I almost run into his back when he stops suddenly in front of me.
Before I can ask what's going on, unfamiliar men are stepping out of thetrees ahead, and my heartbeat quickens.
I’m instinctively backing away to put distance between us and them, when two figures are thrown to the ground in front of me, making my blood freeze over.
Somehow, the morning air becomes even more chilly against my skin, until small bumps are rising along my arms, and there’s a strange sensation pooling low in my stomach for the first time, causing me to pull on that inexpressive mask like a guard.
The two kids from the grocery store huddle together like they had the first time I saw them. The girl is clinging to her brother with wide eyes, while the brother holds her protectively and glares at me.
And I think it’s the first time I recognizedread—a new emotion paralyzing my limbs and making my throat tight.
“‘Stay off the streets and don’t show your faces in the neighbourhood for a while’.” One of the men steps forward, speaking in a deep voice, and I know who he is without being told.
Reuben’s eldest brother, Aster Taiga.
The Underboss of the Taiga family.
“Those were your words when you let the kids escape, right?” Aster asks with a raised brow. The left side of his hair is slicked back while the right side curls about his face, and a grey suit hugs tightly to toned muscle and tattooed skin, exposed to the air from the undone buttons of his shirt and snaking up to his neck and ear.
But it’s the disinterested look in his eyes and the sheer weight of his presence in the space that makes me hold my tongue and remain silent.
“Because of that, it took me a lot longer than necessary to find them.” Aster puts his hands in his pockets casually but the motion is enough for me to step back to put more distance between us.
The reason the assessment took so long—
Was because Aster had been looking for the kids who escaped.
The kids who’d seen mine and Reuben’s faces.
The kidsI’dhelped escape.
I want to tell him he could’ve let them be. That they wouldn’t have said anything. That this could’ve easily been swept under the rug.
But that’s not the kind of world Syndicate is.
And that’s not at all the kind of world Christian lived in.
So I say nothing. I say nothing and I keep my emotions off my face, like I’d practiced. Anything to hide the rampaging beat of my heart beneath my skin.
“It also taught me a lot about who you are,” Aster nods to one of the other men, who walks toward me and I have to fight the instinct this time not to step back.
Until he holds out a small gun towards me.
And this time, it’s a feeling worse than dread spreading throughout my veins.
“But now you need to show me what you can be,” Aster’s voice is cold in the air. “What my brotherneedsyou to be.”
I thought Reuben needed a protector… not a killer.
Christian was both. He killed to protect. He was never malicious. Never unjust. The enemies of his friends were his enemies as well… and enemies needed to be killed. I understood that.
But children aren’t enemies.
In my mind’s eye, I can see the children from my home. Our children are precious. They’re our future. They’re meant to be protected.
Were things really that different on earth?
Was it not the same for ‘people’?
