Entropy: A Dark Romance (Blood Diamond Disciples Book 1)

by Riley Ashby

  She spat in his face.

  “Quinn, stop!” She didn’t need to antagonize him.

  Jonah laughed as he wiped it away. “I bet you swallow for him.” Then he slapped her so hard she fell back to the ground.

  I took another step forward, hand on my gun. “Stop, Jonah. I’m here. You want me.” I had to get his attention off her. He was angry enough that he would be distracted. I could get the jump on him, but first, I had to make sure Quinn was safe. There was a good chance I wasn’t walking out of this alive, but she had to. That was non-negotiable.

  Jonah barreled on, ignorant of my internal monologue. “Did you know she thought it was her mother who set this whole thing up? You probably led her to believe it, didn’t you?”

  “Let’s not do this now.” This had to be part of his payback to me. To reveal the truth, revealed that I’d lied to and deceived her more than she could imagine.

  “I think someone ought to be truthful with you little captive since you certainly have been less than honest with any of us.”

  “I don’t care what he lied about,” Quinn said, but I could read her too easily. She wanted to know more, and I wasn’t sure we could take the hit. I’d known she was tired of me lying to her, but I’d kept doing it anyway. And this was a big fucking lie.

  Jonah ignored her and kept staring at me. “Maybe we could let her tell it.”

  “You didn’t …” I looked around the room. She wasn’t here, was she? Surely, Vin would’ve sent her away the minute he found out what I was.

  Unless …

  “She is here. He would have given her to you to look after if anything happened to him.” Vin’s daughter didn’t go anywhere without Jonah close behind. “You brought her here? Just to rub this in my face?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. We’ll be long gone by the time your friends get here.”

  A new voice echoed from the back of the room, deep in shadow where I couldn’t make out her figure. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.”

  There she was.

  Esther Maldovano emerged from the shadows at the back of the room. She was ready to run, with her dark hair pulled back, and dressed in baggy clothes to hide the shape of her body. She looked at Quinn. “I don’t understand what’s going on here any more than you do. I want you to know that.” She looked at Jonah. “We should be on the road now. Let’s finish them and get moving.” She glared at me. “We took you into our family, Gunner. I hope he makes it hurt.”

  “Jonah.” I tried to pull his attention back to me. “You’re going to hurt her as much as you hurt us. Don’t give them the truth and then snatch it back like this.”

  “Stop talking in riddles!” Quinn struggled to her feet despite Jonah’s gun in her face. “Someone, please, tell me what’s happening.” She looked at me. “Tell me the truth!”

  It had to be me. I couldn’t let Jonah reveal it in a way that hurt her more. “Look at her, Quinn. Really look at her.”

  The silence was so absolute I could hear water dripping from some exposed pipe in the next room. Quinn and Esther stared at each other, Esther increasingly confused as Quinn’s eyes slowly widened. She turned back to me.

  “No.”

  “That’s what all this was about.”

  “What?” Esther looked between the three of us, but even Jonah wouldn’t give her a hint. He thought this was funny. “What’s going on here? What am I missing?”

  I continued speaking to Quinn. I wasn’t gonna be the one to break Esther’s heart like this. “Vin was extorting your dad for money, promising a reunion. It never would have happened. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

  Esther stepped toward me. “A reunion with who?”

  Quinn swallowed and extended one hand, briefly, before letting it fall back to her side where she clenched it into a fist. “I’m your sister.”

  Esther shook her head. “I don’t have any siblings.”

  “You have me.”

  She scoffed. “That’s absurd. My mother died in childbirth.”

  I took a step closer. “People will pay good money for a baby. Vin was one of them. He didn’t want to fuck around with a woman, shared custody, all that. He bought a baby instead.”

  She spun on Jonah. “Tell me this is a lie. What are they talking about?”

