“About what?”
He slowly pivots his head toward mine, giving me that deadly, daggered warning in his eyes. Fuck, it used to scare the shit out of me when he first arrived at the group home. Even if he never messed with me. Mutual respect. And survival.
Heaving a sigh, I shove my hands into my pockets. “Girly.”
“Mmm.”
“Is this about the glow sticks? And the heating pads?”
A subtle upturn of the corner of his mouth confirms that he suspected. And I justconfirmedhis suspicions.
“Fuck.” I drag a hand down my face.
“I have no intention of punishing you.”
Well, that’s something. “I don’t know why she gets under my skin so much.”
“Yes, you do.” He turns back to the entrance and steeples his fingers. “We all saw a piece of her inside us. Broken pieces she used to cut us, even as we bled her.”
“Looks like she’ll be with us from now on.”
“Mmm.”
“She called me Vinny.”
He flicks his eyes to their corners.
I can still hear the cheers of the crowds chanting “Vin-ny! Vin-ny!” like a mob in the arena, waiting for their prized gladiator to take down the weaker opponent in a game of life and death where a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ was the judge. A puppet of blood and violence.
“Vinny” was the tough, cold, merciless fighter who didn’t care about anyone—only the next fight, the next win, the next payout. The next whore to warm his bed.
But the memory of her voice in the pit obliterates them.
“It’s different when she says it,” I confess to Raphael.
There’s no blood, no ring, no grudge—it’s just her calling me. Like some twisted, fucked up power dynamic. She’s reclaiming it. Briella is peeling back the layers of the man I used to be, but she sees maybe not something worthy. But she sees something in all the worthlessness.
“So, she makes you want to be a better man?”
I screw my brows low and turn to him, finding that subtle smirk, and I roll my eyes. “Ha. Ha, Raph. Your humor still sucks.”
He rests his chin on his steepled fingers. “We are gods and monsters, Vincent. Gods of our own realm. Monsters from what made us. Sick fucks. We will never be better men.”
“Can’t argue.”
But maybe, just maybe—in between the gods and monsters—I could be just a man.
I’m still considering that and considering rearranging Seth’s intestines from more of his damn movie when Raphael rises from his chair. Movement from the dungeon’s entrance has me turning back.
“No fucking way.”
I get out of my chair, unable to fathom how she made it out. Briella staggers into the cavern, her pretty tits bouncing and jiggling, but I’m more concerned with how she’s wrapped her arm around her side, fingers pressing to her back where an open wound trails blood. Her knees buckle.
“Jude!” I yell while charging for her because Raphael isn’t moving.
She falls. I catch her, sweeping her into my arms as she moans in pain.
“Whoa, fuck!” Seth tosses the remote controller and kicks Rory, knocking him off the couch, while I bring her to the bed.
