Nathan swiftly pulls out of her, but it won’t hide the fact that we obviously saw them fuck.
They’ve just gotten home and already going at it?
Jesus.
“Your girl?” Nathan zips up and narrows his eyes at Kai. “I thought you’d—”
“Relax.” Kai smirks at Nathan. “I’m not mad. Just surprised she’d let you.”
Lana’s brows furrow. “He jumped me.”
Nathan turns to look at her. “Is that what you call riding my face until you come?”
Lana shoves him with her elbow.
“Oh, fuck me, don’t get me hard already,” I murmur. “I’ve only just gotten home.”
Kai sets me down on a chair near the door, and I adjust my pants with difficulty due to the bandages all over my body.
Lana turns off the shower and wipes some remaining blood on a towel before she wraps it around her body while Nathan zips up again. “Milo … are you okay? Why aren’t you at the clinic?”
“I’m done lying around. I hate that place,” I say, coughing, but it hurts so much I cringe.
“Are you sure that’s a smart idea?” she asks.
“I told you to rest,” Nathan growls, annoyed.
“I know,” I reply. “I just … missed you guys.”
Nathan’s face visibly relaxes as he approaches me, and he goes down on his knees in front of me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nod. “Good enough to sit.”
He eyes the bandages.
“It’ll heal. Or so I’ve been told by the nurses. They took out quite a few bullets.” I fish a tiny bag from my pocket and show it to them with a grin. “Look. Souvenirs.”
Suddenly, Nathan lunges at me and wraps his arms around me, smothering me.
“Thank you. Thank you for protecting her.”
“But … I failed,” I mutter.
“No.” He grips my chin and makes me look at him. “You almost gave your life. And for that I’ll be eternally grateful.”
“You sure are throwing around a lot of eternities lately,” Lana muses, putting her hand against her side.
Kai looks her up and down. “Looks like you’ve got three problems on your hands now instead of just one.”
She snorts. “If that’s my biggest problem, it’s not so bad.”
“I’m not a problem for anyone,” I say.
Nathan leans back. “Oh really? Then what do you call showing up here while you should be in a bed being taken care of?”
I shrug. “You know I can’t resist the urge to be with you all.”
Lana
I scoff and fold my arms. “Yeah, right.”
“What?” Milo says, confused. “I mean it.”
“Y’all are only with me to get some free pussy,” I retort.
All the boys frown, but they know I’m right. We had an agreement, and that’s why they all keep coming back. But if it wasn’t for that deal …
Kai tilts up my chin. “You think that’s the only reason, or are you just telling yourself that so you don’t have to feel like we destroyed that icy barrier you kept your heart locked up in?”
But that’s not just it.
I raise my hands and show some of the blood still caked on there. Guess that shower didn’t work out after all, thanks to Nathan.
“Look at me. This is who I am. A natural born killer.”
Kai lowers his eyes at me, his green eye smoldering with desire. “I am looking at you.”
“We see you for who you are,” Milo says as he gets up from the chair.
I shake my head. “No. None of you truly know me.”
“Then let us get to know you,” Nathan says, approaching too.
I take a step back. “You don’t fucking understand. I don’t just kill for fun. I don’t kill like you guys. I kill to—”
“Satiate the hunger inside you,” Kai interjects. When my eyes widen, he adds, “Yeah, I see the way you look at your victims.” He curls my still bloodied hair around his finger. “I see how you revel in the power and enjoy the taste of their blood.”
I shudder with both fear and delight. My secret is now out in the open for them to use whenever they feel like it. We will never, ever be equals as long as they hold that power over me.
A hint of a smile tugs at his lips. “I told you, I’m not afraid of you.”
I look down at the floor, but my own bloodied footprints make it hard to stay sane now that I’ve come down from the high of all those killings. I have only ever killed one or two people in a single night, but this? This was a murder spree, and it felt so fucking riveting that I was almost afraid I’d be unable to stop.
I shiver in place, and when Nathan touches my arm, I pull back. “Don’t.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he asks.
I look at my hands, but they’re becoming blurrier by the second, the image of a gun appearing in my mind’s eye. It feels like I’m dreaming. Everywhere I go, I see blood—red stains on the wall, on the floor, on the bed. I’m unsteady on my feet as I see two images merge into one, the here and now mixing with the past as the blanket on the bed rises, the room darkening as two figures move in the bed. Groans and cries emanate from down below, and a single tear rolls down my cheeks.
Because when I look at my hands, I see a gun.
A gun that doesn’t belong to me.
A gun I was never supposed to take.
“Lana!”
Hands shake me until I finally realize I’m not asleep or dreaming. Kai’s firm hands pull me back into the now, and I stare up into his green eye, which flicks from side to side to decipher what’s going on.
They don’t know the horrors that lie awake inside me, devouring my very soul.
“Tell me what you saw,” Kai barks, staring down at me.
How does he know? Was I that out of it?
I swallow away the lump in my throat.
If I tell him, I’ll have exposed my last secret. Free for them to use against me.
But if I don’t … I don’t know how much longer I can survive.
“I saw my mother,” I mutter. “She was in that bed, covered in blood.”
I look at Nathan’s bed, but it’s completely normal now. There’s no one in there, not even a bump.
“Your mother …” Milo mutters as he comes close too. “Is that why you’ve been killing people?”
My eyes dart to his, and I feel like my world is spinning out of control.
“Please tell us, kitty,” Kai says, tipping up my chin. “We want to understand you.”