  Jonah faltered in the face of her wrath. Esther was, after all, the daughter of a mob kingpin. She feared no one, not even him. He was realizing his mistake, the harm he was doing to Esther by revealing this secret in this way. “He took you out of a hellhole. Your life is infinitely better now than it would have been growing up with her.”

  “And you thought what, that I’d be okay with this? That you’d reveal this to me, kill them, and we’d run off into the night?”

  I had to keep control of the narrative. My hand was on my gun, ready to pull it out the moment Jonah took his off Quinn. “He didn’t think about you at all. He wanted to hurt Quinn because she’s the one who misses you. Who wants you back. Then he was going to take you away so that she’d never see you again.”

  Esther took another step on Jonah, and he finally holstered his gun as she stuck a finger in his face. “Did you factor in my emotions at all? Did it really not occur to you how this information might make me feel?”

  For once in his life, Jonah didn’t seem to know how to smooth over the situation he created. How could he not have seen this coming? He knew Esther better than anyone. He knew how important family was to her. He’d just upended her entire life, revealed a sibling from a family she’d never known about, and he thought she wouldn’t be upset?

  “You’ve just destroyed my entire life, JJ.”

  His face crumpled. It was my opening.

  “Twice in one day, I’ll offer you your life, Jonah. Get out while you still can.” I’d put a bullet in him the minute he turned his back. But he ignored me, entirely focused on Esther.

  She was crying now, green eyes streaming tears dark with mascara. “You knew this whole time? How could you keep this from me? You are the one who is supposed to always tell me the truth, even when Dad wouldn’t.” She pressed her hands over her eyes. “Oh God, he’s not even my dad. What the hell.”

  “You should go.” My gun was out of the holster, at my side, my finger on the trigger.

  It was like he couldn’t hear anyone but her. “Bunny. Look at me.”

  “Don’t call me that!” she screamed as her hands flew to fists at her sides. “How can I ever trust you, now that I know you kept this from me my entire life?”

  Somewhere above us, the door slammed. “Right now. This is my last warning to you. Get out before they get down here.”

  Jonah looked back and forth between Esther and me, but he couldn’t ignore the noises from upstairs. He was out of time.

  “Esther. Come with me. We have to go.”

  Her lips trembled as she spoke. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” She looked at Quinn as she wiped away her tears. “I’m staying to talk to my sister.” He tried to grab her arm, but she jumped out of his way.

  I raised the gun. “They take you away, and you never see her again. This is the only way you have a chance.” Why was I helping him? He deserved prison or a bullet in the back as much as every other Disciple.

  Jonah walked backward toward the other end of the room, so shrouded in darkness I couldn’t see what was waiting there. Another door, surely. “This isn’t over, for any of us.”

  “Stay away from me,” Esther said, her eyes on her sister. “Don’t come back.”

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but I interjected before he could say anything. “Jonah, go! Now!”

  I fired the gun.

  He roared with anger and hurt, gave one last pained look at Ester, then turned and fled into the dark.

  A door slammed, and then I couldn’t hear anything.

  I couldn’t stand anymore. I dropped to one knee and caught myself with the heel of my opposite hand; the shock from the concrete ran up my e
lbow. My gun clattered to the concrete floor.

  “No!”

  Quinn was torn between wanting to comfort the sister she hadn’t seen in years and wanting to see me.

  Esther waved her away. “Go to him. I need to collect myself.” She glared at me. “Don’t think this means I forgive you, rat. You ruined my life.” She turned and faced the back wall where Jonah disappeared. But her disapproval meant nothing to me. It was Quinn I wanted.

  She was at my side a moment later.

  “I lied to protect you,” I gasped. “Vin never would have let her come home to you. If I had told you the truth, you would’ve been left with nothing. I didn’t know what else to say. I tried to make up something you would believe.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m not mad.” She kissed me once, then leaned back to examine me. “Why are you here? You should be in a hospital.”

