“I’m sitting right here, Camryn.”
Turning to him, she looks him dead in the eye. “Fine. Closet your fucking judgment. Rocco makes me happy. That’s all that should matter to this family, you included.”
I’m pleased by the look of remorse that crosses his face. “That’s all I want for you,” he tells her. “Truly. If he’s the one that can give it to you.” He pauses, maybe praying she’ll interrupt, which she doesn’t. “Then I’m happy for you. But just for future reference, I’d get judgy eyes looking at Codi and Parker sucking face too.”
A lie. One she happily accepts.
“Perfect.” She stands. “I’ll leave York in yo—”
Her words cut off like the edge of a cliff. Brutal and final. Moving closer to my desk, she looks at the photo I had blown up of our mystery man’s face.
“Why do you have a photo of Jonathan Waith?”
Fear is something I’m used to seeing in people. It doesn’t bother me, in fact, I can stare it straight in the eye and take joy in the emotion.
Not in my daughter’s though.
“You know him?”
She swallows, stepping back so she can no longer see his face. “Jonathan Waith was my college boyfriend.”
“Waith as in Waith Industries.”
“Yes,” she answers Tivoli’s questions. “I don’t even know why he was at college. His trust fund alone could feed the world’s starving populations many times over. I assume his father just needed him to occupy himself for a few years.”
She goes silent.
“I’m gonna go,” she announces abruptly, visibly shaken. “Don’t forget to fire Dork.”
“It’s York,” I call after her.
“I’m gonna kill that motherfucker.” Tivoli grinds his teeth, gesturing to the photo.
No explanation needed. My daughter feared this asshole, which means he has to die. I’m not one for getting my hands dirty, our line of work can stain your hands for longer than you’ll likely live. But this cunt thinks he can build fear in my daughter, he’s gonna learn first hand I’ll happily live with that stain on my conscience for the rest of my days.
“You’ll have to wait in line. Firstly, let’s find out why the fuck he was meeting with Jesse.”
* * *
I never questioned my offer in allowing Jesse and Blake to stay in my home. They were family of Rocco and Parker, which meant they were family to Codi and in turn me. You never turn your back on family. Not the ones that haven’t given you good reason.
I also don’t question myself often. I’m a leader. A doer. A man with a focus to protect his family and build his business. One hundred percent in that order.
Now I’m questioning my hospitality. I’m questioning whether I can trust Rocco’s sixteen-year-old son and that sits restlessly within me.
The guy I have sitting on Rocco’s apartment tells me the kid leaves the loft alone twice a week. For a teenager that refuses to stand more than two feet away from his twin sister at any given time, this lights a bulb of uncertainty in my brain. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. I told my guy to leave it.
Now I’m not so sure.
“Thanks for the dinner invite, Dad.” Codi smiles at me, picking at the tomatoes in the salad I had our kitchen staff prepare earlier.
“Always, sweetheart. I’m just glad we could all be here,” I offer her distractedly, not that she notices, her focus on the food laid out in front of her.
My eyes remain on Jesse Shay. If he clocks me and my overly zealous observance, he doesn’t act differently. Staring broodily off to the side, avoiding everyone and everything. So much like his father, it’s almost uncomfortable to be around.
Blake shoots daggers at him from across the room. Staring at him so intently, I’d be certain she’d skin him alive if she had the mind control to manage it.
The twins, usually as close as any two people can be, are distinctly separated. A purposeful distance pushed into existence through hostility and opposition.
Annoyed by her constant bristling, Jesse walks from the dining room, Blake quick on his heels.
“Camryn,” I call. “Can you get everyone a drink? I’m just going to make a call and then we’ll eat.”
Their voices are easily recognizable from the other side of my front door. Their hushed tones heightening as they argue.
Positioning myself by the door, I place an ear against it, listening intently.
“What did you do?” The panic in her voice rises, her whispered tone more of a spit than anything else.
“I took care of us,” her brother replies just as hotly.
“You did no such thing. You’ve put us in danger. What were you thinking?”
“The only thing I’m only ever concerned with doing, Blake,” he accuses. “Keeping you safe.”
She growls, the sound more feral than feminine. “When are you going to get it? I’m not your fucking responsibility.”
“Everything okay?” Rocco walks up beside me, as stealth as a tiger.
“Jesus,” I speak loud enough for the kids to hear. “You scared me, I was just about to grab the kids.”
Opening the door, they stare at us with frenzied eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Rocco steps in front of me, moving closer to them.
“Nothing,” Blake lies like she’s breathing, completely at ease in the action. “Jesse is just being a little bitch about Dominic putting feta in the salad. He’s not a fan of cheese.”
Her phone rings, dragging our attention away from her oddly believable lie.
“You gonna get that?” Rocco asks her.
“No,” she answers easily. “Probably just one of my many admirers.” She winks, pushing past us into the house. “Let’s eat.”
Eyes set on Jesse, he takes the opportunity while his dad’s focus is on his retreating sister, to stare back.
