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Not that I thought anyone was outside, eavesdropping, but you never knew. What Shay and I had to discuss was perhaps the most private matter ever.
“I figured that,” she said. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who blows things out of proportion. If you say it’s important, it’s got to be, so why don’t you just spit it out?” Straight to the point, what I’d come to expect from Shay.
I was slow to meet her near the car. “I… discovered something else Miguel has on the Hand. You have a traitor in your midst. He bought one of your guards out.”
Shay’s brown eyebrows came together. “One of my guards? What are you talking about?” I assumed she’d be able to tell what I meant, but maybe she needed to hear me say it. Maybe she was still hoping this was about something else.
“I know the Cobra isn’t dead… and that he’s your brother.”
The look Shay gave me after that could’ve killed. If glares could be knives, I’d be dead on the spot—but they weren’t, and so the only thing I was after saying that was vastly uncomfortable. It was the same expression she’d worn when I’d warned her before, only harder, graver.
She stared at me for a few seconds, and then she pushed off the car, stalking to the wall and leaning her back on it. She kicked off her heels and let out a single word before sinking to the ground: “Fuck.” She slumped down, resting her arms on her knees, not seeming to care that her already short dress had bunched up even more in the process. She hid her face behind a hand.
For some reason, I felt like I had to explain further, so I said, “I don’t know who the guard is, but at least one of them you can’t trust. Miguel and Rocco both know, so we can safely assume Miguel is planning to use the Cobra against you and the others.”
Shay didn’t say anything for a while, not for a long minute. The seconds ticked by, the silence in the garage growing heavier, more uncomfortable.
She unhurriedly dropped the hand from her face, though she did not stare at me.She looked straight ahead, at nothing in particular, as she said, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Shay sound so… defeated. Hopeless, almost, like the mention of her brother, the Cobra, pushed her to the brink.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that, so in the end I didn’t say anything.
“When Harry woke me up that night and told me we had to leave, I never thought…” Shay chewed on her bottom lip. “I thought they were all dead. I had no idea at the time that Atticus knew Tristan was close to losing it. I had no idea Harry and Atticus conspired together to pull me out of there.”
I didn’t know who Harry was, and I didn’t ask. A family friend, maybe? A worker? I hadn’t seen or heard about a man named Harry before this, so I assumed he was dead now.
“Atticus did what he thought was best. He did what he thought would help Tristan. He knew he was the Cobra, and he kept it to himself. None of the others knew. When I came back, I had no idea. I blamed the Black Hand for what happened to my family. I wanted to kill them all, watch the Black Hand crumble and turn to dust. I told myself it was for my family—my father, my mother, and Tristan—but that was a lie. It was always for Tristan.”
I was slow in moving over to where she sat slumped, mimicking her position by sitting on the floor and leaning my back against the wall of the garage. Less than a foot of space between us. I hooked my arms around my legs and listened. I think… I think this was something Shay needed to get out.
Shay smiled a bitter smile. “He was everything to me, for so long. He was the male heir, while I was always expected to get married and pop out babies for whoever my husband turned out to be. I was trained to take care of myself, but to take over the Arrowwood name… that was all on Tristan. He knew I hated it, so he always came to me, told me about his hits, trained with me when our parents weren’t paying attention. He said he’d never leave me behind, that he’d do anything for me.”
She shook her head once before bringing her brown eyes to me. “He killed them. Our parents. He thought he was doing it for us, for me. Everything he did was for me. He killed Harry. He killed Piper’s parents and her brother. He cut out Slade’s tongue and slit Nix’s throat. He almost killed Atticus, too. He did all those things for me.”
Her hands curled into fists so tight her knuckles turned white. “I had no idea the Cobra was really my brother for the longest time, and I… fuck, it was bad. He thought I was dead. He thought he’d never see me again, so when he did, he went crazy. The things he did, the things he wanted—” She was silent for a moment. “Let’s just say they’re things no brother should ever want from their sister.”
Oh. Oh. Oh, shit. She didn’t mean… she didn’t mean that, did she? Because if she did, then the Cobra-slash-Tristan was more fucked up than I thought—and the whole situation was already way more fucked up than it should be. I guess I wasn’t the only one with a complicated past.
Shay smiled bitterly at me. “I shot him. After he did everything he did, I shot him to take him down, but I couldn’t kill him. He was the madness behind it all, but he’s still my brother, and even though I shouldn’t, I still love him.”
I couldn’t begin to try to understand where she was coming from, so I didn’t pretend to.
“The only ones who know are me, Nix, and Atticus. We kept it from the others. It was my decision to keep him alive. I used to… I used to visit him all the time, but I think seeing me makes him spiral, so I stopped going. It’s like he needs a reset, but I don’t know how to give it to him.”
“If he were to get out, if Miguel got his hands on him, do you think your brother would try to kill everyone again?” I asked quietly, knowing I walked on thin ice.
Her shoulders went up and down once. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Probably? Maybe? He’d come after me, for sure. I hate him for everything he did, but I still love him. I just can’t love him like he needs me to love him.”
Out of nowhere, Shay chuckled. A bark of a sound that didn’t sit right, given the current topic of conversation. “And here you thought your life was fucked up. You got nothing on me, Giselle.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I admitted. “Maybe I don’t.”
The truth of Shay’s past, of what her brother did, what he wanted from her, was one twisted tale of betrayal and hurt. What Zander did, shooting me, seemed like nothing in comparison now. He’d hurt me to save my life, but he didn’t go off the rails like Tristan Arrowwood had.
I didn’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was what Shay had told me, or maybe it was the fact that I’d been holding it so close to my chest all this time, refusing to acknowledge the reality of what had happened, but I whispered, “Miguel. He… when he thought he was handing me over to the Serpents to die, he made sure to get one last knife in me. He told me the truth about who my real father is, basically told me he’d never loved me, and then he—”
The word I was trying to say next got caught in my throat, a lump that refused to move. Even now, even after Shay shared all that with me—things even some of her boyfriends didn’t know—it was hard on me. Maybe because the truth was so ugly.
