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“You can’t fight him.” I suck in air that trembles in my bruised lungs. “No one can.”
“Wrong.” The word curls around me like a blanket of hope. Hope, I’ve found in my twenty-five years, is a fickle thing. It likes to come around and stay just long enough to tear the fabric of comfort from under your feet, leaving you to free-fall.
I’d been hopeful for my relationship with Antonio. Hopeful for a future with a man who loved me. Who told me I was everything he wanted. Who let me talk about babies and the house I dreamed of—with all the rooms I wanted to fill with children. The walls I wanted to collect laughter within. I’d been hopeful until I wasn’t.
I pull in a breath that hurts deep inside my chest. “Antonio is the son of the California State Senator, Andre Diaz. He has his own political career that is quickly growing. He’s powerful and wealthy and the public loves him. He’s not only a monster, but he has monsters on call. You can’t fight him. No one can.”
five
Kane
True to her word, Candace called Tav and Cash. I haven’t been able to leave the hospital as I wait for the test results that determine whether or not she’s staying in the hospital or free to go home. She’s not going home to the place she was assaulted. I won’t let her.
Fuck.Dropping my head into my hands, I see the image of her bruised face with the stitched cuts branded there on my eyelids. Those eyes had looked at me with such fear only a week ago. For a week, I’d thought of little else but her. Hell, she’d entered my thoughts so much, I’d thought,feared, I was edging on obsession. The thing that made my father crazy for mymother. The illness she vowed she loved him for regardless.
It’d been that fear that stopped me from looking for her. From using her license plate number to find her. From crossing boundaries better left uncrossed.
A heavy hand falls on my shoulder. “Worried about you, man.”
“Yeah.” I say, and add in my mind,me too.
There’s a heavy pause before Cash mutters, “Been off since Wrenlee.”
It’s hard for him to say those words. Hard for him to go back to that place. Harder for him than me. Still, I flinch. But I say nothing. I allow not a single thought to pass my lips. Not a, “The death-gray color of her skin haunts me in the night.” Not, “The way you screamed her name like a prayer and threat to Heaven above scarred me.” Not, “I’d thought she’d been killed. Murdered. Snuffed out. Just like?—"
I cut off the thought. I’m not going there.Can’tgo there.
It’s the reason I left my home and family behind. The training. The flame I’d snuffed and the mother that had screamed. The way her knees had cracked against cement in grief, my father’s hand on my shoulder as he made me relay the news—her child had been a traitor.
Show no mercy.
Entertain no compassion.
Stand tall at the top.
“You’re a monster who walks within the skin of a man.”
I force the thoughts from my mind. The memories. All I’d done before and after.
I keep the monster contained now. Imprisoned. Under sex-heavy sedation.
But I’ll let him free for her.
I’ll let him loose on the world—let him demolish everything—for her. For Sunshine.
For warmth where I’ve felt nothing but barren cold for so long.
I lift my head from my hands, seeing my brother’s look at me with caution. “She’s mine.”
I haven’t shared my past with my brothers, not really. They know what I can let them know. It’s as much to protect them as it is to keep their opinions of me intact. That mask fitted firmly in place. I’m the fun guy. The never-serious, fling-loving, guy. For a while, I enjoyed living life so carefree. After the way I’d been raised, a man of two faces, the back-up to the golden boy who sits on the throne of Volk Vault Bank, and the next in line to the devil who rules over the hell of the Volkov Bratva. I’m the third brother. The spare. The one who takes over when the first fails—ifthe first fails. It’s no wonder I have multiple personalities. That I flip between masks as easily as another mightchange an outfit.
Clearing my throat, I sit back to look at my chosen brothers. The men born into families I was initially sent to infiltrate, to grow connections with for both sides of the Volkov businesses. They’ve become so much more than connections. They’re my family.
I say again, “She’s mine.”
“Yours?” Tav’s deep voice charges the small corner of the hospital waiting room where we’ve gathered. “How do you even know her?”
“My soul knows her,” I explain simply, using the explanation my mother uses when she speaks of my father. “I’ll get to know her.”
