“Our sex is an itch and separate from our friendship. Admit that, please. Then compare that to what you feel with Sawyer.”
Elijah hated the truth of it. “I love you. You know that right? I love you as a friend, as a close companion.”
“And I love you. But not like I love her. And I think it’s the same for you.” Quinn gave him a sad smile.
“It is,” he admitted. He still hated it. He didn’t want to lose one for the other. “You are still a piece of my heart.”
“And you mine.”
“Why does it feel like we’re breaking up?” Elijah frowned at the ceiling. “We were never a relationship.”
“No, we weren’t, but we need to admit our priorities are different now. If she leaves here one day, I’m going to follow her, not stay with you.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that already. It almost didn’t hurt because he’d figured it out. And he knew, if that came to pass, what he wanted. “I want to leave with her too.”
“Then you need to tell her that you’re in love with her and it scares you.”
“I am and it does, and I promise to tell her. I almost wish I loved you this much instead of her.” He wished they would all stop bothering him about it.
“You love me exactly how I need you to.” Quinn sighed. “I want my pack together and the only person holding it all back right now is you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. “Do you think your alpha female will have me?”
“I think that’s between you and her. I’ve been told I should stop meddling.”
“Oh, now you stop offering me advice. Well, fine.” Elijah laughed, grabbing a pillow and threw it at Quinn. “Thank you. For talking to me.”
“I really should have sooner. Now, let’s find something to eat. Stay here tonight?”
“Of course.”
“I forgot to say this earlier…I’m thinking of getting a haircut. I want you and Sawyer to help me decide on something.”
Elijah sputtered, but kept listening to his lover explain what he wanted and why. At the end, he could only agree, even though he would miss the hair.
“Then we’ll get you a haircut. No problem.” He would stand next to Quinn when they cut off most of the long, silky black hair, and that was that. He would never leave him to it by himself, and Elijah knew if he didn’t go, it would happen anyway. He might as well be there for it and help Quinn make his decision.
“Thank you. I knew I could count on you and her for this.”
Elijah repeated those words in his head. Quinn knew he could count on both of them. Just another damn reason he was so in love with the little lady. Not Vincent, or Jasper, or Zander. Just them.
Feeling easier, he passed out that night across the bed from Quinn. He wondered if one day he’d find Sawyer there between them.
Wasn’t that a dream to fight for. He’d just needed to get told off a few times to remember it.
6
Vincent
Vincent picked up his phone the moment it rang and answered quickly, knowing it was news he couldn’t avoid. “What do you have, James?”
“I have an update on Axel’s condition.” Their handler sounded tired, weary. “He was pretty fucked up.”
Vincent held back a groan. He shouldn’t feel sympathetic, but he did. He felt awful.
“Someone tried to kill him. He wasn’t going to come out unscathed. He’ll have scars for the rest of his…his life. However long that’s going to be,” James continued. “How do you feel?”
“They shouldn’t be dragging this out. He’s been sentenced. Why is he even still…” He couldn’t say it. Why wasn’t his brother dead yet? “There’s no way he still has information for them.”
“He always has information, and they don’t even need to torture him for it.”
Vincent’s heart sank lower.
Two weeks before, his brother had been jumped in prison. Without his magic, he’d been hurt enough to get put in the medical wing and watched constantly. Since the WMC still found him useful, they healed him as best they could.
And here he was, asking why his brother was still even alive. “Do they need anything from me?” he asked softly. “Medical information, anything like that?”
“No, but they wanted me to pass a message along. He wants to see you. Before the end, he wants a day to see you. He’s never made a request before and has been cooperative, so they thought it was only fair to pass this one along.”
Vincent didn’t say anything. His hand shook hard enough that he nearly dropped his cellphone.
“Vincent?”
“I…” He covered his face with his free hand, hoping it would stop shaking as well. He’d never intended to see him again. Never wanted to. He’d hoped once Axel was in prison that it would be over.
“He probably just wants to say goodbye,” James said kindly.
“I don’t have an answer for you right now,” Vincent forced out.
“They’ll need one quickly. It’s pretty much his dying wish, Vin.”
“I’ll call you back,” he whispered, quickly hanging up before James could say anything more. He forced himself to drop the phone on his desk and stand. He walked out of the room, slamming the door as he left. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he had to get out. He wasn’t going to sit in the office with a chess board, wondering.
This was a game. He knew it. Paranoid, some would call him, but he knew his brother. There was no way seeing him could go well. None at all. Vincent had hung up because he wanted to. He wanted to see his brother again. As fucked up as it was, he wanted to say goodbye.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
He was out the backdoor before he stopped and bent over, grabbing his knees as he fought to breathe. Something was weighing down on his chest like a stone.
His brother wanted to see him before he was gone. Why? Was it just to play one more game or did he really want to make amends? They were each other’s last real family. Sure, they had cousins out there, but Vincent hadn’t associated himself with the rest of their family for nearly a decade.
