by Amo Jones
“Yes?” I ask softly, hoping it will soften the blow.
“Why the fuck do you think I’ve kept you locked in this house for all those years?”
“I heard you tell Nate one night.”
Silence. “What night?”
Madison stands to leave, but I stop her with my hand on her arm. I shake my head and she slowly lowers herself back on the bed. “The night you all had a party at the manor and Nate tried to open my door. You said that he couldn’t have me.”
Brantley pauses again, before chuckling. “You really think that is all?”
“Well, now that you say it like that, no…”
“Get home. Now.”
“I can—”
“Saint? Do not fucking play with me. Home.”
“Okay, but ther—”
“Saint…” he growls, and the purr skates over my eardrums, rocking my core. “Home.”
“Okay,” I answer through a whisper, squeezing the phone. Right after I finish doing what I’m doing. “Could you tell Bishop I’m okay? He was stressed last night.”
“He knows.”
“I’ll see you soon…”
There’s a long pause, before I hear a door close in the background. “Put it on speaker.”
I panic, my eyes shooting to Madison.
“What?”
“Do it.”
I bring my phone down, hitting the speaker button. He doesn’t waste time.
“Madison, if anything happens to her, I swear to God I will make your life a living hell before slowly, and carefully, destroying you. You understand me? Not a fucking hair on her head is to be missing when she flies home. I don’t know what the fuck you’re both doing, but I trust Saint enough to know she wouldn’t do something unless there was a good reason. She’s smart, fucking way smarter than anyone I know, and she’s about three steps in front of the human brain. You fuck with her, you fuck with me.”
Madison sighs, leaning forward. “Bran, she’s safe.”
“Keep it that way.” Then the phone call ends and Madison’s eyes come to mine. “He’s gotten worse with age.”
I stifle a groan. “I thought he was just always like this.”
She shakes her head. “No. Never. He was the quiet one that we were all too scared to approach. Seeing him worked up is new.”
Madison’s shoulders jiggle as she tries to contain her laughs. “Man, I hadn’t felt like I was missing much being away, but I would sure pay for a front-row seat to the Saintley show.”
My laughter dies out slowly. “There’s not much of a show. We’ve had sex twice, the first time he was my first time, and the second time felt more like hate sex, which I kind of liked.”
Her lips stretch wide. “Well, I can’t be of much help there.” A small smile comes onto her mouth before she taps my hand. “The doc is here. You’ve been out eight hours!”
I swing my legs off the bed. “I’m ready.”
Warm liquid filled my mouth, the heavy taste of metal running down the back of my throat. I still hung to the tree, swinging back and forth like a pig hunted, about to be singed before being eaten.
“We know what you do…” Brantley said, and I lifted my head up, using all of my strength, dangling between my shoulder blades. “We know who the fuck you are.”
I rolled the slimy liquid in my mouth and spat it onto the ground. “Then you know that you’ve just signed your death certificate.”
Brantley laughed so hard that birds probably flew from the trees. He stepped up closer, tilted his head while keeping his eyes on mine. “Nah, you see, we know who you are…” His tongue flicked out to his lips before the corner of his lip kicked up in a sinister smirk. “But do you know who we are?”
“I said I don’t!” I yelled, tugging on the ropes that are bound around my wrists.
He came closer, and the night went silent. The leaves and twigs crunched beneath his heavy boots, and I faintly caught the other boys in the background, over his shoulder. “We’re the motherfucking Elite Kings.”
I paused. The blood that filled my mouth now spilled from my lips.
His finger came to my lips, hushing me. “And you just became our prey.”
He stepped backward, cleaning the blade of his knife on his shirt. “You remember me now?”
I gulped. “I know who you are.”
“Good.” He leaned up and sliced the rope that held my weight to the tree and I dropped in a slump, hitting the ground. “So you know why I’m about to kill you and that you deserve it?” He leaned down and ran his finger down the side of my cheek.
I knew. I knew exactly why. “That was Jay, not me.”
