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So we needed to move her and fast. She hacked again, and some of the color returned to her lips as air was greedily sucked down her throat. I leaned down to push her short hair away from her face, bringing her eyes back to me. “I need you to keep fighting, Ghost. A little longer.”
“Keep… fighting…” she repeated in a wet voice, her chin dipping with a tiny nod.
“That’s my girl.”
Ghost’s hand found mine again, and she squeezed weakly, letting me know she wasn’t giving up.
A groan permeated the air to our left and my hackles instantly rose. Carson’s booted foot moved as he woke.
Corvus was on him in an instant, wailing on his face until it was bloody.
“We need him alive,” I roared.
“The others are bringing a stretcher,” Diesel said, kneeling next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder, his expression grim. I shrunk into myself at his touch.
My father’s gaze strayed to where Corvus was getting off Carson, staring down at him with a hatred so fierce I worried my brother may never regain his perfect control again. How could he?
Carson gurgled, his nose smashed and cheekbone already swelling to double its size. The bullets riddled in his vest probably cracked some bone beneath, but his injuries were nothing compared to what we’d do to him when our girl was ready.
It was her hand that would end him, but only after we got our pound of flesh.
“Father…” Carson slurred, trying to curl onto his side, his red eyes pleading.
Diesel’s jaw tightened as he stood to look down at his son with disgust twisting his features. “He’s yours to do with whatever you will,” he said. “That filth is no son of mine.”
“You hear that, Ghost? He’s all ours.”
The fire returned to her eyes, and I knew that no matter what, she was going to be there when we took him apart. Not even death himself could stop her.
TEN DAYS LATER
“Areyou just going to keep pretending like it never happened?”
Rook stiffened on his way back from his morning shower, the muscle in his back going rigid as he turned and shook the water droplets from his hair, tossing it out of his face. “What’s with the ambush?”
“You tried to kill yourself, Rook.”
“Today, Bro? Really? It’s fucking Christmas.”
I set my jaw, not budging from his door.
“Fine.” He sighed, brushing past me into his dark bedroom, tossing the towel on the bed to throw on a pair of jeans. He zipped them over his junk commando and perched on the end of his bed. “Well, come in.”
I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me, flicking on the rarely used overhead light. He shied away from the assaulting brightness, his upper lip curling. “Ghost will be awake soon, I wanted to be there when—”
“This will only take a minute. I’m not going to ruin her Christmas morning.”
“You’re just going to ruin mine, then?”
“You got something to tell me?”
I cocked my head at him, waiting for him to fill in the blank so I didn’t have to. I didn’t make accusations like this one lightly, but I knew my brother well enough to know when he was on drugs. I should’ve seen it sooner, but that night in that fucking bunker cemented it.
Rook was a lot of things, but he wasn’t suicidal.Unlesshe was coming down. Then we had to stop him from offing himself in a blaze of glory almost weekly. It was the ugly, bitter truth we never spoke of. Other people saw the violence and the bloodshed. They saw thecrazywhen he was high, but they didn’t see him come down.
No, those precious fucking moments were reserved only for us. And we’d kept them only tousfor his sake. But I wasn’t going through that shit again. If he was using, he was going to get cleannow,and I didn’t care how much he fucking screamed for a fix this time.
How had we missed this?
