Page 102 of The Lost Kings
Gio and I both let him go and he immediately took a piece of cloth from his pocket and placed it to his neck. “You’re not going to end up with her. She’s outgrown you both…let her go before you ruin the family.”
With that he jogged off toward the tree line where his dogs were sleeping.
“What’s goingthrough your head right now?” Gio asked apprehensively.
I was doing sit-ups, and I’d already done push-ups and a few other regular workouts, but I usually made him keep track of my time. Today, I was just going until shit hurt, and with as conditioned as I was, shit wasn’t hurting nearly fast enough.
Sweat landed on the mat as I stopped moving and glared over at my twin.
“She chose him over us.”
Gio dipped his head, and I hated seeing him hurt. I despised that I didn’t only have to experience the pain, but had to see it on his face, knowing exactly how his heart felt because mine mirrored his.
Once his attention was on me, he tried to defend her, “She was hurt…thought we’d abandoned her; there was shit we’d said that?—”
Not fucking happening. “We explained all of that to her in our calls and our texts. We’ve done nothing for the past year and a half but sacrifice ourselves so that there’s a future we might one day have. We’ve done everything for her, and she still fucking chose him.”
Every time she’d go to Adrian’s, I’d watch through a lens how happy she looked and how more of herself she’d become. She’d shed a layer until she was stripped down to the version of herself she’d only once given to us.
I couldn’t stop this feeling because even after last night, she’d left us for him.
A murderer. A man who was pretending to be someone good.
I stood and moved over to the punching bag and began to hit it.
My brother’s voice followed me. “What do you want to do?”
I turned toward him and asked, “Do you honestly think she’ll ever be ours?”
My brother’s gaze found the floor and I left the bag, placing my hands on his shoulders. “Gio, she’s toying with us. She will do anything to protect her family, including entering an arranged marriage with Adrian.”
“She doesn’t know who he really is.” He tried to argue, but I shook my head, emotion beginning to clog my throat.
“If you try to tell her, she won’t listen. I dare you to try.”
Gio stepped back and ran his hand through his hair. “And if she doesn’t listen?”
“I know what I want…but I also know I’ll take it and walk away.”
My brother scoffed and picked up a jump rope. “You’d just fuck her and walk?”
The idea of not having Presley’s heart made me afraid, but the idea of her giving it to Adrian made me so angry that I gave my brother the most honest answer I could.
“Yeah…I’d take her virginity so Adrian couldn’t have it and then I’d just walk.”
Chapter 39
Presley
PRESENT
Guilt twisted my stomach like a leaf in the wind.
Each time I thought of something else, the hurt and worry would return, forcing me to my window seat, staring out at the sky. I’d remained there from the moment I got back from the twins’ room, until dawn.
Once the sun began soaking the earth, I showered and dressed.
I needed to talk to them and explain that the last thing I wanted was to hurt them, and then I wanted to bring them up to speed on what happened with Carter and see if they had any ideas on what I could do to keep the family safe without Adrian’s help.