“Nah uh.” Brantley chuckled. “Wrong answer.”
I spun around and ran. I ran so fast my feet throbbed and stung. I looked up ahead of me, but felt a thud vibrate over the back of my skull, and then I was falling forward.
Falling and falling. “What?” I whispered, my eyes filling with heat. Warmth dripped down the back of my neck and over the side, my head burning with a pain so hot I couldn’t even scream. I reached back to touch where it hurt, but my hand connected to a plastic handle that was sticking out of my skull.
Combat boots, dried autumn leaves, the full moon, and the toxic concoction of death. Blood seeped out of my eye sockets as they closed.
Brantley
Squeezing my phone in my hand, I lean against the wall and try to count to ten. My pulse pounds inside of me, my head spinning. I could fucking kill her. I flex my fingers in my fist, clenching my jaw. I can wrap my fingers around the circumference of her little neck and squeeze, until she realizes just who the fuck she’s fucking with. I sheltered her all of her life, never let myself touch her. If black marks white, it’s there to stay, and that’s exactly what the fuck I’ve done. I’m at around five when Bishop’s office door opens and he leans against the threshold, his arms folded in front of himself.
“She got there safe?”
“Yeah.” I bring my phone back down, shoving it into my back pocket.
Bishop chuckles. “It’s cute that these girls think they can fucking slide out without us knowing where the fuck they are.”
“Do you know why Madison needs her?”
Bishop shakes his head, his eyes losing focus. “Who fucking knows at this point.” The front door to Bishop’s condo opens and closes, as Nate makes his way down the hallway.
He pauses, his eyes swinging between the two of us. “What’d I fucking miss?”
“Oh, you know.” Bishop rolls his eyes. “Yet another example of our stellar taste in women.”
Nate’s brow rises. “Where’s Saint?”
“Fuck you,” I snap, kicking off the wall and heading into the office.
Nate and Bishop follow suit, taking their seats amongst the numerous scattered chairs. The condo doesn’t get used nearly as often as we all thought it would. I sit in silence as we wait on the rest of The Kings before we can get down to business. My fingers tap against my thigh, my leg jiggling while my other finger traces the top of my upper lip. I do a repeat round of that before everyone is here. Bishop’s office here is big enough, but not as big as the one at his forever home, where he hasn’t even been since Madison left. Fucking shitshow. This place is more of a hotel than a home.
“Now that we’re all here, we need your attention. I’m calling in our fathers. We need them in on this.” Bishop pushes a few buttons and puts the phone on speaker.
“Dad, we’re all here.”
“All right.” I listen as the other four announce their attendance. We’ve come to the conclusion that the same people who shot at us are connected to the ones who drugged us. “I get you’re all angry about what happened that night. They drugged you, left you vulnerable, and on top of that, they shot at you, but hear me loud and clear…” Wherever Hector is it’s loud. Either planes or car racing, I can’t decide. “You will not make a move until after the ceremony. There are too many important people attending, the women have put too much time a
nd effort into the planning, and Bishop, if you fuck this with your mother, you know what’s going to happen.”
I smirk at Bishop.
He flips me off. “Agreed. We won’t make a move until after the ceremony.”
“Good,” Hector says easily. “The last ceremony we did was obviously mine. It’s a big deal to us. There are three stages of the night. You’ll receive information over the next forty-two hours. The first stage is with The Kings only, the second with family and friends, where there will be food, speeches, and drinking. The last part is the ceremony. A song will play, you will take your oath, and then that’s that. I step down and fuck your mom until I damn near rot, and you take on the stress.”
Bishop flexes his hand. “Dad! Fuck!”
Hector chuckles, and I can see his smug smirk from here. “I mean it. Nothing is to happen until the ceremony. We can’t take heat before it.”
We all agreed, and Bishop hung up the phone, his eyes falling on all of us.
Nate, Eli, Cash, Hunter, Jase—because the old fucks are always here anyway—and the silence that spills among us is deafening.
