Justin says something that I can’t hear—there’s no audio—and then removes his phone from his pocket. He types something out, and my own phone buzzes with incoming text messages.
Maxine is safe for now; she’s not my prisoner, but I am with her. Make sure you behave. So long as you follow the rules, she’ll have a splendid time. No harm will come to her.
Enjoy your reunion with Parrish.
That is not a request.
Justin ends the call, and I shove the phone back in my blazer pocket. I can barely breathe. I can barely think. I never agreed to trade Parrish for Maxine; that isn’t a bargain that I can live with.
So far, Justin has kept his word. Do I believe him now? What if I still tell on him? Would Maxine be dead before the authorities arrived? There was that cop tonight; I can’t forget that. Justin couldn’t possibly control everyone in the FBI though, could he? What is he doing right now with my sister? There are other people present; she appears to be there of her own free will.
What do I do? What the actual fuck do I do?!
My eyes meet Parrish’s as he finally gets a moment to himself, and I find my feet moving of their own accord. I close the distance between him and wrap my arms around his waist as he does the same to my neck, pulling my face against his chest.
Tess is right there, staring at us. So is Kimber. But … this could look like a stepbrotherly hug, couldn’t it?
Either way, I can’t resist. I can’t stay away from him. Physical distance is nearly painful at this point. The three of us risked and sacrificed so much to bring him back; I have to savor this moment while I can.
Because you never know when you might not get another.
More than once in the last few weeks, I’ve wondered if every conversation I had with Parrish would be the last. It makes me care a lot less that Tess is staring at us, that she might be wondering, that I could be upsetting Kimber.
“Don’t be scared; I’ve got this,” Parrish whispers, his voice so low that I’m sure only me and Maxx, who’s standing on my right, can hear him. Even Chasm, who’s just off to my left, probably can’t hear. “You don’t have to fight alone.”
Parrish releases me, standing up and catching the blanket as it slides down his shoulders, revealing all of that gorgeous ink. I see the dragon tattoo on his chest, the blue-green one that I scraped my teeth over once upon a time. His almond eyes narrow slightly as he drags them away from my gaze and over to Tess.
“I want him taken to the hospital,” she says, gesturing at one of the paramedics. Several more cars pulling down the length of the driveway draw my attention. One of them is Paul. The others are … FBI, maybe?
“I don’t want to go to a hospital,” Parrish declares, lifting his chin in that haughty way of his. “I’m fine.”
I’m not the only one who drops their gaze to his chest.
To the numerous slices ticked across his skin, counting the days.
There shouldn’t be so many; I should’ve found him sooner.
Parrish looks down and then frowns, reaching his fingers to one of the fresher wounds and swiping it through the blood. Then he glances at me, and his eyes widen slightly. I drop my gaze to my own chest, to the ruby red streaks across my pale skin and the soft pink of my princess dress.
Then I look up again and catch his attention.
“You need a hospital, Parrish,” Tess says, her voice so gentle and soft and tender that I don’t recognize her as anyone I’ve ever met. This is not the bio mom I know. She touches his shoulder, running her hand down his arm.
He tears his gaze from me to look at her again.
“They’re not that deep,” he argues, which is silly. The newer ones are bleeding; the older ones are scabbed. But none of them look pretty. “I want to go home.”
“Parrish!” Paul comes around the corner with Amelia’s hand clutched in one of his, Henry’s in the other. Ben is just ahead of them, his eyes lighting up as his glasses slide down his nose.
“Pear-Pear!” he shouts, and Parrish’s entire face brightens up.
“Don’t call me—” he starts, but then Ben is launching himself at his midsection and squeezing him so tightly that he just laughs. The twins break away from their father, grabbing onto their brother and clinging to him as Tess gently admonishes them.
“Is your sister okay?” Chasm asks, looking over at me. He drops his hand down to capture mine, curling our fingers together. Parrish is laughing and tousling our siblings’ hair, but then his eyes slide over, take note of our conjoined hands, and then flick away again. Chasm’s jaw tightens and he very carefully, very purposefully unhooks his fingers from mine.
