“You made me a promise,” I gritted.
He pushed the hair out of my face. “Don’t go looking for monsters anymore.” His palm lingered on the side of my face. “Where were you, Gemma?”
“With a boy,” I spat. “Some asshole, whose name I’d like to fucking forget.”
THIRTY
GRIM
The hurt in Gemma’s eyes lingered like stale cigarette smoke in my lungs.
From now on whatever bullshit we had is over.
It wasn’t over. It would never be over, so long as the ink still stained my chest. Killing Gemma has become our fucked-up fantasy. Not the actual death—she could have killed herself in the past five years, she could have found a way, I knew that.
It was refusing to take her life in her own hands, instead trusting me with it, obeying whatever I said.
And that drove me nuts. Her soul-deep submission.
“We had a fucking plan.” Lock’s voice dragged me back to the present.
We’d waited until the club closed before starting cleanup. Bleaching the bathroom, moving the body. Now Lock leaned against my bathroom wall, arms folded, eyes on me. Raze watched me with a similar expression, and Wraithsat on the toilet, reading a book. Behind them, a body dissolved in acid.
“We had a plan,” Lock continued.
With my thumb and forefinger, I massaged the arch of my jaw. “I’m aware.”
“Are you? You were supposed to distance yourself from Gemma—there! There it fucking is.”He pointed at me like he’d just discovered something.
“What? There iswhat?”
“I thought I was seeing things at first, but every time we talk about letting Gemma go, you tense the fuck up, like you’re getting ready to fight.”
I relaxed my shoulders. He was right.Fuck.I didn’t know how I’d get myself out of this, but I did know it wouldn’t happen if I kept seeing Gemma. She had ensnared me and whenever I was with her, I didn’t want to leave the web.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Are you saying I did this on purpose?”
“I dunno,” Raze said, stepping forward. “But, somehow, anytime she’s with you, shit goes sideways.”
I rubbed the groove between my brows, looking at the barrel holding a rapidly decomposing body.
“Let her fucking die,” Raze continued. “Let someone take her. Stop fucking saving her. Her contract is void. There’s no real tie to us. So we let America’s fucking Princess leave our lives.”
Another wave of involuntary tension corded my muscles. I breathed through my nostrils, focusing on the moment.
“It’s not that simple,” I said, voice strained with tension.
“Why the fuck not?” Lock demanded.
You promised to kill me, Santos.
I’d opened my mouth to tell them the truth, theentiretruth, of that night, when the reason waltzed in.
Vander Archeron.
The man above us. The reason the police or FBI never came sniffing around. The reason for the ink on our backs. The Horsemen stilled as he walked in, sitting on the edge of the tub like he had every right to be there.
“What the fuck do you want?” I said.
