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Okay, fine, maybe not, but I will never, ever agree to be part of one of his schemes again. This time, he got me due to the fact that our mom should get out in less than eight months, and we both agree that she needs help we can’t get in the city. She needs actual rehab, maybe even therapy, and no access to her old habits and dealers of those habits.
Money. It all comes down to money in the end.
After a while, I roll over and check my phone, and I see that two hours have passed. Two hours and I’m still wide-awake. At this rate, I won’t fall asleep before sunrise, so I might as well relieve my brother from watch duty so he can try to sleep since he has a big day coming up.
Meeting with Cormac O’Connor. The sentence almost doesn’t want to formulate in my head, that’s how crazy it sounds.
I yank my phone off the charger and roll out of bed, stuffing it into my shorts’ pocket. The house is dark, but it’s the house I grew up in, so I can navigate it easily without a speck of light. The only bit of light comes from downstairs, and I only see it once I’m halfway down the steps. I come into the living room to find my brother lounging on the couch, playing some cupcake game on his phone, the gun laying on his stomach.
When I move between him and our guest, I set my hands on my hips and glare at him, but he doesn’t notice me, too entranced in that silly little game to realize a third person is in the room.
Jesus. Silus could’ve woken up and Max wouldn’t have known.
I cough, and the action finally alerts my brother to my presence. He drops his phone and sits up, grabbing the gun with his other hand as we meet eyes. “Oh, shit,” he whispers. “It’s just you. I thought—”
“If I was one of Silus’s men coming to save his boss, you’d be dead right now.”
Max gives me a stupid grin. “Yes, but you’re not, so—”
I point to the stairs. “Go get some sleep. I’ll take watch. I can’t sleep anyway, and it’s clear you’re capable of relaxing even when you’re under a lot of stress, so you might as well just go.” I snatch the gun from him and collapse on the couch beside him.
“You’re mad now, Thea, but I’m telling you, this is our ticket out of this shitty city. You’ll see.” He jostles my shoulder once before getting up, and he doesn’t spare our guest a single look as his feet shuffle to the stairwell.
“You better fucking sleep,” I call out to him, “and not stay up all night playing that game!”
Max gives me a middle finger before heading upstairs.
With a sigh, I turn my focus to our guest. He hasn’t moved an inch, mostly because he’s restrained with an ungodly amount of duct tape and handcuffs, but also because he’s still passed out, his head slumped forward.
If he could never wake up, that’d be great.
No, wait. If he never wakes up, that means he’s dead, and then Max and I will have a host of different problems to deal with and be out of the money we would’ve gotten for him. No dead mafia bosses in my house, please.
Unlike Max, I don’t play any mindless games on my phone. I get bored of the silence after a while, so I do turn the TV on—though I turn the volume down real low. Max and I don’t have cable, and we only pay for streaming services when there are deals. Right now, there’s nothing, which leaves us with whatever we can grab for free from the air with the antenna.
Seriously, the best thirty dollars we ever spent. We get local news and a bunch of other broadcasted channels. The only problem now, however, is that it’s so late at night, or so early in the morning, depending on how you look at it, is that nothing’s really on. Basically, it becomes nothing but background noise, but at least it helps me stay calm, gives me something else to pay attention to besides the large, dangerous man a few feet away.
I find some channel that only does reruns of a show where people bid on storage units without knowing what’s inside. It’s the most interesting thing I’ll come across at this hour, so I leave it on that channel.
It’s actually an interesting show. There’s some weird shit out there people buy and store away, forget about, and then either die or stop paying on their unit. This one unit has an entire golf simulator in it.
Who the hell needs something like that? People with money, man. They’re ridiculous.
A groan fills the air, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My gaze is on the TV, but that groan… it was a manly groan, the kind of groan a man might make when he’s starting to wake up after being drugged. As I let out a shaky breath, my back straightens and I slowly tear my eyes away from the TV and bring them to our guest.
To Silus fucking McLean.
He’s in the process of slowly lifting his head, his dark brows furrowed but his eyes still closed. His shoulders snap into place as he tries to move his arms, but when he realizes he can’t, his eyelids sluggishly lift—and when they do, those pitch-black eyes of his instantly find me.
I cannot emphasize this enough, but fuck.
“You,” Silas mutters, still out of it. His gaze is glassy, a little unfocused even though he’s staring at me. I don’t know what it’s like to wake up after being drugged, but I can’t imagine you bounce back like a spring flower after a late snow.
All I can think of to say is an awkward, “Hi.”
Should I get Max? No. I’m going to have to deal with this guy sooner or later, as much as I don’t want to, so might as well get over the initial awkwardness now.
“What…” Finally, he looks around, at our house, or what he can see of it from where he sits. “Where am I?”
