Fuck my life right now. The past week has been a damn blur. Everything happened so fast that I barely had time to process it. I knew all the cards would eventually fall. I just didn’t realize how epically disproportioned it would be. When this all began, I set out to hurt Ellis, not fall for his girl and maybe even him. He’s my brother, my blood, and somewhere through my hate, I found love. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to bang, but I care for him the way siblings should.
After everything was revealed and Vi took off, I was pissed that he let her walk out. Out of all of us, he was the more suitable option to go after her, but fuck if his scars don’t answer for why he didn’t. When I came to his place tonight and found his home destroyed, I immediately thought he was robbed. It wasn’t until I heard voices down the hall that I realized how wrong I was. It’s so easy to judge someone else’s life when you’re on the outside looking in. As a kid who watched his parents die, only to be shoved into the system and abused, I didn’t think their pompous rich asses could ever relate to my hell. But, come to find out, theirs were equally disturbing.
When Vi walked into the kitchen, I wasn’t asleep. I couldn’t sleep; the events of the last few hours wouldn’t let me, and damn if she wasn’t everything I needed. I could get lost in her for hours, and that’s exactly what I planned on doing when I snuck up behind her. After hoisting her onto the counter and finding her naked underneath her robe, I was in heaven. One taste of her sweet pussy is all it takes to become a fiend and damn if I wasn’t an addict. Ever since she gave me the green light in the shower at the gym, there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t found myself buried in her sweet heat until this past week.
By the time Sebastian found us in the kitchen, I was gone. I was rock hard and dying to have her ride my cock. It didn’t matter that Sebastian and I had been arch enemies until a few days ago, or that we still haven’t talked after everything that went down. All that mattered was we both had the same goal: loving our girl and making her feel good. So when he started ordering me around, I was all in. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like fucking with an audience. I only have eyes for Vi, but something about sharing her and watching her take other men gets me hard. It’s sexy as fuck. The second we all claimed her, filling all her holes with our seed, I wasn’t done. I wanted to take her to the shower and take care of her. I wanted to worship her, but those thoughts were short-lived, and now Sebastian and I are shoving our dicks in our pants as Ellis takes our girl to her room so we can answer the damn door.
‘I’ll get it. I want first dibs at the sorry fucker who thought to knock on my door at this time of night,’ Sebastian clips out. But the second he opens the door, I see his posture slump. ‘Sayward, what happened? What’s wrong.’
‘Is Tate here?’
Sebastian runs his hand through his hair nervously. It’s obvious he doesn’t know how to act around her. He’s her blood, but he feels like an outsider. However, that’s on him. Sebastian has yet to try speaking to her since he found out who she is. ‘Yeah, he’s here.’ He throws the door wide to reveal me standing in the kitchen.
She all but runs into my arms, crying. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know it’s late, but I was scared and didn’t know where else to go.’
I tightly wrap her in my arms as my eyes clash with Sebastian’s. Both of us are on edge as we wait to hear what caused her outburst.
‘Say, what’s going on? What happened?’
Just then, Ellis and Vi walk out of her room. Even in joggers and an oversized hoodie, the woman is fucking edible.
‘What happened? What did we miss?’ Ellis asks.
‘Nothing; Sayward was just about to fill us all in?’ Sebastian supplies.
She unwraps her arms from around my waist and shakily pulls her phone out of her purse before pulling up a recent post from TMZ.
The headline reads,
‘BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: Harold Sweet, the heir to the Sweet Candy Factory fortune Los Gatos Estate on fire. Authorities are unsure at the time if the couple is inside.’
I freeze, wholly transfixed by the pictures as I scroll. ‘Did you do this, Tate? Is this why you wanted the extra money? They’ll know it was you.’
Vivian comes to my side to see what I’m looking at as Ellis demands, ‘What the hell is it?’
‘It’s the last home they stayed in, the one that abused Tate. It’s on fire,’ Vi answers.
