“Where do you come from, Banks?” he whispered, biting my lip. “Why do you live with the Torrance’s?”
I held the side of his face, pulling my lips away but touching my forehead to his. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to be me tonight, okay?” I pulled back, giving him a small smile and challenging him. “We’re in the confessional, and no one can see us. Let’s just run and not look back tonight.”
His eyes lightened up, and he caressed my face.
“Hell, yes,” he answered. “On one condition.”
He put me back on my feet and reached into his jeans, and I looked down between our bodies, watching as he pulled out some kind of card.
He held it up, the words The Pope of Meridian City written across the black piece of plastic.
A keycard?
I darted my eyes up to his, seeing the thrill there that was also coursing through me.
He got a room? At The Pope?
“I want to find that twelfth floor,” he said. “Want to go on an adventure with me?”
I broke out in a smile and couldn’t help it—I dived in and wrapped my arms around him. I was going to fall hard if he wasn’t careful.
That would totally destroy my street cred.
How did he get a room? It had to be earlier today after confession, I guess.
I leaned back and nodded, climbing off him and standing up.
“Let’s go—”
But then, all of a sudden, something grabbed my shirt and hauled me up off my feet. Hands squeezed my arms, and I was plucked up and out of the grave.
“Hey!” I screamed, my heart lurching into my throat.
“What the hell?” I heard Kai’s bellow from below.
I landed on the cold grass above, the wind knocked out of me. I flipped over, seeing several pairs of black boots.
Who…
But I instantly found their faces. David, Lev, Ilia, and…Damon all stood over me, staring down. My brother’s black eyes were on fire.
Oh, no.
I slowly rose to my feet, keeping my eyes down.
But I kept my chin up. Cowering wouldn’t do me any good this time.
Kai hopped out of the grave, pushing himself to his feet and coming to stand in front of me. “Damon?” he said, breathing hard as he looked at my brother. “What the hell, man?”
I opened my mouth to say something—I don’t know what—but Damon grabbed my wrist and hauled me over to his side behind him.
“Stay fucking still,” he growled at me.
Kai advanced on him. “What the hell are you doing?”
My brother turned to him. “You’re not messing with what’s mine, are you? I thought we were brothers and all.”
I closed my eyes. Oh, God. I could feel Kai’s eyes on me. His confusion.
“Yours?” he shot back. “I didn’t know she was yours. You acted like you didn’t know her in the Bell Tower!”
I glanced quickly between him and my brother, tears springing up. People were starting to gather around, and I saw Michael and Will step up to the scene, as well.
Kai’s eyes narrowed on me, still holding the hotel key in his fist.
“And I’m sorry to say,” he continued, “but it doesn’t really look like she wants to be yours.” He said to me, “You want me to take you home?”
No.
Take me anywhere else.
“You want him to take you home?” My brother looked down at me, daring me with his icy voice.
It wasn’t a choice, though.
I would love to be someone else, somewhere else, but this was it. Damon needed me. Kai didn’t. What would happen to my brother if I broke his heart?
I reached over and took his hand, shaking my head.
And I could feel Kai’s silence like a knife slicing through my gut.
“Well, this is fucking fun,” Will chimed in. “Come on, man, leave her alone.” He nudged Kai. “Damon’s got dibs. What does it matter?”
“Since when does Damon give a shit about dibs?” Kai barked at Will. “If one’s not available, he moves onto the next. No one woman is worth the trouble, right?” He challenged my brother. “You’ve never put a girl before us. What if I want her, too?”
“Well, you can’t have her,” Damon shot back. “It’s kind of nice having one piece of pure, clean pussy all to myself.”
Vomit rose up from my stomach as laughter went off around the circle.
Damon turned to me. “Who do you belong to? Who do you love?”
I shook my head, anger shredding every bit of happiness I’d just felt down in that grave. Goddamn him.
But blood was forever.
“I love you,” I said, looking up at him.
And I caught the glint of relief in his eyes before they turned hard again. Did he actually have any doubt?
He kissed my forehead. “Go to my room and wait there,” he instructed, slapping me on the ass and looking back to his friends. “I may want a piece when I get home. Whenever that’ll be.”
Chuckles surrounded me again, and David put his hand on my back, leading me away.
The four of us walked toward the SUV, leaving my brother and his friends, but I caught his warning to Kai as I pulled my hood back up.
“No one else touches her,” he told him. “Not ever.”
No. Not ever.
Banks
Present
Kai Genato Mori, I read to myself. Born: September 28, Thunder Bay…no siblings.
Page after page detailed his life, his impeccable grades, and his basketball and swimming stats.
And his arrest and activity since he’d gotten out more than a year ago.
Aside from what got him arrested—assaulting a child-abuser who just happened to also be a cop—he had always been a model kid. He knew how to party but never went over the limit like Will.
He enjoyed women, but they never seemed to hate him for it like they did Damon.
And he could be tough and hard and scary, but it never came off as mean like it did with Michael.
Kai was the best of their whole little crew.
Until he got out of prison. Now he was different.
No women, at least not publicly. Never more than one drink, at least not publicly. And not only was he mean, he seemed almost cruel at times.
I stopped on the photo of him taken as he was walking to Hunter-Bailey one day. The PI caught him on the sidewalk, his black suit coat whipping in the wind, his white shirt collar open, a duffel bag hanging on his shoulder, and his black hair making his eyes stand out, looking stern. I stared at his crisp shirt, remembering the feel of the man underneath when it was a T-shirt and hoodie.
Warm. That’s what I remembered.
Really warm.
I shut the folder, inhaling a deep breath and shoving it under the seat with the others. I’d seen my brother play with countless girls, treating them like insignificant toys and then throwing them to the side like trash. I knew how horrible men could be to women they were fucking. And the women not only took it, but they came back for more. Begged for it, in fact.
That would never be me.
“Where the fuck is he?” David grumbled from the driver’s seat, flicking the ash off his cigarette through the crack in his window.
I turned my gaze out the rear passenger side, looking through the streams of rain pouring down the window, up to the black brick house. We arrived fifteen minutes ago, and I’d texted him to let him know we were here. He hadn’t texted back, but I knew he was home. His RS7 was in the driveway, under a tree, getting shit on by all the thistles above coming loose in the rain.
Checking my phone, I saw it was now eight-fifteen. If he didn’t get out here, I was going to leave. I had other things to do besides wait on him.
Lev yawned to my left, and I glanced over, seeing his seat reclined, and his eyes closed. He still wore the same black jeans and sleeveless white T-shirt from last night, and he smelled like a bar bathroom.
“When is Vanessa due to arrive?” David asked me.
I stared back out the window, my heart pumping hard despite itself. “A week or so.”
“How did she take the news?”
“Does it matter?”
I could feel his eyes through the rearview mirror but ignored him. Gabriel had made the call to London late last night and sent me instructions to handle her when she arrived. She wasn’t happy, but she knew this day was coming. Eventually she would’ve been sold off to someone, and as long as that someone kept her in the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed, she’d do what she was told.