Page 28 of Boy of Ruin
I frown, murderous thoughts suddenly leaving my brain as I dart a glance at Ezra. He shrugs, looking bored, and I know he probably wasn’t close to his father’s guard. We aren’t close to our fucking families at all, guards are nothing to us. But even still, if someone got close to a Van Damme personal guard, then someone’s too close.
I turn my gaze back to Elijah. “Who?”
Elijah shrugs, his shirt pulling tight against his muscular frame as he looks up at me, his eyes lined with red. “We don’t know,” he admits, clasping his hand. “It was a drive-by. I was at the governor’s mansion and Cory was in the car. There are no cameras around the back of that building.”
Just like there aren’t cameras here.
I always told my father that was fucking stupid. Sometimes he’d hit me for that. Snarling shit about me never being able to take his place when he was gone.
You’re gone now, dick, and you’re right. I’ll never be like you.
“What the fuck does this have to do with me?” I don’t give a fuck about Elijah’s guard, or Governor Phil, if I’m being honest. And I know Elijah has already replaced Cory, because attachments are not things the 6 do.
Seems I’m the only person in this fucking cathedral who gets too close to people.
Elijah narrows his eyes, but he reaches for something beside him on the red pew. For the first time, I notice a manila envelope. He unclasps it, slides out a glossy photo the size of a sheet of paper and hands it to me.
With a sense of unease, I take it, looking down at it as my stomach twists into knots.
It’s blurry, and the first thing I see are trees, dark shadows behind each gray trunk. Then I notice a smudge in one corner of the photo, like a droplet of water on the camera lens. I don’t even see her for several long seconds, but then I do, and I freeze.
She’s running.
Her hair is back in a ponytail, and she has a bandana around her neck, her body slanted forward, one foot off the muddy ground, black shirt clinging to her lithe frame. I see her pert nose, those full lips. The details aren’t clear in the photo, but I know my wife. I have her entire body burned into my brain. Every morning we went for runs together, and she insisted we wear the fucking bandanas.
Even if we hated each other come nightfall, in the mornings, we were together.
A team. Us against the world.
I bring a shaky finger to her face, and I realize, little hairs standing on end along my body, that she’s not facing the camera.
Whoever took this…she didn’t know they were there.
And she’s alone.
She’s alone.
I snap my head up, dropping my hands to my side and clenching the photo in my fist, wrinkling it as I do. “Where did this come from?”
“Might wanna sit down,” Cain says softly.
I ignore him, rage lighting through me.
Elijah sighs. “Found on the guard’s lap.”
My breath catches, blood running cold. “How would anyone working with the 6 know about my fucking wife?”
Elijah scoffs, scrubbing a hand over his face as he clenches his jaw and looks away, his hands clasped together on his thighs as I glare down at him, still seated. He doesn’t say a word.
My blood is boiling. “How do they know about her, and who the fuck did this?” I haven’t even told Julie about her, wanting to keep her as safe as I can. I knew one day I’d have to out her, but I wanted to give her secrecy. Carrying my baby, especially, I wanted to protect her from the world.
Maybe I made her feel like a prisoner instead. Add that to my many fuckups.
Elijah stands, glaring at me. “We operate in secrecy, not in solitude, Lucifer. Unfortunately, in order to do our goddamn jobs, we have to work with many agencies, many people. They know more than we’d like them to, but that’s just how it is.” He exhales through his nose, smoothing down his shirt. “Adam and Cal took one of the photographs to a lab to dust for prints and check the geography. I assume this is at…Rain’s mansion. Right now, we know nothing but what I’ve told you.”
“Where’s Maddox?” I ask through clenched teeth, ignoring the mention of my fucking half-brother, balling up the glossy photograph tighter in my hand. I glance at Maverick, and he’s staring at Elijah, too, waiting for a fucking answer.
My wife shot him. Her and Mav’s father. She fucking shot him, and that motherfucker still lived.
