Sins that define us, p.12
Sins That Define Us, page 12
Worry, maybe? Though I don’t want to fool myself into believing that.
He drops one hand to hold over mine where I’m still clutching my stomach, and the other cups my chin. His tongue wets his lower lip, and I wonder if maybe he’d speak if he could. But somehow, I don’t think that’s why he’s silent right now.
Dipping his head low, I have only a second to prepare for his kiss. It’s not any softer than usual, but it drags on without him trying to take things further. Maybe he is worried. Maybe he’s starting to crack under all this pressure too.
If anyone would admit to being sick of me and the shit that came on the heels of bringing me into the misfits, it would be him.
“Ari, I—”
He shakes his head, then kisses me again before stepping back. ‘Kane needs you.’
He signs a little faster each time, and it’s getting a little easier to keep up. ‘Okay,’ I sign back because I know it’s the only way I’ll really learn to understand it.
Ari reaches for me again, and his fingers tap a pattern against my neck that takes me just a bit longer to work out. ‘What do you need?’
I close my eyes and breathe. “Just a second to myself. I’ll be right down.’
‘Okay, princess.’
His hands are gone, and I listen to his footsteps as he leaves the room, closing the door behind him. When he’s gone, I sag down onto the edge of the bed and scrub my hands over my face. This is no time to be falling apart. Kane needs me strong, and even if the baby is making my body feel weak, the rest of me isn’t.
I signed up for this, and I’m not going to let any of them down just because I’m feeling lost.
I don’t have a new bounce in my step or any of those ridiculous TV moments after a long montage of feel-good music. But I do find the energy to get dressed from one of the sparsely packed cases one of the boys put together for me.
The room I’m in is small, nothing like my sprawling suite back home, but it’s cozy, and there’s a bathroom. I empty my bladder and wash my face, and I feel a bit more human as I head to the living room.
The boys are all there—Kane in the armchair, Phoenix and James on the sofa so close their arms are tangled together, and Ari perched on the window bench with his knee to his chest. He meets my gaze first with a tiny, private smile, and I return it before looking at Kane.
“You asked for me?”
“Have a seat, little goddess.”
I don’t know if I’m ever going to get tired of hearing him call me that. At first, it came across as mocking. Now it just makes me sound like I’m theirs to worship. I glance around, and while James looks like an adorably eager puppy in the space beside him, I take the second chair and ignore the way he deflates.
In truth, he’s too close to Phoenix, and Phoenix too often knows how to use his fingers to get me to comply. Whatever Kane wants to say, I need to think straight.
There’s a pause that lasts only a beat before Kane begins. “We plan to bring Leo in.”
I stiffen. I know what that means. They’re going to torture him for information. I have no idea what they did to Rhys, but it was enough to leave him in recovery for months. Maybe years. And he’s blood family.
“Are you looking for my approval?” I ask.
“I’m looking for your cooperation,” Kane says.
I can’t help a small, bitter laugh. “Are you trying to tell me I’d be able to stop you from taking him in?”
Kane’s eyes seem to glow, and the others have gone stock still. “No, little goddess,” he says, leaning forward over his knees. It’s that moment I realize he’s not wearing his leg, and I wonder if he’s made himself physically vulnerable to manipulate me. Or…maybe he’s just in agony. He wouldn’t tell me if I asked, though. “We’re taking Leo in no matter what.”
“Even if he’s not behind the breach?”
Phoenix sighs. “I know your theory, Alice.”
“And you dismissed it,” I shoot back. For a single moment, I suggested that maybe Leo wasn’t the one they were looking for, and Phoenix smiled at me like I was some toddler. It stung more than I wanted to admit. “But whatever. So you want my cooperation how?”
Kane’s quiet for another moment, and I see his fingers gently massaging his stump through his trouser leg. So yeah, pain, probably. “I think he’ll talk to you. We can get it out of him our way. He might be good, but Ari has never failed to make his little birds sing.”
I know for a fact Leo would crack under Ari’s attentions. I just don’t know how accurate and truthful the information would be.
Maybe that’s why Kane’s asking me first. Or maybe he’s testing my loyalty.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” Kane says, staring at me intensely. I think he’d probably get up and join me in this chair if he could. “This isn’t a trick, Alice. There are no tests you have to pass. We all understand that you feel some measure of affection for your sibling.”
“He’s not,” I start sharply, then swallow past a lump in my throat. “Just because we share a father doesn’t make him anything more than he was before this all happened.” I realize my hands are shaking, and I realize all these fucking hormones are making it harder to ignore the trauma of my past. My tongue feels loose with desperation to just say it.
To stop hiding to appear strong and unaffected.
“Darling girl,” James whispers, and he tries to move, but thankfully, Phoenix holds him in place.
I take another breath, well aware I have their undivided attention. “Leo taught me a lot,” I go on. “How to defend myself. How to stay strong. How to turn it all off. How to expect betrayal by people who are supposed to love you.”
Kane’s jaw is so tense I can see something pulsing in his temple, but he says nothing. He just nods.
