Page 58 of In the Midst of Chaos

“You know why, Dad? Because you can never marry for love, you and Micah treated your wives like glorified whores.”

“Well, I think whoever it was, is who got her killed,” he finished off.

“Fuck this shit,” I said as I started to walk back to the manor. These damn secrets were going to kill us all.

“Nash,” my father called after me.

“Yeah?”

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Don’t talk but observe. Sooner or later, rats get caught, and when that day happens, we will be there.”

It took a few heartbeats, but I nodded because I knew he had a point. Chaos was the last thing you needed when you were tethered to war.

Without thinking, I made my way to Finley’s room. I passed my mom, who was smoking a cigarette on the balcony that overlooked the woods I had come from.

She came up to me and stroked my cheek.

“Fight for what makes you happy,” she said as she kissed my cheek and walked away.

With my head too fucked-up, I didn’t think about what she had said.

I made it to Finley’s room. Her night-light was on, and she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed finishing her homework.

I knew she noticed me but acted like I wasn’t even there.

“I fucked up,” I told her.

She continued to pretend like she hadn’t heard me come in.

“I’m so fucking crazy when it comes to you,” I confessed. “The fact that if it was anyone else, I would have already handled it. But I’m stuck between the girl I love and my little brother.”

With that, her face snapped to my face, and her mouth parted doing a sexy little O.

“You love me?”

“Fuck, Fin,” I said as I made my way to the bed. “You’re the one girl I couldn’t have and the one I couldn’t stay away from. You’re the one girl who could break my family apart, and I tried. Fuck, I tried to help it, but it’s always been you.”

She crawled her way to me, and she looked so fucking sexy and so irrevocably mine.

“That’s why I picked him. Because I knew I could fall in love with you,” she told me.

I bent my head and cupped her cheeks. There were tears in her eyes, and I felt like a dick for making her cry.

“I love that you’re vulnerable for me,” I told her.

She went up on her knees and wrapped her arms against my neck.

“I love that you have no problem being soft with me.”

I wrapped my arms around her waist, my hands coming down to her ass. I moved one of my hands down and pushed her shorts and panties aside, only to be greeted with wetness.

“I can also be hard,” I murmured darkly.

“Fuck me,” she begged me. And I was tired of staying away. I didn’t care about the fallout.

Chapter Twenty

Past

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