Page 46 of Ravaged By the Dark

“Hold this to your lip. It will help with the swelling. Did I do this,” Arek asked, his eyes worried.

“No, not directly. I slammed my face into your shoulder when I was trying to get you to stop,” she mumbled.

“You did?” Arek furrowed his brow, and she watched his reaction carefully, and she couldn’t decide if she was more or less comforted that he truly hadn’t noticed her.

She spotted Cody limp his way in and close the door behind him before he flopped down at the kitchen table. He did look one punch away from death, but Arek did not. He was going to have a nasty black eye and a bloody nose, but other than that, he looked unscathed.

Renee looked up at Arek’s still worried expression and then into her brother’s arrogant one.

“Okay, who wants to start,” she asked as she turned her anger on the two overly testosterone-filled males in her way too small kitchen. “And there better be a fucking good explanation for this.”

Arek lounged against the counter as he kept one eye on Ice Man and the other on Renee. She had her hands on her hips, and he had to stop himself from smirking as he pictured this as her motherly, not impressed look. She was fucking adorable. His few days away from her had done nothing but make him want her more.

“Well?” she prompted, taking the peas out of the cloth she was using and tossed them to Cody to use.

“What are these for,” Cody asked and then shrank into the chair as Renee practically growled at him.

“For your face, stupid. You look like a meat grinder ran you over.”

“I don’t look that bad,” Cody grumbled but put the bag to his face. “I’m not sure what you want me to say. I came to warn you about Tyson, and this fucker jumped me in the front yard.” Ice Man nodded in Arek’s direction.

Renee looked over to him, and he shrugged, not sure how much he should say.

“If you ever want to see me again, you better start talking because what I saw out there was not—” Renee sighed. “You were like a man possessed.”

Arek crossed his arms over his chest.

“Your brother is not a nice guy. I thought he was here to hurt you.”

“Oh, please! Why would I hurt my own sister?”

“Cody, shut up! You have no right to say a word. You walked out of this house two years ago and never looked back. How is anyone supposed to know you’re even my brother? You certainly don’t act like one.”

“That’s not true! Why do you think I joined Tyson’s fucking gang in the first place? Because I like it? Because I always wanted to be some thug? Sis, for fuck’s sake, I was fast-tracking to be an architect. I threw my dreams away to protect you!”

Arek raised an eyebrow at the siblings. With them now side by side, he could see the family resemblance. If Cody or Ice Man or whatever the fuck he called himself was telling the truth, this could work in his favor.

“I don’t understand. How does you joining the Crimson Vipers help me?” Renee sat in the chair across from Cody.

“Don’t you think I know what Tyson wants from you? Don’t you think I’ve always known? You were a kid, twelve when I first heard he was serious about wanting to fuck your brains out. I mean, I knew he had a crush before that, most of the guys did, but this…what he would say went well past a crush.”

Cody took a deep breath and slumped into his chair.

“I will kill him,” Arek said, so quietly she almost missed it. She looked over her shoulder at Arek, and his eyes were calm, but anger ebbed off his body in waves. If she wasn’t so pissed off, she might have found it a little hot that he was so protective.

“Do you remember when I joined the gang when you were seventeen?” Cody’s hand gripped into a fist on the table. “By then, I’d seen firsthand what he did to women, and I didn’t want that to happen to you. I asked him to wait until you were twenty-three and finished school. I figured you’d be done before then and get the fuck away from this city and Tyson. And if not, I’d warn you to get lost, you’d run, and that would be that.”

Cody pulled the peas away from his face and placed the bag on the table.

“Tyson told me he would heed my wishes but only if I joined his gang as payment. What was I supposed to do? Let him take my baby sister and my best friend, or let him have me?”

Renee’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked away from her brother. “But you became so distant, like a totally different person. You came home at weird hours, dropped out of school, and stopped speaking to me. Then you stopped coming home at all. I waited night after night for you to show up, but you never called. You never stopped by. Why?”

Cody looked away from his sister’s face.

“Because your brother has turned into a murderous fucker,” Arek said.

“Shut up, man!” Cody shot up out of the chair and pulled a gun. Arek saw the movement and pulled his own.