“Before Leo knew he was my brother, I was still his cousin, and he knew what my father’s plans were for me. He was going to let it happen. He never lifted a finger to stop…to stop anything. He participated,” I spit bitterly, thinking of how often I’d been kidnapped as a child for training. For fun. “If you hadn’t taken me, he would have left me to whatever Guido had decided my future should look like.”
These are all words I’d been too afraid to admit to myself since Leo showed up after the engagement party. They’re all the words I kept in a tiny box inside my head as a reminder of why I made the choices I did.
These men are not good men. But they are better.
“But I don’t know why you think I have some hold over him,” I finally say. “He won’t tell me anything he won’t tell you.”
“I know,” Kane says softly, meeting my gaze. “But I thought maybe you’d enjoy it.”
His words send a rush of terror and shock through me because he’s right. He’s…he’s fucking right. I just hadn’t thought about it before. I hadn’t let myself.
There’s this piece of me desperate for something—not quite revenge but the power to dish out everything I’ve been forced to take my entire life. I want to see the look on someone’s face when they realize they have no choice. That their fate is in the hands of someone else.
I want them to look down that black hole and know what it means to plot an escape they’ll never get the chance to use.
I would rather it be my father, but I’ll settle for Leo, who only cares about me now that he thinks I can further his cause.
“She looks hungry,” Kane says, and I realize he’s speaking for Phoenix’s benefit since he doesn’t have his AI to murmur in his ear. “She looks like she understands what it means to be one of us now.”
I turn and glance at Kane, studying his face. It’s still passive and protected, but his eyes are more open than I’ve ever seen them. “Are you really planning to marry me?”
He blinks, startled. “Alice…”
“Is this some…” I try to stop myself, but I can’t. Not now that the words are escaping my chest. “Is this some plan to buy time so you can kill Guido without needing me?”
“I will take pleasure in watching him accept the fact that you belong to us now. That you’ll willingly accept my name, my body, and my soul. But marrying you is more, and I’ll spend the rest of my life reminding you about how much I want you, if that’s what it takes. If that’s what you need, little goddess. This right here, in this room, is my life.”
I sniff, hating myself for it, but fuck it. I’m tired of the belief that crying makes you weak. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why me. You don’t even know me.”
“No,” Phoenix says quietly. “You don’t know us. We watched you for a long time, princess. You were ours before we even understood what that was going to mean.”
My heart throbs in my chest, sort of like poking at a sore, atrophied muscle. “I…”
I don’t know what to say.
Kane sighs, then turns toward me and holds out his arms. “Come here, little goddess. I know I’ve fucked this up. I don’t know how to be delicate with you.”
“I don’t need you to be delicate,” I say, and I try to stay in my seat, but my limbs won’t obey me. I’m on my feet and closing the short distance between me and the master of this empire, and he’s holding me like I’m actually fragile.
“Yes, you do. And that’s okay,” he whispers into my hair, kissing the spot behind my ear. His hands are massive and warm and clinging to me like he’s afraid to let go. “Because we need you to be delicate for us. We need you to remind us that we’re capable of tenderness and care.”
It feels like a heavy weight to bear, and it also sounds like paradise. I’ve always been a little naïve—maybe even willfully. I’ve never had to lift a finger for myself that I didn’t want to. But I’ve also never been allowed any weakness.
There’s a part of me so exhausted I just want to collapse in Kane’s arms and allow the boys to take care of this problem. I want to sleep and not wake until it’s over.
But I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I did.
“You have my cooperation,” I say to him.
He kisses me, long and slow, until I’m mostly breathless, and then he knocks our foreheads together. “Tomorrow, Phoenix will finish securing the house, and we can go home. You’ll have your dress fitting and the last food tasting, and soon, my sweet thing, you will be our wife.”
It means something that he says our wife. Almost like it doesn’t matter that I’m taking his name and sitting in his arms. It’s all of us. There’s no choosing. There’s no real hierarchy inside our little bubble. There’s just them, and they’ve made room in the exact shape of me.
I’m wanted.
I’m needed.
I’m home.
Chapter 12
KANE
Alice sleeps in my bed for the remainder of our time in the safe house, but soon enough, it’s time to pop the bubble. I think of this place for our honeymoon, though I’m not sure what kind of time away we’ll be able to afford while my kingdom is in disarray.
It all depends on what happens because the wedding is soon, and we now have a house full of prisoners to deal with.
Ari has been itching to get his hands bloody, and Phoenix has been desperate to get back on the grid so he can slip into his well-earned confidence. James is just worried, and Alice is still floating somewhere in the limbo of belonging and not knowing where she stands.
Words don’t seem to help with her. She’s far too like the rest of my boys—far too like me—for that to happen. It’ll take years of us remaining steady and proving to her that she belongs with us. But we all have the patience for it. How could we not with her, when we needed it so much for ourselves?
A call comes in the morning as I’m sitting at the table waiting for the house to wake. It’s the first noise my phone’s made since Phoenix put it back on the grid, and I don’t need to look at the screen to know exactly who’s trying to reach me.
