He shook his head once. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t put much thought into it. The last thing I thought when I came here would be that I’d… well, that things would be so complicated.” He chuckled softly at that. “But I have the feeling that’s the norm around here. You, Kieran, and that Fang guy. You don’t look at it as strange?”
This wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with him, but I supposed it was literally now or never. Who knew if I’d ever have time alone with him again without the others around. I said, “My brother’s in a similar relationship with his girl and two other guys. It was touch and go at first, but after a while, it became the same as any relationship. If you really want to make something work, you make it work.”
“Laina is an interesting character. I can understand why you three would be willing to try it out.”
Right then I pulled into my apartment building’s parking lot. I didn’t say anything until I was pulling into a parking spot and turning off the car. Jason grabbed the handle of the door to get out, but I stopped him by saying, “We know she’s got a thing for you.”
His hand relaxed at the handle, and he leaned back in the seat and met my eyes. “She might’ve mentioned something like that, yeah.”
Ugh. I was no good at this shit. I didn’t like having discussions like this, especially with someone I hardly knew.Jason didn’t seem like a bad guy, but that didn’t necessarily make this any easier on me.
“What about you?” I asked him.
“Me,” he said. “What about me? I didn’t come to this city to be on the market for a girl that’s way too young for me. Then again, I also didn’t come to this city to stand aside and let a mob family plot my daughter’s demise, either. I’ve watched Laina for months now, learning her routine, the way she walks, how she carries herself—the darkness she hides inside. I’m well aware it should be something I should easily shut down, but… it’s the strangest fucking thing. I don’t know if I can.”
Jason shook his head before he continued, “There are so many goddamn reasons I should say no. It’d make things easier on Kieran, at least. All the logic in the world, though, doesn’t seem to mean shit when it comes to her.”
I sighed. Everything he said sounded like what I used to think, way back when. All of my excuses, all of my denial—all of that effort expended in an attempt to keep things professional between us—and look at where we ended up. In spite of it all, or in spite of me, we were together, against all odds.
Quieter, Jason said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself feel anything like that. Maybe that’s why it feels so surreal.” He ran a hand through his hair, then tossed me a smirk as he got out of the car. “I’d say I’m way too old for her, but a lot of people would probably say the same about you, Kieran, and Fang.”
Getting out with him, I frowned at nothing in particular. He wasn’t wrong there.
“She’s got a lot of people who care about her,” I said. “Just don’t play with her.”
Jason stared at me over the top of my car, giving me a strange look. “I’m not someone who plays around, and I don’t think you are, either. You don’t have to worry about Laina when it comesto me. I realize my word might not mean much to you yet, but I swear on it.”
Again, he was right. His words didn’t mean much to me. Still, he had a fire behind everything he said, and I could tell he meant every single word. Whether or not he’d live what he preached was another story entirely, but as of now, I was inclined to believe him.
God help me. This probably meant I’d have to share my girl with him, too.
Chapter Twenty-Three – Laina
I was cold. So unbelievably cold. Everything in me screamed, telling me to wake up. I opened my eyes and found myself in a room that felt so familiar, and yet I was sure I’d never been here before. I worked to sit up, but I couldn’t move, and when I struggled with my limbs, I realized why that was.
I was chained to the bed I was on. My wrists and my ankles. I was as good as helpless, and the air around me was so cold it was choking.
“Hello?” I was fairly certain I tried to speak, but I heard no sound. My ears heard nothing at all… until I was able to focus on a steady dripping sound.
Drip, drip, drip. Whatever it was sounded heavy, like gravity barely had to work to pull whatever it was down. It sounded as though it came from my left, so I turned my head to look—and what I found was my dad, sitting in a chair beside the bed I was on. That dripping sound? Blood running off his fingertips and colliding with the concrete floor below.
He was dead. Pale. Eyes open, glassy. There was nothing left of him. A bright red spot seemed to grow in size on his chest with every passing second, accompanying that drip. Bigger and bigger it grew until it swallowed him up and he was covered in blood.
“Dad,” I spoke, trying to reach for him, but I was frozen. I could not move. This time, I heard myself, and I sounded like a stranger. A stranger inside my own body.
The sound of a door opening alerted me to someone else’s presence, and it was a short while until someone wearing a devil’s mask strolled between me and my dad’s body, carrying a shiny, sharp, inexplicably long knife that honestly belonged in a butcher’s shop and nowhere else.
The person used their free hand to lift the mask and reveal their face—Tessa. She wore all black, reminding me of my Devil, even wearing his same mask, but she held no love toward me. In fact, her dark eyes burned with nothing but a pure hatred, venom and ice hurled at me like acid-coated knives.
“You were always a problem,” she started with a smirk. “I should’ve known if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” She made a big show of turning around and glancing at my dad, or rather, at his body. “How’d I do?”
I again tried to free myself, but I was chained down expertly; there was no give in any of the chains. The metal clanked as I pulled, the cold bands around my wrists and ankles rubbing the skin raw. I said nothing to her, because I had nothing to say. Nothing that could undo the damage she’d done, nothing to rewrite the carnage of the scene before me.
I felt… like giving up.
Tessa’s dark eyes returned to me, and that smirk of hers only grew as she held the knife up between us. “It’s time to finally get rid of you. I can’t say I’ll miss you. Do you think anyone will, or do you think they’ll all forget you by the time the year’s up? My money’s on the latter. You’re nothing to them. Just a stupid little girl who thinks she knows everything.”
That knife was brought to my cheek, the sharp edge dragging down until it reached my throat. I swallowed hard. This helpless feeling, I’d give anything to trade it away, to make it so I’d never feel this helpless again.
