Page 40 of The Pretty Psycho

"Guys." I stopped them. "I just slept, that's all."

"Yeah, right," Jax drawled.

"Seriously," I laughed as I approached the desk they were all sitting at, with several cans of energy drinks and coffee cups between them. "You guys had a wild party last night, huh?"

Jax looked at me, then at Dante, and then back at me. "You know, I will never ever complain when you're pissed off, because coordinating this amount of people is insane. My phone bill is going to be through the roof, my nervous system is practically nonexistent. Why the fuck do we have so many psychopaths in The Brotherhood!"

"Because they're the most creative ones?" I asked, earning yet another glare.

"Seriously," Jax huffed. "Gabriela basically told me she will cut off my balls and feed them to me, because I told her she needed to be here by this evening. That chick, Mariella, she asked me who the fuck did I think I was. And don't get me started on the Hudson brothers." He shivered. "I'm not a saint, but those two would even scare Lucifer himself."

"But they're all coming?" I asked as I sat down and pulled over one of the clean coffee cups. The coffee in the pot was still steaming and given how I didn't want to annoy Vega even more, I rushed out of the cabin without a drop of coffee in my body.

"Oh, they're coming, all right," Dante said. "But they won't be happy when they realize they won't be getting individual rooms."

"Well, if they want individual rooms they can pay for the hotel in the city and get the fuck out of The Brotherhood," I said, sipping my coffee slowly, when I felt their eyes on me. "What?"

"Just like that?" Dimitri asked, finally participating in this conversation.

"Yeah, just like that. They know what The Brotherhood stands for. This is not a beauty pageant, so if they don't like it, they can get the fuck out."

"You know they won't do that." Dimitri laughed. "They're too scared of you, especially because they know you'll be able to overthrow your old man." I definitely hoped so. "Besides," Dimitri placed his elbows on the table, "they're also too curious to see what the new world order would look like."

Hell, even I was curious to see what it would look like. The five of us weren't the only ones that had beef with their families and wanted to change things. The problem was that there were those who wanted to change things simply because they thought their parents were too weak to do the things that needed to be done.

"We will see," I simply said. "What's happening with The Schatten?" I asked, looking at Arseniy who just grunted, his face revealing everything we needed to know. They were definitely in cahoots with my father, which shouldn't have been that surprising, given the circumstances. "So it's true then?" I asked, looking at Dimitri this time. "The rumors are true."

"It would seem so," he added, leaning back in his chair. "I must say, they hid it really well."

"They sure did," I grumbled. "All this time I simply thought that my father didn't like them because The Schatten still held too much power in the underground, but I guess I was wrong."

Arseniy and Dimitri had been looking into The Schatten and the possible connection between them, my father, and Vega. Turns out The Schatten wasn't just an enemy.

They were technically my family, or should I say, they were founded by my family.

My father, Gerard Zylla, and Heinrich Schafer were brothers. Blood fucking brothers, and my father had never mentioned it to me. There was a fallout in the family long before he even marriedmy mother, and instead of staying, he ran from them, changing his last name and creating his own organization. I would've laughed because the similarities between that situation and the one we found ourselves in now were uncanny, but nothing about this was funny.

"So, we're a hundred percent sure they're working together? That file my father gave me on Vega wasn't just some stolen document?"

"Oh, absolutely not. Here." Dimitri pushed the white envelope he had in front of him in my direction. My fingers wrapped around it, turning it toward me and opening it slowly, only to see dozens of photographs inside. I started pulling them out, one by one, seeing the same thing on every one of them—my father and Heinrich sitting together, drinking and laughing like old pals. "I have a feeling your father somehow knew about your plans long before Vega even came to the Academy, or he at least suspected."

"And he had Heinrich send her here, expecting either her to kill me or?—"

"For you to kill her," Dimitri added.

"But why would Heinrich want her dead? She's his best operative."

"Because I wanted out," a feminine voice I knew very well spoke, and all of us turned around to see her standing at the threshold where the door stood open, glaring at the photos on the table. "Hello, boys." She grinned, slowly walking toward me, mesmerizing me.

"I thought you wanted to sleep," I grumbled, not exactly happy to see her here. Not because she didn't deserve to know all these things, but because I really wanted her to rest.

"I know." She placed her hand on my shoulder as she pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down. "But I was bored, and Yolanda wasn't coming nor was she picking up her phone.”Dammit, Yolanda. “So I came to look for you." Her eyes flickered toward the photos, and I didn't miss the flaring of her nostrils when she saw the particular one where a woman sat with the two of them. "That's Alena," she said, her voice dripping with poison. "She practically coordinates everything for Heinrich when he's not there. But yeah, he wanted to take me out because I wanted to leave. This…" She looked at me. "This was supposed to be my last mission before I planned to disappear."

"Why didn't you just leave?" Dante asked, pulling her attention to him.

"Because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I wanted to be free of all this. Free of them. I know all of you have pressure from your families, but living with The Schatten, living in the shadows and being one of them, is something I wouldn't wish even on my worst enemy."

I wanted to wrap my arms around her and destroy every single person that dared to hurt her, but I knew I couldn't. Vega didn't need me to protect her, not really. She needed me to stand by her side as she fought her battles, and I would need to learn to control the urge to take her and run far away from here every time someone threatened her.

---