Well, he hadn’t really. He’d repressed it. That had to be worse. I threw my arms around him just as Kit pushed Jeremy aside and struck Kal right in the face. Hard. The other man went down and the room erupted. Crying and screaming.
Phoenix backed up, and I held onto him. He turned and ran from the room, puking over the side of the balcony when we got outside. My guys were around us. Everyone was talking, but I couldn’t hear any of them.
Their mother came outside. She carried a shot gun. “Phoenix. I am going to kill your uncles. My brothers won’t get away with this.”
As though she hadn’t said she was about to commit murder, Rosalind stormed from the house. “Your fathers will kill him if his own brothers and wife don’t. This will all be done by the end of day.”
How could she look so calm?
“Mom,” Barrett practically choked. “Even here there are laws. You can’t kill them. I want to, too. What if they kill you?”
She shook her head. “They won’t.”
Stephen tore through the door, staring at us before his wife. “Go to the house. Your house. Now. Lock yourselves in.”
Rosalind turned left, heading for the garage, and Stephen—who had once told me that he was the calm one—chased after her but apparently not to stop her as much as to help her. Or join her. My heart raced.
“No.” Phoenix shook his head. “I want to see them. Like I saw him. I want to see them. I need to see them. Barrett?”
His older brother nodded. “Come on.”
We had agreed when the time came we would help him, and even Julian seemed on board. These people had destroyed Phoenix’s life. Broken him, as Jules had said to me once. He would never be who he should have been. I loved who he wasnow but that wasn’t the point. He’d been vulnerable, and friends and family had betrayed him.
Something shattered inside. We piled into the Jeep, Barrett keeping up behind his mother’s car. They wouldn’t get to stop us.
It turned out they didn’t try. I was finally on the other side of the lake. The houses were smaller, as Dina had described them, some of them looking like they were going to fall down any second. But the one we stopped at—it was upright. Old but standing just fine.
A man sat on the porch drinking a beer in a chair. When Rosalind jumped out of the car, he leapt up.
“Roz?” he shouted.
She cocked her shot gun right at him. “Where is he, Daryl?”
He paled. “What are you doing with that?”
We were all out of the car next to Stephen in a second. He looked at Phoenix. “Was he there?”
Once again I watched a grown man pale. “I wasn’t.” He held up his hands. “I never want trouble. Just to be left alone. You live your life up there. It is none of my business.”
Phoenix shook his head. “I don’t know him.”
“Where. Is. He?” Rosalind shouted. “I won’t ask again. He hurt my son. His kin. I deserve this and you know it. All these years forgetting I grew up here too. I know and remember the same lessons you learned. Where is he?”
He cleared his throat. “He ran with Miles when they fucked up the kidnapping. He’s gone as far as I know.”
Phoenix took a deep breath. “Fuck.”
“Language,” his mother said; it almost seemed more like a reflex, and she didn’t turn to look at him. “You tell him if you hear from him that his days are numbered. I’m not scared of you anymore. Any of you. I was scared too long. But maybe I finally found Dina’s backbone. They’re dead.”
I couldn’t help but think Dina would love this. She believed in revenge, and it turned out, so did I.
16
We turned toward the cars when another one screeched to a stop and Eric and Daniel rushed out of it. Eric grabbed his wife. “Did you kill them?”
She shook her head. “They’re not here. They’ve gone missing.”
He pulled her to him and then after a second Daniel took her from Eric to give her a hug, too.
