“I think it’s pretty hypocritical for you to say we can’t see anyone else, yet you go off and drool on the first new guy that comes into your life,” Maddox hissed out, sounding quite pissed off. His usual, only a bit worse.
Lola grinned. “Do you even know what that word means?” Her thinly-veiled insult at Maddox’s intelligence caused him to bare his teeth like an animal, but she waved him off. “And, come on, you saw the guy. Don’t act like you wouldn’t bend over and take it in the ass from him.”
Okay, that—that rendered us all speechless for a bit.
“I can honestly say I wouldn’t,” Sylvester was the first to say, while Maddox eventually muttered, “Neither would I.” Meanwhile, I was still shocked into silence at what she’d said. Nothing that girl said should surprise me, but time and time again I was proven wrong.
Lola brought her blue eyes between them, glancing at me for a quick moment before saying, “Liars.”
“Not to change the subject,” I started, really wanting to change the subject if I was honest, “but how did it go? I’m guessing, by the amount of blood you’re wearing, you did it?” For some reason the words you killed your abusive, rapist brother wouldn’t come to me. I still hated the fact that he’d hurt her all those years, that no one ever lifted a finger to help her or stop him from doing it more.
She nodded. “Yes, the bastard is dead, and now we party—or, we would, if we didn’t have other people to kill.”
“Tomorrow,” Sylvester said. “We come up with a firm plan tomorrow. For now, sleep. It’s been a long night.”
That was certainly something I could agree with, and as the others got ready for bed, I couldn’t help but wonder when Richie would break the news to them. I doubted he’d tell them before everything went down, because it might cause Maddox and Sylvester to not be at the top of their game. He’d only told me because I’d pried it out of him.
Even though my brother’s condition was looking up, I knew things would never be the same.
Chapter Ten – Lola
Bianca’s warm, amber eyes drilled into me, her middle-aged face lit with a smile that most people would fall for. Me? I wouldn’t. I would never. I was used to dealing with liars and thieves, so the mask she wore was see-through for me.
Still, she kept trying, which was annoying.
We sat in the same drawing room we’d sat in during our first official meeting. I wasn’t counting our little conversation at the Gilded Rose, mostly because I didn’t know who she was then, while I did now. A pity I didn’t know; I could’ve stabbed her in the throat with a butter knife or something. Anything I could’ve gotten my hands on at that club.
If I would’ve known who she was… we could’ve avoided all of this.
“Lola, dear girl, I do hope you’re not thinking of betraying me,” Bianca spoke, sipping from a teacup in her hands… a teacup I could’ve sworn she didn’t have a minute ago.
“Of course not,” I told her, though my voice didn’t exactly sound believable. I sounded like a terrible liar, which was ironic, because I’d made my whole life these last few years based on lying to everyone else, especially the poor saps who took me home with them expecting an easy fuck.
“Look at yourself, dear,” Bianca said. “You think the Night Slayer can challenge the Bloody Princess?” She chuckled, reaching and puffing up her blonde curls, the teacup suddenly nowhere in sight.
Weird.
I glanced down at myself, finding that I wore one of the dresses I used to wear while clubbing, along with the thin, four-inch heels that accompanied them. Easy to act drunk in heels like that, tripping over my own feet and anything and everything on the floor in front of me.
I blinked, and then my red dress was wet with blood. My hands and arms coated in slick red, and the strangest thing was I couldn’t remember where all this blood had come from, whose it was. Did I kill someone else? I… I couldn’t remember.
“You’re a fool if you think you and those pathetic Luciano boys can beat me,” she went on. She wore a white shirt, its sleeves loose on her arms, coupled with matching white pants. Such an elegant, refined outfit, something I could never wear because I’d dirty it up instantly. Bianca DeLuca was practically royal.
“I don’t—” I started to say I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, even though I totally did, but my voice stopped coming out. Odd. I was pretty fucking sure my mouth was still going, but no sounds came out of me. None at all.
What the hell was going on here? Something strange was happening, because this was… well, it was just unreal.
