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“Hey, gorgeous,” Kane says, his voice barely a whisper. His arms are moving better, which means James got his shoulders fixed, but I can see from the way his hands are shaking, they’re weak.
My heart aches as much as it’s able. I stare down at my bloody fingers, then at him.
“I don’t give a fuck about that. Kiss me.”
I’m unable to do anything but obey. My knees buckle, and I’m on him, pressing him into the ground, devouring his mouth. I can acknowledge now the real and terrible fear I had buried inside me that when we found him, he wouldn’t be breathing.
But he is.
He’s hurt. He’s been fucked up in ways we won’t be able to fix. But he’s here, and he’s still my fucking god. My king.
I pull back when James knees me gently in the ribs, and then I help him get Kane upright. The hopping has to be agony for him, but we make it back to the Jeep, and the world seems strange because there’s still not a soul around. Off in the distance, I can hear a car or two passing by on the county road, but it’s always an odd feeling to know that we’ve taken lives and the world just…kept turning.
Kane hisses as I get him into the back, and then James turns and looks at me. “Go close the units up and see if there’s a hose to spray down the pavement. I’ll get him stable, and you can ride here with him.”
I appreciate the order because I need it. I need something to focus on. I’m feeling too goddamn much where I spend most of my time numb, and it’s going to overwhelm me if I’m not careful.
I find a garden hose, and it smells like mold when I turn it on, and the water’s a little green. It’s not a power washer, but it does the job and gets most of the rusty color from the concrete lip of the shed, and the rest blends into the black asphalt as I dilute the evidence of what we’ve done.
When that’s over, I pull out my phone and shoot a text to Phoenix, who doesn’t reply, but a few seconds later, I hear all the locks click back into place.
From a casual observer, the day is just like any other day. There’s no reason to believe that a handful of mutilated, dead men lie behind the locked door. And the cold will keep them preserved until Guido or one of his lackeys comes looking to find the message we left behind.
Putting the hose back where I found it, I return to the Jeep, and the back door’s waiting open for me. Kane’s prone on the seat, and it takes me a second to get his head and shoulders up and situated onto my lap. He’s still only half-conscious, but he lets out a soft groan, then turns his head and nuzzles into my stomach.
To some in the family, it might look like a show of weakness, but those people don’t know what real pain feels like. And because of that, they’ll never know the almost animalistic comfort that human contact can bring. I remember the first time gentle hands touched me after I woke with my throat slashed to ribbons. I remember the pain of severed nerve endings and the choking panic because I had a hole in the bottom of my throat with a tube attached so I could breathe.
I remember the bone-deep agony that I was certain would never go away…and then there was Kane. He soothed me with a gentle, rumbling hum—speaking no words because maybe he thought it was cruel to flaunt his voice when mine was gone for good. I never did tell him that all I wanted was to hear him tell me it was going to be okay.
But in the end, that didn’t really matter. He massaged my scalp and rubbed my temples, and when he was sure it wouldn’t hurt, he dragged fingers over my throat. It wasn’t platonic, and it wasn’t romantic. It was a level all on its own that gave me the strength to survive, even if day by day, my ability to feel anything but pain and anger drained out of me.
And Kane never loved me less for it.
He never made me feel broken.
I palm his cheek, then drag fingers into his hair. His eyes are closed, but he sighs quietly, and then I look up in the mirror at James and nod. He knows it’s time to go home—to let Kane lick his wounds and plot the rest of our revenge.
Whatever we decide, it will be fucking poetic, and I hunger for that final moment between us all.
Chapter7
ALICE
They have him.Oh fuckme, they have him. It’s one of those moments that feels like it should happen under the cover of night instead of the midmorning, and it’s almost comical to imagine them rolling up to some storage facility at 9:00 a.m. and gunning down a bunch of guys.
But I don’t think it’s funny. All I feel is relief deeper than I ever knew was possible. Kane’s alive, and as far as they’ve been able to tell, none of his injuries are life-threatening. I know they’re severe—I could see the look of horror on Phoenix’s face when he got the call—but he won’t tell me details.
I could fight him, but I figure I’ll know soon enough. After all, they’re coming home.
Kane and the boys are goddamn coming home.
Right now, they’re on a plane, probably somewhere over New England, and I do my best not to count down the hours before they’re pulling into the garage. Phoenix has already sent a driver to the private airfield to pick them up, and I’m now sitting in the parlor, streaming a university ASL class on the massive, wall-sized TV.
The man and woman running the class look far too kind and friendly for this home, but it brings me some comfort and a little pulse of nostalgia because I miss the life I thought I had just a little. I don’t think I’d trade this for the world, of course, but I was born for a life drenched in blood. Even before I knew the reality of the world I’d grown up in, I never felt like I belonged.
I’d sit in class and envy the young sorority and fraternity pledges, and even the ones who looked lost because they were away from home for the first time and just now discovering what it meant to be an individual. There was always a threat hanging over my head. My father’s men lurked around every corner, and everyone knew who I was.
Even if they didn’t understand what Guido Romano did, the name still meant something.
