Just when I’m about to jab at the fast forward button, the revolving door begins to slowly spin. A figure steps into the enclosure and, seconds later, walks into the foyer. A hood covers their head, but the tallish figure strikes me as familiar. A woman. Neither the material concealing her face or the long raincoat covering her frame can hide those feminine curves. She steps farther into the camera’s view.
And pulls the hood back.
Ember.
Shock rips through me. I stare at her beautiful face, so clear even in the slightly grainy quality of the video. Gaze still pinned to the video, I shuffle backward a step, away from it. A rush of emotion floods into my chest, threatening to crack my sternum open like the gotdamn Jaws of Life.
Shock, yes. But also disbelief, confusion, anger.
Pride.
Ember had been at her father’s place that night. The night he was murdered. And she never said anything to me. Never so much as mentioned that she’d seen her father hours before his death. There was only one explanation why.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the tablet, watching her disappear from the camera’s view. After continuing to watch the video for another twenty minutes, she still doesn’t reappear. That’s when I pause it.
Silence permeates the room. None of us move or utter a word.
“What’re you going to do?” Eli asks after several tension-thick moments.
There’s no need to discuss if Ember killed her father. We all watched the same incriminating footage. And Ember’s own omission is a testimony to her guilt. Now it’s about action.
Consequences.
I pivot, stalking over to the sink and slamming a hand down on the counter next to it.
Fuck.
Gotdammit. Fuck.Fuuuuck.
Wrapping my stinging palms around the cool, stainless steel edge of the sink, I stare out the window into the trees and mountains in the distance. As much as I planned and committed damn near every unthinkable act to be right here as the head of HoC, sometimes I just want… My fingers curl tighter around the sink edge.
Sometimes I just want to run. Run and disappear into thosetrees or those mountains. Shrug off the weight of decisions, responsibilities, lives and walk the fuck away, never to be seen again. How freeing that shit would be. To walk without the ever-present concern of who might be running up to my back to pump a bullet in it. To not always be thinking three steps ahead. To not map out a room as soon as I enter it to be aware of the fastest exit should something pop off. It’s fucking exhausting, and gotdamn, I’m tired.
Of the lies.
The betrayal.
The greed and envy.
The people.
I could never admit this to Ember, but I get it. I get her desire for freedom, to abandon it all. Besides being unwilling to allow her to leave this organization, leave me, maybe that’s the other reason for my refusal. Jealousy. I don’t want her to experience what I at times so desperately crave.
Yeah, that makes me a selfish li’l bitch.
“Prince?” Makeda softly calls my name and, inhaling a deep breath, I briefly close my eyes. When I open them, gone is the would-be wanderer, and the head of House of Cross returns.
I can’t afford to be anyone, anything else.
Spinning around, I face my street bosses again.
“Nothing,” I announce.
Makeda and Eli glance at each other, then back at me. Both wear identical frowns.
“What?” Eli asks, with “the fuck you mean?” all up in that one word.
“That’s what we’re going to do. Nothing.” I shove off the sink and retrace my steps to the counter, picking up the tablet and powering it off. Setting it back down on the island, I meet their confused, angry gazes. “I’ll get with Ro, but we’re the only four who know this exists, and that knowledge stays here.”