The sound of a door opening behind us caused Bianca to smile at someone who wasn’t me, and even though I didn’t turn to look to see who it was, deep down, I knew. I knew, and I thought: this can’t be happening.
“There you are,” Bianca said, blushing a bit. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
The person in question stopped when he stood beside the lounge chair I was on, and I felt my heart rate spike immediately. I opened my mouth to ask Bianca what the fuck was going on, to demand to know why he now stood in front of me, but still, my voice was silent. It would not come.
Probably because the man who stood beside the couch was the one who always knew how to best silence me growing up.
Aiden. My brother. My sick, twisted, despicable brother who, I used to be under the impression, should be dead. And yet he wasn’t; he was here, two feet away, sluggishly drawing his stare away from Bianca as he looked at me, his blonde head cocking. Those pretty blue eyes twinkled as he smiled at me, and my gut hardened in the worst way.
No. No, no, no.
Since I could not speak, since I could do nothing apparently, I got up, my intent to run away, because… because what else could I do? What else was there to be done? No matter what I did, regardless of where I went, this monster would haunt me until the end of my days. He’d insured my innocence was lost, and he stuck a hand into my brain to make sure he’d always have a place with me.
I could never get away from him. He was my darkness, my fear, my strength. Aiden was everything I was and nothing I should be. Why couldn’t I escape from this never-ending nightmare, this haunting of souls?
“Where do you think you’re going, dear?” As soon as Bianca spoke, my legs stopped working. I couldn’t move a single step more, couldn’t run to the other side of the room to get away from my brother… and that allowed him to step closer to me, to smile at me, to reach his hand up and caress my cheek like he was a long-lost lover and not the worst kind of devil there was.
No redemption. No salvation. He would only crash and burn, and he’d take me down with him.
“Well?” Bianca spoke, and Aiden dropped his hand from my cheek. “I didn’t bring you here just to reunite you with your sister, boy. You know what you have to do.” Again, she sipped from a teacup that wasn’t there before, smug and satisfied by her own handiwork.
She might not be my brother, but she was just as bad, killing her own family all because she saw them as weak, because they didn’t believe the same things she did. She was evil. She manipulated and connived, plotting and planning for years, all so she could be the one in charge, so no one could question her decisions. She was the root of it all, the crumbling foundation, the rotting stump, the sugar in the concrete.
It wasn’t my fault. Things would’ve happened sooner or later without my involvement; I just happened to help speed it all up, and now she was thanking me for my help by letting my brother have me.
Helplessness. Wasn’t that what she’d threatened me with before? But how could she know—
Aiden’s hands grabbed both my arms, curling around my skin in a sickening display of possession. Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, I found myself on the floor in front of Bianca, Aiden on top of me. My heels had fallen off, my dress somehow already hiked up to my hips. Just a bit more, just past my thighs, and then he’d have what he’d missed for so long.
I tried to scream, trie
d to fight, but all I could do was hit him—and even that was short-lived, because his hands found my wrists easily and pinned them back, just above my head. It was just as Bianca had said: I was helpless. This was my worst fear. She’d taken one look into my eyes and known somehow, the bitch.
Aiden released my wrists to undo his belt and his pants, but I still couldn’t move my arms. They were held above my head, and my legs… suddenly my legs were tied with rope, around my ankles, holding them wide open.
We weren’t in the DeLuca mansion anymore; we were in a fancy penthouse suite, and Bianca stood in the shadowy corner, watching as my brother freed himself. Aiden and I were on a bed, a bed of red sheets—only the sheets weren’t red because of the dye on their threads.
They were red from blood.
Voiceless, powerless, helpless. This was always my fate, and Bianca was letting it happen. She wanted to use me, and when she couldn’t, she went on the offensive. I was too blind to realize it, and now look at me, back to where I’d started, beneath my brother.
His hands tugged my panties aside, and I closed my eyes, no longer trying to break free, no longer attempting to scream with a voice that wouldn’t come out. I could do nothing here. Destiny had its hand in this, I guess. Some endings weren’t meant to be happy ones, and mine? Mine would be tragic.