I shuffle in my chair.
Jase slinks down onto the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Anything we missing here? You guys talk as if you know who has been doing all of this shit?”
“We do.” Bishop nods his head. “We’ve just been—”
My eyes collide with Bishop’s.
“—waiting.”
I sneer, the adrenaline already settling in my blood. I need it.
“Want to fill us the fuck in?” Jase crosses his arms in front of himself.
I run my tongue over my teeth. “Garcia.”
There was a reason why they called it frostbite. It would literally bite at your skin until you could no longer feel. I sank my nails into the white snow, my jaw clenched shut. It got progressively worse as I aged, I found out. My father wasn’t just an evil man, he was straight-up vile. He wanted to humiliate, torment, and destroy people in a way that you could never see on the surface. He worked his sins by hiding it behind human nature. I hated him. Fucking despised him.
“What you thinking about, boy?” Elijah said opposite me.
My eyes found his, my jaw tensing so hard that my teeth gritted beneath the tension. I didn’t answer him. He was Lucan’s right-hand man in this business. I soon found out after he raped me all those years ago. See, Lucan didn’t pull that shit anymore. Elijah was the last; now he just likes to humiliate me by making sure Elijah is always around when he’s with us. I swore one day he would go down, as would Lucan, only differently. I had to be smart when it came to Elijah. SO fucking smart.
I kicked out my leg, the snow melting against the heat of my skin. We had been in this goddamn igloo for four hours straight, waiting for a drop. I was fucking done with the trade, almost close enough to filling Uncle Hector in on Lucan’s little secret. I wanted to. Every fucking time I saw him, but then she came to mind. It wasn’t worth it. Civilians, other people—they didn’t mean shit up against Saint. Sad but true.
“Something going on in that head of yours?” Elijah asked, leaning his elbows on top of his knees. “Something you want to do to pass the time? I mean, I think you and I both know that I don’t mind bondage…”
I bared my teeth. “If you touch me, I will kill you, Elijah, and trust me, I don’t want to do that. Yet.”
Elijah laughed, his smirk so fucking smug I wanted to reach forward and punch it right off his face. “Settle, settle, Vitiosis. You’re a little old for my taste now…”
I ground my teeth, my fists clenching so hard in my palms that crescents indented. His phone was against his ear when he got a call.
“Ava, how’s my favorite little sister?”
Yeah, I’ll get you real soon, motherfucker.
Saint
I watch as my blood fills the little syringe, slowly and carefully. It’s a much-needed distraction from the weird things I have been imagining. It’s gone from shadows, to faces, to a name. Ava Garcia. I know what I have to do, but it’s going to have to wait until I land back in the United States. I want to study his reaction when I say her name. Maybe I’m having wild dreams that are invading my everyday life, or maybe I’m losing my mind. I guess I’m ready to find out.
“How soon can you get me results?” Madison asks the doctor, whose loafers cost more than some cars. Huh. Why am I not surprised?
“For you, I can have it back within a couple of hours.”
“Thank you,” Madison says, resting her head back on the sofa.
I clear my throat. “Will this work? I mean, because Bishop and I are only half-siblings? I know that we share fifty percent DNA, and half, like—” I pause, trying to rack my brain. “Twenty-five percent. Will this work?”
The doctor nods his head, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Yes, because you and he still share twenty-five percent of that DNA, which this baby will hold fifty percent of his DNA. If this comes back inconclusive, it means the child is not his.”
Madison lies backward on the sofa as another doctor rubs jelly over a small ultrasound wand.
“I’m nervous,” Madison whispers.
“Have you had an ultrasound yet?” I ask, watching as the nurse rubs the wand over her belly.
“No.” Her cheeks flush. “I guess I haven’t felt like I wanted to. And at first, I didn’t know if I was going to keep it.”
Thud. Thud.
The heartbeat is the first thing I hear, and I turn my head farther, wanting to get a clear view of the screen.