“She’s okay,” I murmur back. “For now.”
I surreptitiously hand him the phone. Once he’s got it, he can just pretend it’s his, so he lifts it up, blatantly reading the text before handing it to Maxx.
“Wonder what’s going to be different this time,” he murmurs, putting the phone in the pocket of his white jacket.
I don’t have any answer for that.
Once again, the idea that I might have to kill the Seattle Slayer myself comes to mind.
This really is a never-ending cycle. I’m not surprised. I just … wish it didn’t have to be Maxine. She’s too sweet, too gentle, too trusting. She won’t last weeks in a dungeon with bloody wounds all over her chest; she just won’t.
“You need to be seen by a doctor,” Tess persuades again as Paul looks his son over with a physician’s eye, probably wondering if he can ‘fix’ the scars that Parrish will undoubtedly have after his wounds heal. He gives him a hug, even as Parrish stiffens up slightly, and then relaxes, putting one hand on his father’s back.
“Fine, I’ll go,” Parrish agrees, looking up as the two FBI agents I’m now familiar with approach. The dark-haired one, Itsumi Takahashi, is the first to speak.
“How are you doing, Parrish?” she asks, and I let out a long sigh as I close my eyes.
This is going to be a long night, that’s for damn sure.
I stand there, a dichotomy of hot and cold, happy and sad.
Makes sense, considering all that I know about Justin Prior.
Nothing that man ever does is singularly focused, is it?
I open my eyes again to see Tess, Paul, and Parrish begin a low conversation with the two women. Tess breaks away slightly, but she doesn’t move more than a foot past her son.
“Paul and I are going to ride with Agent Takahashi and meet the ambulance at the hospital. I hate to ask this, but could each of you drive one of the cars home? Dakota, you’ll be in charge of your brothers and sisters.” She holds out a pair of key fobs. Maxx takes one while Chas grabs the other.
Kimber moves up to stand beside us, arms crossed over her chest, eyes downcast, but she doesn’t argue.
“We’ve got this,” Chasm agrees, his eyes flicking to Parrish’s yet again. Parrish meets his friend’s gaze before looking over at Maxx, and then down at me. He maintains eye contact with me, dragging that tension out between us. I missed him so much, I think, realizing that the feeling is entirely mutual.
That beautiful energy we shared our first night together, when we reluctantly slipped away into our separate bedrooms, it’s still there. It’s there, and it’s poignant, and it fucking burns.
“I’ll see you three later then,” Parrish tells us, but then Tess is grabbing his arm and encouraging him to climb into the back of the ambulance.
“See you soon,” Maxx agrees, squeezing the key fob in his fist. He offers me a smile, but it isn’t much different than the one he’s been wearing for weeks.
Because Parrish is back, and my sister is now the one in trouble.
After a quick round of rock-paper-scissors between Maxx and Chasm, it’s agreed that I’ll ride with Maxx and Ben while Chasm takes Kimber, Amelia, and Henry home. The younger kids are so excited, it’s like Christmas when they burst in the door of the Vanguard house, laughing and screeching and racing around. Even Ben is participating. Wel
l, okay, he follows his younger siblings with a smile and keeps adjusting his glasses, but he’s there. He’s happy.
We all end up sitting together in the living room/kitchen area while Maxx whips up something quick to eat and feeds the kids. Chasm and I stay seated at the table together, observing Kimber as she curls up in a chair and scrolls her phone while the other three immerse themselves in a game on the large TV above the fireplace. I can’t lie: it makes my fingers twitchy.
It feels like it’s been eons since I had time to game properly, I think, biting on my lower lip.
“Hey,” Chas says softly, drawing my attention over to him. My Maxine-phone lies in the center of the table, screen black, just waiting for Justin’s next message. “It’ll be alright. We got Parrish back; we can do this again.”
