Page 58 of Princes of Carnage

“It’s just been you living here, since Jonah died?” he asks after a moment.

“Yeah,” I reply, leaning down to get a pan from under the counter.

“And now you’ve got three roommates.”

I huff a laugh, shaking my head. “Yeah, which wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. But…” I sigh, then admit the truth. “Honestly, even though I don’t love having you guys here, I can admit that this big house felt too fucking empty after my dad died. Empty like the fridge.”

“I get that.” Atlas’s voice turns somber, and when I glance over at him, he’s nodding thoughtfully.

“Do you?”

“Yeah. It’s how I felt after my dad died. Not that I stuck around where we lived for long after he was killed.”

I blink, taking in that new information. It’s hitting me more and more every day how little I knew about these men before I married one of them. I had no idea Atlas’s dad had been killed, for example, but I guess there’s no way I would have known.

And in spite of myself, I’m curious. Who killed his father? And why? Was it similar to what happened to mine, where he caught a bullet in the middle of some job that went wrong? Was it more personal? A grudge of some kind? And why did Atlas have to leave? Was he involved somehow?

So many questions, and I want to ask all of them, but I don’t. I don’t give in to the urge. Better to let those mysteries stay mysteries. It’ll just make it easier when this tenuous alliance inevitably ends and I have to go back to thinking of the Princes as only enemies.

If I learn too much now, I might hesitate to pull the trigger later, once things are back to how they used to be.

I can’t risk that. That’s the sort of shit that makes you end up dead.

“So, Nico said that woman you were talking to after the meeting the other day was your ex,” I say, changing the subject to something less vulnerable. “What’s the story there?”

Atlas immediately narrows his eyes at me. “Why do you want to know?”

His defenses are back up, and I realize my mistake. This isn’t really a safer topic than getting into our families and pasts.

I shrug dismissively. “No reason, really. I’m just trying to get a lay of the land now that we’re allies. She’s in your gang, right? I should know more about the other Carnage members if we’re in this together.”

Atlas doesn’t answer for a long moment, just watching me as I dump things in the hot pan and add pasta to the boiling water. Then he nods, even though I can tell he didn’t buy my bullshit excuse.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “She’s my ex. We were together for a couple years.”

“Wow. That’s a while.”

“I guess,” he replies, kicking his legs out and leaning back in his chair.

He doesn’t offer anything else, but I can still feel his gaze on me. There’s something in the air between us, a sort of wary, charged tension, like he’s just waiting for me to say the wrong thing. To give him an excuse to dislike me even more.

“So what happened?” I’m pushing now, and we probably both know it. “It can’t have been all that bad if you still trust her to be in the gang and have your back.”

“She’s still trustworthy,” Atlas says sharply. “It’s not like either of us cheated or anything. I ended it, and that was that.”

It’s the answer to my question, but for some reason, I just can’t leave it alone.

“Why?” I press.

He shrugs, shoving his chair back and getting up from the table to take his bowl to the sink. “I couldn’t see myself with her forever. There wasn’t that spark. That chemistry.”

I think back to how cozy they looked after the meeting. Zoey was standing very close to him, her hand on his arm, and I saw the way she was smiling up at him. Everything in her body language screamed interest, so if there was a lack of chemistry between them, maybe it was just on Atlas’s end. Which would track with what Nico said about how she’s been trying to get him back.

But that’s not my business. I don’t care.

I remind myself firmly that none of the things these men do or have done is about me and mine. The only things that matter are what we do together to end the threat against us.

“I guess that makes sense,” I say. “Chemistry is important.”

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