“There’s your baby,” the nurse says, pointing to the screen. The doctor drawing blood from me pulls the needle out of my vein and I flinch, snapping me back to what he’s doing.
Thud, thud, thud.
“And there’s the other one!” The nurse smiles at the screen.
My eyes swing up to the little monitor.
Madison’s face falls. “What?”
The nurse points again. “Two babies in different sacs. They won’t be identical, so it could be a boy and a girl. Lucky.” The nurse was young, and if I’m guessing, she and the doc have a thing going on. The chemistry between them is hot, spicy even. I could reach out and touch it.
“No!” Madison yells, shaking her head. “Two? Oh my God, no!”
“Madison, hey, it’s okay,” I say, and once the doctor is finished up with me, I make my way to her.
I feel her calm as I sit beside the couch and lay my hand on her arm.
She searches my eyes, tears falling down the corners. “I’m sorry. It’s just, you look like him at times and I wish—”
I squeeze her arm. “It’s going to be fine.” I couldn’t tell her that I was internally screaming with the fact she was going to have twins. The birth alone would terrify me.
The nurse continues, “You’re safe to have the extraction. Would you like to do it here or the doctor can take you into a bedroom?”
“Here,” Madison whispers, her hand on mine. “Here is perfect.”
After the mini-hospital has packed up, I close the door behind them and keep my eyes on Madison, who still seems to be freaking out in the lounge. She has her phone pressed to her ear as she talks to someone. I hear her say dad, so I decide to give her some privacy, moving into the kitchen to find something to eat. Amongst the chaos of getting here, I forgot to eat. I find fresh fruit and sliced deli meat. I take them out and place some grapes on a plate with shaved ham, grabbing a bottle of water and moving to the kitchen table. Opening my phone, I find a text from Bishop.
Bishop: How is she?
I want to yell at him and tell him that they’re both being stubborn and ridiculous. Now that I’ve met her and I’ve seen how affected she is by their separation, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t logically make sense. They love each other with such ferocity it could burn, so why aren’t they using that same violent passion to stay together? They’re both clearly tenacious in their ways.
Saint: About as good as you
.
He doesn’t reply, and I open Tillie’s message thread. She’s yelling at me. I’m not surprised. I send her off an I love you text and leave it as that.
Tillie: I think you were put on this earth to stress all of us out.
No text from Brantley. Closing her message, my finger hovers over his name. Every time the cushion of my finger touches the screen, my heart beats so loud I almost can’t hear anything else. Unsure of what to even say, I choose something simple.
Saint: I’m sorry.
I don’t know why that’s all I could think of to say, but I felt I needed to say it. I don’t mean to stress him, or anyone, but I realize I do put a lot of unwanted tension on Brantley.
The message bubbles light up. And then stop. And then light up again before my phone dings, just as I pop a grape into my mouth to stop my guts from spilling out from all the nerves.
Brantley: For which part?
Saint: You’re still mad.
Brantley: Yup.
Saint: What can I do to make you forgive me?
When he doesn’t reply right away, I pick at my food. Madison is still on her phone, walking back and forth furiously, sobbing and running her hand over her forehead. I feel bad. I want to console her, but I also don’t want to interrupt.
My phone vibrates, and I pick it up, throwing another grape in my mouth.
I stop chewing. 1 new MMS. An image pops up and I’m suddenly staring right at Brantley’s cock. His hand is wrapped around the base. Tanned, thick and angry, with all of the dangers pierced down his shaft. My mouth waters, my eyes sting. The leather bangle on his wrist sits over his hip, his jeans pulled down and his Calvin Klein briefs tucked behind. Six ladders, and one Prince Albert on the tip. Wow. I think this is the first time I’ve been able to really appreciate the beauty of him. Is that normal? Is a dick even supposed to be attractive? Because Brantley’s is. So tight, heavy, built like a man.
My phone vibrates again with a new message from him.
Brantley: For starters? You can sit your pussy on my face and wrap your lips around this.