“Aldis,” I say in greeting.
He sighs quietly on the other line. “Will you kill him?”
That must mean our team was successful. “You know damn well I can’t tell you that, and I wouldn’t either way. You’re slipping.”
He says nothing for a good long moment. “I believe Rhys, and you know where my loyalties lie, so I’m not trying to play both sides. He has no reason to lie to me.”
“He has every reason now,” I remind him. God only knows how Rhys’ recovery is coming along. I haven’t checked because it’s a guilt that will eat at me until the day I die. Mostly because if Alice’s fear and suspicion is right and we’re looking at the wrong person, Rhys would have suffered for nothing.
“Rhys knew exactly what would happen the moment he crawled into a Romano bed,” Aldis says bluntly. “He’s just grateful you care enough about him to let him live.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, and think about the Romano I have in my bed. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, but when I left her this morning, she was finally sleeping peacefully.
Alice was merely a mission, but she became something so much more long before I wanted to admit it. I would have done the same thing Rhys did. I would have betrayed the family for her in a heartbeat.
“I’m going to assume that whatever issue you had that took you into hiding is resolved,” Aldis says after a long beat. “I tried to reach you over the last couple of days, and it seemed like everything had shut down.”
“It had.” But we are secure again. The person hacking into our system wasn’t more clever than Phoenix—they just got lucky. They got an in. And it won’t happen again. So much blood will be spilled in Ari’s playroom that the floors will never come clean. And I don’t know that the Walsh empire will heal from the wound.
But needs must.
“The IT department was gutted,” Aldis goes on. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No,” I tell him bluntly. I won’t speak a word to anyone outside of this household until Guido is buried and everything the Romanos ever touched is ash. “Now, are you calling for information or for a favor?”
“I’m calling because you’re my nephew, and I’m worried about you,” he says, and I hear the honesty in his voice that hurts. “What can I do?”
“Show up,” I tell him. “The wedding’s going forward as planned.”
“God Himself couldn’t keep me away,” Aldis says, and I believe him when he says that too. But God may interfere this time.
I wait to see if he’ll beg for me to forgive Rhys, to commute his sentence and allow him to stay, but he doesn’t. Maybe he really does know better. Someday, Aldis will retire and be wherever his son is, but I have a few years with him left.
“I’ll speak to you when I get back to the office,” I say, then hang up without letting him say goodbye.
I let the phone clatter to the table and drop my face into my hands. I’m exhausted, feeling lost, my absent leg is throbbing, and I feel strangely alone in this moment. Sometimes I can forget how heavy the weight is to carry a kingdom on my shoulders, and sometimes it’s unbearable. Sometimes I let myself think about how the world will keep turning, and life will go on, and very little will change if the Walshes all disappeared.
This city was not built on the backs of my forefathers. It was just shaped in a way that people have forgotten that we’re not necessary. The only ones who could crumble without it are us.
A hand on my shoulder alerts me to the fact that I’ve dropped my guard, and for a second, it shakes me before I remember that we’re safe here. Safer than I’ve ever been. It wouldn’t last even if we chose to stay, but for now, I can have this.
I reach up, pulling whoever it is into my lap, and for a brief moment, I’m shocked to see that it’s Ari. He’s been so wound up he’s the last person I expect to be here, but he perches on my knee and stares up into my face with a question in his eyes.
“What is it?” I lift a hand to his throat and stroke my thumb over his scars.
He swallows thickly, then lifts a hand. ‘Who was that?’
“On the phone?” I ask with a frown, then shake my head. “Just Aldis.” My thumb runs over his throat again. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
He snorts quietly through his nose, shaking his head. ‘Not worried.’
Of course he isn’t. I don’t know that he’s truly capable of fear, though I saw a flicker of it years ago when I was furious enough to kill James. I think there might be something in Ari that does feel the same way we do. But it’s buried so deep under trauma and determination to never, ever be vulnerable again that it may never see the light of day.
My precious little psychopath.
I cup his cheek and kiss him slowly, teeth scraping his tongue, digging into his lip. He squirms on my lap as I press the heel of my hand over his dick, which isn’t quite hard yet, but it’s getting there. “Is this what you came for?” I murmur.
His hand flails before it lands on mine and taps out a stuttered ‘Just you.’
That goes straight to my head. It’s not often I get Ari like this. It was this way in the beginning, when something cracked, and I began to see him as mine in the same way Phoenix was. He wanted to prove to me that he was worthy of keeping, so he gave himself to me, but I could never be sure if he truly wanted it.
I’m sure now. He’s a good actor—better than most—and innocent-looking with his big eyes and sweet smile. But he can’t fake it anymore. Not in my arms.
My fingers flick open the button on his jeans, pulling the zipper down just enough so I can get my hand in his boxers, and then I curl my fingers around his cock. “Work for it, sweet thing,” I whisper.
His hips tremble and thrust, trying to get as much friction as he can while I hold him still. His skin is hot, and he’s needy and desperate, and he knows I won’t give in easily.
“Look at you,” I whisper.