He’d only had his brother, for good and ill. Through losing their mother, to murdering their father, to the dangerous games that resulted in the scar on his chest, they only had each other.
“Vincent?”
He jerked upright to see Quinn frowning at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“He…he wants to see me,” he mumbled. “My brother wants to see me visit him in prison.”
“Oh.”
Vincent could have laughed. Even Quinn knew just how bad that was. Even the most socially awkward, misunderstanding man who walked the earth could relate to the trouble that Axel left in his wake.
“I want to,” he admitted. “I want to say goodbye to him.”
“The last time you saw him, another agent had killed himself, Sawyer was maybe dying, and we were all wondering what to do. You said he wasn’t your brother. What changed?”
“Sawyer reminded me that it’s okay to love the brother he was before he became a monster.” It was the only answer he had. Once, there had been a boy who loved his mother and was a good older brother. He’d protected and cared, and had a sharp mind. He loved that boy. His brother.
“Sawyer also admits that the man she loved and the boy you knew isn’t there anymore. She’ll even say that maybe he was never real to begin with.” Quinn touched his shoulder and leaned closer. “Why does this bother you?”
“Because he asked to see me.” If it had been Vincent requesting to see him, or anyone else, it would have been different. But Axel had called him out. Axel asked for him, knowing he was going to die soon.
“Do you think he’s changed?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since before he was shipped to the prison. But he’s…cooperating for the WMC. He’s helping. He’s the model prisoner. He’s well behaved. He denied protective custody before he was attacked-”
>
“He was attacked?” Quinn’s voice turned hard, his face becoming stone. “Who attacks a defenseless man?”
“Criminals,” he whispered. “The criminals he’s helped catch.”
“Why haven’t we been on those cases?” Quinn removed his hand from Vincent and crossed his arms. “We caught him. Why aren’t we the team destroying Axel’s entire world?”
Vincent sighed, knowing this question was going to come from someone. He understood the Director’s reasoning behind it, and so did James. “I’m his brother, and Sawyer was once employed by him. Using us could be seen as me and her looking to destroy his enemies for him, or take his place as powerful members of the criminal world. Perception is important.”
“Like we will pretend in public that we aren’t sleeping with her.”
“Exactly. So I get news of it instead of being directly involved. It took a couple months to get rolling, right after we caught him. They only started making arrests right after we got back from the Amazon, having confirmed the information he gave over.”
“And now he wants to see you,” Quinn repeated thoughtfully.
“And now he wants to see me.” Vincent’s hands were still shaking. The idea of it terrified him and yet appealed to him as well. To have one more moment with his brother. To look back in the eyes of another Castello, and maybe they could find what they had lost. The family. Even in his remaining days.
“He killed his own son,” Quinn murmured, looking away, back into the woods. “Five years ago this month.”
“He did,” Vincent agreed. “Sawyer told me the full story of that day a long time ago.”
“He might be redeemable for what he did as a criminal, but he’s not redeemable for that.”
Vincent listened to those words kill any chance of hope he had about reconciling with his brother.
“He’s not redeemable for what he did to her either. Vincent, drop it. Don’t go see him. You have brothers. We’re here with you. Let him stay where he belongs. He’s not good for you, and he’s not good for her. He’s not good.”
Vincent nodded silently, closing his eyes. That’s what he’d needed to hear. Axel was a monster, not just to him, but to everyone. He’d murdered a little boy he’d brought into the world, and even if it was unintentional, it was something he couldn’t come back from. He’d done unspeakable things to a woman he’d claimed to love. A woman Vincent now truly loved, for her spit and fire, her dark eyes, and her sharp tongue, that wicked dark sense of humor and unapologetic nature of her being.
“Thank you,” he whispered, opening his eyes again.
“For what?” The head tilt Quinn gave him was so much like one of his wolves that Vincent couldn’t resist a chuckle. The image of it lightened him just a little.
“For reminding me. Speaking of that particular woman, where is she?”
“She left an hour ago with Elijah to Atlanta. For their date.”
That had his attention and further pushed Axel from his mind. “Really? How did I miss that?”
“Maybe because you’ve been locked in your office for two days?” Quinn smiled at him. “Would you like to watch movies with me? Sawyer keeps recommending one called the Godfather. She said it’s good but banned from the house? Why is it banned?”
“Of course she does,” he grumbled. “Yeah, fine. We can stream it.” He should have known she was secretly whispering about that movie to Quinn. It was a classic. He would have to get her back for it later, since he knew this was her way of giving him a hard time. It couldn’t have come at a weirder time, but he would go along with it. No reason to deprive Quinn of a new movie to experience. As they walked inside, he went back to the discussion of the date. “How do you think the date will go?”
“Terribly,” he answered. “I think they will stumble over it like children. I think nothing will really be resolved, but they will at least be on the same page.”
“What page is that?”
“He loves her and she doesn’t know how she feels about him.”
Vincent frowned as he thought about that. “She doesn’t know?”
“She said as much to me.” Quinn shrugged. “I think they’ll fuck. Hopefully. They are more complicated than I ever thought they would be.”
