Page 153 of Like Grim Death: Part One
I cut my eyes to the knife embedded in the cabinet, only three feet from me.
The stairs creak, an eerie sound. But then the steps grow louder, each one a thud as whoever it is brazenly heads down here, toward us.
Atlas turns to me, dropping his hand. His face seems blank. No narrowed gaze, no pinched mouth. But when he speaks, his voice monotone, I understand every word.“If you don’t run, you will be the crazy one.”
Rain slashesagainst the roof of my car and I lift my eyes, staring into the rear-view mirror. Gray irises edged with brown look back at me in the darkness of the BMW. His face is expressionless, and in the few days he’s been staying at my house, I’ve got nothing on him. Not a read, not a feeling,nothing.
“Who is it?” Ezra asks, voice low.
I jump my eyes to him, sitting against the opposite window in the back seat, behind Maverick. “You think they told me?”
He tips back his flask but holds eye contact. When he lowers his vice, twisting the cap back on, he shrugs one shoulder. “Thought my dad might.”
Maverick laughs. It’s like a cackle from the passenger seat. Slowly, I turn to glare at him. His white teeth flash like fangs and he slouches down, getting comfortable as he cocks his head, staring out the windshield. We’re parked in an alleyway, across the street from our target tonight. Sevryn has to come on this first job with us, and I feel uneasy about it. I considered using him as a lookout, but I don’t trust him in my fucking car.
“Mikhail gave us these orders without running them by Elijah, bro,” Mav says to everyone in the car, but I know he’s talking about Ezra’s last comment. “He’s calling the shots while he’s down here and he’s making sure we obey while he’s at it.” My brother’s blue eyes cut to mine. “You obeying anything else of his you wanna tell me about it?” He drops his voice as he asks that.
I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, other elbow propped up on the ledge of my door. “If you think I’m taking orders from my dad’s brother on the low, I’d say you don’t fucking know me at all.”
He studies me a moment and it kind of pisses me off because what I said isn’t untrue. Then he finally just says, “We need to get moving,” with a snarl, lifting up his right hand and showing the handgun in it, his finger off the trigger.
As if sensing we’ll be outside soon, God makes sure to turn up the volume of the fucking rain and it comes down like hail over my car. I am never nothing if not unlucky.
I dart a glance at Sevryn, twisting in my seat to stare at him. He’s dressed in a blue hoodie, the hood up but it can’t cover all of his thick, wavy hair. Gray eyes peer out from beneath it, his elbows on his knees and hands together, fingers tucked under his chin.
“You follow orders, don’t eventhinkto reach for a weapon, and if you run off, I’m letting you go because I don’t give a fuck if you live or die.”
He doesn’t even blink, but he asks, very calmly, “Where are the others?”
Cain and Atlas. Cain was late tonight, and Atlas didn’t even show up—I know this is some sort of allowance because of Samson’s corpse. Afterward, Cain spoke to his father privately, the two of them winding their way through Sanctum and away from us while Boaz gave me this task, to kill some woman tonight in an apartment complex the 6 own. No reason, no explanation, just an order. I only obeyed after I was able to go home and check in on Sid and Rain. Being apart from them fucking kills me. Even Mav and Ez didn’t go back home. They don’t seem to have the pull I do. It’s like a fucking leash.
“Let’s go,” Mav says from the front, then he reaches for his door handle and opens it up, rain lashing wildly against the darkened streets and towering buildings of Alexandria.
“Never mind them,” I quickly say to Sevryn. “This is on you now.”
I pull down my hoodie over the butt of my gun, bowing my head as I shove my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt. Mav’s arm brushes mine as we cut down another alleyway, across the street from where my car is parked.
Behind me, Ezra and Sevryn follow. I can just make out the sound of their boots splashing along the puddles in the darkness. I glance at Mav’s tall, lean form, dressed all in black. We’re getting soaked because umbrellas are inconvenient to murders and none of us brought raincoats to Sanctum. I could’ve grabbed one at home, but it’s not as if we bothered to check the fucking weather forecast. Maybe I’ll make that Sevryn’s job for the next few weeks.
Mav’s light eyes seem to glow in the darkness as the scent of wet asphalt and garbage fills my nose from the city streets and his eyes meet mine for a second.
A sudden desperation seizes me, thinking of Sid and Ella on Corpus Avenue, alone now. Of what I’ve done behind my brother’s back in trying to get Ella a firm hold with the 6. I’ve treated her like shit anytime we’ve been in the near vicinity of one another, all while I’m attempting to ensure my uncles respect her.But how could they, if I can’t?
I think of Mav taking my phone from me the night I brought Sevryn home. Diverting another argument with Sid, another fuck-up as Rain’s father.
I owe you so much and when you find out what I’ve done, you might never let me pay you back for it.
Before I can snap myself out of all these emotions bearing down on me out of nowhere, a loudpopfills the air.
Something metallic pings somewhere close to my head and a hand comes to the back of my neck, grabbing me and pulling medown.I go to my knees, reach for my gun on reflex, finger on the trigger as I lift up my elbow, covering my head.
“Beside me,” I hiss, grabbing Maverick’s leg, hauling him close. As another crack goes off, I blink in the darkness and rain of the alley and see Sevryn is next to me, his head in his hands, but he was the one who pulled me down. Ezra is on his other side, elbow bent, and gun aimed up, his face turned away from me, staring at the entrance to the alley.
He’s the one they’ll be able to shoot the easiest.
Fuck that.
As Mav drops down to a squat beside me, his shoulder against the fire escape ladder the bullet glinted off of, I dart over, past Sevryn, intending to place myself on the other side of Ezra, blocking him from the entrance to the alleyway. I can see nothing through the onslaught of rain, just headlights as cars pass by, sludging up mud and water.
