Page 27 of Black Hearts
Well, that left me with Markus. I got to work looking for him.
Searching the house for a man who wasn’t in his room and couldn’t be in his office was dreadful. It took me way too long to find him, and when I did, I found him in a place I didn’t think he’d be in, but I figured I should just check there, anyway. A good thing I decided to look in Juliet’s room, because that’s where I found him.
Markus’s wide frame was sitting on her bed, shoulders hunched over. He held onto something on his lap I couldn’t see. I didn’t knock, since the door had been left ajar; I simply strolled in, moving around to stand before Markus.
The man still wore a suit, but he looked ruffled, unkempt. He also looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, his stubble thicker than I’d ever seen it. Those dark eyes of his didn’t move off what he held onto, and it was then that I realized he gripped a pair of fuzzy pink pajamas, the ones Juliet adored.
I didn’t have to ask him what he was doing. He simply offered an explanation to me, his deep voice sounding so profoundly bitter and sorrowful it caught me off-guard, “They still smell like her.” His fingers rubbed against the fuzzy fabric. “I told her to move all of her things into my room, but she didn’t like my dressers, so she still kept everything in here.” He brought the pajamas to his face, practically burying his nose into them so he could inhale her scent.
Uh, okay. Was this weird? This had to be weird. This was definitely, one hundred percent weird.
At least it was for me.
“You and I need to talk, somewhere private,” I said, choosing not to address the whole sniffing the pajamas thing. The more I thought about it, the weirder I thought it was. What was he, some kind of dog?
Markus got to his feet, setting the pajamas down on the bed. He still didn’t look at me, even as he walked past me. “I don’t need to talk to you.” It was like his walls had been down while he was busy smelling her clothes, and just like that, the walls went up, ten feet thick and made of brick.
I followed him. “Actually, we do. There are some things you need to know—”
He stopped in the hall, finally turning to face me. The scowl he usually wore was gone, replaced by a face that, for once, mirrored Stella’s: emotionless, bare, blank of everything. “I already know Jaxon, Will, and Bennet left, and I already know they left to go after Juliet.”
I stared at him. He sounded like he didn’t give a shit—it had to be a show he was putting on. It had to be Markus trying to put distance between him and Juliet to prove to his father he didn’t care about her. I didn’t know why he bothered. Having Johnathan’s approval meant nothing if Juliet was gone. Why didn’t he see that?
“Don’t you care?” I asked. “Or are you going to continue to pretend you don’t care about her?” I glanced around us. “I don’t see your father here, so—”
He took a step toward me, towering over me with his six-and-a-half-foot tall frame. “Don’t you get it? You think you see everything here. You think you know it all.” Now the venom, the typical Markus sneer, crept back. “You don’t know anything, Doc. You don’t know shit. I don’t get to have an obsession like my brothers and sisters. I don’t get to have what I want.”
“So that’s it, then? You’re just going to give up? You’re right, I don’t know everything, but I know you, and you’re not the kind of man who gives up, especially when that something you’re giving up is Juliet.” I narrowed my stare at him. “She’s safe, by the way. In the hospital with Jaxon and the others, just woke up. Fred stabbed her and left her for dead. If they wouldn’t have found her, she’d be dead right now.”
Markus closed his pitch-black eyes, and I couldn’t tell if he was relieved or not. “I knew Fred would try something eventually. It’s why I wanted her here.”
“Well, you were right. And it’s a damned good thing they went after her, because if they hadn’t… we would’ve lost her.” When Markus slowly opened his eyes once more, I held that intense stare. If I could hold my own against Johnathan, I could surely do the same with him. “You need to decide what’s more important: running the show and listening to your father or having Juliet. I already know which is more important, and I’m willing to walk away from this family and this house if I have to—and I bet the others would do the same.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Are you saying we should all walk away together, hand in hand, and start our own family?”
I ignored the mocking tone he used. “I’m saying either we do that, or you stop pretending like you care about Juliet. If you aren’t willing to throw everything away for her, you don’t love her.” I paused, waiting to say this next part, just to make sure my words were sinking into his thick skull. “Or we rally together and kick your father’s ass out of here.”
Markus seemed somewhat taken aback by that. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Stella follows you. She respects you. Same with the others. I haven’t heard a single soul in this house say they’re happy your father is here. They want him gone, and they want you back in charge. If you take the reins, they would rather you lead them.”
He turned his back to me, but he didn’t walk away. “I could never. He’s family.”
“So is Will, and you locked him in the basement for weeks for what he did. Your father handed Juliet over to Fred, who in turn tried to kill her—and he would’ve succeeded, too, if it weren’t for Jaxon and the others. If you care about her, you need to stand your ground against him, and we’ll stand with you.”
Honestly, I had no idea if I was getting through to him, if he was listening to me, agreeing with me, or if I was talking to the wall he’d put up. Markus was hard to read.
“And if he decides to kill us all for our disloyalty?” Markus asked, measured in turning to face me once more. “What then? Will you still stand so proudly against him with a knife in your gut? We might be able to force him from the house, but I know there are others who would gladly take us all out. You’ve never met my uncles and their children… let’s just say most of them are too uncontrollable to allow in this house.”
“Would your father let that happen? Sounds like if they took over, the Scott business would be run into the ground.”
Markus stared at me, and he didn’t say a word. The seconds stretched on, and it felt like an eternity passed before he nodded once. “You’re probably right. His legacy, this estate and what we do here… he wouldn’t throw it away.”
I was pleased to hear that. Well, as pleased as I could be, given the situation.
He continued to stare at me. “You really do love her, don’t you? Not only willing to stand up to me, but also to take a stand against my father, all for her.” I wouldn’t say Markus sounded like he was in awe, but I would say there was definitely some respect laced into his words.
“That’s the thing about love, Markus. When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can for them. To keep them happy, to keep them safe. Juliet wants to come home. Even after everything you’ve done to her, everything else that happened here, this is her home now, and I want to make sure she’s safe. Until your father’s gone, she’s not.”
