Page 51 of These Monstrous Ties
Chapter Sixteen
Present
I toss backmy second shot of whiskey.
Brooklin sips on something bright purple and twirls the paper straw in her glass. We’ve said about three words to each other since we’ve been sitting here, and I’m waiting for her to get to the fucking point. To tell me what I want to hear so I can get away from her. It isn’t fair to her, my awkwardness around other women. It isn’t fair to women in general. But here we are.
I motion to the bartender, Monica, for another shot. Monica shakes her head, her lips tugging into a smile.
She brings it to the table, sets it down, and folds her arms over her chest. “You Rains are exactly the same,” she says.
Both me and Brooklin glare at her.
I bristle against those words. She tucks a strand of honey-colored hair behind her ear, a piece that had fallen from her low ponytail. She pushes the shot toward me. Her hands are flat on the table as I throw back the shot, relishing in the burn, aware that both her and Brooklin are watching me.
“No, we’re not,” I answer her, slamming the shot glass on the table.
She arches a brow, refolds her arms. She’s probably in her early thirties, if that. I have no idea how she’d come to work for Jeremiah. I don’t know how most of his people came to work for him, but I suppose we all had one thing in common: We had been strays. He’d plucked us up off the streets and put us in this fancy prison instead.
“Look around, Sid,” Monica says, glancing around at the empty bar, meeting Brooklin’s gaze briefly. “Your brother is the same. Drinks at the worst times.”
“Worst?” I ask, shaking my head. “There’s no such thing.”
“Agreed,” Brooklin chimes in, glancing at her nails and taking a sip from her purple drink. She has a bleached blonde pixie cut, and she ruffles it with her hand, blue eyes swiveling back to Monica.
Monica smiles, and her eyes light up with that smile. She could’ve been something more than my brother’s bartender, if she’d wanted to be. I know she, like everyone else here, gets paid well. But still, she’s beautiful. She could be a model. An actress.
But maybe she hadn’t wanted to be any of that at all.
“You can’t run from your demons in a bottle, Sid,” she says quietly. She turns to Brooklin. “That goes for you, too.”
I frown. “Who said I’m running?” I twirl the shot glass around, watching it catch the low lights of the bar.
“Only runners drown.”
I sigh. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Ironman? Those people, they’d probably beg to differ.”
She rolls her eyes and slaps the cleaning rag that had been on her shoulder on the table between us. “You know what I meant,” she teases.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
She winks at me and turns, heading back to the bar.
The three shots have warmed me up. I place my hands on the table and lean in toward Brooklin, who sips on her drink. She’s only halfway done. She needs to hurry up.
“Tell me,” I demand. “Tell me about the motherfucking Unsaints before I lose my goddamn mind.”
She chews on the straw, licks her plumped lips, and then leans back in her chair. She has giant silver hoop earrings on and she fiddles with one now. She’s beautiful, which is no surprise. My brother has a type.
She finally sighs, crosses her arms. “The Unsaints really do own Alexandria,” she says, echoing Ria’s words from a year ago. I don’t say anything. I want to hear it all. She glances out the window, at the manicured lawn round the back of the Rain mansion. “Kids of the Society of 6.” She shrugs, still not looking at me. “The Society is made of all kinds of rich ass people. A chairman of an investment conglomerate, CEOs of billion-dollar companies, heirs of fortunes that would bring you to your knees.” She shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter, really. The kids are worse than the parents.”
I swirl the dregs of my shot glass. There’s nothing really in there except a few drops of whiskey, but I have the urge to lick it all up. I resist.
“How do you know all this?” I ask Brooklin. There’re obviously things I don’t know about my brother, but I can’t imagine he’d tell her any of this.
She meets my gaze. “I’m Mayhem’s sister.”
I stop fucking around with my glass. “What?” I ask her, sure I’ve heard her wrong.
