“I was following your orders,” I said, my voice tight. “You told me to do what I had to, to make her understand. To use her in any way I saw fit, to get our money back. I did both.”
“You did,” Morpheus agreed. “But in the process, you lost sight of the bigger picture.”
“What bigger picture?” I demanded.
“Bastards by blood,” Morpheus said flatly as my brothers responded, “Brothers by choice.”
A knock at the door had everyone turning as Xzibit popped his head inside to say only one word. “Visitors.”
“Time’s up, brother.” My head whipped to Morpheus as he stood to his full height, while Garrote and Scythe moved fast to stand behind me. “Now we do it my way. The Brotherhood way.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alex
Time had stopped.
Or maybe it was just moving so slowly that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. I didn’t know how long I had been locked in Nano’s room. Minutes? Hours? The light coming through the window hadn’t changed, but that didn’t mean anything. The sky outside was the same dull gray it had been when Nano dragged me upstairs and locked the door behind him.
When he left me here. Alone.
I paced the length of the room for what felt like the hundredth time, my bare feet silent against the carpeted floor. The walls felt closer than they had before. The air thicker. Like the room itself was shrinking around me, pressing in from all sides until I couldn’t breathe.
He’s not coming back.The thought whispered through my mind, insidious and cruel. And maybe it was true. Maybe he had finally had enough. Maybe downstairs, in that church meeting with all the officers, he had decided I wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.
Maybe he chose the Brotherhood over me.
You knew this would happen. You knew the second you refused to answer Morpheus’ questions that you were signing your own death warrant.
I stopped pacing and pressed my palms against the wall, feeling the cool surface beneath my skin. My reflection stared back at me from the window glass, pale, hollow-eyed, wearing nothing but Nano’s oversized sweatpants and a tank top that hung off one shoulder.
I looked like a ghost.
You are a ghost. You’ve been dead since the moment you stole that money.
“Why didn’t you just answer their questions?” I whispered to my reflection, my voice hoarse and broken. The girl in the glass didn’t answer. She just stared back at me with those empty eyes, accusing and pitying all at once.
Because you had no choice.
Logically, I knew that. I knew that the second I gave them Michael’s real name and told them where to find him, I would become expendable. A tool that had served its purpose. They would use the information, hunt him down, and then what? What reason would they have to keep me alive?
None.
I played the only card I had. The only thing that kept me breathing was the fact that I held information they needed. Information only I could provide. But logic didn’t make it hurt less. Because somewhere between the interrogation in church and Nano dragging me upstairs, something had shifted. Something I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. Something that made my chest ache and my throat tighten every time I thought about the look on his face when I refused to answer.
You broke something.
Something that could never be replaced.
I had seen it in his eyes. The moment I defied Morpheus in front of the entire club, I crossed a line. Not just with the Brotherhood, but withhim. With Nano. The man who had spentdays breaking me down, building me back up, making me his, and I threw it back in his face.
He told you to tell them. He was standing right there, and he told you to cooperate. And you refused.
A small, traitorous part of me, the part that had learned to crave his approval, his touch, his attention, felt like I had betrayed him. Like I had taken everything he had given me and shattered it on the floor of that church room.
And that hurt. God, it hurt more than anything else. More than the fear of dying. More than the terror of what the Brotherhood would do to me. More than the knowledge that I was trapped in this room with no way out.
It hurt because Iwantedto please him. I wanted to be the girl he claimed in front of everyone. The girl who screamed his name and surrendered completely. The girl who belonged to him.
