AllFreeNovel
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This wasn’t me. I was the group mediator. The make-everyone-happy brother. The calm one. Theniceone.
The things I wanted to do to Drake were as far from nice as you could get.
“I want to rip his arms off,” I gritted out.
“Mmm,” Rook agreed, puffing out a cloud of noxious smoke, heavy-lidded gaze still focused on the phone, completely unfazed by what I’d just said. And why would he be? I was letting myself feel everything now and only now. With one of the only people on this planet who would understand.
Something beneath my breastbone trembled and heat scattered down my arms like sheet lightning.
“I want to castrate him and scalp him and roast his ass over a bonfire, and when I’m fucking finished, I want to serve his smoking head to her on a platter.”
The volume of my voice increased of its own accord until I was shouting. The pressure behind my eye and the space where my other eye used to be making them feel on the verge of popping.
This finally got Rook’s attention. He ashed his cigarette before snubbing out the still-burning cherry between his fingers.
“Welcome to the next level, Bro. Now use that shit. We’re going to need that fire to find her and finish this motherfucker.”
My pulse slowed back to a manageable tempo, warm cheeks cooling as my breaths evened out. “Is this what it’s like for you all the time?”
All the rage? The vicious desire to smash everything within reaching distance just to let out enough of the fury to properly function. It’d been building since I woke up and AJ wasn’t there. It’d gotten worse after finding out about Becca. But now?
Now it was almost unbearable in its intensity.
Rook’s deep timbre filled the cabin with his reply. “Worse.”
I sagged, trying to pull my focus back to the task. We were pulling onto the strip of hotels near the northern edge of the city. “Where is he?”
Rook pointed a ringed finger up the street. “Up ahead. Another few blocks, I think. I don’t see the Camaro. He must’ve parked it in one of the underground lots.”
“He’s stopped?”
“Yeah. Looks like it.”
I pulled into a parking spot on the side of the road, not wanting to get too close in case Corvus spotted us, but also sort of wishing he would just so I could throttle him for going off on his own, in thecomplete oppositedirection from where he said he was going.
If either of us pulled this, he’d shit a brick and then use said brick to bash our heads in.
We stepped out into the growing dawn, the smell of the city in the early morning filling my nose.
Rook stepped up onto the sidewalk on his toes to get a look down the street before checking his phone again. “I don’t see him, but if this is right, he’s at the Vandermark.”
The Vandermark?
I tipped my head up to see the length of the narrow gothic revival building currently dressed up in gaudy Christmas decor to match the banners strung on the lampposts lining the street leading up to it.
“Shit, there it is, right out front,” Rook said, and I followed his eye to the Camaro sandwiched between two larger vehicles in a parking space close to the entrance. Corvus not inside it.
Why would he be going there? It didn’t make sense as a meeting spot. Not if Drake’s intent was to take Corvus out. There weren’t enough fast ways to escape the tall building. Unless…
“The underground parking garage.”
Rook nodded. “Let’s move.”
Drake madeit impossible for me to move and absolutely everyfuckingthing itched. That alone would’ve been enough to drive a woman insane, but with the drugs still lingering in my system, and thatincessantdripping… safe to say I was absolutely mad. Delirious. Starting to question reality.
So when he came barging in, sweeping right into the room to head straight for the desk of monitors, I thought maybe he wasn’t really there at all.
I mean, fuck, I thought I’d seen my dad chilling over there in the corner, humming his favorite tune to the sound of a guitar strumming in my brain just an hour ago. Or maybe it was a day ago. Who fucking knew.