‘Did you do it? Is what she’s saying true, you planned on going after the Sweets with my money?’ Ellis questions.
‘What? No. I mean, yes,’ I toss the phone across the room. ‘ The money from the last job we planned on doing was going to be used against the Sweets, but we never made the last hit. This wasn’t me, but I can’t say I’m upset. I hope those fuckers were inside.’ I pace the room several times before adding, ‘Sayward, you’re not returning to the apartment tonight. I’ll get you a room at—’
‘She can stay here, where she’s protected. Where she belongs,’ Sebastian cuts in.
I’ve been trying to convince her for the past few days to leave the apartment, but she insisted she didn’t want to leave until she had a plan. She’s still determining if she wants to stay in California.
‘You can stay in my room,’ Vi adds. Say gives her a clipped smile. I know she’s on edge. It’s why I never shared any of what happened to me at that house with her. It’s an unnecessary misery on her already guilty conscious. Now she’s scared. ‘Come on. You can help me put fresh sheets on.’ Vi says as she comes over to take her by the hand and pull her away, and I’m grateful when I see her go willingly. Maybe all she needed was someone else to tell her this is where she belongs, that she’s welcomed, that she’s not an outsider.
The second the girls are out of sight, Ellis says, ‘You better start talking, Seb.’
My eyes snap over to Sebastian, who’s now in the kitchen, grabbing a water bottle. ‘What are you talking about? What does he have to do with any of this?’
Ellis shrugs his shoulders before throwing himself on the couch and saying, ‘He burnt our family’s trailer down to the ground while our piece of shit parents were passed out on drugs.’
‘How the fuck do you know that?’ Sebastian snaps.
‘You think Nico and I didn’t track you down after you had been gone for hours the same day you got your license?’
‘I didn’t take my phone,’ he exclaims, as if that’s the only way he could have been tracked.
‘You didn’t need to. Nico bought you a Mercedes with a built-in tracking system. He had the app downloaded and synced to his phone before you ever drove it off the lot.’ Ellis says as he rests his arms on the back of the couch.
Sebastian walks over to the couch opposite him and sits before asking, ‘Why didn’t either of you ever say anything?’
‘There was nothing to say. Whatever they did to you that provoked that type of end said enough. They got what they deserved. As far as Nico goes… It’s Nico.’
I let his words hang as I digest everything that was just said. Sebastian killed my parents, and from the sounds of it, Nico Serra’s rumored ties to the mob must hold some merit for him to turn a blind eye. However, all that is in the past. I need answers for the present.
I stand at the coffee table between them and ask, ‘Does this mean Ellis is right to suspect you? Did you have something to do with the Sweets’ house?’
‘Does it matter? They hurt you and a lot of other innocent people. Harold Sweet ran a sex ring, and his disgusting wife Monica lured, groomed, and targeted girls and boys alike. Neither deserved to breathe another day.’
‘Fuck yeah, it matters!’ I say a little louder than intended. ‘Ellis just confirmed the last time you burnt someone’s house to the ground, you fucked up and left a trail. There are two important women in the other room, and I need to know if they’re in danger.’
He stands up, ready to fight, and Ellis rushes between us. ‘I didn’t leave a fucking trail. They mean everything to me too, fucker. The Sweets are in that house burning alive as they should. I can guarantee it. They had a list of enemies a mile long. I ensured the authorities had more than enough leads, and unlike you, the authorities have no reason to look at me. I have no ties to the Sweets.’
‘Tatum, he’s right. We don’t have to like it, but he’s right.’
A door opening down the hall has us all immediately breaking apart as if we weren’t just at each other’s throats. It could be Vi or Say walking down that hall, but the person didn’t matter. What mattered was protecting them. Both of them. It’s then that I know these men are my brothers. They are my family. I may have wanted to seek revenge against the Sweets and pay them back for every scar, but that type of retribution wasn’t in my cards. Instead, my revenge is living my best life, one they sought to steal, with a family I didn’t know I needed.
