My brothers were smart enough to remain silent even in the wake of my destruction right before them, no doubt knowing how likely I was to shatter if I was pushed even a little further in that moment. I wouldn’t care if there were guns pointed at me from all angles. Wouldn’t matter to me one single bit. I’d rip them all apart limb from limb and welcome any death they might be able to offer if they gave me even the slightest motivation to do so.
“You have twenty minutes to make the reservation on time. It’s at the Grand Avalon. Don’t keep your new bride waiting,” Pa said firmly, like nothing else had just passed between us at all.
I turned my eyes from my father and the rest of my rotten family as I strode from the room, nothing in my head but screams which grew louder with every step I took as they worked to drag me down into the dark place.
I stalked down the long hallways neither noticing nor caring if I saw anyone on my journey to the exit before throwing the double doors at the front of the mansion open and heading down the stairs to the drive where I’d parked my BMW.
I opened the door which now held a little bullet hole and dropped into the driver’s seat, taking a long drag from my cigarette before flicking it out the window and starting the engine.
The roar of the powerful car starting up gave the screaming a run for its money as I tore away from my father’s house and raced down the drive towards the setting sun and Hemlock City which awaited me in the distance.
The roads sped past in a blur of motion and I wasn’t even lucky enough to run across a patrolling cop car on the lookout for anyone breaking lockdown on my journey to the hotel, pulling up outside it three minutes early with Eminem trying his damn best to drown my pain in lyrical acrobatics which unfortunately didn’t even seem to be scraping the surface in that moment.
My fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel and I started counting in my head, working against the screams and the need to save the woman who was causing them. But that ship had long since sailed.
I was shaking. My muscles trembling from the force of my grief and self-hatred and worst of all, I couldn’t even remember Ava’s face anymore. Not really. She was all soft edges and half memories now. I couldn’t even be certain if the things I thought I remembered of her were true anymore. Had she loved strawberries or was it peaches? Was her hair to her shoulders or just below them? Had she been happy living the lie I’d let her paint for us? Had she really loved Niall the motor mechanic with the incredible bonus package, or had those lies eaten into her at night when I was late to come home once again? Had the times when she’d inadvertently seen me with blood staining my clothes or my hands really been forgotten as easily as they seemed to have been? Never to be mentioned after the moment when her eyes widened at the sight and she hurriedly turned away and took herself to bed. Did the lie of me make her happy? Had I even been happy? Or had I just been playing make believe like some kid who never quite figured out how to grow up?
I reached for my phone as I shut the engine off and the music cut out, my thumb moving to the familiar app as it hovered over the camera reel and I prepared to make myself watch Ava’s last moments all over again.
But I fell still with my thumb not quite finding it, my gaze slipping to the call list instead and before I could second guess myself, I opened it up and dialled out a number I hadn’t thought I’d need to dial in a situation anything like this one.
The phone began to ring and a stillness came over me like the surface of a pool where a crocodile lay in wait, eyeing the creatures fool enough to want a drink from it.
On and on it rang and the darkness seemed to push in deeper around me as the sun set somewhere in the sky and night began to take hold.
Finally, the call connected as I released a long breath at the sound of Brooklyn’s voice on the other end of the call.
“Hello?”
I said nothing, too lost in my demons to offer her more than my silence, but something unfurled in my chest at that simple word, at the knowledge that she was still there in the house, up to fuck knew what but safe at least, answering the house phone like she thought she lived there or some shit.
“Is that you, Horny Barry?” she growled suddenly. “Because I told you, if I catch sight of your beady little masturbation eyes ever again, I’m going to pluck them out of your face and feed them to a honey badger.”
“It’s me,” I murmured, a breath falling from my lungs as the tightness in them eased.
“Oh ho,” she said, her voice all full of outrage. “Needed a break from the big-boobed sex woman, did you? Thought you’d just call up tiny tata Brooklyn and remind yourself what small boobs sound like?”
There was hurt in her voice that I’d put there and bastard that I was, I couldn’t do anything to soothe it. This was better. She needed to hurt over me, hate me if she liked, anything other than want me. Because she couldn’t want me and I couldn’t want her, that was the one thing I was certain of. I couldn’t do it again. Not to her. Not to a woman who actually knew me, saw me and didn’t even shy away from the truth. She was…
“Well, here they are and I’m shaking them right now and nooo, you can’t hear them slapping together because they can’t do that. They just bounce, Niall. They bounce and I’m bouncing too and if I take my shirt off, they-”
“Mi sol, what are you doing?” Mateo rumbled in the background and I gritted my jaw.
“Just telling Niall some important things about myself,” she replied haughtily and my lips lifted just a little.
I wasn’t sure if she really had been topless with her tits bouncing up and down or not and I was trying pretty hard not to think about that, but my cock was seriously interested in the subject despite my protests to it.
“Give it here,” Mateo said and Brooklyn huffed out a breath before he took the phone from her. “What is it?” he growled down the line a moment later. “Is she in danger? Do I need to do something?”
My mind went to the way Kyan’s boys had circled around Tatum like a pack of wolves when she’d been under threat this morning, and my brows arched as I realised Brooklyn was forming her own pack of attack dogs too. I liked the idea of that.
“There’s no new threat,” I replied, unable to give any excuse for my call. “Just keep her safe from that giant in the basement,” I added, unsure when I’d started trusting Mateo with my little psycho, but I was somehow unworried about him doing anything to harm her while I was gone.
“Of course I will,” he replied scathingly then the line cut out and I was left in silence.
True silence.
Ava’s screams had abandoned me and I was left there in the cool air inside my car, with nothing but my own thoughts in my head and my cock aching for release.
The fucking thing was healed at least now, but I was yet to give it a whirl with the addition of my piercing and with the mental image my little psycho had just gifted me, it was damn tempting to do so right now before I was forced to endure the agony of Anastasia’s company.
But just as I moved my hand to my waistband, an obnoxious knock sounded on my window. I turned to look out at a very grumpy looking Russian arsehole who seemed to have been waiting a while.