“She will be taken somewhere else. Because real men are not raised by women, you hear me? My son will not be raised by a woman. Not without his father. No, you will be like me.”
I look at the car pulling out of the garage, driving my mother away. The look in her eyes when I shot that man. A cold panic like I’ve never felt spikes and spreads through me. I want my mother to explain to me what I did, why it was wrong, why it was wrong when it was all for her. Why she’s being taken away. My face is suddenly wet, and I get another slap, this one shooting me across the room and against the wall.
“None of that, boy! None of it. Now see that man?” My father points at the man covering his eye where I stabbed him, blood staining his shirt, his jeans. “He’s your uncle, Greyson. Uncle Eric. He’s my brother, he’s our family. We are your family. Apologize for what you did. If you’re good and I’m happy with you, I will let you see your mother. She will be kept alive only for you. She was family too, and I take care of my family—but she shouldn’t have betrayed me. She should never, ever, have taken you.”
It took me very little time to realize how this family worked. Very little time to realize that my father used only his newest men for these antics. The guy I killed, standing like some mannequin behind my mother, had been working for him for three days when my father whispered the dare in my ear, all the time expecting and hoping I’d prove myself Slater enough to make my first kill.
Many nightmares later, I supposed my mother had been trying to tell me not to shoot. If I hadn’t been so determined to defend her, if I’d proved to be weak, she’d be with me. I’d be left in school, thought unfit to be a part of this family. But I played my father’s game and instead of saving her, I doomed us both for the rest of our lives. I showed him I was thirteen and yes . . . I would kill, even him, for my mother.
I was good. I trained. I sucked back every emotion in me. I became nothing. Zero. And left when the promises and promises that I could see her turned out to be nothing but empty words . . . I followed every lead, and found nothing. A whole big world, and all these skills, and I still don’t know where she is.
A noise in my bedroom filters into my dreamlike state. I awaken instantly, and move by instinct, reaching under my pillow for my knife. Lightning fast, I flip around and send it flying, slamming it within a grazing hair from my intruder’s face, against the door.
“Zero?” a stunned voice says in the dark.
I’ve got my gun cocked and aimed before Harley finishes my name. Then I sigh. “Never do that again.” I shove up to my feet and flick on the lamp.
I turn back to my list. I’m anxious to get this over with. So many names. So many. I can’t even stand looking at her name, there, next to number five. “Your father wants to see you. He wants to know how the situation is going.”
My father has the oddest hours. We’re still off-season. Everyone is sleeping. The meds and the morphine they give him make him sleep all day, and wake only for small periods during the night. I grab the list and shove my legs into my slacks while Harley waits for me.
He grins. “You’ll enjoy that one.”
“Excuse me?”
“Number five?” he presses. “Your finger . . . it’s on number five.”
I drag my finger away and my heart starts pounding with the sudden urge to choke him as I fold the page into a tight little roll.
He didn’t attack her, but the fact that her name is on my list bugs me. The fact that all the guys know she owes us money. Wyatt, Harley, Thomas, Leon, C.C., Zedd, Eric, my father . . .
I think of her, feminine and vulnerable, exposed to these assholes, and things uncoil from inside me, like cobras out of a basket. Only she can make me feel this. Like I’m the home of a deadly hurricane, and it has no outlet. I told myself last night before going to bed that I would use what little honor I had left to protect this girl from me. I told myself She doesn’t want you. Not the real you. She wants a prince, and you’re the villain. You’re the one she’s working extra hours for. You, your father. I don’t want to remember how she smells like summer and the way she slides into bed. Warm. Hot. Real. Melanie. Number five on my list.
“This chick. She came to ask for more time to make her payment,” Harley says, “which got her name almost to the end of the list now. She asked for an extension. Leon told her she could become an extension of his fucking cock and they could forget about it. If she can’t pay, we’ll all pitch in for a chance to fuck her.”
I breathe hard.
Nope.
Doesn’t calm me.
There’s just no fucking way anyone will touch her. No FUCKING way.
“Go. I’ll go talk to my father in a bit,” I snap out darkly, holding his gaze pinned.
I slip into a shirt and then wait for him to leave. I’m so fucked up by what he said that I grab my knife and fling it at my target across the wall. I do it several times . . . I won’t leave this room until I’ve hit my bull’s-eye twelve times, straight up, which means I’m calm again. I could probably blame this possessiveness on my cock. I never did like sharing for shit. Or I can blame it on some false sense of justice—I never believed it fair when someone stronger took advantage of anyone weaker. Pure cowardice. But that’s not it either.
I wonder who’s taking her home.
Jaw clamped, I swing my knife and hit dead center.
? ? ?
“SON,” JULIAN SAYS, his eyes lighting up when he sees me. I hear the beep of his heart monitor, and notice, to his right, Eric is rolling up his shirt sleeves.
“Update?” I direct myself to Eric, crossing my arms as I assess the trio of nurses around them. I not only owe Eric his eye, I have owed him my life, here, in this fucked-up, strange family.
“He needs platelets,” Eric explains.