  “I wasn’t letting him hurt you. Not anymore. This is supposed to be over.” I lifted my chest so I could grab her face, running my thumbs over the apples of her cheeks, wiping away the sweat and blood and tears. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I don’t know if they’ll let me.”

  “You said I’d come with you. You promised.”

  “Things didn’t go to plan. Too many people want my head. I can’t keep you next to me if it means putting you in danger. I’m not that much of an asshole.”

  The door behind me slammed open. We were out of time.

  “I don’t regret anything I did to bring you to me. I regret a lot of things, but spending these days with you isn’t one of them.”

  She grabbed my shirt and pulled me closer. “This can’t be the end of it.”

  “It isn’t. You belong to me, always.”

  “Come back for me. Please. Don’t say goodbye.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her something, anything that would reassure her, but they were on us. Parker in full body armor, recognizable only by her voice, demanding I sit the fuck down before I ruined all the work the doctor had done on me. Other team members swept the room with guns while Esther stood against one wall with her hands on her head. She said nothing as they cuffed her hands behind her back and led her out of the room. Quinn stayed by me. Both her hands over my heart, holding my eyes as the field medics assessed my condition.

  Parker lifted the shield on her helmet. “We have to get to the safe house now. You need more blood.”

  Quinn squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll wait.”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled her down for a final fleeting kiss as they pulled me away.

  “You’d better.”

  And like that, he was as good as dead.

  No one told me anything. I was interviewed endlessly, asked to remember anything about every person I had interacted with. If I had overheard any conversations. I had nothing, but they must have known that. After all, they had the tapes from Gunner’s basement. I followed every question with one of my own. And every time, I was shut down.

  When Parker finally came to speak to me, I knew there was no use in asking anymore.

  “I don’t even know where he is. Or where he’s going. He might not even stay in the country. You should be grateful—living a life on the run like that is not what you were meant to do. He wouldn’t want that for you.”

  I brushed away the tears, angry that she, of all people, saw me cry. “You think you know what he wants?”

  “I know him better than you. For the record, I told him it was a bad idea to be the one to hold you from the beginning. I think he hoped that you would bring back the missing part of his humanity, the pieces he lost while he was becoming one of them.”

  “Can’t I talk to him? Even for a minute?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” But her voice was flat, and we both knew what she meant. It wasn’t going to happen.

  They finally let me go, but I refused to testify against my father. Parker talked them out of subpoenaing me. It turned out she was a special agent with the FBI. Since she was the one who got Gunner involved in the undercover mission in the first place, she was able to pull strings not available to anyone else. In the end, Dad got house arrest and an ankle bracelet. It was a small price to pay, considering how broken and angry I was. I knew why he did it. He thought he had a chance at getting his other daughter back.

  In the end, he sort of did.

  I tried not to be in the house when she was there. It was too hard not to resent her at first, and I wanted her to get a chance to know Mom and Dad alone.

  And being around my parents came with a new kind of pain. No matter the reasons, my parents had orchestrated my kidnapping and put me through this hell. It turned out Mom had been gambling again, and when Vin found out how much time she was spending at the tracks and casinos that he controlled, he saw an opportunity to make back even more money than she owed. He told my dad that he would reunite our family with Esther for several million dollars—more than triple what he’d paid to have her kidnapped in the first place. Like Gunner said, he had no intention of ever allowing Esther to know what was going on, much less keep his deal with my father. But somehow, we ended up together anyway, one big happy family.

  Well, happy was debatable.

  Esther and I met for coffee one day, tapping our fingers against the stained ceramic cups in the back corner of a busy local place a few blocks from the loft apartment I was renting. Neither of us knew what to talk about. Her eyes searched the room constantly, and I didn’t have to ask what she was looking for. Or rather, who she was looking for. Did she hope he would come back? Or was she afraid?

  I didn’t bother looking for Gunner. I couldn’t get my hopes up.

  I stirred my coffee. “You really never knew?”

