Page 42 of Ruin

“Get a clean page open.” I cut her off. She doesn’t want me here, and I have to go to the club, so I don’t mind leaving soon. “I want you to design a dress, sew and wear it next week.” Trixie looks at me, and the fear on her face makes me smile. I won’t make her walk around naked. I’m not that fucked up, and her fashion sense is growing on me. I wait for her to draw a person. I don’t know much about fashion, so I leave her to it.

“You have sexy legs. I want them out all the time. From your boobs to your thighs, I want the dress to be black, and cover you.” He starts telling me how he wants the dress to look. “But I want more of your thigh showing than hiding.” I wait for her to finish what I’ve told her to do. “Then, on top of this I want like a lace fabric, from the top to the bottom, and arms covered. Something like you wore the other day, but I want you to somehow put dark blue periwinkle delphinium flowers on there. But not blue. I want them black.” She stops drawing and turns to face me. “It was the color of my baby. You needed a reminder I haven’t forgotten.” I throw my things into my bag and lean in closer to her. “You’ll wear this next week. You need any fabric? Send me a message. I’ll get it for you. Now walk me to the door.”

Getting up, I grab all my things. I won’t make her spend money on something I want her to wear. It’s going to make it hard when she wears it. I have so many ideas in my head about what she can wear, and now I know she makes most of her clothes, I’m going to get her to wear everything that’s in my head.

Standing by the door, I step outside and turn to face her.

“Give me a kiss.”

Please don’t.

“You don’t have a choice. Now kiss me.” My words bring a tear to the surface of her eyes. But she obeys me. She stands on her tiptoes, and I grab the back of her neck, kissing her hard. Her lip ring hits my tooth, which makes her open her mouth for me, and I glide my tongue over the stud on her lip. Pulling away from her, I plant one more kiss. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

The door slams shut behind me, and I make my way to the club, and find out why I have to go down to hell again. Something is going on, and Cain being Cain, he won’t say a word about what he thinks about whatever it is.

* * *

Walking into the club, I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for whatever Cain has planned for me tonight. As always, the club is busy, and this is what I wanted from him, the club. Let me be the manager of this place, heaven for all men, but no, he gave me fucking hell.

“Hey Lincoln, is he in his office?” I ask him by the stairs as I look around at the pole dancers.

“Hey, I’m heading up. Seems like he wants us both there for this conversation.” Now this does worry me. He wants Lincoln there, too. I’ve done nothing wrong. I followed the rules. Cain gave me a lot of rules before he took me to The Pit, and I followed every one of them, I think.

Walking into the office, Cain looks up from his paperwork. I sit on the chair in front of his desk and wait to see what tonight brings me.

“When was the last time you slept?” he asks.

He’s reading me. The man is good at it, too. I learned how to read people down there, but I was only there for less than three months. I quickly picked up things.

Cain was there for most of his life. I’m nowhere as good as he is.

“I don’t know, but nowhere close to the amount I used to sleep?” I answer. No point lying to him. I can lie to mom and dad, but not him.

He opens the draw and takes something out and throws it toward me. Catching the bottle, I look at it and look up at him. “Cain-”

“I’m sorting it out before it gets too bad. There are four pills in there. You take one tonight and fucking sleep.”

His voice is louder than before, and I shut my mouth and nod.

Maybe taking one won’t be the worst thing I do. “Who did you talk to in The Pit?” he asks.

I glance at Lincoln, who’s leaning against the wall, watching me.

“I didn’t tell anyone my name. I didn’t tell anyone who you are to me. Nothing. I swea-”

“Declan, I only want to know who you spoke to. That’s it. Give me numbers.” He pauses. “Someone is coming for you because you killed one of their men. I have the list of people you killed, but I need a list of who you spoke to.” Cain looks over at Lincoln before turning his attention back to me.

“You think someone knows we’re family?” I ask.

“The moment I showed everyone who I was, they knew about my family. But this isn’t about me, because they didn’t send me the message, they sent it to you. So you killed someone important. What I need to know is who told them who you are as it’s just numbers down there.” Cain gets up and walks around the desk, before sitting on the edge of the desk.

“The five of us have the, ‘Find our phone’ app on at all times. I already told the others. Lincoln is added to that now. This is in case something happens. We’ll know where you are, just like you know where all of us are. Today, they’re coming for you. Tomorrow it can be me again. Or Mason. Now I need a list of the people you spoke to.”

I think back, every conversation in my head, and then I give Cain the numbers of them.

I remembered every man I spoke to.

I never spoke to the women.

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