by Penelope Sky
“Not he, himself—”
“Doesn’t fucking matter. He’s just as guilty.”
I stared at her. “Then I’m just as guilty.”
Her face tightened into a look of pain. “You’re nothing like him.” She breathed through the emotion making her chest rise and fall at a quicker pace. “Don’t say that again. You would never do any of this shit if it were up to you. You’ve asked him to stop. You saved me. Don’t compare yourself to that fucking psychopath.” Angry tears came from the corners of her eyes. “Why do you allow this to happen? Why do you do nothing? Why do you continue to work here?”
I stared at the TV.
“Magnus… Answer me.”
I tilted my chin to the floor. “You wouldn’t understand…”
“Try me.”
I held my silence.
“Tell me…”
“I continue to work here because I owe him.”
“Owe him for what?”
I inhaled a deep breath. “For saving my life.”
“You shouldn’t have to owe him for that. Any brother would—”
“Shut up.” I rose to my feet and regarded her. “You want me to tell you or not?”
She pulled her knees to her chest and shut her mouth tightly, like she needed to clench her jaw not to speak.
I looked away for a moment, reliving the memory, feeling the raindrops against my fingertips when my hands hit the concrete. I remembered how hard my body worked to sprint to safety. I remembered my brother’s voice as he told me to run. I wouldn’t have believed the story if I hadn’t seen him in the flesh…standing on the porch with his gun aimed at our backs. “When I was fifteen, I was asleep in my house…”
Her eyes softened when she realized how far back this story went.
“My sister’s room was across the hall, my parents’ bedroom at the far end. My eldest brother’s room was next to mine. I was dead asleep, drugged so I couldn’t hear anything. Fender was supposed to be home before curfew, but he didn’t make it on time. When he came into the house, he tried to sneak into his room, but then he heard a muffled gunshot. Assuming there was a burglar in the house, he grabbed a knife and went to my mom’s room to wake her…but she’d been shot in the head.”
She inhaled a deep breath, quieting her gasp so she wouldn’t interrupt me.
“When he went to my sister’s…she had the same fate.” I could picture it all without actually having seen it with my own eyes. I still remembered the layout of that house vividly, knew how the house looked at that time of night, the lights from the city coming through the windows to light up the hallway. “The gunman went into our brother’s room, and Fender knew there was nothing he could do. The gun went off. He came to my room…and I was the only one still alive.”
Tears fell down her cheeks as she pictured it in her head, mourning people who’d been dead for nearly fifteen years.
“I was drugged, so I couldn’t get up. So, Fender picked me up and carried me down the stairs. He didn’t make it to the door before the gunman came after him. He raised his gun and fired, but Fender got me out of the house without taking a bullet. We were young at the time and not as strong as we are now, so he dropped me on the stairs. It jolted me awake. I didn’t have time to process what was happening. Fender told me to run, so I did…and we sprinted for our lives, gunshots firing behind us.”
She covered her mouth with both hands to muffle her words. “Dear god…”
“Fender saved my life…and he’s all I have now.” I hoped that would be enough to help her understand the connection we shared, why I did nothing even though I didn’t agree with the shit he did.
“Did you ever find out who did it?” She wiped at her tears, but they just kept coming.
I nodded. “My father.”
She stilled in horror, like the information was too sickening to process, like she couldn’t allow the words to enter her mind because they were so wrong. Her hands moved over her mouth again, and she cried quietly.
It was too hard to look at her, so I turned away. “Shit like that leaves a permanent mark that never goes away. I didn’t have to see it with my own eyes, but he did. He had to discover my mother’s body, my sister’s, listen to the bullet leave the barrel as it killed my brother…and that’s why he is the way he is. It’s no justification for his actions, I understand that, but…that’s why. I have more humanity because I didn’t have to witness it myself, didn’t have to experience that firsthand. His descriptions are my memories. It’s like looking at the sun on the TV. It’s not the real thing, so it doesn’t do physical harm to your eyes like it would if you looked at it directly.” I stared at the TV for a moment longer before I turned back to her. “I don’t condone his decisions, I don’t condone this camp, but he’s all I have. I’ve tried to talk him out of it many times, but he doesn’t listen. And I’m obligated to work here…because of what he risked to save me from our father. We are bound by this event forever. I don’t expect you to understand that because you have no idea how it feels, but I will never move against my brother because of it. I just…can’t. If I kill him, I’m no different from our father.”
We didn’t talk much for the next few days.
She still wanted me every night as if nothing had changed. The passion was at the same intensity, but she did hold me tighter when she slept afterward, practically sleeping on top of me even though it was too warm for that.
I expected more questions about it, but she seemed so upset by the story that she needed time to get past the initial trauma before she could talk about it, like it had happened to her.
I lay in bed beside her, half of her body on top of mine while we reclined under the sheets naked, her bare tits against my body because I’d just been on top of her minutes ago. But I could tell she wasn’t ready for sleep because her breathing hadn’t changed. I usually waited until she was under first before I allowed myself to drift off.