Rocco, following his daughter, leaves us alone.
“Deceit can hurt a lot of people, Jesse.”
His eyes flash in worry.
“Mostly those you love. You’d do well to remember that.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Sarah
Deal’s off.
I stare at the text, anger bubbling through my veins. I’m going to rain hell on fucking earth.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Blake
I fucked up.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tivoli
Kid is a sneaky fucker.
“Dominic,” I speak into the line. “I lost him.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Camryn
“Where’s Jesse?” Blake walks from her room, arms reaching upward in a long stretch.
They’ve made themselves a comfortable space from Parker’s old room. Jesse’s living on a swag fit for a king at the end of the queen-sized bed Blake claimed as her throne. The room is covered in books and clothes; messy in the way teenagers are. Much to Rocco’s discomfort. He’d offered to renovate and add an extra bedroom, but they shut it down. They’re most comfortable in close proximity, even when they’re on the outs.
Look that up under the definition of siblings.
“I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Where’s Rocco?”
“At the club,” I tell her. “He and Parker had some work to do.”
“He realizes I don’t need a babysitter, right?”
I shrug, placing my coffee mug down. “He wants to make sure there’s always someone here if you need it.”
Appreciation pulls a smile from her blank face before worry turns her eyes in, her frown line coming on heavier than I’ve seen it. “Jesse should’ve been back by now. He only ever goes for an hour, maybe two.”
“Goes where?”
She ignores me, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. Fingers moving like fire, she rings him, the call going straight to a generic voicemail. A quick inhale and she calls again, the outcome the same.
Rocco bought them both phones the day after they
arrived. Blake, like every teenage girl in the world, is attached to hers. She doesn’t even pee without it. Jesse, on the other hand, is impartial. He keeps it with him at all times, a security blanket he’s never had before.
“What time did you say he left?”
“Blake, you need to calm down. Jesse’s fine, I’m sure.”
“I asked you what time he left?” She bites out unkindly. “Not for your opinion on how I should be feeling.”
I refuse to answer.
“Please, Camryn,” she pleads.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “Maybe tenish.”
Her hand comes up to massage her stomach. “It’s now two. He’s been gone for four hours. That’s not right.”
Her big gray eyes have moved past her initial worry and straight into a hysteria that makes me move toward her.
“Hey,” I soothe. “You need to relax. Shoot him a text and I’m sure as soon as he gets it he’ll call you.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Text,” she stresses, calling him for the third time.
“Blake—”
“He can’t read,” she yells at me. “I can’t text him because he can’t fucking read, okay?”
I take a step back. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows,” she cries. “He thinks he’s stupid. He goes to the library twice a week, some old lady there has taken pity on him and teaches him how to read.”
My heart breaks. “Why didn’t he say anything?”
She laughs, the sound the exact melody of a broken heart. A sonnet to the betrayal she feels she’s now painting her brother with by telling me this.
“We’re street kids, Camryn. Kids who get by through hustling. We lie, we cheat, we steal to live day-to-day. Who would want us?”
“Rocco,” I state categorically. “Rocco wants you.”
“Well we didn’t know that.” Tears have now sprung to her eyes. The gray of her irises, so wet with emotion, they’re almost transparent.
“Jesse was convinced that if Rocco found out he couldn’t read or write that he’d be embarrassed his son was such a fuck up. He begged me not to say anything.”
I grab at my chest, working to calm the pain in my chest.
“But, you—”
“Know how to read?” she guesses.
I nod.
“Jesse forced me to go to school while he stayed at home caring for our mom. Whether it was to make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit or to protect her if Marcus decided to visit. He never got an education, but made sure I did.”
I can feel my own tears now, sitting uncomfortably against my eyes, waiting for permission to fall.
She begins pacing the room, thumbnail caught between her teeth.
“Blake,” I start.
“You don’t understand,” she accentuates, stepping toward me only to step back again.
“You guys are attached, I get it,” I pacify, working my hardest to talk her down from the ledge she’s hellbent on balancing upon. “You’re worried, but he’ll be fine.”
An unamused cry falls from her lips. “Jesus. We’re not fucking useless without one another.”
Her cell sounds and she jumps at the sound, hand diving into her pocket to retrieve it.
I’ve seen a lot of people through grief. Both strangers and family. Interestingly enough, I’ve never met two people who react the same way. Tears are tears, but crying, that’s strikingly individual.
Watching a teenage girl break is high on my list of things I’d happily never experience again. To watch the moment her world falls into pieces around her has never made me feel more useless, more inept as a human being.
Her knees give out before either of us have noticed, my reflexes far too slow to even attempt to catch her. Her cry is one that strips her vocal cords so violently, in the end, no sound actually comes out. Her mouth open in a silent scream that would disturb peace on earth.
But it’s the way her body shakes that gets me the most. The way she free falls into shock so quickly, her body is a quivering mess of heart-wrenching sobs and bone crunching wails.
Body weak enough, I retrieve her cell from her hand without a fight, the small device falling into my palm in ease.