Choking, stifling, stinging. Were tears coursing down my face or was it all in my head? Real or imaginary, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except what I started to feel between my legs. Even though I didn’t want it, my body still always seemed to take it. What a traitor it was.
The air in my lungs stopped being useful, and I held my breath, refusing to breathe, wanting to die. Death would be so much more preferable to this… this awful, terrible life.
Why wouldn’t death take me?
My eyelids flew open, and I jerked up, sitting in a bed that was unfamiliar to me. Light came in through the curtain, and I felt my wrists, looking all around. No Aiden. No Bianca. No bed of blood. My breathing was erratic and short, and I couldn’t quite catch it. It was like, no matter how many times I breathed in, it still wasn’t enough.
My body felt wrong, but I was alone, at least. No brother. No unwelcomed guest between my legs.
Aiden was dead, I reminded myself as I got out of bed, only slightly wobbly on my feet. I wore nothing below the waist and nothing but a t-shirt on my chest. It looked like everyone else was already up, and I hurried to get dressed. There were no clocks in this room, but from the sheer amount of sunlight streaming through the curtain, it had to be way past dawn.
Who knew torturing and killing your brother—and then getting freaky around his corpse—was so tiring? Really, I would’ve taken a power nap on the way there if I would’ve known I’d be this tired the next day.
I… I didn’t know why I had that dream. It wasn’t the first time my brother had literally haunted my sleeping hours, but this one felt too real. This one had my brother and Bianca at the same time, my brother doing what he did best while Bianca looked on, as if she approved of it all.
Helpless. She threatened me with helplessness. I didn’t think much of it until now, and now that I was thinking about it, I knew what I had to do.
Did that mean the others were going to agree? No. In fact, they’d probably fight me on it, because it was a stupid idea with no guarantee it would work, but I just couldn’t let it go, you know? It was like a little bug had gotten into my brain thanks to Bianca, and all this time it had gone on with its life, blissfully unaware as it planted eggs inside me. Well, those eggs had hatched, and… now I realized just how fucked up that analogy was, so never mind.
Whatever. The point was it backfired on Bianca. She wasn’t going to scare me into submission. I wasn’t going to kill Maddox and Sylvester for her, but we already knew that. She didn’t, though, which put her on the stupid as fuck team.
Seriously. Why would I kill the guys I cared for? Why would I hurt the ones I loved, the ones who made me feel alive? The ones who helped me shine a light on the monster in the dark and kill him for good? I would never. I might not be the greatest one around, but give me some credit.
Pushing out into the hallway, I heard voices in the living room. Richard’s, Sylvester’s; not Maddox’s though. Or Viper’s. I assumed I knew where Viper was, so instead of going to meet the others, I went right across the hall, walking into Mike’s room, where the big giant lay on the bed, his top half propped up with pillows.
And, wonder of all wonders, the big guy was awake.
I didn’t even see if Viper was in the room; I rushed to the bedside, chuckling in happiness to myself as I went to hug him. Yeah, yeah, guess that was a little overboard, but I just couldn’t help myself. He was alive and awake, and all the guilt I’d felt that night about his and Viper’s possible deaths faded away into bliss.
Bianca and her crew couldn’t take anyone away from me. They couldn’t even hit an apartment right. Fuck them.
Mike let out a grunt of pain, and I quickly pulled myself off him, finally seeing that Viper sat on the other side of the bed in a chair, watching the entire thing. If I had to bet, I’d say he’d slept there, for he certainly hadn’t crept into my bed last night… unlike two other someones.
“Sorry,” I apologized, eyes glancing down to the wound on his stomach. He wore no shirt, his big, lumberjack frame looking pale but not deathly so. The doctor had stitched him up and put bandages over his wounds, and the IV that had been hooked up to him before was now empty and pulled out. I guess, since he was now awake, he could take his own medicine and not have it pumped directly into his body.
