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“Okay,” I said. “Is your mom still alive?”
“Yes, she is. She travels a lot, and I don’t ever see her.” She pointed at me. “That was two questions. You have eighteen left. My next question is…why are you talking to me?”
“People aren’t allowed to talk to each other?” I asked.
“No, people don’t usually acknowledge me at all,” she admitted. “In fact, if I pass someone, it’s like I’m invisible. Not there. Their eyes take me in, and they completely dismiss me before they’ve even finished passing me by.”
“I talked to you because I wanted to.” I told her the ugly truth. “I told you I’ve been obsessed with you since I saw a photo of you on your brother’s phone.”
She blinked, surprised to hear my answer.
“Ask your next question,” I ordered.
She blinked at me a couple of times, almost as if she was clearing her head, then said, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Wow, right to the heart.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I shot a couple of kids once,” I said. “They were holding rifles and pointing them at the young soldiers I was charged to protect. I think they were seven.”
She looked crushed for me. Horrified that I would have to go through something like that.
“Oh,” she said. “Wow. That’s horrible for you to have to experience.”
“That’s why kids scare the hell out of me,” I said. “My PTSD already has issues with loud and sudden movements, but when they’re kids, it’s like I have a flashback of having to make that split-second decision…and fuck if I don’t have a mini panic attack any time I’m around a kid.”
What was worse was that my brothers’ kids were all at the same age as the ones I’d hurt. Anytime I saw them, this weird pressure inside my chest felt like I was repeatedly taking a knife to it.
Hancock’s kids looked exactly like mine would look if I ever allowed myself to have kids—being twins and all—so my dreams had morphed into me shooting my own kids like that.
Needless to say, it was a vicious cycle that my tired brain couldn’t handle in the middle of the night, let alone the light of the day.
Her eyes were intense as she said, “Ask me.”
I closed my eyes and stared at the quickly waning sun and said, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“Well, you know about me breaking my sister up.” She paused, and my eyes opened and I stared at her, feeling something huge about to happen. “I killed my father.”
The only thing to react were my eyebrows.
They went straight up to what felt like my hairline.
“You did what?” I asked.
“I killed him,” she said, the small smile making my heart beat faster.
And all of a sudden, I didn’t have to ask why.
I knew why. Well, I knew some of why.
She’d been hurt by her father repeatedly.
But still, I wanted to ask what had prompted her to wait.
“You can go ahead and get your next question out of the way,” Hades offered.
“What happened to make you do it?” I asked.
She picked up her journal and looked at it.
“I can’t talk about it. Not yet.” She looked at the journal for a long second, then reached out and handed it over. “But you can read it.”
I took the journal.
Our questions went on like that for a long time. Until we were well over the twenty questions she wanted to ask.
Eventually, though, the night got too cold for even the blanket wrapped around her.
Heading inside, I walked her up to the door of her room that connected to mine.
And, because I thought she could use the guarantee that she wasn’t going to be a burden, I explained.
“I can promise you now that I wouldn’t ask you to do something that I didn’t truly need help doing,” I told her point blank. “The Vegas Royale Circus is a little out of my comfort zone. It was great timing that you showed up when you did. With this many women involved, it’s got to be something that they’re not comfortable talking to a man about. And that obviously needs a woman’s touch. It’s making me realize that sometimes for my business to be successful, I’m going to have to use outside sources to make this work.”
“Reassurance means a lot to an overthinker,” she said quietly.
I looked at her more fully. “Overthinker?”
She laughed. “Read the journal.”
Then she used the card to push into her room and close it behind herself.
CHAPTER 8
I’m ready to settle down and suck the same dick for the rest of my life.
-Text from Hades to Hannibal
HANNIBAL
I could hear her moving around in the room next door.
The shower flipped on. There was some speaking, which I later decided was way too rhythmic to be anything but music, and then the whirl of the air conditioner getting turned on full blast.
