Page 61 of Little Wing
As soon as those words left her mouth, I whipped my head back to the door where Lotus’s keys still hung. Moving closer, I looked around the door frame until my eyes settled on what I realized Lotus was looking at—scratches on the door handle and harsh black scuff marks on the bottom of the door. Before I pushed it open, Lotus grabbed onto my wrist. If she thought I was going to let her go in without me checking it out first then she was out of her mind.
“Lotus, stay out here while I—”
“Silas,” she cut in, her voice quaking. “I-I hear music.”
I bobbed my head slowly and signaled for her to stay quiet and outside in the hall while I pushed the door open. Inside, the apartmentlooked normal enough until I turned my head to the side. In the living room, her decorative pillows were torn to shreds, their innards littered around the couch. The candles from her coffee table lay in pieces just before the kitchen where cabinet doors were left open and utensils were scattered around the floor.
What the fuck?The apartment was a fucking mess, but I continued moving further in. If I hadn’t come here with her, what would she have come home to? Or better yet—who?
I continued looking around the apartment while Lotus slowly stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind her. She wasn’t wrong about the music. I could hear it coming clearly from her bedroom—the soft grainy buzz of her record player that I knew she loved to have on while she got ready each evening, now spinning in the presence of someone unwelcome.
The song stopped and restarted again, playing “Tonight You Belong to Me” by Patience and Prudence. The music only grew louder with each step that I took toward Lotus’s room down the short hall, mentally preparing for whatever I would find inside. When I finally made it, I leaned in to find her bed messy and her floor covered in cans of synthetic blood. Someone was definitely here, but they weren’t in her bedroom. Not anymore.
Just as I moved to turn back around, the door to the bathroom burst open and a dark-haired man growled and hurled himself at me. The force of his body slammed me against the wall opposite the rooms, hitting my head on one of the many frames that decorated the wall. The crunch of the glass and the crack in the wall alerted Lotus from the other room. It was when her panicked voice sounded and the man holding me twitched that I realized who the intruder was. I took one whiff of him and snarled at the man with damp blackhair—Luca.
I pushed against his shoulders to force him off me, but as I did, he looked up through the curtain of his messy hair to realize I wasn’t the person he was looking to attack. He stood straight and quickly darted his eyes to where Lotus was standing with her hands held up in defense.
“Sister,” he sneered. “You are tough to track down when your scent is all over this fucking town. It’s almost like you’re hiding from me.” He shot a chilling glare back at me, the droplets from his wet hair whipping me across the cheek.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I did not speak your name or utter your crimes. Why can’t you just leave me be?”
Luca wasted little time moving out of the hall and to the main room where Lotus now stood with her fists clenched at her sides. He assessed her slowly, taking careful steps closer to her, like a fucking predator cornering its prey. Given that I wasn’t his target, I used his focus on her to my benefit and quickly rushed around the kitchen island to step between them. With a quick tug, I pulled Lotus behind me without my eyes leaving the lunatic before us for a second. Her brother was a bit taller than Lotus, but it wasn’t his stature that gave me the creeps. It was the way he tried to devour her with his eyes—the wicked grin that spread to reveal his fangs, even the chipped one.
“Answer me! Why won’t you leave me?” she demanded.
Luca paced, hunched over, without advancing closer. He was playing with his meal, drawing out his torment without even having to lift a finger. My eyes never left him.
“Why won’t you leave me?” Lotus repeated, her voice sounding more fractured than it did just moments ago.
“Because,” he snarled. “You’ve had enough time fucking around, sister. You know you don’t belong here.”
“But, I do!”
Luca stopped pacing and turned his head to the side, lazily pointing his lanky index finger at me. “Because ofhim?”
“I have family here. I’ve made a home!” Lotus cried.
Looking unimpressed, Luca glanced around the mess he created. “A bit tacky for my taste.”
“Enough—gods damn it!” Lotus pleaded, her hands scrunching the back of my shirt in her hands.
“No.”
With both of them in the same room, I felt the rage in the pit of my stomach threaten to boil over. Knowing that it was him that starved the woman I love and long to protect, I wanted nothing more than to put him through the same misery Lotus had to experience. Because of his torment, I had to fight for even a glimpse of her smile when we first met.
Behind me, I felt Lotus vibrating not in fear, but in anger. What I thought was her trembling was the buildup to a growl that erupted from her as she stepped in front of me. Even as Lotus raised her voice, Luca barely flinched.
He slicked his wet hair back and rolled his eyes at her. “Seriously? You let someone new fuck you and now you think you can talk back to me? I think you’ve forgotten your place."
“Luca—” Lotus flinched, stopping just a foot in front of me.
“Enough!” he hissed, using her line against her. “I made you, saved you, and I can unmake you if I see fit. You thought you were free of me just because you packed up your shit and left? Oh no-no-no,” he cackled, the ruby of his eyes glistening in a way that Lotus’s never had. “I just gave you a longer lead while I got my own shit in order.”
It was pure malice that overcame him when he thrust his arm out to yank Lotus away from me. I barely had a second to react before she was pressed up against him with her face cupped in his palm.
“Lotus!” I yelled, my voice heavy with desperation as I immediately stepped toward them. “Let her go!”
Luca ignored me completely while his hands roamed Lotus’s body with unnatural hunger. My mind was calculating how quickly I could move to pull her away from him, how quickly I could knock him the fuck out for laying a hand on her again. But as I thought to rush at him, I froze when his hand tightened around her throat that he yanked back to sniff.
