Page 33 of Ink Deep Devotion

Deep down, I know every single one of us fears this day. We no longer have each other. We are going back to our old lives once more. Separated.

Sure, I have Titan and Damian attending my new school, but the rest of these guys are my family. For years, we were a team covering each other’s backs. Now Anders, Leo, Dante, and Cillian have no one. They don’t have cousins they trust their lives with. If they need our help, we are an ocean away. That keeps us all up at night.

Dante was fortunate to be the first one out who wasn’t snatched up by their parents, allowing him ample time to catch up on what we missed. He was the bearer of all the nasty news. Mila replaced my absence with another man in her bed.

Was I shocked? Yeah. I know I broke a part of her when I left. I just thought she’d crumble into my hands and not find another to fix her.

Whatever. Doesn’t matter.

I’m not the only one who has a hard truth to swallow.

“Dash.” Cillian calls my name, but I’m too far entrenched in the plague of fury in my mind. I don’t want to be free. I embrace it.

“Just leave him alone.” Anders grunts. It’s astonishing that the most outrageous individual here is speaking wisely.

I see the remnants of his final test still present under his skin. He picks at the grimy, crusty blood caked under his fingernail. He’s fucked in the head like that, leaving the blood stained on him for a few days as a memory of sorts. It drives Cillian utterly insane. As a matter of fact, Cillian has become agerm freak. We all walked away with some form of hindrance after surviving Initiation 101.

“Dash, be gentle on her. She’s suffered without you. Give her time.” Dante presses.“She’s not, well, she hasn’t handled her situation. I saw her in the hospital. You didn’t. They tried to drug her to take her out of her depression.”

“Depression?” My brow pulls sharply like a bowstring.“She’s always wanted to escape. She tried and failed. That’s not depression. It’s stupidity.”

A deep grumble from Cillian’s throat comes in like a warning light.

I bark back with a roll of my eyes.“Mila is none of your concern.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Dante uncrosses his legs and widens his stance as if he’s got the guts to pull me from my chair and beat some sense into me.“She is my concern, and so are you. I’m warning you.”

“Your warning is less convincing from across the ocean.” I spit, turning to look out the window of his private jet. We gathered and used it as our meeting point, but soon, we would all go our separate ways, starting our new lives. In the shadows, we will meet and plot to take down every single person who has harmed us. The Brotherhood has formed, and the only way to defeat it will be to kill us all.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Damian promises; his hand is hidden in his pocket, but I know what he’s holding. The knife his mother used to kill herself with. Damian has a soft spot for damsels in distress.

A scoff of laughter escapes my throat, trying to hide my pain. They’d all so easily pick her over me.“Nice to know you’re more concerned about a stranger than your own blood.”

“I can see how that stranger affects my blood,” Damian hisses with a wrinkling of his hooded eyes,“Stop being a dick and get over it.”

“Dash,” Titan interrupts, sensing the conversation going too far south,“If I could go back and kiss Elsa again, I would do anything to be able to. Anything.”

Not Elsa again!

He lost the love of his life, so he thinks. Titan never slept with Elsa, never gave that part of himself to her before she died.

It’s different. Mila was my first; she was the only person I thought actually loved me. What started as a game turned into something twisted but real. At least, that’s what I felt.

In the end, Mila played me just as badly.

It was all a lie. My mother was the only one who truly loved me.

“You have that chance. I know this news is hard to swallow, but Dante is right. We were gone for years. You left, making Mila think she was nothing but a game. How was she supposed to react? She’s not even with the guy anymore.”

“You know nothing. If you all care about her so badly, then form a line and fuck her for all I care.” Standing, I walk off the plane. I can’t bear to hear it. All the love for Mila. She doesn’t deserve it!

The foreign walls make me tense up as I walk down the hallway in our new home. Empire University has dorms, but my cousins and I won’t be staying in them. We have a house oncampus, but it’s more like a bomb shelter—at least it will be. It’s being outfitted with the latest security and safety measures.

The University is a joke that fools the world. We have the education we need; this is just a cover story to make them believe we’re civilized, shining stars they can all admire.

Want to know the truth about stars? We’re just remnants of anger and forgotten battles. Most of what you see doesn’t even exist anymore. The presence of light in your eyes takes time to fade, and once it does, you realize the star is nothing more than a distant, dead object, a remnant of what once was.

Trudging into the kitchen, I find Damian and Titan awake and sitting at the table. A pile of eggs and sliced breakfast meat is in front of them, and an empty plate is waiting for me. I take a seat and load up. Empire has a cafeteria, but we don’t trust others and would rather cook for ourselves.

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