Page 70 of Empire of Carnage
“Uh, well… I mean…” I scratched my head anxiously, “She was handling herself pretty well all on her own. She didn’t need me.” He didn’t like that, scowling deeper at my response. “What? She doesn’t need any of us dude.”
She laughed, forcing the expression on his face to harden and the scowl on his forehead to deepen.
“Let me remind you of the week she spent in that Bratva cage. Let me remind you she was drugged, starved, and soldtwice. And maybe you forgot but I had to spend an entire week watching her get mouth raped by my own fucking cousin. When it comes to the four of us, the three of us die before she ever gets hurt,thatshouldn’t be a hard rule to follow.” Santos was rarely the type to yell, hardly the kind to verbalize so clearly why he was upset.
He never talked about what happened in that basement. Chalked it all up to it beingherexperience even though he was the one bearing most of the visible scars. She’d been marred by it too, but they were both processing it on such opposite ends of the spectrum that it was easy to forget they went through it together.
Like everything that came her waymadeher who she was, no matter how awful or painful it might have been. While for him it was ripping him apart. He stormed away, heading towards the several options of cars that had been left behind. Her expression had deflated to one full of pain and remorse.
I sighed heavily, dropping my shoulders before pulling her in again to place a kiss on the top of her head.
“Where the fuck are you going?” she asked as I turned away from her.
“I’m gonna see if Zerkos is still around for me to catch a ride with him. You should go with Santos,” I told her, knowing damn well I was risking sliding onto her bad side.
Her nostrils flared and she stared up at me through furrowed eyebrows.
“I’m not good at saying the right things. I don’t even know how to fix this,” she confessed, making me chuckle.
“Sunshine, you’re hot as hell and twice as stubborn, but you’re right, your communication skills are shit. Get in the car with Santos if you want a ride to your new home,” I told her, dropping my tone into that serious one I rarely took with her.
“That’s not fair.”
“Tough, you wanted three guys, you gotta take care of the fragile little egos that come with them too.” I pushed her in the direction he’d walked off to before I ran off to find Ronan, hoping he hadn’t left me behind yet.
27
Santos
“I’m sorry,” she said after five minutes of driving in silence.
“No you’re not,” I answered.
“You’re right, I’m not.”
“And you’d probably do it again too, if given the chance,” I added, turning my head just in time to get a glimpse of her biting her lip like I really knew her too well for her own good.
“I guess after watching my family go through so much pain, so much violence, I thought I was doing the right thing by prioritizing your safety above everything. The three of you are my family.” She shrugged, looking out the window while fidgeting with her nails.
“What do you think would happen to the three of us if he had hurt you? If he had killed you?” I asked.
“What would happen to me if it was the other way around?” She raised her voice.
I sighed.
“Stop trying to leave me all alone in this world,” she chastised.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” I gritted out.
“And what would you have done had I taken you up there with me?” she asked.
“I would have k—”
“Killed that motherfucker,” she interrupted, nodding like I was just so damn obvious. “You see the problem with that yet?”
“I do,” I admitted begrudgingly. “But my wanting to protect you isn’t because I don’t think you can’t protect yourself. It’s because you’ve been doing it for so long. Don’t you think it’s time to let someone else take a turn?”
“Take a turn?” she asked.
