Page 113 of The Demons We Hide

Nolan smirks as he stops in front of me. “Of course she did.”

“Sheis standing right here,” I say, as if they need the reminder. “Andshedoesn’t like being talked about like she’s not.”

A loud, wet cough splutters into the night and all three of us—Nolan, Lex, and I—turn towards the sound. My jaw drops at what I see.

Gio has dropped the metal pole and withdrawn a pocket knife—from where, I don’t fucking know, since I didn’t think football pants had pockets. Now, however, that knife is sunk deep into the middle man’s throat. Without giving the man another second, he rips it free and blood splashes across the ground.

His body falls to the dirt with a deadenedthud.

“The fuck!” The other two kidnappers scream and squirm, one of them falling over onto his side as he tries to wriggle away, looking more like a worm than a human man at the sudden outpouring of violence from the Scorpion King I least expected it from.

“Juliet.”I whip back to Nolan and freeze. My head still throbs with pain, but it warns me against my next actions.

There’s a voice inside all of us that cautions us against danger, and right now, it’s screaming at me. It wants me to turn away from the men surrounding me, to run from them, to flee and keep running until they forget I ever existed.

Behind that little voice, though, there’s another one. And as I look down to what Nolan now holds in his hand, it grows louder.

“Do you want to finish this or do you want us to?” he asks.

I’ve never held a gun before, but my eyes are locked on the one in his hand now and my fingers itch to close around it.

“P-please, we-we were paid! It was just a fucking job!”

“Lex?” I glance towards Gio as he casually turns towards us and flips the knife in his hand up and down. Over and over again, the silver end glints from the car’s headlights. He catches it as easily as if he were tossing a football, and Lex steps around Nolan and me to head his way. “Your turn?” G sounds like he’s asking rather than telling, and when Lex gets close, he holds out the knife.

I knew it the night they helped me hide my own crime. My attacker’s body had disappeared and they hadn’t even seemed to care that I killed someone. I’d told myself it was because he was a monster, someone who meant to rape me. That was why. He’d deserved what I did to him.

Now, I have to wonder if it wasn’t that at all, and one question spirals through my mind.

Who the fuck are the Scorpion Kings?

44

NOLAN

“Why?” Juliet stares at my eyes as she whispers the question. Behind her, Lex takes the knife that Gio offers him.

I return my attention to the woman in front of me and see that her attention is now on the weapon in my hand. The gun. “Why what?” I ask.

“Why are you doing this?”

If someone had told me three months ago that I would be standing here in Trail’s End, handing Juliet Donovan a gun that would inevitably lead back to me if it ever got picked up by law enforcement and encouraging her to kill someone, I would have laughed myself stupid and then punched them for such a ridiculous idea.

Why am I doing this?She’s not the only one wondering the same damn thing, but if there’s one thing she’s taught me—it’s that opinions change.

I once thought she was nothing more than a spoiled rich princess. Every time I’d seen her at one of her posh prep parties in her designer t-shirts and thousand-dollar jeans, she’d ignored me, turned away as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the street rats crawling their way throughherturf. It didn’t matter that we’d been invited—temporarily, of course, and only for what we could provide on the drug market. I thought she’d been disgusted by us—and maybe she had at one time.

“Do you not want it?” I ask in lieu of an answer. I’m not sure I can offer her one right now, not until I know for myself.

“I…” Her gaze remains locked on the gun, but she doesn’t reach for it. Not yet.Is she not ready?

Perhaps I tried too soon. I’d been so sure Juliet would be ready for this next step, this final barrier to cross, but as she continues to stare at the weapon in my hand without reaching for it, I feel my chest cave a little. I hadn’t realized how hopeful I’d been until this moment.

None of us have ever known a woman like her—someone willing to do the dirty, bloody work that comes with revenge. The night she’d shoved that pissant motherfucker who’d broken into her apartment over the railing, I’d wondered if maybe she hadn’t been waiting for us too.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” I tell her.

At her back, the guys are going apeshit. Lex laughs as he drives his fist into his victim’s face, over and over again. He doesn’t even bother to use the knife. Gio grunts as he drags his man over the train tracks, ignoring the sobbing and begging. Pathetic.

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