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Brantley
It was dark. I didn’t know what I wanted or needed to do, but I always somehow found myself in front of Saint’s bedroom. As if my soul ached for her while my flesh bled through my pain. This time was different, though. I finished a job like always, but this one. Was. Different. This one would impact her in years to come, and I knew that. I knew that if at any time I could free her from the cage I’d built around her, this… this would come back to haunt her. Fucking Lucan.
I opened her door, not caring fuck all if she heard. I never came home much anymore, but I needed to see her. To check on her. Ending another life always made me want to see her still living hers. As if I needed reassurance that God hadn’t started punishing me because he knew the first place to start.
Nothing good would ever come to me, and the only good I had in my life I had to fucking force to keep. I was a piece of shit. That was a given. But as she breathed the same air we did, smiled whenever she saw me, and walked along the haunted floors of the Vitiosis Manor, I knew. I fucking knew it was all going to be worth it. She was going to be worth it.
The door slammed against her wall and the bottle of rum I had clutched in my hand dropped to the floor as I clenched the doorframe with the same hand. She shuffled in her bed before her body shifted up and her soft little voice sang out, “Brantley? What are you doing? It’s—God, it’s four a.m.” Not a hint of fear in her tone. She had never been afraid of me. Not when I’d come home with blood on my clothes and a haunted kind of darkness in my eyes. Not ever. She was never afraid. That scared me most about her.
“I need to ask you a question, but I need you to answer me honestly.”
“O-okay?” she answered, but I knew the stutter wasn’t from nerves. It was from sleep.
“Have you been sleepwalking more often lately?”
She shook her head as I stumbled farther into her bedroom. Kore and Hades were fast asleep in their beds in the corner, not a single flinch at my being in her space.
“I don’t really know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I’ve been doing it and then walking myself back to my bed.”
At this point, I was directly beside her bed, the poison of rum strong on the tip of my tongue. I dropped down onto her mattress, right beside her. It was dark, with the only crack of light spilling in from the hallway. “You need to tell me if you know.”
“Why?”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence because my fingers were wrapped around her chin and my mouth was an inch away from hers. “Promise me you will tell me.”
“Yes, Brantley.” Her hand was on my cheek, and my eyes squeezed shut when she lowered it onto her lap and looked down to it. “Is that blood?”
The question I know we are all wondering is who, if anyone, is haunting her now. That’s the one fucking thing I can’t get out of my head. Our lead on The Gentlemen has gone cold. We chased it all the way to an old warehouse near the Canadian border, finding it had been completely emptied.
“We’ll find them.” The second I pulled the trigger that ended Elijah Garcia, I knew it was going to start a war. One I wasn’t sure we knew how to win. It’s hard to win a war when the opposing team goes ghost. “Maybe bring her home. I don’t know, Brantley. Something about this makes me feel uncomfortable. They’re too quiet.” I understand what he’s saying. The Gentlemen have always operated this way, which is what make them such a viable threat to The Kings. We are loud, forceful with our power, and precise, but The Gentlemen are pure stealth.
“Are we going to ignore the elephant in the room, meaning Hector?” Eli asks from behind us. I snicker, ru
“Oh, I’ll take care of Hector.” We have a plan, and I’m not so sure he’s following it.
“Brantley!” Bishop snaps, and I knew it was coming. I pause. “I know you’re angry with him, as am I, but he thought he was doing the right thing for her.”
I spin around. “He thought he was doing the right thing for her?” I mimic, and an ugly laugh escapes me. “When the fuck will any of you get it that I’m the only person who will always know how to keep her safe?”
Bishop’s jaw tightens. “You need to accept that other people are a part of her life now. I am a part of her life now.”
I ignore him, not wanting to go into more detail about Hector. If it were up to me, we would have put a bullet in him a long time ago. People have died for a lot less than what Hector Hayes has done.
It doesn’t take long before I’m back in the heart of New York, arriving at the penthouse where Hector is staying. Scarlet isn’t with him; she’s away on set for a new film.
I kick open the door and find him staring out over the city, dressed in a suit with his hands buried in his pockets. It’s as if he was waiting for me to enter. “Do you know who my first kill was, son?”
I shut the door behind me, strolling farther into the sitting room. “I don’t know, but if I had to take a guess, I would say it’d be someone you stabbed in the back. Someone who trusted you.”
Hector finally turns to face me. “No.” He relaxes into a leather sofa. Brown and distressed, as if it has been sat on millions of times before today. His eyes narrow on me, though his smile is tense. “Not quite. He was young. A boy, really, but then so was I.”
I close my eyes, shaking my head. It doesn’t disturb me. It should, but when you’ve been assassinating people for the better half of your life, you become void of feeling any sympathy about death. Except one. “You were going to allow me to think she was dead.”
“Ah, that’s what this visit is about.” He leans forward, unbuttoning his jacket to reach forward for his glass of whiskey. He sits back, his eyes on me. “Yes, I was. And given the chance, I would do it again.”
“She’s mad at me.”
“Hmmm, why ever would she be mad at you?” His eyebrow cocks, and I have to fight everything inside of me not to reach forward and tear his throat out of his body.
“She said she saw me in the limo.”
He doesn’t flinch, simply swallowing the amber-tinted liquid in a fast-enough gulp that has my thirst quenched. “Hmmm, I do recall her saying your name in the car.”
“Why?” I snap, my upper lip curling. “And just so we understand each other.” I lean forward to rest my elbows on my thighs. “I’m not in the mood to play games. Not when it comes to her, not ever.”
“Brantley.” Hector places his now empty glass onto the coffee table in front of him while keeping his eyes trained on me. “What makes you think I know what she saw? I was simply as shocked as the next person.”
“Which was?” I ask, my patience wearing so fucking thin I’m pretty sure I could floss my teeth with it. “Who was in the car with you?”
“Just myself. I was pla
“We had a plan, and that was to allow Veronica to take her, and besides that, you hate Perdita.”
He challenges me. “I wanted her safe more.”
I exhale a deep breath. It was a conversation we both knew we had to have.