Page 72 of The Game

“Like you’ve done any better by tiptoeing around her?” I seethe, glancing at him in the mirror but catching Alice’s big blue eyes instead. There’s a storm gathering there, and it’s directed at me.

“If you’re going to talk shit, do it so we can understand.”

Shock grips me, but Nick chortles and Jameson whips around to stare at her. She never would’ve talked back like that before, not with that icy edge to her beautiful voice. There’s something deadly and cunning to it, and although it’s something new she’s presenting, and although I obviously want the old Alice back, for some reason her sass makes my cock hard and a smirk form on my lips. So she wants to play with fire, then?

“If you’re going to be a fucking brat, choose which knee you’d like to be bent over,babochka,” I growl, utterly serious. The tension in the car grows thick, Ellie’s eyes widening and swishing to Alice’s face.

My little butterfly turns a beautiful shade of pink, but the way a sneer paints her face haunts me, and I almost regret biting back. Crossing her arms, she drops her chin to glare at me through the mirror, my eyes a ping pong ball jumping between hers and the road.

“I’d like to see you fucking try.”

Despite that new, frigid edge to her voice, despite the words spoken she would have never dared speak to us before, my cock swells with heat and desire. I want to make her submit. Before, even in the maze, she was compliant and willing.

But something tells me this new Alice would rather claw my eyes out first, and that’s the sexiest fucking thing I could ever ask for.

CHAPTER 35

Tristan

The ice cream shop is thankfully empty this time of night and in this cold fucking weather, so we simply sit back and allow them to do as they please—which is to ignore us. The two teen girls working the shop keep eyeing us men with worried looks, from our builds and height, to our tattoos and Nick’s scars. If we were in Moscow, they’d be giving us whatever we desired for free.

Alice stands, my eyes shifting to her as she wanders to the back hallway, likely heading to the restrooms. Standing to follow, I ignore Jameson’s protests. Littlebabochkaneeds someone to bring her back to reality, and I am more than willing to oblige. The thought makes me nervous, though; what if I am overstepping again? What if this pushes her further away from us? It’s a risk I have to take for my own edification, and it’s been long enough.

Leaning against the wall outside of the bathroom, I wait like a snake about to strike its prey. When the door opens, I’m greeted with the top of her golden head before her face snaps up, her wide eyes narrowing into a glare. Pushing off the wall, I crowd her space and force her backwards into the single bathroom, those big blue eyes widening so beautifully in her fear. It makes desire burn through me hotly, my morbid grin growing as I snap the door closed and lock it, sealing us in.

She presses herself against the opposite wall, crossing her arms and mustering her glare again.

“Can you leave me alone?” she hisses. Her words are like arrows puncturing my body in all the most painful places, but I do not falter. I figured out a way to bring her back from her trauma before. I can fucking do it again.

“Not until you tell me what I want to know. I’m done with this bullshit, Alice.”

Her throat bobs as she tries to disguise the pain in her eyes.

“I don’t have to share anything with you—”

I hold up my palms, not in surrender, but to prove to her the lengths I was and am still willing to go for her. The circular scars are still grisly and pink and fresh, my own crucifixion, knowing she was forced to watch us endure heinous forms of torture.

“Do you have any idea what it was like for us?” I hiss. “Not knowing if they were putting you through what Ellie endured? You’ve still never fucking told us, and it was torture then, and it’s torture now.”

She pinches her eyes closed and looks away, her chin wobbling, her mask slipping.

“I just want to know, Alice, so I can help you—”

“You can’t help me,” she whispers, that hollowness back in her sweet voice.

“Try me.”

Her eyes swish to mine, brimming with wavering tears. She swipes at them angrily and shakes her head, and my rage simmers as I drop my palms.

“You know what the worst part about that night was?” I whisper, flaying myself open for her in this moment—the only person on this planet I’d bare my soul to in this way. She doesn’t answer except for a sniffle, so I continue. “It was knowing you could see us, knowing that we could do nothing to stop you from seeing what they did. I begged God to let me get to you, to protect you like I promised I always would, and after? You fucking pushed us away.”

“You hate me for what I did,” she seethes, tears streaming down her cheeks now. Stunned, I step back a pace and shake my head.

“Alice…I don’t hate you. I’m just trying to fucking understand—”

“Then understand this,” she hisses, emboldened as if by fire. “I was alone for months while my uncle and grandfather forced me to play this fucking game to keep you safe. I had to suck his cock every fucking night. And the night he tried to knock me out and rape me? Teddy was there. The night he cornered me in the hallway and was about to assault me? Teddy was fucking there. So forgive me for finding solace in a shitty situation, for having an accident—for knowing I was carrying his child forone daybefore it was robbed from me.”

Fury chokes me, and I cannot bear to look at her trembling form as tears simply fall from her round eyes. Turning my face to the side as my own quivering takes root in my core, I grind my teeth and allow it all to sink in. But before I can formulate a thought, she speaks.

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