Page 18 of Ruin Me
Callum approaches me, cutting off my next lap across the room. His gaze is sharp as if he’s trying to pin me down and make me listen. “Vogue,” he starts, his voice steady and sure, “I know this is a lot to take in. But you’re not alone anymore.”
“Alone? That’s rich coming from you.” My voicecomes out harsher than I mean it to, but I can’t help it. “You drop this bomb on me and expect what? That I’ll just accept it?”
He doesn’t flinch at my tone. “We can protect you. You have a right to your heritage, and we can keep you safe from the others that would see us fall, that would seeyoufall.”
Protection and heritage. Those words feel foreign, distant. I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hold myself together. “And why should I believe you, Callum? Why should I believe that any of you give a damn? You don’t even know me.”
“Because it’s the truth,” he says, and there’s something in his voice, a sincerity that makes me pause. “You’re one of us now, whether you want it or not.”
Biting my lip, I sit heavily on the couch. Callum’s words hang in the air like a heavy fog I can’t see through. Protection? Heritage? They’re just pretty cover-ups for danger and a life of crime. I stare at him, sceptical.
“Can I really trust you, Callum?” My voice is raw, scraping out the uncertainty that tightens my chest. “Can I trust any of this Syndicate stuff?”
He doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away. “Yes,” he says simply. But it’s not enough. It can’t be that simple, can it?
Quentin steps into my line of sight with a look in his eyes that makes me believe he means every word he’s about to say. “You don’t need to accept your father into your life, Vogue.” His hand reaches out but stops short of touching me, respecting my space, ormaybe respecting his own. He is a closed-off sort, and it makes me curious, but not enough right now to push aside the fact that they’re all in this shitshow up to their necks. “But you do need to accept that you’re in danger and need protection.”
“Fuck off,” I grit out. “I was doing just fine until I came here. This was supposed to be my way out of the life I was born into. Instead, it’s dragging me into a nightmare!”
Thayer steps closer, his shadow falling over the plush carpet. “This was the lifewewere born into, and it isn’t going anywhere.” His voice is low, a rumble of thunder on a clear day.
“Can’t you get out? Run?” I shoot back, arms crossed, bracing for the answer.
“Not a chance. Even if we wanted to, which we don’t, you have to understand this isn’t a choice. It’s inevitable.” Harrison cuts in from behind Thayer, his tone steady. “It’s about survival. About sticking with those who have your back.”
“Inevitable. I hate that fucking word. Only death is inevitable.”
But deep down, something strikes a chord. Survival I understand. It’s what I’ve done all my life—just never like this, never with the stakes so high.
“Look at us, Vogue.” Thayer gestures to the four of them. “We’re more than some crime syndicate; we’re a family of our own making, and we protect what is ours. You are ours.”
“Yours?”
But that’s not even the word that hits me the most.Family. A word that means everything and nothing to me. My mum is my family, but she’s miles away now, and the father I’ve never known? He’s just a ghost, a whisper of a legacy I’m scared to claim.
And there it is.
The big revelation. I’m scared. In shock and scared.
“Family doesn’t leave you to suffer.”
“Sometimes, family is the only thing that keeps you alive,” Harrison replies gently.
Staring into his forest-green eyes, I see something lurking in the depths. Something I can latch onto and relate to, even though I don’t really know what it is.
“We are not the same,” I murmur.
“We are, you just don’t know it yet.”
Our gaze deepens, and the flashes of lust I see do nothing to swing me in their direction. They all lied to me. Okay, admittedly, I’ve known them for the space of a day tops, so really, they don’t owe me anything, and it sounds like they’ve taken a leap trusting me with this now. So maybe they get points for that, but still. All this time, and I was wandering around in the dark in danger because of a man I hate.
Hate.
I’ve never really placed an emotion that wasn’t indifference onto him before. Why bother? He wasn’t there from the start, so fuck him. Some days I thought of him and how things might be different, but most days, we got on with shit.
We survived.
I search their faces and see the resolve etched intotheir features. They’re ready to step into a fire for one another, and it rattles me because I realise they’d do the same for me. That they have already by bringing me with them here. Me, the target of this horrible day. It has to be. Callum wouldn’t have come clean if he didn’t think it was me they were after. Quentin is a decoy.