“He held off for you and ended up developing more feelings than he had figured.” Vincent chuckled softly. “The idiot.”
“He didn’t have to do that…” Quinn was frowning now as well. “I could see it, though. He probably didn’t want me to think the new female was taking away my pack.”
“He didn’t want you alone.” Vincent smiled gently. “I don’t blame him, really. I never thought you and she would find anything in the Amazon.”
“She…she respects me, not for my power, but for everything else.” Quinn looked down at the floor as they kept walking. Vincent watched the feral Magi’s face change to one of sadness. “Even you and Elijah sometimes only think about the power.”
Vincent opened his mouth to deny it and Quinn waved a hand to stop him.
“It’s your job to always account for how useful and capable your team is. Elijah is a direct extension of that sometimes as your second-in-command, at least officially. I get it. I know you also respect me for me. But she…she respected my power, certainly, but respected me more. She refused to be scared of my strength, so that she could get to me. That’s something none of you had ever done.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, feeling guilty. He’d never known just how much his fear of Quinn’s power had been so noticeable in his behavior. He’d figured everyone was like that.
“You tried. It’s why I’ve always accepted you as the leader. You all tried to ignore my power and deal with me. But I would also purposefully use my power to scare you into backing off.”
“I’ve noticed that’s stopped.” Not once in over a month had Quinn’s power lashed out to shake the house or strike terror in the hearts of the inhabitants.
“It proved to be ineffective with her. Since I couldn’t scare her away, there was no reason to keep trying to scare any of you when I ran out of patience or was trying to protect my pride. And the things I was ashamed of are no more thanks to her. And you. All of you.”
Vincent crossed his arms and leaned on the wall. He thought of that. This was Quinn reaching out to him, making something private known. Opening up a little. “Why don’t we invite all the guys down? We’ll make it a group thing while we make bets on how Sawyer and Elijah go.”
“A pack event while two are off finding their places together,” Quinn rephrased, nodding. “I like that.”
“Go get them while I get the movie ready.”
He couldn’t even blink and Quinn was gone. He’d changed so much. So much, in fact, that it was easier now to make him a part of the group. Not that he’d ever been a real outcast, but he’d always been a little separate. Now it felt like he was molding into them like he’d always been there. At least to Vincent.
“Interesting,” he whispered as he went into the basement. She was changing them all. Zander was more focused, maturing, growing. Quinn was becoming more human every day, and bringing his animalistic wisdom with him, able to put it to more use as he understood how to be more human.
And Vincent himself was happier in general. Before her, he’d spent his time completely focused on Axel, but it had always felt like he’d had one foot in the grave. Depression had been his companion.
Who was left?
“Elijah and Jasper,” he reminded himself. Elijah had his own issues, and Jasper’s relationship with her had seemed to go…stale. He wondered what was happening with that. He could bother their Golden Boy during the movie.
“You meddle like me,” Quinn’s gruff voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I do. We all know I meddle,” he replied. “I like to know she’s happy with everyone.”
“Why?”
“I promised her I would do anything to erase him. This is just…an
extension of that. I would be fine with her doing anything as long as she was happy.” Vincent grabbed the remote for their TV and began flipping to the store page to get the Godfather. He purchased it and began the download before continuing to speak. “In the end, Axel would have never needed someone like her if I had never betrayed him and run to the IMPO.”
“In nature, everything is connected.”
“As it is in life,” Vincent agreed. “So, I meddle. To make sure she’s happy. To make sure none of her relationships are like the one she had with him. To make sure her life is as perfect as I can make it.”
“You’re a good man, Vincent Castello.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, keeping his eyes on the television. Coming from any of them, those words meant the world to him. “Where are the guys?”
“They will be right down. I beat them here.”
“Good. Get settled in. Want anything to drink?”
“A vanilla martini?”
Vincent couldn’t stop a laugh from bursting out of his chest. He was still laughing as Jasper and Zander joined them.
Zander chuckled as he saw the drink Vincent was making. “Who lost their balls?” he asked, eyeing the martini.
Vincent pointed and Quinn growled back, making him laugh harder.
“I’ll have a beer,” Jasper mumbled, trying to not laugh as well.
“It tastes good,” Quinn snapped.
“It smells like her, too,” Zander pointed out, grinning. “Her and those vanilla candles she lights all the time.”
“That’s beside the point.” Quinn jumped up and grabbed his drink. Vincent put away the alcohol after pouring himself a scotch. “It’s good.”
“Never said it wasn’t,” Zander said, still teasing.
Vincent was smiling as he fell into the soft leather recliner and hit play on the movie. He continued to smile as Zander and Quinn bickered about the drink and why it was the one Quinn chose.
“Remember to silence your phones for the movie,” he ordered as the title card ended. This led to some shuffling around and a growl from Quinn.
“Is that a picture of her in the gym? Does she know you have that?”
An Echo of Darkness (The Redemption Saga Book 4) Page 7
