AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My fists shook, and I dropped them to my sides. There was no shampoo here, no soap for me; it was clear Damian wasn’t actually living here while in town. He’d told me he’d send a few of his guys out for food and everything else I’d need here while we planned.
I couldn’t go back to Cypress, not until everything was ready to be set in motion. We’ll have one chance to take Miguel off-guard, so we had to come up with a foolproof plan.
I shut the water off and stepped out, getting water all over the floor since there was no towel or rug. I moved before the vanity, and once I stood there, I reached for the mirror, wiping off the steam from the reflective surface.
The face that stared back at me was the face I’d grown accustomed to seeing: pretty, flawless, more like my mother than my father… because my father wasn’t really my father. I could see it now. Miguel’s eyes were pitch-black, the darkest brown imaginable. Mine were more of an amber color, lighter and warmer, more akin to Father Charlie’s.
My real dad. I had my real dad’s eyes.
Since there was no towel, I couldn’t really dry off. I had to get dressed in the same clothes I’d worn before. In reality, I wanted to burn these clothes; they were the clothes I’d worn when Miguel finally showed his true colors to me. They deserved nothing more than the trash heap, but until I got new threads, I’d have to wear them.
I couldn’t even brush my hair. I probably looked like a drowned rat when I walked out of that bathroom, but it was a necessary pause on the conversation Damian and I were having. I needed to wash off the feeling of Miguel’s hands on me—along with other parts of him.
Damian was sitting in the small dining area between the kitchen and the living room, and when I walked out of the hall, he looked up, a small smile tugging at his lips. “You still look like shit, baby girl. Why don’t you tell me what size you are, and I’ll send the boys out to grab you some new clothes, too?” His dark eyes twinkled as I approached and sat down across from him, though he didn’t say anything more than that.
I looked hard at him. At his smirk. At his dark eyes. At all of his tattoos, especially that teardrop near his eye. That thick golden chain, ever-present around his neck. The older shirt, and what I knew were torn jeans beneath the table.
All in all, he didn’t look like a criminal warlord. He looked like a stereotypical thug—but I supposed that was the point. He was Atlas, and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t. To everyone else, he was just Atlas’s right-hand man.
“I don’t care what clothes they get me,” I said as I rested my hands on the table between us. No gloves. What was the point in gloves now?
“Come on, baby girl. Don’t be difficult now. Just tell me your sizes, and I’ll send ‘em out.” The smirk grew into a full-out smile when he added, “Sizes for everything, baby. Everything.”
That might’ve made me blush before, but now? Now I simply held his stare and rattled off my sizes. Pants, shirts, underwear, and bras. Damian never took his eyes off me, and his grin only deepened once I finished.
“There,” he whispered as he pulled out his phone. “Was that so hard?” I assumed he must’ve been typing out a message to the guys he had guarding the entrance to the building—still wasn’t sure if this was a house or something else. Either way, we weren’t in Cypress. We weren’t close enough to be caught.
Once the message was sent, he set his phone down and cracked his knuckles. “I suppose that means it’s just you an’ me for a while. Sorry if this wasn’t obvious before, but I don’t want to leave you alone here.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Don’t trust me, Damian?” Since no one else was around, I added, “Or should I call you Atlas now?”
A low chuckle escaped him, and he tapped the table between us. “Damian is fine. You understand the whole Atlas thing needs to be kept on the DL, right? No one can know, except you and me.”
“I won’t tell anyone, and I’m not stupid. I know leaving this place would be dumb. I don’t need guards at all times.” Under my breath, I muttered, “I got that enough with my… with Miguel.”
That got him to give me a look. “Miguel, eh? Figure you’d distance yourself from dear old pops before we put an end to his schemes?”
Damian didn’t need to know the whole truth. What Miguel did to me… I’ll keep that to myself, but he might as well know the rest. “He told me the truth before your men picked me up. My mother had an affair with a priest years ago, and that affair resulted in me.”
“Shit,” Damian whispered. “An affair, huh? And with a priest, no less? Say, it wouldn’t be the same priest Miguel hired some Serpents to take out, would it?” The look I gave him right then was all the answer he needed, and he shook his head and swore under his breath. “Goddamn. I’m sorry, Giselle, I really am.”
I wanted to move on from that particular topic, though, so I said, “Besides, isn’t it stupid to leave me here with Serpents who want to teach me a lesson for killing some of their brothers?”
“They know those brothers you killed went against the code. We don’t do nothing inside no church,” Damian said, fury in his gaze. “Those men thought they’d go behind Atlas’s back and accept a job from Miguel Santos. No, you did what I would’ve done once I got my hands on them, so in that way, you saved me some trouble. Now, those boys I sent to Cypress’s church, on the other hand—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know. It was that damned Black Hand priest. What’s his name again?”
“Ezekiel,” I murmured, remembering what he’d shown me beneath the church, and then what he’d shown me before the altar. His bare back. All those scars. The truth of his monster. Ezekiel and I were more alike that I could’ve ever known.
I guess sleeping with a man of the cloth was something that ran in my family. Like mother, like daughter.
“Father Ezekiel. Is that really his name? Sounds off.”
“It’s his name.” I spoke that part a little too quickly, because the glimmer in Damian’s eyes flickered with amusement after that.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush on the man. He is a man of the cloth, you know. Although, apparently priests have dicks, if what you said is true. Who knew? I guess every man has urges. Plus, our Father Ezekiel is a killer, so—”
