Page 60 of Black Hearts
I yawned and rolled out of bed, stretched, and went to put on some clothes. A baggy shirt and some leggings. Will and Jaxon had gotten up a while ago; I couldn’t exactly remember when, still too sleepy at the time. I shuffled across the hall to the bathroom to do my morning routine.
As I brushed my teeth, I thought I heard the others talking down the hall, but they were so far away, all I heard was the echo of their conversation. I finished up and was out of the bathroom after a few minutes, shuffling my feet down the hall. The further I went, the clearer the voices became—and the more obvious it was that it wasn’t just my guys having a chat.
No. Other people were here.
“I have to pick Tori up at school around three,” a woman’s voice was busy saying, and I knew it could only be one person: Stella. An emotionless tone, and yet I knew she loved her daughter more than life itself. People weren’t so black and white. I wish I would’ve known that from the beginning.
I paused at the end of the hall, staring at the small crowd of people standing around in the living area. Markus stood near the windows, his tall frame blocking out a lot of the sun. Jaxon and Will stood near the wall behind the couch, their arms folded. Bennet sat with his knees wide apart on the couch, looking quite bored. Theo had come too, and he sipped on a coffee, staring at Stella as she talked about how Tori would want to be around for this.
Whatever this was.
But there were two others here—Vaughn, who I’d briefly met at Oliver’s house, and someone else who looked remarkably like Bennet. Pitch-black hair like most of the Scott men, with the same piercing blue eyes Bennet had. Also a love of tattoos. He was, I realized, vaguely familiar.
Was he at that party Zoey threw? That was the only place I could’ve seen him, for he looked a bit too old to be a student at Hillcrest University.
“We’re still waiting on a few arrivals, but most everyone is in town,” he was busy saying. A cigarette sat between his fingers, the air smelling of smoke. He brought it to his mouth and inhaled, holding the smoke in his lungs for a bit before letting it out.
“And Rave is still on Fred’s trail, so he won’t be coming,” Jaxon said.
“I think there’s enough of us here to make our father see reason,” Vaughn spoke. He stood beside Travis, looking more like Markus with his black hair and black eyes. Or Lincoln.
Stella chuckled. “He’s on a power trip. I think he gets off on it, like someone we all know.” The back of her head was to me, so I couldn’t know for sure, but I’d bet anything right then she glanced at Markus, because he scowled at her. “I honestly don’t know if this is going to work.”
Markus growled out, “It’s one thing to hear about everyone. One thing to know we’re spread out, but another thing entirely to see us all at once.” He happened to glance toward the hall, spotting me, and his scowl lessened.
Stella glanced over her shoulder at me, which alerted everyone to my presence, and she rolled her eyes. “Morning, sunshine.” Her voice could not have held more disdain; she really didn’t like me. “I don’t understand why we couldn’t just kill him. Ed, Lincoln, and Killian could’ve restrained him, and I could’ve ended this once and for all.”
Theo broke apart from the group to greet me, sweeping me up in his arms and hugging me to his chest, whispering, “Good morning.” Warmth oozed out of him, and he ended the greeting by placing a soft kiss on my cheek, making me smile. With his free hand in mine, he brought me over to the group, and to my surprise, he didn’t let go of me. He kept holding that hand, as if it belonged there, attached to his.
It was nice.
“There is no going back if that’s the route we take,” Markus said, slow to pull his dark gaze off of Theo’s and my hands, returning it to Stella. “I don’t want a free-for-all. It would set a bad precedent and open the door to the others trying to push their way into the family business.”
“Right,” Bennet huffed. “The They Shall Not be Named ones.”
Markus frowned again. “Exactly. We will try it this way first, but if worse comes to worst, we will handle it then. We all need to be ready for that possibility. He didn’t call anyone back the to house?” This question was asked to Stella and Theo, the only two people here who’d been in the house lately.
“No,” Theo said. “He’s been working in your office every day. A quick peek told me he’s looking at the numbers.”
“Then he’ll see that I’ve done a better job at running you lot than he did,” Markus said. “Even if I let some of you go.” At that reference, Vaughn might’ve flinched if he was anyone other than a Scott, but he wasn’t, so he stood strong, even in the face of Markus’s jab.
Travis inhaled another deep breath from that cigarette. “So it’s settled, then? Stella goes to pick up Tori at three. We start gathering at the estate around then. You’ll go in and see if talking to him works, first.”
Markus nodded, and he looked to Stella. “Who will control the gate?”
“Lincoln or Ed” was her answer.
Beside me, Theo sipped his coffee. It must’ve been strong stuff, because I could smell it. Not exactly something I wanted to smell first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach. Everyone seemed to love coffee, but no matter how I drank it, it never sat right with me.
“Good. Everyone who’s here, I want them ready to go. We’re going to play nice, but we’re also going to follow our father’s lead. If he decides he doesn’t need us, then he’s going to have to go through all of us.” Markus held everyone’s attention, commanding the room and everyone in it effortlessly. That was always his power; it’s how I’d fallen for him the moment I saw him at that masquerade years ago.
Will mused, “Mano a mano, or in this case, psycho to psycho. Should be fun, depending on the old man, right?” Everyone looked at him, though no one deemed to answer him. That didn’t stop him, for he added, “Well, I think it’ll be fun.”
Markus didn’t have anything to say to that. Instead, he gave a nod to everyone in the room. “Dismissed, for now.”
Stella looked like she was ready to leave, but in the end, she didn’t. She walked over to Vaughn, asking, “How’s your girl? I’m surprised you didn’t bring her here with you. From what you told me, she’s got some darkness in her.”
“She’ll be at the house with me.” He seemed to think on his next words. “She doesn’t want to be a monster.”
