal whispering the words through his cracked lips.
Don’t make me move again.
That’s what he said. He called for Dad just before that. Dad, who found him almost dead, and instead of helping him, he kept going with his plan to frame the Darlings. Instead of getting Royal help when he so desperately, obviously needed it, Dad and probably my uncles used the time while Devlin’s dad was at a football game to move Royal to his house. He might not be responsible for the battered state we found my brother in, but he’s fucking responsible for plenty.
What if those few minutes, those few hours, had cost Royal his life? Would Dad have stopped then? Will he ever stop?
If he would sacrifice his own son in his quest for revenge, would he even blink before taking Devlin’s?
Before I can form into words the fury raging inside me, we pull up into a gravel lot beside a house I recognize. It’s the one where Devlin left me after that first party. Colt’s house. I beg my brothers to stop, but my pleas fall on deaf ears. They’re out of the car, slamming the door against me when I try to climb out. I fall silent, watching in stunned horror as they light the fuses, ready to torch the sixth house of the evening.
From the parking area at the end of the house, I can see both the front porch of the house and the back deck, where the wooden bar sits silent in the rain. There’s a patio set at the end of the bar closest to us, with a huge umbrella protecting it from the rain. I almost miss the figure sitting in one of the chairs. She’s so small, so motionless, she blends into the shadows. But a flash of lightning illuminates her tan coat.
Mabel Darling is sitting outside. She doesn’t move. She watches my brothers light the fuse and toss the first block of fireworks through a window. Before they can toss another, the front door flies open, and a far more imposing figure is framed in the light. A figure holding a gun.
I scream, diving toward them, trying to scramble across Baron’s lap. King shouts a curse and explodes out his door, sprinting for our brothers. I can’t hear the man yelling through the drumming of the rain on the roof, but I can see his face in the light from the windows. I can see the anger, the defensive instinct. And I can see the glimmer of raindrops streaking the barrel of the gun as he raises it. I can see the flash at the muzzle when he fires just as King jumps in front of our brothers.
I scream again, and Baron shoves me roughly back and jumps out of the car. I don’t care what they told me. My brother is hurt. That’s all I think as I leap from the car and run across the gravel. I don’t think about the rain or the danger, that I could be shot. I don’t feel the bite of the gravel as I fall on my knees beside King while two of my brothers vault over the railing and tackle Colt’s dad. I don’t care about him. I only think about King. My brother, my protector, my king.
He’s kneeling on the gravel holding his side. “I’m fine,” he grits out, his breathing shallow. “I just slipped on the gravel.”
“You’re shot,” I snap, grabbing his arm and draping it over my shoulders. “You’re not fucking fine.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” he says through a ragged breath. Another shot sounds, and I freeze, my blood running cold.
I hear the sounds of fists hitting flesh, of bones hitting the deck as they roll around fighting. My mind is racing, but I try to stay calm. I can only do so much at once.
“Let me help you to the car,” I say to King, gripping his arm over my shoulder and lumbering to my feet.
“Come on,” Baron says, appearing beside us. “Let’s get out of here.”
Supporting his weight, I help King into the backseat of the car. By the time he’s in, the rest of them are, too, and the car skids in the gravel as Royal floors it. I glance up in time to see that Mabel hasn’t moved. She sits watching as we disappear behind the trees.
>
“Did anyone else get hit?” I ask, peeling King’s black sweater off over my head and handing it to him. He balls it up and clenches it to his side, doubling over halfway and holding it in place with his elbow.
“No,” Royal says from the driver’s seat. “He fired a shot when I was trying to get the gun, but it didn’t hit anything. I got his gun away before he could shoot any more of us.”
“Fuck,” Duke swears, rolling down his window and spitting out into the rain. “I think he busted one of my teeth in half when he hit me with it.”
“We need to get King to the hospital,” I say.
“No hospital,” he says. “It barely grazed me.”
“What?” I ask. “King, that’s crazy! Someone shot you.”
“Which is why it would be crazy to go to a hospital,” he says.
“We’ve got one more to do, and then we’ll go home,” Royal says.
“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?” I demand, my voice edged with hysteria. “King is fucking shot! Go to the hospital!”
“I’m going to have to get used to this in my new line of work,” King says. “Drop the last ones off and let’s go home. I wouldn’t mind lying down.”
“You guys are crazy,” I yell. “You’re all fucking crazy. What is wrong with this family?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me,” Duke says, spitting blood out the window. “I’m missing half a tooth. I can’t believe that asshole pistol-whipped me!”
“Oh my god,” I say, lying my head back on the seat and closing my eyes. I can’t deal with this. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been through too many emotions tonight, the shock and horror of what they were doing, learning the truth about Royal’s kidnapping, and now this insanity. I just… I’m going to lose it if I have to listen to this insanity much longer. They’re like Dad. Nothing will be enough until every Darling house is burned to the ground, until every Darling is nothing but ash.
One house left, I tell myself. That’s my only consolation. One more.