“Poor little crazy Shiloh.”
“Nobody will love you once they know.”
Micah locked eyes with him. “No matter what you do or where you go, I’ll always be there. A voice in your head.”
Shiloh lunged at him with a sound that was barely human, his bare foot slamming into his face again and again until he could feel blood squishing between his toes. He could feel hands on him, trying to pull him off, but he wasn’t done. Micah was still alive, still laughing, still taunting him.
When he slipped in the blood, he scrambled on top of him before he could somehow gain the upper hand. His face was red but he was covered in blood as thick as syrup, so much blood it looked like a movie prop, but he could still hear him laughing. How was he still laughing? Shiloh clawed at his face and eyes, tore at his throat, his lips, his ears, even his hair.
Mal and Nico pulled at him, but their touch was nothing, like flies buzzing around him. They begged him to stop but he could barely hear them over the fevered sounds escaping with each breath and Micah’s maniacal laughter in his ears. They wanted him to stop. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. His whole world consisted of only one thing: tearing Micah to shreds with his bare hands. And he wouldn’t stop until Micah was no longer capable of laughing at him ever again.
Something heavy draped over him. He struggled, trying to shake it off, but nothing helped.
Then everything went black.
“Where are they?” Levi muttered for what felt like the thousandth time.
He paced the dank and dusty warehouse, the smell of oil heavy in the air as Jericho and the twins worked on the two-story machine to his left. They were back at the slaughterhouse, only this time, they were on the meatpacking side. Unlike their usual space next door, this building had metal catwalks that criss-crossed above their heads.
“Something’s wrong,” Levi said, no less than a minute later.
Things weren’t adding up. The others were deliberately keeping him out of the loop and it was driving him nuts, like a thousand bugs beneath his skin. Maybe this was his karma for keeping things from Shiloh. Maybe this was what he deserved. He didn’t know how things had gone so badly in such a short amount of time.
A simple operation to take out one low-level gangster in a Gucci belt had now turned into an all-hands-on-deck situation and that knowledge had teeth. Sure, the Mulvaneys ofteninvolved themselves in things like this for back-up or clean-up services, but this wasn’t that.
Levi had expected Noah and Lucas. They’d been the next on deck for emergencies, and extracting Shiloh, Nico, and Mal had quickly become an emergency. Levi just didn’t know why. Still, hearing they were coming hadn’t rung any alarm bells for him. They didn’t go off for Noah and Lucas. Not even for August and the twins. Where there was bloodshed, they were often the culprits. They made sense.
It was the two surprise guests making Levi’s head spin, each scenario more horrific than the last. Sitting in the corner, in a nest made of fluffy blankets, sat Felix and Zane. And they’d arrived before their husbands who had seemed just as surprised to see them. If Avi and Asa didn’t call them, that meant Noah had, and that wasn’t a call to his brothers-in-law—that was a bat signal to the feelings faction. And that was never a good sign.
Seven tracked his movements from where he leaned against an old metal pipe. “Bro, you’re making me dizzy.”
Levi ignored him, shaking his head, his agitation growing. “This is taking too long.Somethingis wrong,” he stressed. Then he shouted, “Why won’t someone just tell me what happened?”
Everyone paused to look at him as his words echoed throughout the space. Jericho gave him his concerned dad look, but Levi just shook his head. There was no way Jericho was benching him for some dumb shit like emotional distress. After thirty seconds, everyone went back to their assigned tasks.
“Dude, youhaveto chill out,” Seven urged. Levi was Seven’s task. Handling him. Managing him. Keeping him from getting sucked into the impending downward spiral that was his intrusive thoughts.
“I can’t. I can’t until someone tells me what’s happening with my boyfriend.” Panic gripped him and he grabbed Seven, looking him in the eye. “Tell me the truth. Were you lying whenyou said he wasn’t hurt? Are you just trying to keep me calm until you tell me something—” Levi choked on the thought, coughing before he said, “something bad happened to Shiloh.”
Seven’s eyes went wide. “What? Dude, no. You’re losing it. I don’t know what they know, either. I’m just as in the dark as you are, but they wouldn’t do that to you. Whatever the situation is, you adding your crazy to the mix isn’t going to help anyone, least of all Shiloh. They said he’s fine.”
Levi shook his head. “No, that’s not what they said. They said he was uninjured. That’s a whole lot different than fine. If he’s so fine, why wouldn’t they let me talk to him?”
When Nico had called Jericho the second time, he’d refused to put it on speakerphone and had talked in clipped sentences. Levi could barely make out anything. All he knew was that everybody was uninjured except Micah and Jericho needed to call Thomas to get a clean-up crew to the basement of Nico’s and Levi’s building.
“We’ve got a clinically-trained psychologist with him and we can get Freckles here in thirty minutes if necessary.” Seven forced him to meet his gaze. “But I don’t think it will be necessary. If he was hurt, Atticus would already be here waiting with the others. Shiloh is uninjured. Everyone who matters is fine.”
The heavy door banged open just as Seven finished his sentence, the protesting hinges raking over his raw nerves. Noah held the door open for the others. Lucas and Nico were struggling to carry a body wrapped in a brown blanket. Given the rough treatment they were giving it, Levi assumed it was Micah beneath it.
Where was Shiloh? He was striding towards Noah and the open door when Mal stepped through, Shiloh in his arms. Levi froze. They had wrapped him in one of those foil emergencyblankets that kept people warm, his bloody bare feet sticking out the bottom.
“Shiloh!” Lucas stepped into his path, barring him from moving closer. “Get the fuck out of my way. What’s happening?”
Shiloh’s eyes were open but he didn’t acknowledge Levi’s cry. His face was caked in dried blood, his hair, too. It was like a scene out of that movie with the prom and the pig’s blood. Only Levi knew this blood was not from any animal.
“What the fuck, man? Let me go. What happened? You said he was okay. Why is there so much blood? Shiloh!”
Shiloh still didn’t acknowledge him. Felix gestured for Mal to bring him to them. Levi gasped as they removed the foil blanket, revealing a t-shirt and boxers covered in rust-colored splatters and hands so coated in blood all around his fingernails looked black. There were more parts of him that were dirty than clean.