“I know we can, but … what’s the endgame here?” I ask, reaching out a hand to touch his. He stiffens up slightly, and I remember the way Parrish’s eyes landed on our entwined fingers earlier. Chasm tightens his mouth into a thin line and then grabs my hand in a tight grip, brushing his thumb over my knuckles.
In a video game, the word endgame means a lot of things. It can be the final boss, it can be the content that happens after you’ve completed all of the game’s preset challenges, it can be the player versus player action when you achieve the highest level.
In a game of chess, it’s the final stage when forces are reduced, and there are few pieces left on the board.
In the world of fandom, it’s the final relationship between the characters, the one that works out at the very end of the story.
In the dictionary, it simply means the final stage of an action, plan, or progress.
So. What is Justin’s version of ‘endgame’? Where are we going with this? What does he want?
Me.
Okay, so that’s an easy one. But how? What does he want for us? To rule Medina together? To work on his app together? To kill people together?
I shiver.
“We’ll get this figured out,” Chasm promises as Maxx moves over to the table, dressed in the same apron from the other day. He sets two plates down in front of us, and I smile.
Crepes again. This time, he’s put the chocolate-hazelnut spread and sliced strawberries inside, rolled them up, and decorated the tops with fresh whipped cream and a drizzle of melted chocolate.
“Thank you, Maxx,” I murmur, losing my voice for a moment as I pick up my fork and do my best not to panic. Nobody will understand it; it’ll only make me look like a crazy person in front of the Vanguards. Justin is already trying his hardest to turn me into a total asshole in front of everyone I know. It won’t help if I add to that narrative.
“You’re welcome,” he tells me, taking a seat across from me. Chasm is on my left, at the head of the table (Paul’s usual spot). “But you can’t just pick at it. You have to actually eat.” He cuts his crepe in half and slides it onto his fork. He manages to easily put the entire thing in his mouth, letting his eyes go half-lidded as he chews. “Damn, I was hungry,” he murmurs after swallowing.
Chasm looks down at the food. Based on his facial expression, I can see that he’s just as hungry as I am, but probably also just as nauseous. He wants to see Parrish again. Me, too. Haven’t we been separated from him long enough?
But Maxx is right. We can’t be serial killer fighting teens if we don’t eat.
My lips quirk in a smile as I slice my own crepe up with the edge of my fork.
“Our story would make a really good manga. Or an anime. A video game.”
“It’d make a really good book,” Chasm offers up, and I go terribly still. My mind strays to Tess, to the beautiful words she weaves with her fingers, a goddess of stories, a keeper of sanity, a purveyor of tales. I force myself to keep moving, putting that first bite between my lips even as my stomach roils.
As soon as it hits my tongue, I groan, and Chas gives me a look.
“You can’t be making sounds like that anymore,” he chastises, turning his head away from me. “Not when Parrish comes home.”
I pause with the food still in my mouth, staring at him. He looks back to see my gaze and frowns softly. We’ve been saying that for so long—when Parrish comes home, when he gets back, when we find him—but now it’s happening. It’s everything that the three of us wanted.
It also comes with challenges.
What are we supposed to do about our strange relationship? How am I supposed to tell him that Maxx and I had sex? That I’ve been lovey-dovey with both boys, and that I’d keep on doing it if I could.
But, if it comes down to choosing, I … Parrish was first. I wasn’t lying when I explained that to Chasm. Parrish was the first of the three that I met, and the one I spent the most time with. It was impossible not to fall in love with him when our doorways are thirty-six inches from one another’s.
“Eat,” Maxx commands, but he isn’t talking to me. He points at Chasm’s food and lifts his brows. “Before it gets cold.”
“Yes, sir,” Chasm replies with a roll of his eyes, and I stifle a smile by looking down at my plate. My eyes keep flicking to my phone, but I know that Justin will call when he needs something from me. He has no incentive to simply torture or kill Maxine; that won’t help his cause.
That’s how I keep myself relatively calm, by repeating that mantra, by remembering the obsessive gleam in his eyes when he looks at me. His princess. I stab a piece of crepe with extra force and both boys pause, watching as I chew it angrily, and then throw back a drink of the ice water Maxx gave me earlier like it’s Jägermeister, and I’m at Antonio’s house party all over again.