  “Never had a reason to suspect.” She sipped hot herbal tea; apparently, caffeine gave her a headache. “People always told me how much I looked like my mother—the woman they told me was my mother. And even if I knew that Vin was up to some shady business, I didn’t think stealing children was part of it. And I never expected Jonah to lie to me about something like this.” She looked down and away as she said his name. “I was supposed to be able to trust him.”

  Coffee burned my throat as I took a large swallow. “Looks like we’ve both been fucked over bad.”

  “There’s one thing we have in common.” And then she smiled, just for a second. “I don’t know how to live like a normal person. I’ve been a mob princess my entire life. I had the world at my feet. Now, hardly anyone knows who I am, and if they do, they are afraid of me. Or worse, they look down on me.”

  “If it helps, I’m in the same spot. You know I’m not taking money from Mom and Dad anymore. And I quit working at the company. I’ve been folding clothes for minimum wage.” What happened with Gunner’s house, filled with its books and expensive furniture? Had anyone gone to clean it out? Or was it sitting empty and alone, gathering dust? Maybe the Disciples had torched it.

  She bit her lip and scratched at the table with one long nail. Her red polish was chipped. “I’m eighteen years old, and I have nothing. I would turn down your parents’ money, but I need it. No one will hire me. I dropped out of high school two years ago. I have to learn to navigate a brand new world.”

  “Maybe you need a fresh start. Go somewhere new.” But I knew she wouldn’t leave. Not when this was the last place Jonah knew to look for her.

  “Maybe.” She looked up shyly. “But until then, do you think you can stop avoiding me? I don’t know anyone else.”

  I spent most of my life wishing I had my sister back. It didn’t make sense to avoid her now that she was here, even though having her meant I’d lost Gunner. But the details of my time were so hard to talk about to anyone. At least Esther had been there for part of it. “Yeah. I think I can do that.”

  She walked around the table and hugged me. After a moment, I hugged her back.

  I wasn’t used to being alone. For my whole life, I’d lived with my parents or roommates, and now suddenly, I had only myself for compan
y at night. I thought about getting a cat, but the idea of being responsible for something else’s well-being when I could barely feed myself was laughable. Parker ended up with Gunner’s dogs, so I visited her whenever possible to get my snuggles.

  I went to school. I worked. I came home. I slept. School was paid for thanks to scholarships, and my savings covered the rent, but I was responsible for all my other costs. Food was more expensive than I thought. I hated my job and everything about it, but I didn’t have the resume to get hired anywhere yet for design work. I used my middle name when I applied for jobs so no one would connect me back to my father. I didn’t want any sympathy hires.

  At night, I sat alone in the dark and wondered what Gunner was doing.

  Parker came to my apartment and practiced with me and the knife. She took me to a shooting range and showed me how to operate any handgun I could conceivably come across. At least I could sleep at night, exhausted from our workouts, but it didn’t stop the nightmares, the monsters that pulled me down so deep beneath the surface, only waking when I ran out of breath and my body forced me to inhale even though my mind believed I was underwater.

  I finished school and started applying for jobs, but it was hard when I refused to leave New York. I didn’t want to go anywhere that would make it harder for Gunner to find me. Not that I doubted he could find me anywhere, with any name, but why make things more difficult? My friends thought I’d lost it completely. My parents begged me to move on. Even Parker frowned whenever I mentioned his name as if it was a dirty word. But every night, I got in bed alone and touched myself, remembering the smooth baritone of his voice, his knowing hands on my skin moving as surely as if he was driving a car or preparing food for me in his kitchen. I built fantasies as grand and elaborate as any movie, convincing myself to make it through one more day when every morning I fought back tears when I woke up and he wasn’t there.

  Katie insisted on going out to dinner before she started her senior year. “Nothing crazy, I promise.” She tried to smile as if she was joking. She’d battled endless guilt when she realized Gunner had tricked her. But I knew the truth. He would have found me, one way or another, no matter what anyone could have done.