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice broke the silence, lacking her usual confidence.
I already knew what she wanted to ask about. “Yes.”
She turned quiet for a while, as if she didn’t want to ask the question anymore. “Do you know why he did it?”
“Money.”
That wasn’t sufficient for her, so she asked for more. “What do you mean?”
“My father was a count. I come from a noble line.”
She stilled before propping herself up on one elbow to look down at me, like she couldn’t believe what I’d confessed. Her eyes shifted back and forth as she looked into mine, having even more questions now. “That’s why you have the chateau, why the butler calls Fender his Highness… You’re a count.”
“Fender is. I’m not.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“He’s the eldest sibling, so the title goes to him. But it was just a title at one point because my father pissed away all our money. Rather than confess his crimes and live with the shame, he decided to kill all of us.”
“Jesus…”
“Over money.” It still sounded ridiculous, after all this time. “When Fender and I ran from the house that night, we had to start over from nothing. We didn’t go to the police because we knew they would just hand us back to him…and he’d finish the job. We survived on the streets and worked for money any way we could get it. It was the beginning of our criminal careers. This camp was born from that nearly a decade ago. When I told Fender we were being inhumane, his response was always, ‘the world is inhumane,’ and carried on.” I looked at her as she leaned over me, her long hair on my chest.
“What happened to him?” She looked down into my face, her hand on my chest as she tried to comfort me.
It was a long time ago, and I didn’t need to be comforted.
“We killed him.”
She had no reaction, as if she expected me to say that.
“When we had enough power, we hunted him down—and shot him in the back of the head.” Fender was the one who’d pulled the trig
ger, but I wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same. “He went into hiding because he was too much of a coward to finish himself off…like the rest of us. We eventually reclaimed our noble titles and funded our family name with all the money we’d earned doing what we do. Fender didn’t want the chateau, so he gave it to me.”
Her fingers gently rubbed into my chest as she kept her gaze on me. Then she dropped it, watching her fingers move across my chest, her eyes carrying the grief that had been on my shoulders for many years. “I’m so sorry…about all of it.”
When people said something like that in response to your trauma, it was usually just a common phrase that needed to be stated so they wouldn’t seem rude. But I knew she meant it.
“I can’t even imagine…”
When we’d found my father and finished the job, it hadn’t given me any satisfaction. He was weak and scared, begging for his life like a blubbering idiot. He’d drugged everyone in the house so he could kill them in their sleep. He didn’t even look them in the eye like a man. He was so fucking despicable. It was unbelievable that someone so pathetic had claimed the lives of people I loved. He took my family away…my life away. What kind of men would Fender and I be today if none of that had happened? “Don’t ask me again to kill my brother because I won’t. And I hope now you understand why I won’t.”
Nineteen
Fender
I’d never told anyone my family secret before.
Aristocrats and socialites knew because the history of our noble line was of great interest to them. Our family was brought into shame after losing all our assets, but Fender and I returned them and reclaimed what was rightfully ours. But I never told the women I was seeing, and I imagined Fender didn’t either.
I told Raven because I had to.
She would never understand my situation otherwise.
As a young man without the muscle definition he possessed today, he carried me from my bed and strained his body to get me out—and could have lost his life in the process. But he saved me from a senseless death.
I’d always feel indebted to him.
But there was also this unspeakable connection between us, two survivors who were permanently angry, permanently sorrowful. No one else in the world would understand us except the other. I didn’t agree with a lot of things he did, and he took almost everything too far, but he was the one person immune to my acts of vengeance.
Once we got our hands on some money, he hit the weights and bulked up into the beast he was today. His physique was a part of his defense, to know that he’d always be strong enough to carry me—even though that would never happen again. He was built like an ox, with muscles so thick that if someone stabbed him, the blade would never reach his organs.
I had an athletic build, all muscle and no fat, but I was definitely on the leaner side. I was just too active to be that bulky.
There were only a few days left before we returned to Paris. I was eager to get Raven out of there, but it also seemed as though Alix had let it go. He would have done something by now, otherwise.
She and I didn’t talk about Fender or the murders of my family again. Everything that needed to be said had been said, and we went back to our quiet, domesticated life. There were a lot of things I liked about Raven, but her intuition was one of the qualities I valued most. She could read my moods without asking me a single question. She knew how to be what I needed her to be at any given time. She also didn’t need a conversation to be entertained. She was perfectly comfortable just being with me, watching TV in silence, running her fingers down my chest as she lay close to me on the bed made for one.
All the women in the outside world were weak and superficial.
Raven was so much deeper.
I didn’t spend all my free time in the cabin because I didn’t want to piss off the guards. If they knew I was slacking, they would know exactly why, and it would be another excuse for retribution. So, I made a point to show my face as much as possible.
I stepped into the communal cabin to do my evening checks, and the guys were at the table. Every seat was filled—but Alix wasn’t there. I loathed bumping into him, which was inevitable because we were required in the same area multiple times of day, so any opportunity not to look at his piece-of-shit face was a good one.
