Page 226 of Seizing Control: Part One

“Cherub.”

“Don’t Cherub me.”

“Duchess.”

“I’m not kidding, Slash. I. Will. Stab. You.”

“Wife!”

She huffs. “What?”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t’ve said that. I’m sorry—” As the door to Diablo’s office swings open, and the dark-haired man ducks under the doorframe to enter. I spy the wrath in his expression. It’s directed at me, and that’s not a good thing. “Listen... I gotta go. Dunno when I’ll be free again. But I will ring you as soon as I have my head on straight.”

“I asked for three things, Carter.” The vice around my chest loosens after my wife uses my legal name to address me. “No lies, no secrets, and no leaving... are you still on board with that?”

“I am.” Diablo flops into his office chair and kicks his legs up on his desk. His mood is rapidly deteriorating. He folds his arms behind his head, his gaze tracking my movements when I start to pace. The lethality emanating from him warns me that he’s about to snap, so I work to placate Cherub without giving him too much of a heads-up on the personal turmoil I’ve left back home. “Baby, I know I’m disappointin’ you lately, but shit’s gonna be okay.”

“I hope so.”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Okay.”

Gut churning, I make my pride get out of my way for a moment. “I love you.”

“Damn it, Carter...” Cherub’s voice wobbles. “I love you, too.”

She ends the call before I can. My fingers refuse to relinquish the handset. Frozen in place, the weight of the world on my shoulders, I bow my head. Every ounce of wisdom I once prided myself on possessing has been relegated, moth-eaten and tattered, to the darkest corner of my brain. I’m devoid of answers. Uncertain of my next step.

There’s a hole in my chest.

A Cherub-sized hole.

I feel like I’ve already lost her.

And Lazarus hasn’t even returned from the dead yet.

“I’mma give you one chance to level with me,” Diablo tells me in his deep voice. The tone is a filled with warning, the look in his eyes matching his words. “Fuck me ’round and this little deal of ours will come to a sticky end.”

“You’ll have to get a lil more specific...” I drawl. Freeing my hair from its tie, I don’t even bother to gather it again. The long locks, hair that hasn’t had more than a trim in more than a decade after a simple comment from my wife, fall around my shoulders. Dragging my fingers through it, I shrug. “Most everythin’ is fucked right now.”

“Sounds like it,” he muses. Shifting in his seat, Diablo opens his top draw and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. After smacking the bottom, he offers me one. “Here. Little nicotine always helps.”

We light up a cancer stick.

Greedily suck on them.

Contemplate the cherry embers like they hold the answers to life.

While I keep my gaze fixed on the men sparring, blowing out rings after each inhale, Diablo comes to stand next to me. He’s a mountain of a man. One of the few to make me feel ordinary. There’s a menace in him that I lack, a feral quality he shares with Venom. It used to make me envious, especially when we were in our teens, but now I take comfort in the knowledge that I’m more like them than I originally figured.

Hard-headed, stubborn, prideful men.

The carnage the three of us bring down on our own heads is ridiculous.

First, Venom dies out of some noble plan to save his Lily.

Diablo refuses to admit his feelings for the only girl fighter on his roster.

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