Page 27 of The Pretty Psycho

"Adrian," Dante's voice pulled through me, bringing me back to the present instead of staring at the bodies they left for us in the hall of the main building. I turned toward him, expecting more bad news, but when I saw the smile tilting on his face, I practically ran toward him.

"What is it?"

"We found them."

"What do you?—"

"In The Pit," he grinned. "They were hiding in The Pit. They barricaded themselves inside and kept quiet. They're okay. They're alive." They may be alive, but the others… I looked back at the pile of bodies left for us, like a fucking joke. My father loved his games more than he loved anything else, our family included, and this was just one more game for him.

He didn't want me dead, but he wouldn't stop until he took everything from me. He wouldn't stop until he killed the last person I cared about, because that's the kind of man he truly was.

Isolation was his favorite tactic, but the moment he sent me to the Academy was the moment he lost control over me. This place gave me Dante, Jax, Arseniy, and Ethan. This place made me see that the life I was living was as empty as the casket he had made for my brother, making everyone close to us think Dain had died. And I knew the truth. I knew he was still out there, somewhere, all alone, maybe even scared, because God knew what my father did to him.

He buried his son just how he buried my dreams, but he didn't expect me to be stronger than him. He never expected me to rebel, to start questioning everything he did.

"They're waiting for you," Dante murmured, looking at me expectantly. "I'll deal with this."

"We need to give them a funeral," I mumbled, unable to control the unraveling of the emotions in my heart. They were too young to die. Too young to live this fucked-up life.

They should've been out there, dancing, falling in love, living through every moment as if it were their last, and instead they were here, in this purgatory on Earth, wasting their time to appease mothers and fathers who didn't really care about them.

"How many have survived?" I asked, looking at Dante.

"Thirty-three," he said, wincing slowly. Gerard's assassins took out more than half of the people we knew. More than half who were part of The Brotherhood, and for what? To feed his ego? To tell himself that I would go back home?

Fuck this shit.

He should've known better. Before all this, I had every intention of locking him up somewhere, far away from here, where he wouldn't be able to hurt another person. But now… Now I had every intention of cutting him open, piece by piece, so that he would feel the pain of all these deaths.

"Are they still down there?"

"Yeah," Dante nodded. "Jax is with them, calming them down, but you know how it is." I did. There was nothing we could say or do to calm down a bunch of barely twenty-year-olds. "There's more," he said after a beat, making me look up at him again.

"What is it?"

"Dimitri called." That had my attention. "They're getting ready to leave, but there might be some complications."

"What fucking complications?" I growled. Fuck. I should've gone there myself.

I shouldn't have left her alone. What the fuck was I thinking?

"Hey, hey." Dante lifted his hands up, but his words did nothing to calm down the beast clawing at my insides because I dared to leave Vega behind. "I'm just the messenger."

"I swear to God, Dante," I huffed, closing my eyes. "If you don't tell me?—"

"She's gonna be okay. He said they'll be leaving in ten minutes at most, but some of the security cameras caught a big van heading toward the hospital. Arseniy thinks it might be our lovely assassins."

Great. Just fucking great.

I have never felt this powerless, this helpless. Not when my father took Dain away, not when my mother looked at me with the same hatred she had for my father. Not even when he tortured me, making me tell him about Dain and the things he was doing.

But I felt powerless now because the woman who was my entire world was kilometers away from me, already beaten by that fucker who took her whose name I still didn't know, while I stood here, looking at the carnage my father left behind.

"They're gonna be fine, Adrian," Dante murmured. "She's not alone." I knew she wasn't alone, but she wasn't with me, dammit.

"Just," I breathed out slowly, "let me know once they start heading this way. I want to be here when she arrives."

I couldn't keep on standing around and doing nothing. I had to plan. I had to talk to Jax and see where we were at with the rest of The Brotherhood coming in.

---