I went into the weapons room and did my checks, even though the only prisoner there who would have the balls to take anything already had a knife in her pocket and no reason to steal. The guards didn’t have much of a reason either, but it was part of the routine, so I did it.
I’d just shut one of the drawers and locked it when I heard a distant scream.
I stilled, my ears straining to hear it again. It was faint, like it was far away or just muffled inside the bedroom of a cabin. My heart was steady, and it was impossible to get a spike in my pulse because I was always in a state of eternal calm, but that scream sent a tremor of fear down my spine.
I stopped what I was doing and immediately left the room to get to the front door.
The scream was louder. “Let me go!”
It was her. I sprinted to the door.
“Now!” Eric jumped on me and slammed me into the wall.
My body hit and bounced back like I was made of rubber instead of muscle. Nathan grabbed me next, Eric jumping on my back.
I twisted and threw them off, still moving toward the door because nothing was going to stop me from getting to her. “I will fucking kill you!”
Eric yanked me down, Nathan kicked my feet from underneath me, and then another guard was on top of me, pinning me to the hardwood with six hundred pounds from their body weights. Nathan pressed his knee into my back while pinning down my arms.
Her voice came loud, full of terror, full of tears. “Magnus!”
“Get the fuck off me! I swear to fucking god, I will kill all of you!” I pushed as hard as I could, tried to wiggle free, but it was no use. I couldn’t fight the weight of three men with my hands tied behind my back. I breathed hard, spit dripping to the floor because I was so furious that I practically frothed at the mouth. Every muscle in my body burned because I continued to fight against a weight I could never conquer. The pain was excruciating, not their restraints, but having to listen to her scream, beg for me to help her, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Please…please let me go.”
She screamed again. “Please don’t!”
My eyes burned with a sheen of angry tears. “Eric, come on… Nathan…” I begged without shame, abandoned my pride because all I cared about was the woman I’d promised I would protect. I should have killed Alix. I should have done something instead of looking the other way. “Please…”
Then the screams abruptly stopped.
I breathed against the floor, blinking my eyes so the tears dripped to the floor along with the stream of saliva that fell from my mouth with my screams. “Let me up. Now.” Their hold seemed to slacken, so I tried to jerk free, but it didn’t work.
They all stared at each other then at the door.
Then a voice sounded, a voice I’d recognize anywhere, a voice I remembered in my greatest memories and some of my worst. “Let her go.”
I started to breathe hard again, imagining the scene outside. Fender must have entered the camp on his horse with his guards at that moment, witnessing whatever the fuck Alix was doing to her.
The guys stopped holding me down because they recognized his voice too.
I pushed to my feet then tumbled forward slightly, my legs carrying me quicker than my body could allow. Revenge wasn’t on my mind at the moment because all I cared about was the woman screaming my name. I pushed through the front door and took the stairs to the ground. It was nighttime, but the lights lit up the horrific scene in front of me.
Raven was on her knees on the ground, completely naked.
Alix was standing behind her with a knife in his grasp, like he’d held it to her throat just seconds ago.
Raven covered her chest with her folded arms and
kept her gaze averted.
Fender stood there in black jeans, boots, and a black t-shirt. His guards were positioned behind him, holding the reins to his horse so she wouldn’t run off until she was put in the stables. Fender faced Alix directly, staring down at him with one of those stoic gazes that could mean anything.
Alix just stood there, breathing hard, still as a statue.
I strode across the ground and headed right for Raven, pulling off my shirt so I could cover her with it.
Fender didn’t look at me when I approached. His eyes were on Alix. “This woman doesn’t belong to you—and you know that.”
Alix was stupid enough to argue. “She’s a prisoner—”
“Don’t. Speak.”
Alix inhaled a deep breath, a little timid in Fender’s presence.
“She belongs to Magnus.” Fender pulled a blade from his pocket and placed the tip right against Alix’s heart, the point digging into the fabric of his shirt. “Touch her again, and I will not hesitate to slam this deep into your heart and make it stop.”
Alix didn’t even breathe.
I made it to Raven and pulled the shirt over her body.
The look she gave me…was indescribable. She looked at me like I was a hero, when I wasn’t the one who saved her. She pulled the shirt to her thighs and clutched the fabric like it was a bulletproof vest. Silent tears still dripped down her cheeks.
Unable to resist my natural instincts, I cupped her face and brushed her tears away with the pads of my thumbs. I wanted to do more, to kiss her, to hold her, but I couldn’t do that right now. I got to my feet then extended my hand to her.
She stared at it for a moment, her eyes watery but a slight smile coming through, and then she took it.
I pulled her to her feet.
Fender continued his showdown with Alix. “Magnus was punished for his crimes. He’s increased shipments to distributors, lost his own pay to make up for losses, rebuilt this camp, and has atoned for those sins. If you can’t let your need for revenge die, then perhaps you need to die.”
