Page 52 of Tempest

“Hunter.”

Rio doesn’t need anything else to decipher my meaning. His mouth twists in sympathy. “The turd.”

Rio is as familiar with Hunter as I am. In an unfortunate twist of fuckery, Hunter lives here, too. It’s only the luck of the draw that our schedules are the opposite of one another’s.

“Can I help?” Rio asks as he follows me up the stairs.

He doesn’t trail me like a puppy. Riordan Hughes is the one true friend I have left, more of a brother than a best buddy. We’ve gone through a lot of shit together and are likely to experience more. While the rest of our group was smart enough to escape this life after boarding school, Rio and I fell back into it. The familiarity of violence was more comforting than the foreign effort it took to become normal. Who could thrive in that life, anyway? We were born in violence, taught to manipulate before we made it out of diapers, and held knives with more precision than writing tools. I’m not meant for better, or more.

I’ve long ago accepted I’m destined to destroy. It’s really too ironic that the one time I was kind, it’s come back to bite me.

“Miguel gave us a talking to,” I explain as we traverse the second floor. My room is the last door, dead center at the dead end. “Nothing I haven’t sat through before.”

“I thought last night went fine.” Rio ambles past me once I unlock my door. The room is sparse, containing bare essentials like a bed, desk, and wardrobe. It’s the only one with an en suite bathroom. Hunter tried to suffocate me with a pillow the first night so he could snag the room, but too bad for him, I don’t sleep. I only pretend to since it convinces people I’m as human as they are.

“Cartwright was an easy kill,” I admit and stretch out on the bed, folding my arms behind my head and staring at the stone ceiling where cracks grow into obvious fractures. “It was the party afterward. That black magic ritual shit that makes Hunter constantly want to jerk off.”

“Yeah, sorry I missed it.”

Rio isn’t apologetic at all. He’s the quieter one of us two, less snarky and more internal. He prefers the solitude of a haunted forest, whereas I actively go looking for who I can piss off next.

“Ardyn Kaine was there,” I confess, focusing on the ceiling. Maybe if I follow the cracks, they’ll lead me to another option.

“Does that mean Clover was, too?”

I break my focus to glance over at him with a frown. Nobody mentions Clover and gets too far in life. “I take it you remember who Ardyn is, then.”

“Sure. Clo’s best friend. She was in the car when you delivered the hit.”

Rio doesn’t know that I chose to save Ardyn and killed Mila instead—no one fucking does. Until I have an answer for it myself, I’m keeping that deadly secret locked down, even from my brotherhood. As a Vulture, Rio’s aware of that night, and while Miguel kept the reasons behind my orders on lock, the Vultures are up-to-date on kills. Miguel’s boss allows him to seek out personal vendettas. What he did to earn that trust I can only speculate on, but I guarantee it’s because Miguel proved his worth in a glaring act

Rio moves to my single window, though there’s not much to stare at. The trees are so gnarled and overgrown, there’s no view, and shockingly, I’ve decided against a professional landscape of the place. “That night’s always stayed with me.”

“Why? You weren’t even there, man.” I resume my glare at the ceiling.

“They were girls. She was just a kid. We don’t usually go after that gender or that age group.”

“You don’t go after it at all.” I lift on my elbow, studying him closely. Rio is our scout and investigator all rolled into one. Not that he’s too soft-hearted for kills, I’ve seen him slice and dice like the rest of us, but he’s just plain smarter than many dudes who try to beat us. He sets up the time and place, delivers the targets, and we do the rest. “Do I have to remind you never to question Miguel Rossi?”

“So you’re saying if he ordered you to kill Clo, you would’ve?”

I push off the bed, the rumble in my throat growing in intensity. “I’ve had my share of tussles this morning, but my dance card isn’t full yet.”

Rio doesn’t back down. His dark, shaggy cut matches the dark brown of his eyes, becoming one with this place about as well as I stand out. I half-believe if I try to punch him, I’ll only hit shadow.

He persists, “So why’d you do it to her friend? Why’d you break Clo’s heart?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” Rio is the sole person who could ask that question and wake up tomorrow.

“Because she’s your blood, man, and what’s yours is mine to protect, too.”

My shoulders relax. Slightly. I take a beat, collecting my thoughts because it’s not in me to tell the whole truth. It never is. “I know what that girl saw, and it was enough to make me agree to Miguel’s orders.” I gruffly turn away from Rio’s questioning stare. “That’s all you’re getting out of me. Go away and let me sleep. I had a long fucking night.”

“I’ll go. When you answer one more question.”

“Fuck me,” I groan, falling face-first on the bed.

“If this shit was all sorted a year ago, how was your night ruined by this chick? Why does Ardyn Kaine still matter?”

Because she’s better at hauntings than these goddamned witches. Because I can’t leave her alone. Because when I saw her dressed in white, all I wanted to do was mark her up and make her mine.

Because I saved her.

Rio doesn’t wait for me to answer. “You get this way when there are loose ends, Tempest. I’m not enjoying the panic button my brain is pressing right now.”

“You want somewhere for that binary head of yours to go, snag me my laptop. Help me break through a few firewalls and get all the information I can on Ardyn Kaine’s childhood kidnapping.”

Rio cocks his head.

I sigh. Alas, I am still the sharpest one out of all these fucking tools. “You can help me with my master plan.” I fall back onto the bed, re-folding my arms behind my head and pretending these last few minutes never happened. “I will break Ardyn Kaine for the second time and get her committed for good.”

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