Page 14 of Reckless
I was thankful to Jacob for that. I was. I still didn’t like how close they were, but if he could afford her some protection I could not, I would learn to deal. Just like with Dante. I would be the bigger man and learn to deal with all of their dicks sniffing around her.
And more, but I wasn’t going to think about that right now.
We arrived before Ryan’s door within ten minutes. Markus stopped outside of his room, turning to glare at me. He always wore a serious, stern expression, his eyes blacker than his soul. Anyone with half a brain knew not to mess with him just with a quick glance; anyone who was forced to deal with him usually tried to do anything they could to avoid the same in the future.
Markus’s glare turned to glimpse both ways down the hall. He toyed with his cufflinks, flashing his watch every few moments. “I’ll be out here. Get it done, Vaughn.”
My family was not the type of family that was ever flowing with love. We were all about loyalty. The second was obsession.
I nodded once, moving past him to enter Ryan’s room without a sound. My feet glided across the sterile white floor, the lights above a bright, almost blinding fluorescent. Ryan laid in a hospital bed, his IV steadily dripping into his wrist to keep him hydrated. The machine measuring his heartbeat beeped steadily, a low thrumming of noise that anyone who spent a lot of time here would grow used to.
His bed was the only bed in the room, no witnesses, no cameras, save for the ones in the hall. Markus assured me that no one would bat an eye at what I was about to do, and Markus’s word was as good as law.
I stopped when I stood beside his bed, eyeing him up like he was the trash of the earth. His blonde hair was greasy, slicked against his head, his white skin even paler than it was before. Gaunter cheeks, some of his skin a bit bruised from Dante’s attack, he looked like shit.
Staring at him, my fingers itched. I wanted to hurt him in more ways than one, wanted to hear his screams as his life drained. Alas, being in a coma, he wouldn’t make any screams. He wouldn’t even be aware that he was dying. A shame, really.
The death he was about to get was more than he deserved. A mercy, a gift from an angel of death.
Me. I was an angel of death, born into a family of grim reapers.
With Markus just outside, it was time. Some might look at the boy in the hospital bed before me and think: poor Ryan. He had such a good future ahead of him. Why did one mistake have to affect him so much?
Those people would be wrong in their opinion, though. The truth of the matter was, his future didn’t matter. It was not as if his mistake had been tiny; if Archer hadn’t interrupted him and his friends, by all likelihood Jaz would’ve been raped—and that was something that would’ve changed her life forever, for the worse.
No, this was a fate Ryan deserved, a fate he’d unknowingly written for himself when he went after my girl.
Jaz might not have been mine physically yet, but she would be. She would be, and I had the nagging feeling that my life would never be the same.
All of the flowers arranged in the room, the get well cards and the well wishes, they were all pointless things. A tragedy, people were calling this, what happened to Ryan and his friends in the park one night, but it wasn’t. The truth was, no one in Midpark, besides maybe their families, would miss Ryan and his friends in a few years. I was pretty sure everyone would forget their names within two months. Time was fickle.
I moved closer to his bed, standing beside his head. It was propped up a bit, a white pillow behind him. Inside my chest, my heart beat steadily, evenly, as if I wasn’t going to do anything out of the ordinary in these next few moments—and it wasn’t. This was just a small taste of what I’d be doing for my family after graduation.
Lifting a hand, I sluggishly moved it to his face, clasping his nose and his mouth and holding it all closed. No more air would get into his lungs.
His heart rate spiked; I could hear it on the machine next to his bed, but that didn’t stop me from doing what I had to do. Everyone would look the other way for Markus. If there was a family who owned this town, it was mine. The Scotts were the ones you wanted on your side; we had the money, the power, the connections and the know-how. We were everything, dark demons wearing handsome faces.
Ryan’s body started to jerk below me; its involuntary way of trying to seek out breath, attempting to find air to keep itself running.
Alas, there would be no more air for him. Ryan would die while not knowing his body was trying frantically to breathe. He would suffocate in oblivion, and meet an end that was still too good for him. If I had my way, I would’ve heard his screaming before he died, but that was a favor I couldn’t ask of Markus. He’d allowed something similar for Travis, another older brother of mine, but that had been three years ago, and Travis had worked hard to pay off that favor.
This? This was a favor, but not quite one like that.
The machine keeping track of his heartbeat went wild, but I remained still, my hand clamped down on his face. I wore no expression, simply staring down at my handiwork and wondering if, deep down, Ryan’s subconsciousness could feel it, if he knew he was dying and couldn’t do anything about it. Such were the wonders of life, weren’t they? To me, and to most of my family, there was nothing sweeter than the embrace of death.
The seconds ticked by, little eternities passing until the heart monitor’s screen beeped with a lessening intensity, and then, eventually, it leveled off completely, a high-pitched, flat sound taking its place when Ryan’s heart no longer beat in his chest.
Underneath my palm, Ryan’s body was motionless, no longer flailing about, trying unconsciously to breathe. He was dead.
He was dead, and I’d killed him.
My first kill. I always imagined it would be something different, in the dark depths of our estate, not here, in a sterile hospital, killing someone I actually knew. I’d never paid much attention to him before, but after what he nearly did to Jaz, he made sure that my dark eyes had been turned to him.
What a fool. If he would’ve known the consequences of his actions, I bet he never would’ve gone after her. I bet Ryan would’ve steered clear of her, given Jaz a wide berth, because he valued his life. Most people did. Me? I wasn’t frightened of death, wasn’t scared to die. When death came for me, I’d welcome it with open arms.
Or, at least, that’s how I thought before.
Before Jaz.
