My grief is already at a pinnacle, so you can imagine how far it soars when I catch the quickest glimpse of red embedded in the shower stall floor. Most of Demi’s blood has circled down the drain. Only the slightest bit of evidence of the devastation that occurred here today is stuck in the white grout. It’s bloody and red, as gory as the coloring that ran from my knuckles when I scrubbed them with a grout cleaner with the hopes of removing Igor’s blood from my hands.
I killed a father, and now the woman I love was killed before she could make me a father. In a sick, twisted way, it makes sense. Evil is like a boomerang. It always comes back faster, harder, and more devastatingly.
With my heartbreak at a pinnacle, I kick out without thinking, too distraught to consider the consequences of my action. My recently booted-up foot breaks through the glass surrounding the shower stall. The shards digging into my calves should slow me down, but it hardly makes an indent to a man pummeled with grief.
After stepping over the glass spanning one half of the bathroom, I set to work on remodeling the tiles in the stall with my fists. I punch and punch and punch the gleaming white material until my knuckles bust open, and I’m on my knees, shuddering and blubbering like I’m on the verge of a breakdown.
I lost the woman I love and my child on the same day.
Not even He-Man couldn’t act unaffected by such a devastating blow.
When the sound of glass crunching under shoes trickles through my ears, I anticipate being wrapped up by one of my brothers and carted out of the cabin like I was forcefully removed from Mercer Private an hour ago, so you can imagine my shock when I’m left to handle my grief alone for the next several minutes.
After dragging my hand under my nose to remove the contents pooled there, I angle my head just enough to spot the person eyeballing me but maintaining an amicable distance. An ill-timed chuckle leaves my mouth when the eyes peering back at me aren’t close to the coloring my family was gifted. They have a green edge to them like Justine and me, but not an ounce of blue is associated with them. Rocco Shay’s eye coloring doesn’t alter depending on his mood. They only have two settings—murderer and remorseful. Today they appear to have a bit of both.
“What did the wall ever do to you?” While licking his lips, he pinches his jeans, loosening up the stiff material, before he bobs down in front of me. His movements are brisk, but I don’t miss the quickest straying of his eyes to the pregnancy tests on the vanity sink. “Having a bad day, are we?” Although he’s asking a question, he doesn’t wait for me to reply. “Probably not as bad as mine. You were three bricks short, then you failed to return the Buick. What if I had another run organized for this afternoon? What would have happened to me then?” Hetsksme like the past eight hours were nothing but a nightmare. “You’re lucky I like your girl, Ox, or I would have added your brain matter to the bloodstains in the shower.”
Is he fucking kidding me? Demi is dead, yet all he’s worried about is a couple of pounds of coke.
With my anger too perverse to ignore, I grab Rocco by the throat, stand us to our feet, then pin him to the shower now housing several cracked tiles. He could fight me. He’s a little taller than me and around the same weight, but he’s too busy laughing to respond to my aggression.
That’s all set aside when I scream in his face, “Demi is dead, you fuckin’ piece of shit. So if you think I give a shit about some missing bricks, you’re dead fucking wrong. I hope you burn in hell, the whole fucking lot of you.”
“Hold up. Go back. What the fuck are you saying?”
I glare at him as if to say,how can I make it any more obvious for you?
I straight up told him what happened. I can’t put it any more bluntly.
After forcefully removing himself from my hold, then taking a couple of seconds to deliberate, Rocco locks his eyes with mine. “Did you see her body?”
I huff out an annoying grunt before moving to the sink to gather up the pregnancy tests I plan to take with me. “This wasn’t a mob hit.”
Even if you’re not in the mob, you’d still be aware the Petrettis don’t leave a body, and although I’d love someone to blame but myself, this time around, Demi’s death only falls on one set of shoulders.Mine.
“That wasn’t what I asked.” Rocco stops me from leaving the bathroom by pinching the muscle between my shoulder and neck.
Unlike him, I retaliate to his aggressive stance with violence.
He doesn’t laugh this time around. He uses words instead. “If you ain’t seen a body, you shouldneverbelieve someone is dead. Been played a trick or two on before. Won’t happen again.”
I pull him forward by the collar of his shirt before slamming him backward. “Speak fucking English, Rocco. I don’t have time for your shit.”
Even though he’s smiling, I know he wants to pummel my words back into my mouth with his fists. His narrowed gaze is very telling. “Since you seem to have trouble understanding me, how about I show you what I mean?”
Not waiting for me to answer, he pushes me away from him, almost sending me toppling onto my ass before he digs his phone out of his pocket.
“No fucking way,” I grunt out in disbelief when he brings up a photo of Ophelia Petretti. I’m not talking about one when she was young and wild. If the kid with identical lips and eyes wrapped around her leg is anything to go by, she settled down after her ‘death.’
“Do you understand me now, Ox? Or should I write it down for you?” Rocco asks while pretending to write a note on his hand.
I doubt he will have the possibility of writing anything when Dimitri unearths what he’s hiding. I don’t claim to know Dimitri’s inner-workings, but the grief he displayed when they lowered his sister’s casket into the ground wasn’t fake. He’s a hard-ass gangster, but not even the world’s best actor could portray the set of emotions that hit him that day. It was a perfect representation of the expression that was projected back at me when I looked in the vanity mirror only minutes ago. He was beyond devastated.
“Attaboy, get on your bike,” Rocco pushes out with a laugh when it dawns on me what I must do. Landon doesn’t believe anything presented to him without evidence, and neither the fuck do I, so I have no clue why I went off-script today.
When my sprint through the front door of the cabin converts Rocco’s whipping noises to faint rustles of the wind, I realize why my breakdown in the bathroom went unannounced to my family. The cabin must be soundproof. I can barely hear Rocco’s chuckles, and he sounds like a hyena when he really gets going.
“Maddox,” Caidyn growls in a warning tone when he spots the determination on my face. “Think about this.”
