Page 62 of Graveyards & Greed

“The braying laugh?”

“That too.”

I smiled a little. “I got the deluxe package from mom. A strange laugh, a nasty temper, and a knack for finding trouble.”

“Or maybe trouble has a knack for finding you. Tell me about Jeffery.”

I stared ahead, unseeing. “It was late afternoon and the school was pretty much deserted. We were getting our stuff to head home. As I shut my locker, I saw him standing there in the dark hallway.”

“What’d you do?”

That familiar shame rose within me. “Nothing at first. I froze like a stupid, scared child. Fenn didn’t let me hear the end of it when he found out. We were trapped at the end of a hallway, and when he started toward us, I saw the gun in his hand. I turned and screamed at Luna to run, then heaved my backpack at him.” I still had nightmares about his terrifying grin.

The dark, quiet corridor echoed sharply when I slammed my locker shut that day. The janitors hadn’t begun their nightly cleaning routine, leaving us alone in the late afternoon shadows with my worst nightmare, who stood there with a gun, staring at me with lifeless eyes.

“Alexa is the one who saved us. She was practically invisible at school, a year younger than us, and she wore the same outfit almost every single day. She saw him walk into the school and spotted the gun.”

“How’d she get him?”

Smiling grimly, I remembered the sound echoing in the hallway. “She played softball, and practice had just ended. Lex still had her gear with her—including her old, dented softball bat. Without missing a beat, she came up behind him and swung like she was aiming for a home run right as he pulled the trigger. His shot went wide, but hers didn’t. She knocked him on his ass.” I smiled faintly, remembering her swing and the gleam in her eye.

Drakos raised an eyebrow. “Alexa plays softball?”

“Yes, and she’s good. After she hit him, chaos erupted. Luna called nine-one-one while Alexa kept searching for an opportunity to swing again. She broke his arm and bruised his kidney. She’s the true Harley Quinn, and we were her clumsy suicide squad.”

It had been a complete shitshow. My arm had gone numb, but adrenaline and hate kept me going. I bled like a stuck pig, and Luna was screaming and crying into her phone as she talked to the dispatcher.

“You have a strange look in your eyes. What happened?” he asked carefully.

“He winged my arm,” I admitted. It’d been a little more than a graze, but the bullet missed bones.

He leaned back and dragged me to him, squeezing me hard. “Good Christ. You three are… something.”

“After that, things changed. I mean, how could they not? I grew up, I guess.” My voice wavered slightly, and I cleared my throat. “My own father, who was supposed to protect and love me, tried to kill me over money. All three of us have at least one evil, shitty parent who made our lives hell. No wonder we bonded.”

Drakos brushed a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I know a little something about that.” He did. His own family had sent him to Bitter Creek Ranch, and our backgrounds were eerily similar in many ways. No wonder I was drawn to him.

His understanding was there in his fingers as he trailed them along my jawline. I found myself leaning closer, drawn into his gravity. He gazed at me with his own demons stirring in his eyes, and in that moment, the truth hit me. I loved this gorgeous, sinful man, and he was probably going to break me in ways my father never had.

Chapter 24

Drakos

I dreamed about my grandfather again that night. My dreams of him started at Bitter Creek Ranch, the first time they beat me unconscious and threw me into one of those fucking cells.

When I came to, I lay there on the cold concrete floor in my own piss and blood, and wondered idly if I was going to die. After drifting in and out of consciousness for hours, I dreamed about him for the first time. We were sitting across from each other at a picnic table in the park near where I grew up, with a chess game set up between us. I felt warm and didn’t ache everywhere, so I knew right away it wasn’t real.

He patted my hand and studied the board in front of him. “You’re in a bit of a pickle, Drakos, my boy. Can you wake up?”

I looked over at his craggy face and bushy eyebrows. “I don’t think I want to, Grandpa.”

He sighed and sat back. “But you need to, son. If you don’t get up, get moving, and maybe drink some water, you may not make it.Illegitimi non carborundum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It had become my personal motto during those endless months in Bitter Creek.

I woke sometime later in that cell with Xander kneeling over me, offering me water and the animal crackers they usually fed us. Not the good kind with frosting and sprinkles, but the stale, shitty kind that came in industrial-sized bags and tasted like cardboard. They thought it was funny to feed us those disgusting crackers.

Tonight, I dreamed he waited for me in the booth of an old diner like the one we’d eaten at when he took me to New York City for the first time. I looked around absently at the 1950s décor and the servers in pink uniforms. It was a place he would have liked.

“Hello, my boy.” Tonight there wasn’t a chessboard between us, just two cups of coffee and a small silver pitcher of cream.

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