Page 118 of Lock Up the Darkness

Or killed altogether.

But that craving wasn’t only still there, it was more intense than ever. It was all-encompassing. Knowing she could take me the way I needed… I hadn’t expected that. But she’d had me doing something I never usually did—hoping. I’d fucking well hoped that she’d be able to do that, that she’d want to, that it would turn her the fuck on and get her off like nothing else. She hadn’t just fulfilled that hope, she’d exceeded my expectations. The way she’d met me on my level throughout, the way it had felt with her… I didn’t know what to do with that.

She—the whole thing—had me stumped.

She pushed me.

She challenged me.

She excited me.

For fuck’s sakes, she made me feel alive.

And I couldn’t be that way.

I had to be numbed.

Always numbed.

It was where my control was rooted.

My patience.

My fucking sanity.

And that control was imperative so that mistakes weren’t made.

With the war that was coming, one mistake, one fucking misstep, could destroy us all.

The most obvious option would be to remove her from my vicinity.

From Killian’s and Jonah’s too, with them both becoming more affected by her with every passing day.

But, despite Jonah’s rather transparent attempts to convince me otherwise, she was needed.

Instrumental, would be a more appropriate and accurate word choice.

I’d been gathering information on the Head Infidels since I was a teen and I’d only stepped that up since I’d left the confines of the family home for college and it had invited more space to do so.

But it had been a slow process.

A gradual, mind-numbing process, in all honesty.

I’d had to be very careful what I’d accessed, what I’d taken, and where I’d chosen to tread. I hadn’t always been able to venture down the paths that I’d wanted. To say security was tight surrounding those motherfuckers would be a severe understatement. I’d even had to step back and pause several times because they’d come close to detecting an invasive presence in their security systems. And I was damned good.

I hadn’t been able to go the human intelligence gathering route either, which had caused massive gaps in what I was able to piece together and gather in an attempt to undercut our fathers’ operations, determine weaknesses to use as opportunities to maim the goliath that their organization was, to acquire leverage to bend them, and possibly even exposure of their underground operations to the law. Their underlings—associates and soldiers—were loyal out of fear. And the rest, from captains, all the way to our fathers’ right hands, were compensated far too well with riches, influence, and power, that they’d never turn. The former would never risk shifting their allegiance to me while knowing what our fathers were capable of—the slaughterhouses, the dolls, their trigger-happy approach to dealing with even slight obstacles that found their way into their path.

But with Aurora now in the picture, those gaps could finally be filled in.

She didn’t possess the same problem that I did, the same restrictions.

Her disconnection from not being a blood relation to the Head Infidels meant she could go places the three of us couldn’t, ask questions that would otherwise raise alarms and get back to our fathers almost instantly.

While I had data and insider knowledge that amounted to years’ worth, I hadn’t been able to touch anything concerning Revenant. It had taken all my conniving just to convince my father that I hadn’t been responsible for him escaping that day. Any digging, any questions on that subject matter would have led him right to my door. But Aurora’s research and data gathering had been predominantly focused exactly on that time, the days running up to her dad’s disappearance and the three years following.

Between us we would be bringing together the missing pieces to form a complete picture.

Going through all of that data manually and piece by piece would’ve taken an age, hence the program we’d developed together.

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