A gasp escapes my throat before I can school it, the jolt of shock hitting me like a punch to the stomach I was no way prepared for.
Jesse’s face stares up at us from the message. Eyes barely open with how heavily swollen they are. His bottom lip split so severely, a mixture of dried and fresh blood decorate the lower half of his face like a Halloween mask. He’s unconscious, that’s obvious enough. The masculine arm in the picture having gripped his hair to tilt his face upward to allow the photograph to be taken.
“Jesse,” I whisper. “What? Who?”
“Sarah,” she answers me, numbness having claimed her for the moment.
“Sarah?” I echo in confusion, but she doesn’t respond.
I move to stand, but she grabs onto my leg, holding me hostage.
“I need to call Rocco.”
“Please, no. Camryn, you can’t.”
Hands twisted into my pant leg, she stands on her knees, begging me with her life. Face blotchy with the salt of her tears, chin quivering incessantly, her confidence strips away, leaving a young girl pleading with a stranger to help her.
“Hey.” I drop back down, pulling her into a hug. “Rocco will fix this.”
“No,” she cries into my shoulders. “Not when he realizes what’s happened. What I’ve done.”
Pushing her shoulders back, I look into her eyes. “What you’ve done?” I query.
Her head moves up and down quickly. “He’ll hate me forever.”
“That’s not possible.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done.”
Hands gripping her cheeks, my thumbs swipe at her cheeks, attempting to remove the rush of tears silently streaming down her face.
“What did you do?” I ask gently.
“This was all my fault,” she declares. “They retaliated.”
“Who retaliated?” I question, confusion setting in.
Her chin lifts and drops slowly, her bottom falling to the ground as her body gives up. “They’re punishing me.”
“Who?” I stress.
“Sarah,” she tells me, pausing for a moment before adding. “Jonathan.”
My blood runs cold. Pure liquid ice coursing through my veins.
“Jonathan?”
Eyes closing in regret, she nods. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.” She repeats herself over and over again. The words nothing but stuttered sobs that send shockwaves up my spine. Every cry like the whisper of his name tying itself around my vertebrae, ready to snap it at any given moment.
Jonathan.
“Talk to me,” I beg her, needing to understand how Jonathan became entangled, not only with my mother, but in something sinister enough to involve the attack of a teenage boy.
“Sarah,” she whispers again.
The cogs are turning so quickly in my head, I can’t get any to line up, to make sense.
“You’re talking to Sarah?”
Chin wobbling, she nods.
Click. Fears falling into place like puzzle pieces I didn’t even know I was missing.
“Did she send you here?” I breathe. “You coming to Dominic’s home… was that her idea?”
Her head shakes vehemently, her hand coming up to wipe at her nose, transferring the snot and tears from her face to the bare skin of her arm.
“Blake, I’m so confused, you’re going to have to fill me in.”
She forces herself to inhale, defeat now defining her. “I fucked up,” she tells me. “I really fucked up, Camryn.”
“We can fix it,” I assure her, not one hundred percent believing my own promise.
Head dropping into her hands, thick, jagged sobs wrack through her body.
I move in closer, sitting on the floor
beside her to drag her into an embrace. I made the mistake of forgetting she was a teenage girl. A child. Her life has forced her to grow up too quickly, but deep inside, she’s a scared little girl needing someone to guide her.
Climbing onto my lap, her face buries into my chest as she cries. My hand rubs up and down her back, a soft shh echoing the movement in an attempt to calm her.
It takes some time, a good ten minutes, but she settles, her sobs trailing off into sporadic stuttered breaths. Eyes, wide and unseeing, stare into nothing.
“Blake,” I test softly.
“Sarah was watching Dominic’s house,” she starts, her eyes still fixated on nothing, her voice completely devoid of emotion. “She saw us there and approached me.”
She sniffs, her palm coming up to graze the upside of her nose. “She offered us cash.”
“You and Jesse?”
Finally, she blinks, turning to look at me before she shakes her head. “Yes. No,” she corrects. “Just me. She knew Jesse wouldn’t give her the time of day. He despises her. She was always around, she got Mom hooked on smack and whatever else she was snorting and injecting.”
My hand never ceases its constant track up and down her spine.
“It was a lot of cash,” she tells me robotically. “Enough to set us up with a new life.”
Her chin wobbles and she lifts her palm, pressing it against her jaw to stop it. “It was before I knew Rocco. Before I saw that he was a good guy,” she begs me to believe her. “Before I knew he actually gave a damn about us.”
I move to speak, but she cuts me off.
“Before I knew you.”
“Me?”
She swallows audibly. “You have to understand, you were no one to me.”
“I—”
“She wanted access to you both. You and Rocco.”
Understanding hits and my hand drops away on its own accord.
She bargained with my life. Rocco’s daughter, his flesh and blood, negotiated my life like a transaction.
“All I had to do was give her access to you both and she’d give me five hundred grand.”
Reining Devotion: A Chaotic Rein novel Page 23