“I told Azrael the day you guys showed up.”
I turned my head, finding Olivia standing in the doorway, one hand on Lucy’s head, wearing a dress for the first time since before that fateful day.
Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, the dress was black and bright pink, extenuating her curves, her beautiful breasts, her immaculate ass. God, she was beautiful.
“I didn’t know why he didn’t tell you,” she went on,remaining where she was, “but by the way all of you talked about him, I figured there had to be a reason. There had to be a reason Phil didn’t say anything. There had to be a reason nobody at that compound told you his name when you went back to finish the job.”
Azrael was terrifying when he had an agenda, even more so when he was taken off-guard. Whatever his search was for, Alascer was part of it, and us finding out about him too soon would only detour his overall plan. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked softly. “You hold no allegiance to him.”
“But I do,” she answered, her brows pulling together as if I should have known that already. “I have an allegiance to all of you. None so more than you, but Azrael…” She shook her head, looking at the wall across the room, so many thoughts racing through her mind.
After a few seconds, she turned back to me. “Azrael is right. I think that our minds cracked in the same way. Whether that be because we were both born with psychotic tendencies or something much deeper, we are similar.”
“There is nothing wrong with that,” I told her. It was unsettling, how alike they both were now, but it wasn’t in the way she thought. She didn’tactlike him. Maybe their minds were made of the same stuff, but she wasn’t unhinged. She wasn’t on the fence of becoming a psychopathic serial killer. She was just Olivia. Just a woman who had a new craving for death and destruction.
I wanted to nurture and grow those parts of her a long time ago. I hated that they had developed due to the hatred of what happened to her, but it didn’t make my want to help her any less. I could still water her. I could still be the warmth her petals bloomed for.
“I know,” she said, taking a few steps forward, her eyes turning wild. “I know that, but you guys talk about him likehe’s crazy, but he’s not. He’s clearly on the hunt for something bigger than all of us, and you guys can’t see that because all you see is someone who escaped from an asylum and started hunting delusions, but it’s not a delusion. Mr. Alascer wanted to take me away. He touched me and squeezed me and asked about my age. And Phil said that he wanted me for sex trafficking or something much worse, and I think that’s what it is, Everett. I think it’s much worse, and I think Azrael’s been hunting it for a long time and having us get involved when we only know the surface of it would ruin years of planning and stalking and hunting.”
It would be like what happened a few years ago with that pedophile ring. No matter how far we dug, we only managed to kill a few of them. We never made it to the main distribution center.
Azrael was trying to get every root, and that’s what Alascer was, he was a root.
But that didn’t mean we shouldn’t be allowed to help. Alascer touched my girl. He raped my sister for months, his own daughter. I wanted nothing more than to hang him by his femurs from a tree and skin him alive. Shouldn’t we have that option?
I wanted that fucking option.
“What did you talk about?” she asked, her eyes searching mine. “You, Jack, Rae, and Zo.”
“We talked about our next steps.”
“Why didn’t you help them before?”
“Because Azrael likes to play games, and it doesn’t matter who gets involved, if he doesn’t want us going after someone, then we can’t go after them.”
“But now?”
I tightened my hands around the ribbons. “Now you’re involved, and when Rae found out who it was that was in thatvan, who it was that almost got his hands on you, it was an effort for Jack to calm her down.”
Olivia straightened, shock touching her features. “Because of me?”
“Because he went after her sister.”
Her breath caught, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. Of course, Rae was her sister. She was apart of The Family. Rae was her sister just as much as Jack was her brother.
I turned away from her, watching the ceiling. “I don’t doubt that they’ll take another detour once this assignment is over. She’ll probably give Azrael an earful.” Which means I would also hear about it not long after that.
That was just perfect.
I should join their little crusade just to keep that from happening, honestly, but this was about Olivia now. I didn’t care about Azrael’s agenda, his need to be in control of this, Alascer almost got Olivia. He deserved to die a painful death.
“Everett.”
Fuck, I loved it when she said my name.
My eyes shifted back to her, finding her a step closer.
“I need you not to look away from me,” she said softly, her eyes holding a slight bit of fear to them. “Please.”
