Page 106 of Boy of Ruin
My eyes spring open and I’m staring at the dark ceiling in the guestroom. I had enough sense to fall into bed alone last night. After Finn was asleep, and O rode my dick while I fingerfucked Julie, coming inside a condom—which I haven’t worn in a long, long time.
I’d hate to kill both of them in my fucking sleep. Actually, I’m not so sure I’d mind, but then I’d have the kid and…no thanks.
“What are you fucking talking about?”
“She’s staying in Jeremiah’s cabin. Not far from you,” Maverick spells it out for me. At the sound of his name, I sit up, the room spinning as I do.
“Why the fuck—”
“Have you found anything out?” Maverick snaps.
I tug on one of my curls, yanking hard. “No, but what are you—”
“You know why?”
I blow out a breath, my temper rising with these fucking mind games. Why is my wife here? Why is she here with him and why the fuck is my brother calling me at four in the goddamn morning?
“Because whoever it is that’s fucking with us, they were at one of Jeremiah Rain’s clubs last night. In Virginia.”
My breath catches. “But Sid is—”
“She wasn’t there. But if you’d pay the fuck attention, you’d know I said she was near. You.” It sounds like his jaw is clenched. I flex my own, blinking away the sleep from my eyes. The heaviness. Weariness. Trying to pay attention, but I can’t keep up, my head spinning with every word Mav speaks. “But one of the longest employed dancers at his club was found dead. Cindy. Her throat was slit in the dressing room at the back of the club.”
My mouth drops open.
“Apparently, her and Rain sometimes fucked, on and off, according to the police reports.”
Of course we’ve already got our hands on those. “Cameras?” I croak out. If someone is after us, and after him too, then they could be coming after my wife next.
Elijah’s guard was nothing. Even the photos of Sid could’ve been a way to spook us. But another death? After the shit with the kitten here in Acid City, like a way to divert me and my brothers from focusing on Alexandria…whoever the fuck this is, they’re playing the long game.
“Disabled.” Maverick’s voice is clipped. “All of them. Whoever this is, this isn’t a spur of the fucking moment vengeance. They’re after us, and with Elijah’s guard, and eyes on Sid…they’re after all of us.”
I feel dizzy, dread coiling my stomach into knots.
“You need to get to her.”
I swallow down the tightness in my throat, my fingers shaking as I grip the sheets, closing my eyes, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my brow against them as I grip the phone so hard my palm starts to sweat. “Mav,” I choke out, thinking of when I woke up with the knife in my hand. My wife in my arms. How scared she was. She was never really terrified of me, not for long. Not like I secretly wanted her to be.
But after that night…she was.
“I’m not better.” I hate admitting that. I hate the pressure building behind my eyes. “I’m not better, and she chose him, and—”
“And our fucking family dragged her from her house. My girl too,” Mav snarls. “They took them, and you had already hurt her…” He trails off, his voice little more than a whisper. I know he isn’t trying to rub it in. I know he’s trying to make me understand. To see why she left.
But it doesn’t matter.
It hurts all the same.
She fucking left me.
She left me.
And if she thinks he can protect her, then fucking let him.
“I’ll give you the address. You need to get her, bring her back here, and we can figure this shit out together. But we have to have all of us in one place. And with Ignis—”
“Stop.” I whisper the word. Ignis. Fire in Latin. When the brotherhood is formed. But with me and Sid married, Coagula between the two of us, it was her turn to be brought into the fold. It would be the first ceremony between the Unsaints where a woman was there to participate as one of us.
