Page 143 of XO Karma

“Do you want to tell me?”

“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. A beat passes between us as he formulates his thoughts. I understand how scary it is saying these things out loud. Keeping it inside and bottled up, I could almost convince myself Violet wasn’t gone and it was all just a fever dream. I hoped and prayed it was only a lie until I was forced to accept the bitter truth. She’s dead. And sitting alone in that realization wasn’t going to bring her back. “The day I graduated college, my brother and I decided to take our family yacht out to celebrate.”

“I’m sorry, your family what?” I ask, dumbfounded.

A small smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “I suppose I should have started with ‘your boyfriend’s secretly a former millionaire nepo baby.’”

My head is spinning. “How does someone go from nepo baby with a yacht to Robin Hood serial killer?”

“Well, first of all… my dad was training me and Oliver to be hunters since we were kids.”

“Hunters?” I ask, and he bites his cheek. “And you were trained to hunt…”

“People.”

My lips part in disbelief. How could someone force that type of life on their own children? Aster didn’t even have time to grow up and figure out himself before being manipulated into this killing machine. When he says he feels it’s his responsibility, he’s being sincere, because that’s what’s been engrained in his brain since he was a child. “That’s dark.”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Also, my family owns Hephaestus Weaponry, one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world.” The confession is its own bomb drop. Being raised in that industry would certainly desensitize you to death. “My dad was grooming me and Oliver to run the company someday. My brother was a few years older and already my dad’s right hand. The semester before I graduated college, I was interning, working under Oliver for weapons distribution.” He grits his teeth. “I found out the business was doing a slew of shady shit going back years.”

“Like what?” I ask, brows drawn.

“For one… turns out they were the number one manufacturer for black market arms dealers in the entire goddamn country.”

I gasp. “Did Oliver know?”

A silence passes between us. “Yes.” He clenches his fist. “After I figured it out, I hesitated to tell Ollie at first. I knew, like me, he wouldn’t agree with Dad’s methods. Profit over people. My dad was single-handedly contributing to gun violence in our country and didn’t give a shit because he’d gotten filthy rich from it.” Aster tightens his hold on me. “Oliver wasn’t the guy to get into a fight or rough people up. He preferred to handle things with words, despite how hard my dad tried to convince him to settle things with violence. Working at the company was hard enough for him, but he did his best to separate what people were doing with the items we were selling and tried to view it from a business standpoint. I also think part of him thought he was protecting me, shielding me from my father. ”

Aster slides off the hood and steps away, dragging his hands through his hair. His throat bobs, and then he clears it and continues, “When I told Ollie what I’d found, he assured me he was taking care of it. But months went by with no change. He was getting deeper in the business by the day, and the thought of him getting involved in a way he couldn’t escape terrified me. He had a friend who worked for the FBI. They’d been close since college, and I stupidly assumed we could trust him. A few weeks before my graduation, I used evidence I’d been collecting, and I sent it all to Oliver’s contact from his work computer. I was hoping they’d use it to send my dad a warning. At the very least he’d be on their radar, and it would make his shady dealings more difficult.”

“Aster,” I say gently.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. I used Oliver’s email because I knew they wouldn’t take it seriously coming from me. After all, I was just a dumb twenty-one-year-old kid who hadn’t even graduated college yet. And even then, I hated my father. I was worried they’d think I made it all up. I deleted the email from Oliver’s outbox and trash and didn’t think it could be traced back to him.” He releases a shaky breath. “Three weeks later, when we were on the yacht, a masked man boarded the boat. He shot my brother six times.”

Tears well in my eyes. Heart aching for this beautifully complicated man. “That’s not your fault,” I whisper, fully aware of the guilt one has from being the survivor. Of continuing on with life, day by day, wondering why them and not you.

He laughs, lacking humor. “I wish that was true.”

I brush my finger against his cheek, wiping away an escaped tear. “It’s not your fault.”

“After the guy killed my brother, he tried to escape, but I caught him as he went to jump on the small watercraft he’d arrived on. We fought, and he shot me in the arm.”

Absentmindedly, I run my fingertips along his bicep covered by his jacket. “That’s why you have a scar there.”

He nods. “I got his gun, then shot him in the back of the head as he was running away.”

“He deserved it,” I whisper.

“That may be true… but it still felt so cold. Calculated. Heartless. I prefer to look a man in the eyes before I take his life. I didn’t even know the guy’s name at the time.”

“Who was it?”

He grits his jaw. “One of my dad’s contract killers.”

“One of?”

He nods. “And when my dad arrived that night… he said if I ever tried anything like that again, my sister would be next.” Another gasp escapes me. “And that if any harm came to him, she’d still receive the same fate.”

“That’s terrible.”