Mike said nothing, though his hazel stare did dart to his brother. His brown hair was greasy and messy, the stubble on his face more like a budding beard than anything else. He’d never been one to keep his face clean, but after getting shot and nearly killed, I supposed that would be last on his list of priorities.
The man, as cute and lumberjack-y as he was, looked like shit, but at least he was alive.
I sat on the edge of the bed, unable to stop staring at him. A part of me feared that if I did, I would never get to see him again. Nothing like a life or death scenario to make you realize certain things. My heart might not belong to Mike, but it did belong to Viper, and anyone who was important to Viper was important to me.
“How long have you been up?” I asked, glad Mike didn’t scowl at me or give me a look that said I hate your fucking guts, bitch. I never wanted him to blame me for what Bianca had told her men to do.
Mike let out another groan, though this was not as pain-filled as the first. “A few hours,” his voice came out raspy and dry, and I saw the plate of eggs and glass of water near Viper on the nightstand beside the bed. Half-eaten, half-drank. He probably didn’t have much of an appetite. “Enough to get caught up.”
Nodding once, Viper added, “And to want to come with us when we go back.”
“What?” While Mike sounded tired and wounded, I came out shrill. No way in hell was Mike going to come with us. I bet he couldn’t even walk properly without pain shooting down his body. Even if we loaded him up with anti-pain meds, he was still too weak to bring along, and it wasn’t like this could wait a month while his body healed up. It had to be done now.
“I know,” Viper said. “I told him no. He’s too weak.”
“And I said I didn’t give a flying fuck what he thought,” Mike muttered, his voice cracking on the final word, which caused him to shake his head at himself. He gestured for the glass of water, and Viper got it for him. After two sips, Mike said, “I won’t let my brother go on a suicide mission without me.”
Ah, the lovely bonds of siblinghood. Something I never had, obviously, but as I watched the two brothers arguing about what would happen, I couldn’t help but grin. It was more than clear they cared for each other, that they would both do whatever they could for the other. Having one and not the other go on a, to use Mike’s choice of words, suicide mission, would be terrible, especially if one en
ded up dying.
But that’s not what was going to happen. I had a plan, and though they all might think I was crazy for this plan, as far as I was concerned it was the only damn plan we had that might just give us a future.
“I’m going,” Mike said again, the glass of water now empty. His voice sounded a bit better, but still tired and strained and weaker than normal.
“No,” Viper spoke. “You’re not. I’m not going to let you. If you come, you know I won’t be able to focus on what we’re doing. All I’ll be able to think about is you and how you shouldn’t be there. When I should be busy shooting those fuckers up, I’ll be busy trying to protect your weak ass—”
Not exactly the nicest way to put it, but Viper wasn’t wrong in what he was saying—and Mike knew this. He knew this, which was why he shut his eyes with a sigh and frowned.
“It’s alright, big guy,” I told him, rubbing his arm… the arm that wasn’t injured, luckily. “We’ll handle it. And if we don’t, then I guess you’ll just have to heal up and kill them all after we’re dead.” They made movies about that shit, and I could easily imagine Mike going bonanza on the city.
That said, I meant it one hundred percent when I said we were not going to die. This wasn’t a suicide mission, at least not for them. For me? Eh, maybe, but if anyone should die, it should be me. Not Sylvester, not Maddox, not Viper or Carter or Roman. Not even Daddy Luciano. Let it be me. Let the Night Slayer do one good thing before meeting her maker.
Mike’s eyes opened to slits, and he stared at me with an unreadable expression. Hmm. Maybe what I’d said didn’t make him feel better. Oh, well. I’d never been too great at giving comfort, mostly because I’d never been comforted or sheltered myself.
Because I had to say it, I told him, “I’m sorry about what happened.”
“It ain’t your fault,” Mike mumbled, breathing a loud sigh. “It’s that bitch Bianca’s. We should’ve dealt with her a long time ago. Richie knew for years how unstable she was, but he never let us at her, always wanting to keep the peace. And now look at it all. Everything’s gone to shit.”
Violent Heart: A Dark Reverse Harem (A Death So Sweet Book 3) Page 19