A single tear rolls down my cheek. “My mother … assaulted my brother when we were younger. Used him in the middle of the night for months on end.” The words stream out of me like an endless river washing away my sins as I stare into his emerald eye. “And I was the one who discovered it. I told my father, and he killed her.”
Nathan’s face contorts with disgust while Milo’s brows furrow as he slowly shakes his head. But Kai remains focused on me and my story so I can say the words I have been dying to say.
“My mother was a monster,” I say through gritted teeth. “And that monster visits my nightmares every single goddamn night of my life because I was the one who caught her.” I’m screaming now, but I don’t care. I need to let this go. “Because I was the one who told my father. I’m the reason she died. The reason behind my father’s misery.”
Tears pour down my cheeks, but I don’t care anymore. It’s out now, along with all the emotions I’ve kept bottled up for so long. And if they use this secret to destroy me, then so be it.
Kai
Out of all the reasons I could come up with as to why Lana Rivera was such a ruthless killer, this was the least expected.
But fuck me, does it explain so goddamn much … About her and her brother.
“Sicklittlebitch13… that’s why you put that thirteen there,” Milo says.
“All those predators, you kill them because of her,” Nathan mutters. “They’re an outlet.”
I grab her chin. “You did not cause your father’s misery, Lana.” When her eyes drift, I say, “Look at me. You are not responsible for what other people do. Not your brother, not your father, not your mother.”
“But I am my mother’s child,” she whispers.
And there it is.
The fucking bullet that’s been boring its way deeper into her skin until it almost fractured her heart and mine along with it.
Fuck.
I wrap my arms around her and pull her into my embrace, almost crying along with her just because of the pain she’s feeling, and I wish more than anything I could swallow all of her anguish and make it mine just so she wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.
All this time, she has been killing men who turned into monsters just to repent.
A girl with all that agony left to fight her own demons that follow her wherever she goes.
She sniffs. “When I look in the mirror, I see her.”
I lean back and grasp her face with both hands, my forehead against hers as I gaze into her soul. “You are not your mother. You will never be like her. Do you hear me? She was the foulest creature on this planet, and you are a living, walking angel.”
She tries to shake her head, but I won’t let her.
“Yes, you are,” I reiterate. “You kill to save people from pain. There is nothing more angelic than that.”
“But I’m a murderer,” she says, her bloodied hands trembling. “And I can’t stop. I can’t stop the killing. I can’t stop wanting more blood, more pain, more suffering. I can’t make it stop.”
“Then don’t stop,” Nathan says, drawing her attention away. “Don’t ever fucking stop.”
“What …?” she mutters.
He looks at her like he’s in awe of her self-control. “Kill whoever you need to kill, but don’t you ever hate yourself. You don’t deserve it.”
She blinks a couple of times and brushes the tears away.
“I understand now why you were so adamant on protecting your secrets,” Milo says. “And why you’re so obsessed with protecting people. Your brother. Us. His sister. You’re trying to erase their pain.”
She smiles gently. “I don’t understand; I thought you’d all—”
“What? Laugh? Be mad?” Nathan says, caressing her cheek. “I used to want to hate you so damn much, but now that I know the truth, how could I?”
“But you hate my brother,” she says.
He nods several times. “Yeah, well, we all know what he did to me was unfair.” He holds up his missing finger. “But I get why he’s a vicious bastard now.”
She snorts and laughs it off, but when he cups her face, she still leans into it.
“So you’re not going to tell anyone?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Why would I?”
“Because I took your deal and—”
“Fuck the deal,” he says, smashing his lips onto hers. He holds her face like he’s afraid she might disappear if he doesn’t, and this is his last shot. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me jealous just a little bit, but I know the connection we share is just as important.
Milo pushes his way through both of us and suddenly grabs her towel, shoving his lips onto hers, kissing her no-holds-barred. And when their lips unlatch, I steal her away from him to claim her mouth as mine, rolling my tongue around hers in a greedy attempt to get so much more from this divine little kitty of mine.
She is nothing short of pure perfection. A rough-cut diamond.
And because of us, she almost turned to dust.
My lips briefly unlatch so I can tell her what I’ve been meaning to say, “There is no deal; there never was.”
She looks up at me with confusion.
“I just needed a reason to have you,” I say.
“But those pictures and my username,” she mutters as I peck another kiss onto the side of her lips.
“I have way too much fun watching you kill, and if we’d revealed them, you would’ve stopped,” Milo adds.
“I just used those pictures to get what I needed, and I needed money to save my sister from those Bonesmen. But then I had you …” Nathan grabs her hand and presses a kiss on top. “And you proved to be far more valuable than money.”
“I don’t want you to just be with us because we’ll reveal your secrets,” I say, curling my fingers through hers as I bring them to my neck. “I want you to be with us because you want to.”
“I …” she murmurs.
“Could you?” Milo asks. “Be with us?”
She looks conflicted, and rightfully so. After everything we put her through, this is a lot to put on her plate. But my God, I can’t let this woman walk. I just fucking can’t.
She raises her brow, her lips parting.
BANG!
A loud explosion down below, coupled with the whole house shaking, makes us all look at the door, and whatever she wanted to say disappears along with our safety.
Because if I heard that right …
“The Phantom building is under attack,” Nathan says, and he immediately bolts off.
We follow suit as he opens the door, but come to a halt in front of the big banister overlooking the hallway down below.
Because none other than Felix fucking Rivera is standing in the door opening … and he’s got his gun pointed right at my face.
“WHERE IS SHE?”
