Page 7 of Boy of Ruin
I don’t think she really likes nice.
Nicolas comes to stand beside me, leaning his elbows on the railing, clasping his hands together as he looks down at the inground pool below this deck and the gate around it which Sid has been sneaking in and out of to run at night.
I’ve had Nicolas watch her on the camera every fucking night, but three hours ago, I happened to get home in time to see her leave myself.
She’s a fucking brat.
I love her for it.
“So,” Nicolas says as I lean my hip on the rail, angling toward him so I can read his body language when he speaks. The tremor in my hand is worse tonight than it usually is, and I should’ve finished that joint, but I know that’s not why it’s so bad.
It’s the stab wounds.
My target tonight just didn’t want to fucking die, so I overworked myself, and I had blood on my black shirt to prove it. Doesn’t help I hit an arterial vein, didn’t move out of the fucking way in time. But the rat that was talking a little too loudly to the cops is out of his misery.
I need to shower. But when I saw Sid slipping away in the night, glancing over her shoulder but not catching sight of me upstairs watching from the window as I started to change, I couldn’t resist the urge to follow her.
Now, I can’t sleep.
Thinking someone is out there. Watching us. Her.
Is it him?
“Do you think she needs to see a doctor?”
I arch a brow at Nicolas. “I had the midwife come last week.” We listened to the strong, fast heartbeat together as I held her hand. I clench my jaw as I think about the fact it’s not my baby she’s carrying, but one day.
One day it will be.
Nicolas hangs his head, his shoulders curving inward as he does. “Not that kind of doctor,” he says softly.
I grind my teeth together before asking, “Then what kind of doctor are you fucking talking about?”
He lifts his head up, his eyes searching mine, but he doesn’t say anything.
Heat flushes through my body with the way he’s looking at me.
“She’s not crazy,” I bite out.
He runs his thumb over his bottom lip, slips his hand into the pocket of his running shorts and looks away from me as he straightens from the railing. “I’m not saying she is. But she’s had a lot of trauma in a short period of time and—”
“Don’t talk to me about trauma. Me and her both know trauma. We were born into fucking trauma, Nicolas.” I glance at the cigarette burns on his arm, visible in the lights from the porch, and I see a muscle strum along his jaw. “You might’ve had it rough, but us? Me and Sid? What we went through makes hell look like fucking Disneyland.” I turn my back to him and feel my hand tremble in my pocket. Rage lights through me all over again and I have to bite it back before I break Nicolas’s fucking neck. “She’s not crazy. If she said she saw someone, she fucking saw someone. And you missed them.” I head toward the door, desperate to be near her. To touch her. Hold her. If she’d let me, fuck her.
“And what about you?” Nicolas asks quietly at my back. “Did you see anyone?”
I clench my jaw and close my eyes for a second. I don’t bother answering him as I pull open the sliding glass door and step inside. But before I can slam it closed, he speaks again.
“Maybe she didn’t imagine it, but if she didn’t…” He takes a breath, and I tense, a whirlwind of anger and pain blowing through me. “You know Ignis is coming, right? You know he isn’t going to let her out of it? In his own way, he wants to keep her safe too.”
I ignore his last sentence because it kind of makes me want to shoot him, but just like that, with the name of one of the many fucking ceremonies the idiots do, all those memories I try so fucking hard not to dwell on, they come rushing back, nearly crippling me. My hand shakes violently in my pocket and I want to fucking cut it off. Rip apart any piece of me that’s connected to them.
I can’t wait to get my hands around Lucifer Malikov’s neck so I can pay him back for everything he ever did to me. Everything he ever let happen. How he took her from me.
“He’s going to die before then,” I answer Nicolas. “And after that? We’re fucking leaving this place behind.” I slam the door closed after me and head into the house to find the only girl I’ve ever loved. The one whose heart I’m going to have to break when I plunge a knife through her husband’s fucking brain.
I watch her sleep through a crack in the door, marveling at how she could pass out so fast after being stalked through the forest.
She must be exhausted.