We eat together in relative silence. Even with the kids’ game blasting loudly from the TV, it isn’t safe to continue a private conversation with them and Kimber in the room. And if she just happens overhear the wrong thing, we’re in big trouble.
She would not be a useful pawn, not at all.
Maxx is browsing his phone while he eats, and my stomach drops when he pushes it across the table toward us.
Milk Carton Isn’t Available to the Public Just Yet—and it’s Already Saving Lives
The news article turns my blood to ice as I drag the phone forward, scanning the rest of it to see how much of Parrish’s story has already gotten out.
“Somebody leaked something—intentionally, of course,” Maxx says, before I even finish reading the article. He’s right, that’s for damn sure.
The boy sat shivering in the back of an ambulance, alive and relatively unharmed—but only because his face, analyzed and placed into Milk Carton’s advanced facial recognition database was scanned in through various videos posted to a popular social media app known as TikTok.
I sigh and give the phone to Chasm. He reads the article over and shakes his head, passing it back to Maxx.
“What a clusterfuck,” he snorts, shoving hair back from his forehead and then frowning at his hand when some of the black spray dye gets on his fingers. He wrinkles his nose and wipes his hand on his very expensive slacks like they’re blue jeans or something. “Some publicity stunt. Kidnap a kid and then save him all in one go.” He lowers his voice to the barest murmur and then attacks his food with the single-minded intent of someone who knows they have to do something, but really doesn’t want to.
“I wonder what Parrish’s story is,” I muse, finishing the last bite of crepe and pushing the plate aside. I don’t have to keep my voice down this time; it’s a genuine question. What is he telling those FBI women? What story will he give them, and why? He doesn’t necessarily care about Maxine; he could just tell them the truth right now.
But he won’t.
Because that would hurt me, and he knows it.
Tess sends us an update shortly after, letting us know that they’ll be headed home soon, and my stomach twists into impossible knots.
Together, the three of us tackle the kid duties, putting Amelia and Henry to bed after they drift off on the sofa, setting Ben up in his room with a book, and … wel
l, there’s not much we can do with Kimber.
“I’m waiting here until he gets home,” she declares from her place on the couch, even though nobody asked or tried to get her to do anything otherwise.
I wait near the front door like a crazy person, the way Tess probably waits for me every time I go with Justin, pacing a rut in the marble floor.
The boys are right there with me, leaning against the wall and waiting just as impatiently as I am.
When the front door does finally open, and I see him step through with bandages on his chest, and a fresh pair of sweats hanging low on his hips, I get a little dizzy.
“Hi,” I say as he pauses in front of me, just as arrogant and pretty as he ever was. No, no, more so than he ever was. I feel like I need another good idiom here: absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes it ache, makes it bleed, makes it long and burn and rage.
“Gamer Girl,” he murmurs, just as Tess and Paul sweep in behind him. Tess closes and locks the door, hitting a few buttons on the alarm, and then turns back toward us. I’m a bit disturbed at how easily Chasm disabled the alarm on the other house, but then again, he is the son of the company’s CEO. It makes a certain sort of sense.
“You’re home,” Tess whispers, touching the side of Parrish’s face. He allows it, but I can see that she’s been doing this continually since we separated at the ambulance. It’s going to be bad for a while; she likely won’t let him out of her sight to take a piss. “We got you home.”
“We got him home,” Chasm murmurs, and I elbow him in the side. Parrish notices, and his lush mouth twitches with the faintest whisper of a smile. He lets his gaze drift up toward the high ceiling and then glances over as Kimber comes padding out of the living room to stare at him.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says, and Parrish exhales.
“I’m glad I’m back, too,” he admits, and the sound of his voice, it just carves out little spaces inside of me, nests there, becomes a part of who I am. It’s like what Maxx told me before, how I carved out a space inside his chest. Same deal here.
Payback Princess (Lost Daughter of a Serial Killer Book 2) Page 50
